matociquala's brain is not being forthcoming with the short stories at the moment. Not a shortage of ideas in this case, but in one of the comments, someone did ask where short story ideas came from. green_knight is also wondering about short stories, namely how to generate short story ideas. matociquala, of course has many successful novels to her name also numerous short stories; I'm still only very slightly published so anything I say comes with a caveat.

I don't have too much of a problem creating short stories to order, in fact often some kind of random prompt gets my brain working. The short I sold to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight magazine started life as a fun activity on a Babylon 5 Usenet group. The challenge was to write a story that would include all the titles of the episodes of one season. Thus the story was created around a random selection of words and phrases. Most of them got edited out when I decided that the story was worth polishing and submitting, but there may still be one or two lurking in there. :)

I'm also not having too much difficulty thinking up stories for the exercises and assingments for the creative writing course -- well, apart from the terminally dull suggestions that assume we're writing a mainstream or literary novel, but even there I managed to put a boring accountant on a moon base. In fact subverting what's expected is a profitable source of ideas. The one I'm working on now for the second assessed assignment is based on the prompt "an invisible wound". The hint given said, "‘an invisible wound’ is likely to revolve around one or perhaps two people affected by a secret." Oh, no it's not, not in my case. Letting my brain lose with the phrase "invisible wound" sent it off in entirely different directions. :)

Another useful method of generating short story ideas is the random plot generator, which I found either via a mention on Usenet or here, I can't remember which, and a random word generator suggested by the tutor on the OU course. I used both to give me character and scenario for another writing exercise about a gold miner.

So it's not the idea part I find difficult for short stories, it's actually getting the thing written, especially in finding a good ending, one that isn't trite or too obvious or one of those endings where the story just stops and the reader goes, "Huh?"

I also find them much more hard work, per word, than a novel. They never manage to build up any momentum because by the time they've got going, they're over. I seem to have to push them all the way, uphill, both ways. In fact I'm poking one now that I need to finish by Christmas because it's for one of the assignments for the creative writing course I'm taking, but it's being very coy and only giving me a few words per day. So far I've already done as much research -- including a trip to visit a castle and take photos -- than for any novel and I still only have 254 words to show for it. Just another 2000 to go!

Tags: creative writing, creativity, where do ideas come from?, writing reflection
Current Mood: reflective

I had great difficulty with Activity 3.6. We were supposed to write about a memory of a character or place. Perhaps I wrongly assumed that it had to be from childhood (the example we were given referred back to the author's childhood). That's not a problem. I have lots of early memories, but they're just fragments, like a little shard from a mosaic. At first I couldn't think of anything that I could make a coherent narrative out of.

But eventually my brain gave me this...

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I stare at my grandmother. She is putting on her hat and I'm fascinated by her look of concentration, the way her mouth purses into a tight line and the tentative way her hands guide the long hatpin through the thick felt of the hat and into her head. I wonder why she shows no sign of feeling any pain, why there is no blood. My mother can do this trick too, though she doesn't do it so often. She usually wears a soft beret and only occasionally wears a hat substantial enough to need anchoring with a long pin.

The thing that bothers me is that I know I will have to master this skill when I'm older and I'm a little scared. I'm sure it must hurt, yet somehow you have to learn not to show it. Like an African tribeswoman undergoing an initiation rite, you have to pretend to be perfectly oblivious to pain. It must be like corsets and tight shoes and having babies, all the things I can forget about now but will have to face when I grow up.

It was only years later that I realised that my Gran's look of concentration was because she was desperately trying not to stab herself in the head, that in fact the long pin merely speared the hair and not the scalp.

I never did learn the arcane skill of skewering a hat to my head with a hatpin. I never wore a corset either. The 60s happened and women abandoned restrictive underwear, wore miniskirts and tights and serious hats only appeared at weddings.

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Tags: a215, creative writing, memories
Current Mood: creative