What. A. Day.
As I always say, it’s deeply satisfying to complete a project, to finally write those magical words “The End” and know that even though there will be revisions and proofreading, the hard part is over. Well, today, at last, I’m pleased to say I have finally completed a major project of long standing.
Here are the highlights from this week’s day of short subjects:
The Spaceman
I almost can’t believe it myself, but today I completed one of my favorite, longest-running short fiction projects.
The Spaceman began as one of my daily sketches (which I will henceforth refer to as “free writes” so as to use established terminology), about a human crash-landing on an alien planet populated by an intelligent avian species. The story was one of the most original concepts I’d ever had, mainly because it’s written from the point of view of the aliens (which, technically, would make the human the alien).
I originally began writing almost two years ago, but while I have more than a few projects that have languished that long, this one didn’t so much languish as continue to grow…and grow, and grow, and grow. While I’ll admit that about a year in I started feeling self-conscious about the length, I always feel that a story should be as long or short as it needs to be. So I decided to just keep writing, and wait until I was finished to decide exactly what class of fiction I had written, length-wise.
As it turns out, The Spaceman (as currently written, at least), clocked in at a staggering 7,552 words. That makes it easily the longest piece of short fiction I’ve ever written, beating the previous record holder by nearly two thousand words. It also means it is not, technically, a short story.
The editing on this one should be interesting, to say the least. With a word count above 7,500 words, The Spaceman technically qualifies as a novelette, albeit very much on the short side. Even if I were able to shed, say, 52 words, while the standard definition of a short story puts it at 7,500 words or less, most publishers of sci-fi short fiction place their caps significantly lower. Presence, which had previously been my longest short story, is a piece I consider to be one of my finest, yet I’ve had a hard time finding submission targets for something that long.
I find myself in an uncomfortable position: The Spaceman, however good it may be, is far too long to be published as a short story, yet likely too short to be published as a novelette. As such, in editing word count will come into play. I’ll have to decide whether to try to condense the story to a more marketable length, flesh it out into a full novelette, or simply keep it as is and hope for the best. I will keep everyone posted.
The Receiver
I would be remiss to limit myself to a single project on Short Story Saturday, of course, so I also took a look at this promising project.
The Receiver takes place in the near future, roughly a decade after an alien spacecraft appeared above the Atlantic Ocean. By this point, a team of researchers have settled into a daily routine of entering a small room aboard the spacecraft and attempting to communicate with the aliens, using a fairly simple radio receiver. The story follows one such researcher, who’s accidental breach of protocol leads to a shocking breakthrough.
I really, really like this story, but I’ve had a hell of a time getting it off the ground. Upon reflection, I think this is owed partially to getting bogged down in detailed background, which is likely unnecessary for the story. In such a story, while it’s important that I know what’s going on, it isn’t so important for the reader to know everything. Indeed, something of a cold opening could provide a tantalizing sense of mystery, and I really feel that limiting the characters mostly to a single, terrified researcher sitting alone aboard an alien spacecraft works much better for the story.
I’ve needed a day like this for some time. After working for a while on a lot of projects and not drawing anything to a close, it’s easy to start feeling as though you’re just spinning your wheels. Today was a good day. Here’s hoping for more in the near future, dreamers. – MK
Writing Tomorrow 