As a writer, I'm still very much in the infant stages of what I hope will one day resemble a career. I'm not merely talking skill level or number of publications, but also in terms of maturity and level of commitment. I'm hovering at the edge of trying to make time for writing on a full-time basis, reluctantly holding back for fear of financial obligations and practicality.
Cherry Estates was a challenge for me to attempt to write (more or less) every day. In addition, I wanted to try something I'd never really done before: to write something scary.
With regards to writing every day, this was actually pretty successful. In terms of volume, it clocked in at just under 15,000 words. With this taking about 35 days to finish, that makes just under 500 words per day (just shy of 2 double-spaced pages). For comparison's sake, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, demands a goal of 50,000 words over 30 days (about 1,666 words per day). Stephen King claims to write 2,000 words per day, saying that "only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words".
If my personal goal seems low by comparison, I'll point out that I also worked 245 hours over the course of those 35 days, or 30% of the time. That's not including time spent commuting, cooking meals, cleaning...sleeping. I'm not trying to complain, I'm merely trying to point out why I felt this was a worthy objective.
Anyway, volume was never really the main point. The point was to break what had recently become an unfortunate cycle:
Tim's Vicious Writing Cycle:
1. Come up with idea.
2. Jot down specific scene tied to idea, usually a snippet of 200-400 words.
3. Congratulate self on being so incredibly amazing, marvel at own genius.
4. Return to scene the following day. Read it. Find all kinds of flaws with it.
5. Move on to another idea to make self feel better.
My stories folder on my computer currently has five of these stop-go story ideas, and with each one I was feeling progressively worse about them as a whole. So with Cherry Estates, I thought it was high time I stop thinking about how good something would look at the end and just get it all out in one delicious, creative mindgasm of nonsense.
I refused to let myself edit, change, or alter anything I wrote except for the most obvious of grammatical or spelling mistakes. Like my other material, I had one scene in mind and one only. The rest would be made up as I went along. This is why I called it "on-the-fly". I'd be throwing material directly into public viewing with no consideration for how it would be received.
But getting back to my second objective: writing something scary. It's my belief that as a beginner, I should try out new things. That means writing things I have no idea how to write, even if only for my own development. The idea for Cherry Estates came from walking down my perfectly ordinary hallway at home, and imagining what it would look like if all of the lights just went out for no reason.
'Cause that's what ordinary people think about when they see things like this.
How would I find my way? Would other people be in the hallway as well? Would the elevator work? The keen observer will have guessed this scene morphed into Part II. And, if I may be so bold as toot my own horn, this scene was actually pretty damned scary. I feel like I actually wrote something that was at the very least unsettling, and Monica's actions in that scene read fairly genuine and believable.
From that scene, I tried to assemble something resembling a plot. I had an idea of what was happening, how it worked, and how it could be stopped. That was about it.
So, if I were to change it, there's a lot I would do differently:
1) I'd probably cut out the entire basement scene. Though it seems like something people would do, it didn't add much (if any) new information, and it slowed the pacing from part III (all action) and part IV (creepy tar and feathering of Monica) to a crawl.
2) I'd try to introduce Ashley's psychic abilities earlier on, and more overtly. This was something I kind of threw in, and right now it feels like a macguffin of sorts to drive the characters on.
3) I'd also try to introduce Grant, or at least talking about Grant, more often and earlier on. As it is, I don't think I feel any sympathy for him when they find his corpse, or when Shbuuth talks about him being lonely.
Those are the big things. Will I ever come back to it? Probably not. But this goes to show that vomiting out an entire front-to-back novella in one horrific go isn't necessarily a bad thing.
So where to from here?
I'll be using this experience to try to springboard back into those stories I left behind, and hopefully one or more of them will find a home. For Look Out It Is a Blog, I'll be trying an update schedule of Mondays and Thursdays. For the most part, it'll be back to business as usual with the tried and true "whatever I feel like posting about" content, but I am thinking about running another serial in the future. Feedback to Cherry Estates was fairly positive (though stats would agree that things definitely slumped in Part V-VII - yes I look at stats, what of it?), so I think there's room for fiction on this blog.
At any rate, I'm very happy to have written Cherry Estates, and deeply appreciative of everyone who read it - especially those who gave me feedback! Cheers for a wonderful experience, and onwards to greater things.
At any rate, I'm very happy to have written Cherry Estates, and deeply appreciative of everyone who read it - especially those who gave me feedback! Cheers for a wonderful experience, and onwards to greater things.
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