THROWBACK THURSDAY
a Long short story
When I first came here to Substack, I was coming from a dark place in my life. I’d already been off work for close to six months, having suffered through workplace trauma in which my best (work) friend, died under the wheels of the machine I was driving. An horrific thing to happen to anyone, at any time. But I was still unable to put pen to paper and actually write a story. That would not happen until almost November, when I enter the NaNoWriMo, in an effort to force myself to write.
I was trying to write a story before I started that however. This story, although it had a different title, and a totally different storyline. It was supposed to be the story of a husband and his wife, dying of cancer, and his affair with the Chinese housekeeper. It wasn’t working for me though. I was, in the meantime, putting up older stories that I’d written before. This was supposed to be my first story. I think I had maybe 1000 words at the most. It just wasn’t working.
So I decided I’d write a novel for the NaNoWriMo (that means NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, for those who are NOT writers.) Even that wasn’t working for me. I was just lost. I was putting up chapters of the serial I was working on before coming here — before the accident. I was putting it up on Vocal.Media. But I wasn’t happy there either, because they were too strict with their censorship. I started putting it up here. I was editing and rewriting it at the same time. I realized, that’s what was holding me back. I was already two days behind on the NaNoWriMo. I scrapped whatever I was writing and found the start of a story I’d been working on, and figured…why not?
THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL was the first story where I didn’t have a plot outlined, and the story ready to go. I wrote it, flying by the seat of my pants. When the month was over, and whatever I was posting as my short story at the time, was finished, I knew I had to come up with a new, original, story. I went back to the original story I’d been writing, and basically chucked it away. I killed the father within the first 500 words, and made the uncle character gay.
The story wrote itself after that. I put it in Montepulciano, because we’d been there just the year before. I wrote it fast, and edited it constantly, whittling it down until I was satisfied. And then I posted it. I put it up on April 9 2023. I had 130 Subscribers. I’m pretty sure that was before we had notes here.
And there you have it. Read it if you have’t, or don’t. It’s your call.
NaNoWriMo did something good for me too the first year I tried it in 2020. It forced me to do a brief outline, something I'd never done before. In October I scribbled an idea for a novel, a few pages just saying: this happens, then this... a list of characters... very loose. It had a historical element, so I did some research online, noting dates and places. All very loose. I knew that if I didn't lay some groundwork in October I would run into a wall in November. It worked... I finished the book before the end of the year. The fastest I've ever written a first draft. It has been edited, revised, etc since but it's coming out next year. I'm now a big fan of NaNoWriMo!
Hi Ben - Here’s my Throwback Thursday story - with a twist. “Where was your head when you wrote the story?” I wrote Hoppers, a sci-fi dystopian satire in 2018/19 and of course we were all thinking “how bad can it get?” In my speculative world, the Flat Earthers are in power, their billionaire backers run all the services—like raising money to build a giant lever to tilt the earth and flush the garbage over the side. Authors use a persona hopping tool to write realistic characters. Never published Hoppers but decided to serialize it on Substack. Here’s the twist—revisiting the story inspired me to create the real deal—a mobile app for voice-activated brainstorming between author and their characters. I’ve got some authors doing proof of concept and we’ll see where this goes. There's a short video at charactersoncall.substack.com and the first episodes of Hoppers are there too. Appreciate your input and love the throwback concept. I wrote that book before AI took off.