NaNoWriMo is over. Thank God. Did I reach 50,000 words? I did not. Is that okay? I guess.
My actual novel, the space story Wandering Star, ended at around 25,000 words. Not a good sign. Basically, I suddenly knew how it was going to end, but not anything else that happened before that, so I metaphorically steered that ship straight into the ground and brought it to the end.
Then I limped my way up to just past 34,000 by adding to a story I left unresolved three years ago, and then writing/starting several short stories based on some of the numerous writing prompts I have saved. My plan was to make up the 20,000 words I needed by writing at least 1,000 words on 20 different prompts. In like two days. One of which was Thanksgiving. So that was easier said than done. I think I ended up doing three different prompts, two of which are more or less complete little stories, and one of which is still in progress. It keeps taking turns I wasn't expecting and I'd like to see where it's going with this.
If you're curious, these are the prompts I used. I got them all from the Writing Prompts subreddit. I've been collecting them over the years.
- You are marooned on an island. Desperate to be rescued you put a message seeking help into a bottle and late at night as the tide is going out you hurl it into the ocean. You wake up the next morning to find one hundred thousand bottles, each holding their own message washed up on the shore.
- You're one of those dads that went to the gas station for a pack of cigarettes and never came back, but you had a damn good reason.
- There’s a strange girl at school but you’re just so attracted to her. You’re a little awkward but your best friend says go ask her out dude the worst thing that could happen is she says “no”. So you go over and ask her out but what happens was way, way, way worse than her saying “no”.
The third one there is the one that's still going. It's some kind of parallel world portal fantasy? I don't know. But I'm interested to find out.
I have a lot of unfinished business now. Aside from the aforementioned short story, I do still have Wandering Star. Even after I brought it to a conclusion, I still found myself thinking about it, still immersed in that world. Those characters and that story is not quite done with me yet. I'm not sure, at the moment, what exactly to do with it, but it definitely feels like it needs more.
But for right now, I'm taking a break. I'm going to get some extra sleep, catch up on some TV shows, and just relax for a bit.
And then, well, I've got a few things I want to do. I need to continue the revision/rewriting of Cold Blooded, if I ever want to get it published. But after this little attempt with the rapid fire short stories, I kind of want to try to do more of that. Just to keep myself in the habit of writing. Maybe commit to writing a story every week or whatever. I don't know. I'll figure it out after my break.
I'll see you… in the future.
Title Source: Marianas Trench - Desperate Measures (it's also what I named the document with all these last minute stories in it)
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