Monthly Archives: October 2009

November’s short is called Satan’s Cauldron and let me tell you, it turned out to be quite a bitch to write. You see, this time I decided to outline it and well, I didn’t much like it. In fact, I almost trashed it and started writing something else. I ended up using the basic premise of the outline as a foundation for it and freestyled the rest. What I actually ended up with is nowhere near what I had outlined.
As I said in a previous post, it took me over four hours to write whereas it usually takes me only two. Suffice it to say, I won’t be outlining any more shorts from hereon out.
I have to put in another weekend of overtime – a bummer, but it’s money – so I’m not going to want to deal with posting it tomorrow. I have to do one quick read-through and triple-check everything tonight. Depends on how I feel when I’m done. I’ll either post it late tonight before I retire or early tomorrow morning, before I head off to work. I’ve gotten into the habit of posting them a day or two before they’re actually scheduled to be posted, simply due to the fact that I have them ready to go and can’t make myself wait.
At any rate, November’s short will definitely be up on Sunday!

For this month’s Short!, Satan’s Cauldron, I decided to outline it like I’m doing with Piratas.
Suffice it to say, and to make a long story short, I did the outline – It only took half an hour to do. – and ended up taking four and a half hours to write what I can normally freestyle in only two. I might try it again with December’s story, but it doesn’t look like outlining is going to have a place in my monthly shorts.
We’ll see.

… that is the question.
Seeing as how I’ve been having a little trouble with my novel, the biggest part being the fact that I don’t write with a set goal – I just start writing and let whatever wants to come out, come out. -, has brought me to a standstill. Well, I shouldn’t say a standstill – more like a “literary downturn”, if I can poke a little fun at our current economic / political state. I don’t write with outlines – I just don’t. Then again, all I write are short stories that only have one plot point, a handful of characters, and are only a few pages in length from start to finish. It’s not that hard to let a story that short unfold on its own. Maybe I’m just a pro at it because I’ve been doing it so long, or maybe it really is just easy.
At any rate, this novel has beaten me. Sort of. My writing comes in spurts; one night I might write ten pages and then I quit for two weeks and pick up again only to write one page or even one paragraph. Then I might wait two days and write twenty pages. At this rate I’m never going to get it done.
When it comes to my short stories though, especially the ones I write for my monthly Shorts! installations, it just flows. I can sit down and write them, as is the case with the three I currently have posted, in just an hour or two. Apparently it doesn’t work that way with novels.
I think I need to give in and outline it.