This is not for general posting, but another one of my flash pieces just got posted to “Horror Sleaze Trash.” Don’t share indiscriminately. It’s a bit…well, trashy. https://horrorsleazetrash.com/2024/11/02/t-w-crone/
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A year and half of writing classes and over 250k written words, I finally got someone to publish < 1000 word story I wrote.
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Wrapping up September with CDF, we finished Bird Box and turned in our first short stories of the class. I ended up revising “Frick” and felt pretty good about it, but after reading two of the other student stories, I realized I was outclassed.
Which is a good thing, I suppose, but a little intimidating. My instructor, Richard Thomas, has a book just published that appears to be doing well and got a nice nod from some important magazine I don’t read. I bought it and read the prologue, and really liked it
Well, I just deleted a bunch of small comments I made about a new way to label the genre as “Literary Xxx.” My short answer is that it’s a way to say the author got an MFA. The long answer is way more petty.
Regardless, it is good for me because I enjoy a wide variety of stuff. Most wouldn’t be labeled as “literary.” That is not how people talk or tell stories in real life, but what do I know.
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I’m four weeks into Richard Thomas’s “Contemporary Dark Fiction” class that will take me to the end of the year. The first couple weeks were rough but this week has been great. I feel like we are hitting our stride and the short story this week is the best we have read yet IMO. It’s honest. Too much of the “literary” stuff is trying too hard to be meaningful and artificial.
I’ve rewritten one of my first short stories, “Frick,” and feel good about it moving forward. My favorite Redbud teacher has looked at “Nan” and I’m editing it to submit at the end of October.
Good times. Good reading. Good writes.
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I’m starting Richard Thomas’s “Contemporary Dark Fiction” class next week and read his LitReactor essay on “Setting” this morning. Excellent stuff! I’m already feeling good vibes about this journey. I like that it talks about using broad strokes with some specific details. I probably lean to the left and don’t provide enough solid information to latch onto.
The next four months are going to be crazy. I’m so excited!
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I finished Maeve Fly by CJ Leede, and it was beautiful. The main character is a very regular, edgy gal that ends up losing her shit and starts murdering people.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/maeve-fly/37375215/#isbn=1250857856
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July was a busy month. I wrote the most words I’ve written in one month (~32k), I had to work extra and miss the SFF Worldbuilding class I signed up for, and I got an email that my short story “Buen Pedo” would be published in issue #98 of Blood Moon Rising Magazine. That is the first short story of mine that has found a home.
YIPPEE!!!
That aside I’ve start writing several stories but the only only that has kept my interest in D&D Forgotten Realms fan fiction about two characters from a campaign I ran in the Army about thirty years ago.
Shadow and the Bearded Monkey Boy
I’m hoping to finish the first part of the story and publish it to fanfiction.net by the end of August because, in September, I start Richard Thomas’s Contemporary Dark Fiction class that goes to the end of the year.
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I’d originally said weekly, then monthly, but I forgot. June was a great month for writing. I got in nearly 19k words for the month, which is the second-highest word count for the year. I also surpassed 100k words for the year thus far.
I’ve finished 11 books, roughly more than I’ve read in the last 11 years. So blogging isn’t on my list of priorities, especially since my advice is, “Please Ignore This.”
I am super excited to be signed up for the “Dark Fiction” writing class with Storyville from September to December with Richard Thomas, a bona fide published horror author. I read at “Noir at the Bar” this last weekend and feeling very good about my writing process.
“Love the work, not the rewards.”
In any event, I wrote a little. Now, I will read more and hopefully finish a short story by Sunday to turn in. Next week, I will start “SFF Worldbuilding!”
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I started this blog about a month ago with the intent of writing weekly. Once again, this was a month ago. Despite failing my initial intent, again, I have been happy with the writing that has come forth from my fingertips since I said, “Please Ignore This.”
So in the interest of claiming I will write here once a month, I am writing now. The journey to writing fiction has been wonderful and terrible in waves of joy followed by waves of “Why the fuck am I doing this again?” But fortunately they ebb back to “joy” for longer periods than that whole despair and doubt portion.
This year, I’ve already revised and “finished” twice as many stories as I did last year. Now, to be honest, last year, I really only “finished” one short story, and I’ve now finished two. But I’m well on my way to finishing revising a third. This I think is key. Although I have projects that won’t likely finish and perhaps don’t even have that intent, it is good to have some that do simply for the pyschological boost finishing affords.
I hope I find myself here again at the end of June, still possessing more optimism than pessimism.
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About one year ago, I took my first writing class, “Writing the Novel,” offered in Raleigh in the basement of So So Books, AKA Redbud Writing Project headquarters.
It was a thrill. I didn’t actually share the first chapter of My Novel, mostly because I didn’t have anything I was working on. I’d spent 20+ years as a software engineer, noticed The Redbud Writing Project online, and said, “What the heck?” The only class that was either available or stuck out to me was one on writing a novel.
Now, it’s a year later, and this year, I’ve begun down the same path. First, I retook “Writing the Novel” and actually retained some details and wrote a SUPER rough “novelette,” clocking in at 15k words, lots of fun, and a pile of hot garbage with a couple of scenes I really enjoyed. Second, I’ve been taking (one class remaining) “Fiction I.” This time, it is offered by a different instructor, and it’s like taking a different class. I definitely have learned from both instructors, and retaking has been additive in many ways. Also, the short story I submitted came much easier, and I revised it a bit before forcing it up my class.
“Emotional Support Animal” was the second short story I wrote and revised to the point that I’m pretty happy with it. Looking back at most of my other class submissions, I can clearly see improvement. No one is going to publish my garbage yet, but at least it is revised garbage that makes some sense. Progress.
Last year, my third course was during the Summer four-week session, and I drove to Chapel Hill four times for a shortened version of “Writing Horror” with Matthew Buckley Smith. It was fun. I wrote some very disturbing, unedited stuff, and it was probably the first time I sat down and did what Margaret Atwood suggested.
“Sit down and write the whole thing in one sitting…”
I did take bio breaks, however, and I might have had a snack or two. But it was quite liberating to sit down and bang out 3k words of story hot off the press. I did the same with “Emotional Support Animal,” but I did it early enough to let it sit a week or so before revising. I also submitted it for random critique on Scribophile.
Well, I feel like I’ve already said too much, so in the interest of keeping a little “in the tank” so I can come back in a few weeks and ramble on, I’m going to stop there.
twcrone 