I’ve never met him, but I do visit his site and you just can’t help but be excited for him with regards to this:
Yesterday, I received word that my short story The World Behind has been accepted for publication by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and work on my happy dance, whilst simultaneously trying not to throw up.
Man, congratulations.
Some time ago I finished a piece that was written in first person past tense. I’ve always disliked first person past, but did it anyway as a sort of experiment. After completing four drafts I was reasonably happy with it. Now, some months later, I dug it out and started going over it again and I instantly came to the conclusion that the first person angle is definitely not working. In fact I’m going over it and thinking, Ugh.
I’m still happy with the story and the general structure, but it comes across as a somewhat biographical, confessional piece which, to me, is just horrid. Sure, it uses some elements that I’m familiar with and takes place in a local that I’m intimately familiar with, but the characters and events are all fictional. Well, that’s not entirely true. There is one part that relies heavily on an actual event, but I don’t have a problem with that. The point is that—except for the aforementioned event—it’s just a pack of lies, not a biographical confessional.
So, I’m going to dismantle the whole damn thing and do it in third person.
Also, this will be a great opportunity to—as alluded to in the previous post—kill a few darlings and tighten the whole thing up.
I just finished a fourth draft of The Breaks and it’s about as much as I can do with it until I sit on it for awhile. At this point I’m going to have to let someone else read it and give me input from a vantage point that’s not as close as I am after working on it for so long.
Right now the story comes in at 9,620 words which is far less than the 12,000 plus in the first draft. It’s still not the 7,000 or 8,000 I had hoped for. I know the adage, “kill your darlings,” but after creating a veritable killing field I’m ready to call a truce—for now.
I’ve not posted much lately; my bad. Actually, it’s not my bad. I’ve basically been trying to fit ten pounds of rice in a sack meant to hold five. Something’s got to give.
One thing I’ve been doing is accumulating more links which I will add to my list shortly.
My free time is limited to the point of absurdity. I’m not complaining mind you, just thinking out loud so to speak.
The only time I’ve been able to make for writing for the last several weeks has been between the time I come home from work and when I go to bed. I come home from work anywhere between 2:00 am and 4:00 am. During my lunch hour at work I’ve been writing outlines and first drafts in a notebook. I mull them over and then try to get in a couple of hours after work.
That leaves me with, perhaps, 4 hours sleep thanks to my mother in law who is kind enough to watch my son until I wake up. The rest of my day is then dedicated to him as much as possible. Like most people I do have a couple of days off. One of those days coincides with one of my wife’s days off. That day, of course, is spent together as a family. That one day of the week re-charges the batteries for the upcoming week.
Oh, my wife and I do spend some time together during the week. There is about a half-hour between the time she comes home and I leave and—during my 40 minute drive to work—we usually spend a few minutes on the phone while I drive.
Now, like I said, this is not meant to come across as a huge screed of complaining, really. It’s just the reality of my life at the current moment and, to be honest, I’m very happy with my life. The point is that, as busy as I am; as devastatingly tired as I sometimes am, I still manage to finagle time in to be productive in matters of both writing and family.
I’ve been so busy as of late with life that it has been difficult to post. Busy or not, I’ve still managed to make time for writing. As noted earlier, I finished a first draft of Little Whiskey and the Dancing Cave and slipped it off to a respected individual for input and advice. Actually, he’s a good friend but I trust him implicitly in such matters.
While giving myself some needed distance from Little Whiskey and the Dancing Cave, I’ve been working on a second draft of a story called The Breaks. The story is currently at 9,964 words, but I’d really like to get it down to the 7,000 or 8,000 range.
Tom took a pull from his brandy and thought of Frank. Frank hated him, he knew, and he also knew it was to be expected. How do you explain that when it comes to certain things, there can be no limits to what lengths one will go for the sake of the larger picture? There can simply be no weakness in such matters. To be weak to any degree meant certain death in a world with no tolerance for ambiguity of will. Tom didn’t expect many to reciprocate this ideology, as was the case with Frank and Will’s mother, who had simply collapsed beneath it after just five years of marriage. He recounted the many times when she would take to long bouts of depression punctuated by venting rage. Often times she had complained to Tom of the “incomprehensible sacrifice” that he expected all to endure for the sake of the Trinity. Over the years she learned to control the rage. She folded it up tight and put it in a dark little place somewhere in her withered heart. She kept it contained and endured the sacrifice. One morning, Tom awoke to find her hanging from the rafters in their bedroom. She dangled from a rope, naked, eyes bulging, purple lips and pale skin. She apparently thought enough about it to make sure she would be facing him when he woke up. He lay in bed for several minutes looking at her and allowed ambivalence to transform into loathing. In a rage, he threw the covers back, leapt from the bed, and grabbed the knife that was in a sheath on a belt hanging from a rack next to his pants. He stood up on the bed, cut the rope, and let her body brutally fall to the floor. His biggest concern at that point was raising two young boys left motherless by a blithering coward.
If a genre must be indicated, I suppose I’d call it a Western, but I don’t really think that the description is altogether appropriate. True, it takes place in the late 1800’s and includes a ranch called the “Trinity”, but what I’ve been trying to do with it is take well established convention and tweak it. It’s interesting to me to take borderline—or outright—cliché and then give it a twist.
Daniel Medley was born and raised in the mountains of Central Idaho and now lives in Utah with his wife and son.
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