My boyfriend and I are off to New Hampshire this weekend for a writing retreat. Just the two of us! It will be a very small writing retreat. I expect to get lots of work done. After all, what distractions could a young couple in love, shut away together in a cabin for the weekend, possibly encounter?
I’m hoping to finish the last revisions on a story I’m revising for the umpteenth time, so I can send it out into the world and try to find a home for it. It’s been out in the world before, but always came back limping and licking its wounds. It’s been through many variations and titles. First it was called “Menagerie,” then “The Magician’s Niece.” The current title is “Clear Skies in Pixieland,” which I’m not sure I’m crazy about either, but is the best I can come up with for now. People who’ve read more than one version always prefer the most recently written one, which is good! I think now it’s just about there. The beginning is much more exciting than any of the other beginnings; Donald and I think a couple other people suggested I start with the scene where Chris and Ed are captured by the pixies, and that seems to work pretty well. I also took my friend Douglas’s suggestion to start and end the story with events in the alternate world and have the middle take place in this world, since so many cross-world fantasies have the opposite structure.
For those who haven’t read this story, and are curious, it’s about a university professor and his research assistant who have this shady operation where they go into an alternate universe and capture pixies and fairies and other beings to sell to wealthy collectors. Then, on one trip to the enchanted forest, something goes terribly wrong!
I also hope to get a significant amount of writing done on my revision on “Swordsman of the Guard.” It’s turning out much, much different that the last version. Much longer, too. It’s still short story length (under 7500 words), but only just, and there’s a LONG way to go. It may have to be a novella. If it gets over 40,000 words (not this weekend, obviously; I can’t write that fast!), I’ll have to put it aside for a while and decide whether I really want to write a novel just now.
It might be a stupid idea, at this stage in my career, to be writing fiction at a not-very-publishable length (the pixie story is over 14,000 words, and getting longer every day). But I never let the fact that something is a stupid idea deter me! And, well, that happens to be what I want to write just now. I do want to write novels as well as short stories eventually, so maybe writing a couple of novellas, even if I can’t find anyone who wants to publish them, will be good practice.