Or “I was feeling lazy and never got past the working title, but it’s been a bad day so have some excuses for my laziness.”
This started off as a joke in a conversation with my friend Lindsey, who is an entirely remarkable writer, and it escalated into this short story. Enjoy. Warpt Factor 6 should be happening sooner than later at this point, but we’ll see where the rest of the week takes me.
I’ve been writing for a fair number of years now, and one thing I’ve never been able to work up the nerve to do is ask someone if I could write something inspired by something they created. There have been plenty of times I’ve really considered it, but never quite had the nerve or motivation to ask.
One day, relatively recently, a four-line story crossed my Dashboard (let’s just gloss over the fact I was on Tumblr, please). I did what I typically would do: liked it, reblogged it, and moved along. And then it stuck with me. Those four lines rattled around in my brain, a frequent distraction.
So, after a bit of debating on the matter, I messaged caliginosity (who originally posted “the stories fairytales don’t tell”) and asked if I could write a short story based around, and inspired by, their post. Here’s the source material, which can be viewed in its original state here:
The prince fought valiantly.
He slayed the dragon.
The princess cried for days.
She loved that dragon.— The stories fairytales don’t tell
Or “I’m totally trying to compensate for slacking off in my down-and-gloomy moods by churning out more new content, plus I’m back to being all excited about writing.”
I’m queuing this post, but it’s essentially being made the same day as installment four. I know no shame. There may be some minor editing glitches, despite me looking it over a couple times, because my mind is presently focused on a presently top-secret project inspired by a Tumblr post (please remember, I know no shame). That should make an appearance soonish. Anyway, back to Warpt Factor!
Or “Here’s the next Warpt Factor, despite doing a poor job maintaining a regular schedule.”
Or “I should be sleeping because I just worked over nine hours and have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow/today (because it’s past midnight)” with a hint of “I’m terrible at setting real, proper adult-like priorities, which explains a lot about me”.
Here’s installment three in Warpt Factor. It features a really horrible/great time travel pun. Oh, and more fun character development and stuff. So much for doing these at a reasonable pace, though. Continue reading
Or “I did a really poor job of not getting really involved in this new project, because I’m already working on entry three and I’ve had entry two done since Monday.” That subtitle sure got wordy.
Here’s some more spaced-out outer space shenanigans. Enjoy!
A little pre-story reading, first. Yes, I’m totally almost two days behind. Yes, I’m still also two weeks behind, more or less. No, I did not account for how stressful these past two weeks would be; what, do you think I have a crystal ball or something? I’d have won the lottery if that were the case (and totally made it so the people who matter to me are debt-free and living comfortably, as well as making my life a little less crazy). However, because of that I have two stories (the second one will be arriving tomorrow, during the day), and a bonus something-or-other because I still feel guilty for some reason. Maybe because I’m already well on my way as a writer to ignoring deadlines as they fly past, glaring at me for my lack of good work ethic.
This first short story, titled Grandpa Pembroke’s Greatest Treasure, started off as an idea about a chess set. It gradually evolved into what it is, and it has become rather dear to me. I’m fairly certain the inspiration is my stepmother’s father, Tibor Zalavary (whose name I hope I’ve not butchered, since I only really knew him as Mr. Zalavary). He was one of the first people I ever played chess with, and I still remember how he schooled me every single time. He also introduced me to The Pink Panther, as portrayed by Peter Sellers, and I will always treasure the memory of sitting in his living room, the smell of cigarette ash in the air, laughing to the point of tears with someone I wish I could have gotten to know better. As such, I hope this story does his memory justice. Continue reading
Well, I would’ve called it “brave new announcement” but it isn’t particularly brave, but it is at least new for me (we’ll get to that) and an announcement.
First, it certainly has been a day of things being frustrating. This post would’ve happened sooner, but switching internet providers made getting the wireless network to cooperate top priority. It still is, so that means that nonsense will be continuing into tomorrow at some point.
In the spirit of maintaining a regular writing schedule, and in light of “Joshua’s Nightmares” once again hanging out on the backburner, I’m going to start a rather large challenge for myself. It’s been done before, in several different capacities, and so I’m pleased to introduce my Short Story a Week. The strongest inspiration for giving this a try is, no doubt, Jonathan Coulton. His version, “Thing a Week”, can be seen detailed here.
The Goal
To push myself to maintain a regular schedule of creating new content, for a year. That means fifty-two unique short stories. They may end up with related bits, they may not. Ideally, I’ll just create. This means one week there could be a dark comedy, the next a fantasy set in Medieval times, and a horror story the next.
The Process
Since this new beginning is starting on a Monday, and it’s going to be a weekly short story, the posting will occur on Sunday. This gives me a full week to come up with an idea, draft the idea, and at least tweak it to some degree if nothing else. The process may change and evolve as this goes on, but the plan is to keep this relatively simple while still accomplishing the overall goal. However, keeping in mind how life generally likes taking plans and flipping them upside-down, I also acknowledge there’s a change the story may have to be posted early some weeks in favor of keeping it a Short Story a Week (no late stories ever, though; even if that means a little sleep deprivation now and then).
Here goes nothing. One short story, every week for a year, starting now.
…and I mean a lot of deliberation. Bordering onto over-thinking my brain into a liquid state, easily consumed through a bendy straw.
Anyway, after a great deal of thinking about this, I’ve decided I’m going to give my short story from this past summer, “Death at Teatime”, a home here. It’ll be in its own post, to follow this one. In short: I really hope you all (you all being anyone who reads this blog regularly, people who happen upon it by chance, and anyone in between) like it. I had an amazing time writing and revising it most of this past summer.
So, if you happened to have a particularly bad day, think of it as a gift to cheer you up. If it’s your birthday, the posting of this story is a tiny digital gift with an equally tiny digital bow. If you just feel like reading something? Well, you’re in the right place, too. Anyway, onward to the story.
As a quick, but probably necessary, side-note: it may initially be a little wonky, formatting-wise, because it’s straight copypasta from Microsoft Word. Any suggestions for a better method of posting it would be appreciated.
Submitting a work for publication reminds me a lot of what it felt like to ride my first real roller coaster, which, by the way, was Millennium Force at Cedar Point and, frankly, it scared the hell out of me.
As did submitting this story. There was the choice: I picked, from the search results Duotrope spat out (a really handy web site, by the way, should you find yourself looking for places to send writing to). In the case of Cedar Point, my friend chose Millennium Force because he was a weaselly little bastard and knew I’m afraid of heights. The anticipation and, let’s face it, fear while in the queue, so to speak. Finally, the thrill of hitting send and knowing, acceptance or rejection, I’ve finally grown enough of a backbone to get this far with something that wasn’t my school’s literary magazine.
Millenium Force actually just made me scream noiselessly for about half a minute before I though I was going to black out, but that’s really where the comparison falls apart (except not really, because I’m actually losing my mind over whether or not it’ll get accepted).
However, after much panicking and worrying over specifics and editing the absolute crap out of it, I’ve finally sent “Death at Teatime” off for publication consideration. Something I should have probably done sooner, based on the choruses of “It’s about damn time” the news was met with over on Facebook. Updates on how that goes will follow, naturally.
More importantly, I have ideas for writing, which is awesome since I haven’t had ideas I liked in weeks. Weeks, people. That’s way too freaking long for me not to be able to get writing done, because then I start considering what weird possibilities could happen in real life and that’s not good for anyone.
Phil's Misadventures In Fiction 