i’ll be honest

i completely spaced on writing this story.

i’m currently in week two of three of running my office while my boss is away, and if you’ve ever been involved in working for the government, you can imagine all of the ridiculous stuff that goes along with it.

with that in mind, i managed to write entire stories in a few hours for the project last year.  i’m pretty sure i can figure out a topic and write this one in a weekend filled with not only work (yes, saturdays are work days too), but also celebrating my birthday and mother’s day.

awesome times.

 

Topic

While I don’t feel a strict need for secrecy on this project, I will say I think I have my plot and will get to work ASAP on it. However, since hearing about this, I’ve had a number of permutations on a plot that I’ve since abandoned. Really, I kept thinking of a baggage runner at an airport finding The Holy Grail on the ground. Even within that there were a few variants there:

- it was a very dumb runner who saw a red Solo cup and thought it was the Holy Grail

- the woman who finds it is a very conspiracy-theorist type who sees a chalice clearly labelled Holee Grale – and she thinks it’s the gov’t trying to get away with something: couldn’t do this one in 600 words

- it’s actually the code to Jesus or whatever, and not an actual cup – either way, didn’t feel like rehashing DaVinci Code in a micro-story

But the religious aspect has made its way into my final idea, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the holy grail.

By the way, this entry is right now nearly 200 words, meaning this is 1/3 my final word count. YIKES!

 

There may be life left in this ole’ project.

My wife posted this link.

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/04/180596004/three-minute-fiction-round-11-finders-keepers?utm_source=books&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130504

So much for no deadlines. We’d have less than a week to do this, so we wouldn’t be able to do our normal process. I’ll also be travelling, so I’ll have even less. Time.

But 600 words? Most of my blog entries are longer than that. Let’s do it!

 

My old novel

This is not about a short story or this blog, per se, but it felt like an appropriate place to put it. I had recently submitted my novel for consideration in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I figure it’s a long shot to win (as I had to enter it in sci fi/fantasy because of lack of a ‘comedy novel’ category), but I figured I could write a good enough 250 word summary to at least move it on. Besides, I had NOTHING TO LOSE by sending it.

So I just got word that it was picked to move on to round 2. At the start, up to 10,000 TOTAL stories were accepted in 5 categories. They quartered that for round 2, taking only the top 400 in each category. Now, it’s certainly possible that only 408 people submitted a sci fi story, but I’m more likely to believe that it was at least a fairly popular category.

Next, they cut that list down to the top 500 total stories (maybe top 125 in each category?) That happens in a month, so I’ve got time to forget about it. I think being classified in sci fi/fantasy both helps and hurts. It hurts because it’s a popular category and my story is fantasy only because it deals with totally impossible things, but really, it’s a comedy story. However, that’s also a strength. It will stand out from the rest of the spaceship epics/microbiology thrillers/chemistry capers out there. I do wonder if I should have submitted in the “general fiction” category, going under the idea that most people would submit their stories in the more specified genres. Whatever. Anyway, here is the 250-word summary that helped my story advance.

 

God is most dangerous when he’s really, really bored.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the comedy novel Same Old Same Old, where everyman Cain Baxter finds himself at the business end of God’s mischievous streak.  When God’s computer malfunctions during one of His pranks, Cain finds himself in a world called Albatross, one wholly consumed with golf.  It is there that he meets Paula, the runaway daughter of the President of Albatross.  Together, they escape to St. Louis and find two more travelers to complete their party: a professional nomad named Sammy and an eccentric nurse named Peeps.  Throughout the pages of this book, the quartet journeys to Heaven and back with their only mission being to navigate through the chaos and return to normalcy.

Same Old Same Old is an 82,000-word comedy novel that flirts heavily with – but never quite seals the deal with – science fiction.  Another in the incredibly short line of novels that contains elements of fantasy, courtroom drama, fugitive chase, and British comedy, the story is a non-stop tour of the absurd. Whether devising theories that would make enlarging themselves possible, being attacked by a renegade dishwasher’s virtually spotless dishes, making clones of oneself by asking for advice, or hypothesizing on television that humans are actually devolving, Cain and a host of unusual characters must untie the web of confusion that God’s mighty computer has wrought.  Along the way, Cain must make the ultimate choice: continue knowingly living a world of esoteria, or return to the banality of his previous existence. 

 

 

Some Stats

So avid reader Carol posted her rankings (which I’ll copy at the bottom of this post, as she put it in a comment in one of our previous columns). She didn’t rank them 1-12, but rather lumped them into groups. Ones she didn’t like, liked some, liked a bunch, etc. So what I’ve done, being the stat nerd I am, is compile some stats on the 3 people who have read all our stories (us two and Carol). For each “1st” place, that story got 12 points. 2nd favorites got 11, etc, all the way down to 1 point for our least favorites. For Carol’s, where many tied, I added the points together and averaged them. So if 3 stories were here favorite, they each got 11 points (10 + 11 + 12). Pretty simple stuff. So here are our OVERALL rankings (if you’re new to this blog for some reason, the top guys are the stories you may want to request we send copies of – you can request that at shortstoryproject@gmail.com.

Aaron’s stories (3 people voting), from lowest-scoring to best-scoring:

10(T). March – Gaius the Bold (13 points)

10(T). April – The Fat Man (13 pts)

10T. October – The Baker (13 pts)

9. August – The Ledgers (15 pts)

8. February – Rigging the Future (16 pts)

7. January – Sign of the Times (17 pts)

6. December – My Name is Cashew (19.5 pts)

5. November – Dark November (21.5 pts)

3(T). June – Project Titan (26 pts)

3(T). July – Year of the Stone (26 pts)

1(T). May – Climbing for Her (27 pts)

1(T). September – A Life in Rouen (27 pts)

Derek’s Stories

12. March –  The Efficiency Expert (4.5 pts)

11. April – Leaving Gunite (13 pts)

10. June – The Exorcism of Anne Foster (14.5 pts)

9. February – Heads of State (15 pts)

8. October – Sleepytown (17.5 pts)

7. July – Two Pair (19 pts)

6. September – Seeing the Forest for the Trees (20.5 pts)

5. November – Sunset at Belham Bay Park (23 pts)

4. May – Unbecoming (23.5 pts)

3. December – Birth of the Stone (27 points)

2. January – Finding Home (27.5 points)

1. August – Cornered (28 points)

More than individual achievements, I’m seeing trends where we just definitely picked better topics than other months. Admittedly only two examples is a very small sample size, but it looks like the three worst topics are:

March – we had to incorporate 5 sentences into the story (two story total of 17.5 points)

April – “Two people meet every day at a bus stop. Until they don’t.” (total of 26 points)

October – “a baker puts a special ingredient in his bread that changes life in his sleepy town, while someone in the town discovers a surprising branch on a family tree” (total of 30.5 points)

The BEST topics were:

May – “a story that focuses somehow around 7 flights of stairs” (total of 50.5 points)

September – we had to incorporate 9 character names into the story (total of 47.5 points)

December – we had to write a sequel or prequel of one of the other person’s stories (total of 46.5 points)

A quick analysis of this info before getting to Carol’s actual comments:

1) Carol and I have wildly different tastes, particularly in regards to Aaron’s stories. What I thought was easily his best, she thought was his second-worst. What I thought was definitely his worst, she said was easily his best. Go figure?

2) The overall list for my stories seems to be fairly close to my own rankings of them. However, Carol & Aaron (and my wife) all think that my June story (the silliest one) was definitely one of the worst, and I think they’re all wrong. It’s a classic!

3) I had a story that received only 4.5 points. Rather than think I totally churned out a lemon, I’m going to pretend that all my other stories were amazing.

4) I had thought that the “gimmick” topics (the ones we did every 3 months that were not based off a specific topic per se) would either be the best or worst, but they’re all over the place. I guess like everything else – they’re hit or miss.

5) If anyone else has read all 24 stories and wants to write their own rankings, I’ll update this list (or if you only read one person’s, that’s fine – you can list their 12).

Onto Carol’s review:

“Okay, here goes. I have re-read the stories, and not surprisingly, my rankings are quite different from both of yours.

Derek,

My least favorite story was July. All those game plays bored me.

For me, your “meh” stories were March (odd, but humorous) and June.

Enjoyable were February (initially hard to get into), April, August (disliked language, but it worked with the story), November and December.

Excellent reads: January (surprise ending), May (lovely story), September, and October

Aaron, My least favorite story was April.

Your “meh” story was June- just not one of my favorites.

Enjoyable were November and December (Love the song)

Excellent reads: February (fun), March (adorably funny), May (fun), July, August, September and October.

And my hands-down favorite of all the stories throughout the year- your January story about the house.

I have truly enjoyed being a part of this adventure, and looked forward eagerly to each month’s contributions. I hope that you come up with another way to showcase your talents.”

 

Ranking My Own Stories

Needless to say, I was pretty surprised by some of Aaron’s analysis. I knew, for instance, that he wasn’t as big a fan of my funnier stories, but I didn’t realize HOW much he preferred the “serious” ones. (Four of his least favorite five were my funnier stories). That alone will cause a rift between how we view my stories, as I tend to feel my comedy ones have just as much to offer as my serious ones. At least some of them.

Unlike Aaron’s stories, our opinions are quite different on my works. In fact, we agree on #12 and that’s it. So, yeah, I guess that’s my worst story. Outside of that, our analysis is quite different, though some of the reasons why we like/dislike something are similar. Anyway, we’re off:

12. March – “The Efficiency Expert” – We both agree that this is a lopsided story. The ideas weren’t fresh (many were rehashed ideas I’d have from a while ago) and because of that I think I wrote complacently. The sentences themselves are integrated fine, I felt (only one sticks out), but very few of the jokes work. Sneaky Pete Cahoots is pretty good, though.

11. October – “Sleepytown” – I recalled having liked this a great deal when I wrote it, yet it’s at the bottom of the list. Why? Well, I think it got hurt by a few things. Some of the humor didn’t work very well, as this fairy tale would have been better suited to be told more like a straight fairy tale. The bigger problem is that a surprising number of my stories were ‘period’ pieces, and this one was overshadowed by one that was much better that I’d end up writing two months later. So thematically it’s very close to December, but not nearly as good.

10. April – “Leaving Gunite” – Aaron and I both feel that this one is one that it’s hard to actually find yourself caring about the major plot. I think the issue could be that the ending is spoiled in the first paragraph, so it’s just a tale about how they got there. There isn’t any tension and the story could be told better.

9. September – “Seeing the Forest for the Trees” – I was surprised that Aaron liked this as much as he did (6th). Within the confines of what I was given – integrating 9 different character names – and doing it in an inventive way, I was successful. However, if you look at it just as a short story (ignoring the “challenge”), it doesn’t hold up. Two of the “characters”, though, Voluptua and Lark, are quite well written. I’m pleased with them at least.

8. May – “Unbecoming” – This is a decent enough story, but it just has SO much exposition. This would make a better novella or something where it isn’t so relentless with its exposition and where it could be layered in. However, this was a pretty influential story, as it was the first of many period pieces and elements of this would find their way into both Aaron’s and my subsequent stories. My attempt at social commentary ended up being kind of average.

7. February – “Heads of State” – Here is basically the separation between the stories I feel are below average and the ones that I like a great deal. This story is in all ways unbelievable, particularly for one where I did so much research (this was most most heavily-researched story, and not just all about Roosevelt). There are a few continuity issues as well. But I can’t deny that it’s just an incredibly fun read. I had a smile on my face half the time when reading it. Inconsequential but fun.

6. July – “Two Pair” – Aaron’s #2, and I rank it as #6? What’s that? (That will not be the biggest discrepancy between our rankings either). When I reread it, I started out thinking I wouldn’t enjoy it very much for some reason. However, it is very engrossing. I found myself getting captivated (being a poker nerd helps). Where Aaron and I do agree is the interplay between the two major characters is very good. However (and I’m surprised he didn’t mention this), there is a jokiness about some of the narration that just doesn’t fit the vibe of the whole story. I should have kept it only to the dialogue.

5. November – “Sunset at Belham Bay Park” – As a concept piece this worked incredibly well. However, I tried to look at it as someone reading it who didn’t know what our “topic” was. And it still works. It’s engaging, the characters, despite only having 2000 total words to work with, are fleshed out. I’m particularly proud of the actual craft that went into writing this story. The silly accent for the psychiatrist was probably not needed.

4. December – “Birth of the Stone” – This one is my ‘epic’ story, clocking in at a 1000 words longer than any other, and it is a well-composed story. Further, it achieved what I set out to do – writing a prequel to a story that guides the action that happens in the sequel (which was written first) without commanding it. I wanted to provide context for smaller characters, all while creating an origin of the parts of Aaron’s story that were just taken as givens. It wasn’t quite as grandiose as I recalled it was upon rereading, but still a good read.

3. June – “The Exorcism of Anne Foster” – I don’t care what Aaron thinks, this is a damn good story (he ranked this as #11). Yes, it’s silly. Yes, I wrote it as a jab to his insistence on starting it so I wouldn’t be able to make it silly. However, it’s actually fairly structured considering its subject matter – certainly more than something like “The Unusual Suspects” which is equally inane but far less structured. More than anything, I was taken aback by the writing – this is better-written than it has any right (or need) to be. It has good pacing, interesting characters, and more than anything, it made me laugh. I mean, despite having written it, I still chuckled out loud when they wheeled out Mr. Foster.

2. January – “Finding Home” – I was pretty surprised to see Aaron rank this one as poorly as he did (#7) though I have my suspicions why he did. When I started writing it, I wasn’t sure what turns it was going to take, so the first half of the story is uneven and clunky. It was too bizarre to be serious, but too serious to be funny. However, when I start to set the story on the path to resolution, it becomes wholly engrossing and I daresay a great piece of writing. I don’t think I’ll edit this story – I prefer to keep it as is as a testament to the possibilities of this uber-restrictive setting – but I am not against the idea of turning it into a one-act play. I’m very proud of this story.

1. August – “Cornered” – I had forgotten how strong this was. In rereading it and its unusual voice, I found myself getting lost in the story, as if I didn’t know what would happen next. While I do agree with Ashley’s take that the narrator isn’t actually DIFFERENT from my writing style, just a highly concentrated and exaggerated section of it, it IS the most different of anything I’ve written in years. The plot is intriguing and the main character is one of the most fleshed-out I’ve penned. I was surprised myself that this unseated “Finding Home”, which I thought for sure was frontrunner to be my favorite.

If anyone who has actually read all of them  wants to rank our stories (with or without criticisms), I’d be interested in averaging what people think they “best” stories are. Taste is subjective, but trends can at least be found. And screw Aaron, my funny stuff is good too.

 

time to rank derek’s stories

derek and i noticed something without or rankings of my stories from this past year – we both though the same 5 were the worst (in a different order however), we had the same pick for #7, the next 5 were the same (also in a different order), and had the same clear cut winner for which story was my best.  i’m curious to see how close we rank his stories.

12.  The Efficiency Expert (March) – my largest problem overall with derek’s writing (and he knows it) is that he sometimes has a tendency to be strange for the sake of being strange.  while i like the concept of having an efficiency expert come and detail exactly why a super-villain is always failing at everything he does (because they’re all dumb, duh), but this story gets a bit out of hand.

11.  The Exorcism of Anne Foster (June) – knowing that some of his previous stories had been a bit insane in nature, when we each wrote the first parts of a story for the other one to finish, i made an attempt to introduce as many characters as i could in as boring a setting possible.  derek managed to turn it into a game of party quirks, which foiled my plan entirely.

10.  Heads of State (February) – again with the fun idea taken overboard with the crazy.  i liked the eradication story, but this one just didn’t really do much for me overall – bitchesssssssss.

9.  Leaving Gunite (April) – the problem with putting two stories into one story is what happened to me.  i really enjoyed the old people on the bench stuff, and didn’t really care for anything else.

8.  Sleepytown (October) – out of all of his crazy stories, i liked this one the best by far.  it does, however, contain what i find to be the one of my favorite names for his characters – alvas grundstock.  no idea why, but it gives me a good giggle.

7.  Finding Home (January) – while his first month did bring the crazy, it ended up being much more serious and depressing than i thought it would have been.  i liked it enough to use my december ‘sequel or prequel’ story to continue the saga of portis goolsby.

6.  Seeing the Forrest for the Trees (September) – i like this story, i really do and wish i could have placed it higher.  even being written as a case study didn’t make it boring to me.  the idea of someone with multiple personalities having personalities that are aware of the others and want to cause harm to them was interesting enough to keep my attention.  it was an interesting use of having to insert 9 names into a story without having a giant cast of characters.

5.  Unbecoming (May) – honestly, the only reason why i rank this story as high as i am is because of the work derek put into designing that staircase.  i’m talking spreadsheets people.  the story itself isn’t bad by any means, but the effort put into what i’ve decided is the main character (the staircase) is beyond compare.

4.  Sunset at Belham Bay Park (November) – this was far and away derek’s most ambitious story of the year.  the fact that there are a couple long stretches of story without any adjectives.  the world being erased as the story goes on is just fantastic, even though i had to read part of it twice.

3.  Cornered (August) – derek has a style of writing.  the vast majority of what i’ve read of his (both in and out of this project) have been in that style.  this story shattered that style into a billion pieces.  it was actually a bit surprising to read a very angry narrative voice in his story.  this was close to being ranked #2 but couldn’t because of -

2.  Two Pair (July) – this story was fantastic.  and i’m saying this while admitting completely that 90% of the poker talk bored me.  the interaction between the not-devil and not-god was fantastic.  the end of the story came as a nice twist.  just a very well done story.

and of course, this leaves my favorite story as

1.  Birth of the Stone (December) – maybe i’m biased because this was based off of one of my stories.  i just really had a great time reading the history of two almost throwaway characters.  well, they weren’t really throwaway characters in my story as they both had important roles to play.  the world i created didn’t have a lot of description.  derek came up with an entire history (placing his story centuries before mine took place) of that story universe.  it was extremely well done, and i loved every word of it (even his initial draft which had such major plot holes i laughed at him).