so we’ve exchanged stories

i see derek’s post with his chart breaking down how he picked which story or mine to use this month.  my process wasn’t nearly as complicated.  almost immediately after deciding on our december topic, i knew i was going to use his first story.  there was something about writing a continuation of someone’s descent into insanity that piqued my interest.

also, since i had so much death and despair through my stories this year, i figured i could write this one in a more lighthearted way.

my story picks up on the day of Portis Goolsby’s release from the asylum.  it’s mostly his re-adjusting into life with his parents at their home.  i kept it WAY more ‘up’ than most everything else that i’ve written this year, which was actually a nice change of pace.  i was able to knock out pretty much the entire story in two sittings (the second of which was about 3500 words to finish it off when my boys were good enough to take a nap while i was off of work that day).

derek’s story this month came as a bit of a surprise to me.  we were avoiding each others (infrequent) posts about what we were writing, and not giving any clues at all about which story we had picked to base ours off of. when i saw the name of his story i thought immediately of my ‘sword in the stone’ story from july.  then, when i started reading it, i wasn’t sure if that was the right story or not.  it took a few pages (and a familiar character’s name) for my suspicion to be confirmed.  it was just set in the past.

a couple centuries in the past.

it actually was a fun read for me, because he based the story off of a character that, while not being meaningless, was far from the focus of the original story.  it was his origin story.  seeming how i didn’t give any thought to this character slightly more than what i absolutely needed to know, i enjoyed finding out more about my creation.  if that makes any sense.

since it’s christmas eve, i’m not sure when derek and i are going to have time to skype for our reviews, probably at the end of this week.  i’m not sure what he thought of my sequel, but i know it’ll be an interesting conversation about his prequel.

all in all i’m pretty happy with this month.