I recently began an application for a staff writer position. Part of the vetting/interview process was to submit a 2000+ word short story according to a certain prompt. I’ve done some research on the company, but as it’s a small publishing house, I’d prefer to play it safe.
Some of the text below may sound familiar to you, and, if so, great! You also have a process, and learning to explore and develop it remains a crucial part of writing. If you need help with that step, I freelance as a writing tutor with two years of composition classroom teaching, so, uh, yeah. Call me. =]
At any rate, “playing it safe” in my book, at least, means blasting out a long and rambling intro followed by actual examples, so good luck and have fun, I guess!
Thus, on to the real topic for tonight (beyond a small bout of insomnia) — My writing process!
Whether it’s for fiction or academic writing, I always work best with a hard copy first. My ADHD brain seems to focus better within tangible parameters, and my Crow brain buys too many pens anyway, so this gives me a chance to use them.
[Here I’ll probably add in a picture or two, maybe of my to-be-stabbed thesis manuscript]
Once I’ve broken my hand writing as many pages as I have brains for – usually around 10-15, depending on how hard the hyperfocus hits that day – I’ll move to my PC, but only if the section is finished. If it’s not, I’ll keep handwriting every day until it’s done. I absolutely loathe editing midway through my own work because I inevitably change direction and the other half becomes a waste. So Pro Tip #1, don’t edit until you’ve finished your [chapter].
I like typing on my Windows machine mostly because I don’t have to move anything or plug anything in, and my mechanical keyboard lights up purple. Also the keys bounce better and help me not ruin my wrists, so there’s that, too. My husband bought me a refurbished Mac a few years ago and it does work like a dream (so much that I usually drop my fingers to hit option+delete and end up mucking things to hell), but I don’t always feel comfortable without a mechanical keyboard, or a large screen I’ve ambered-out. So generally, like tonight, my custom-build PC it is.
I currently have MS Word through school, so I use that if I’m sticking to one machine. If, like I have most recently with my thesis, I need to move back and forth between PC and Mac, I’ll use GDocs and their Desktop Sync dot exe. If I lose my registration for Word, well, back to GDocs it is. Either way, the move to typing things up becomes my second draft stage.
In this stage, I usually type the first sentence of my written paragraph, change it six times, remember I’m on a deadline, and {mark it} to come back to later. From there, I add in another two or three lines, then remember I have a draft to type up and bring in the next written sentence. It seems to work alright, but can be a bit disjointed.
Next step is forcing myself to stick to the draft. At this stage, I am allowed to self-edit as I type, and I destroy the crap out of the original text, but virtually because I’m secretly a hoarder or something. I tend to add in a few references to pop-culture here and there to place my text in a fixed time (so historians can later say, “Welp, we don’t have a publishing date because internet reasons, but we sure know she was a Britney Bitch, so like 2000-2500, right? That’s close enough”), and much, much more sound play. My inner voice reads anything and everything aloud all the time (she sounds nice though, promise), so I constantly change text here and way back there as I’m typing away. Funny story, I’m a medievalist, so if you see alliteration, you can be damn well sure it was purposeful, and there’s more around it!
Once I’ve finished typing the second draft, generally like twelve years later, I reread the text aloud for a final edit. I definitely take advantage of the find and replace function, too – I loathe reusing words too often, even if it’s in character, so I’ll check to see how far apart each one is from itself and what kind of changes I can make that won’t upset the rest of the flow.
While I’ve been writing The Thing, I’ve also been talking about it. My mouth is about as wide as my stomach thinks it is, and as a Southern Lady of Quali-Tea, I often host picnics with my favorite version of chicken ‘n dumplins (really it’s chicken vegetable chili stuff, don’t let me lie to you), corn bread, rice, and your choice of sweetened or unsweet, ice cold or hot
Tea.
So by the time I’m done with the second draft, I usually have at least a couple beta readers lined up to content edit. Meanwhile I cry myself to sleep over finally having finished something and my betas swim happily in their most recently crafted environment.
After edits, it’s time to send off –
For academic papers, they usually go to my professors for grades or ++, or, in the case of my thesis, to a food processor.
Fiction ones I usually don’t send off, since I’m still crying myself to sleep, still figuring out whether that one phrase threw the whole scene off.
So, in light of my recent pursuit of employment, as well as to show off because I’m a Southern Lady of Quali-Tea, I give you the first two parts of my raw second draft. Instead of editing this post to add more and/or edits, I’ll be starting another post entirely, and probably start it off by crying at how mean – or redlined and non-responsive – my readers are.
You are, of course, welcome to comment to me, here or elsewhere, on whatever you wish. Don’t talk trash about my boy, here, if I’m not invited to defend him. Too, remember this is a challenge and only a second draft. The full piece is with my readers (or, depending on what time you read this, still in progress) undergoing requested edits.
The following partial prompt, in essence, asked me to step out of my comfort zone and avoid the sound of rolling dice.
– Your male speaker finds himself in a problematic survival situation.
Partial writing prompt
– He bears a single survival tool beyond his clothing, which could be anything from a knife to an ax or specific, short-range weapon, though limited to simple class. Please avoid Wish and other magical/DEM escape routes.
– Spend particular time with how he finds and builds shelter and fire before nightfall.
– After nightfall, . . .
This wasn’t quite the worst of times, but it was up there. I had long since lost track of the number of boot-sloughing stops I’d made to dump out the tepid water, but I did know it would never be enough. My socks were soaked through, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if, when I settled down for the night, I found a hole in at least one of them, if not a boot, too. Up ahead, though, I gauged the distance to the far-distant hills of the moor. I might actually make it out of this fen by nightfall, if not before.
“At least the water here is moving, my man,” I grumbled, trying to console myself. I didn’t want to outright curse the gods yet, but they could handle a bit of smack talk after yesterday’s Bog Episode. I hoped.
Slogging through this muck – sometimes river, sometimes mud, hopefully the occasional dry dirt, always difficult, midge-ridden, and me on high alert for venomous creatures – stunk as much as weekly fertilizer duty after classes in my youth. There, though, they gave us taller boots. And pitchforks. I gazed now across the tops of marsh grasses, each one beckoning me closer. This is safe, they seemed to croon with their itching noises, we’re all dry here.
I started to snort at the thought, but another movement caught my attention, lower than the grasses and not nearly as hypnotizing. Where did I see – There, where the river cut a swathe of open space, a sparkling eye in the sun, just outside the edge of waving reeds. It rested in a brown head with its twin, floating just above the water line. An otter-shaped head.
A large, person-sized, otter-shaped head.
I dove into the water, pointing my hands forward with an ease born of long practice. Pushing deep and out, hoping this part of the river was as deep as it had been upstream, I snaked through the water with the current, aiming for the other bank. For a moment I thought it had grabbed me, yanking hard. With a sinking feeling, though, I knew it was my pack snapping off with the force of my dive. Maybe I’ll find it downstream. It wasn’t important right now, though. I cursed anyway and felt at my belt and chest as I kicked. Good. My handaxe, though dragging at my speed, still rested at my hip, my oilskin pouch still strapped across my chest beneath my shirt. I drove my arms into the water again and pressed on.
As talented as I am, I do not, unfortunately, breathe underwater, and I hadn’t properly breathed enough to last long without breathing, either. I worked my way toward an opening in the reeds and lifted my head to free my eyes and nose. My feet touched solid ground and I turned, inch by agonizing inch, to avoid disturbing the water.
When I had first spotted it, I had hoped my caution too great, that it was just an actual, early-rising otter hunting for a snack before going back to nap until sunset. As I looked out across the waterway, though, the massive creature standing atop a hillock was not, in fact, an early rising otter.
Oh, it looked like an otter.
If an otter was a seven-foot tall humanoid with massive, fully developed ab muscles, a mage’s weirdest nightmare brought to life.
It – no, he perched almost delicately, his webbed paws digging claws through the reeds he stood on and into the ground. Slick, walnut fur covered his body, but for the lighter shade across his chest region that flowed past the waist of his pants. Showoff, I thought. I couldn’t help comparing my own rather wiry frame to his. I lost this round.
Bright, curious, intelligent black eyes caught the same shine of the sun, leaving me no reason to doubt he had, in fact, followed me from upstream. His nose twitched constantly even as his eyes swept back and forth, piercing through the reedy grasses at an astounding rate. His hands, too, looked more like paws, but as he clenched them I noted functional, opposable thumbs. Which also, handily enough, had sharp, shining claws.
He wore a small pack strapped crosswise on his chest that I’m sure was waterproof. It was definitely large enough for the chunks of me he would take home to his wife and kids once he found me. Which, considering his intense gaze and even more intimidating physique, I hoped fervently he would not do.
When he turned back to search away from my hiding place, I took several deep gulps of air and slipped back under, moving little except to keep myself deep, flowing with the current. As much as I regretted taking such a long detour, I had no other choice. My message was too precious to be mangled in an otter-man’s jaws.
I judged my distance by my breath. Of all Queen Elaine’s “couriers” in current rotation, I was the most classically trained available. Everyone else in my cohort was either dispatched elsewhere, or, more unfortunately, dispatched entirely. This meant, of course, I conveniently received the most difficult routes. As a direct result of my training, as well as Trainer Zorana’s various breathing techniques learned within, with the proper notice I could go for about five minutes. If I liked black spots, six and a half. I counted out five and allowed myself to float slowly upward and into another pocket of grasses, this time on the other side of the river. As slow as this water moved, I couldn’t have made even a quarter mile yet.
Again I left only my nose and eyes above the water when I next rose. I couldn’t see him – I’d started calling him Otto, for lack of anything better – and raised my head in slow increments to change my viewing angle. He had clearly been hunting something. Please let it have been food, I thought. There was plenty in my pack! His eyes had moved so quickly from picking through reeds to large sweeping motions and back. And with that stance, balanced on his toes? No, I was kidding myself. If I was a betting man, Otto would have my spare socks clutched in one massive paw.
I pulled my whole head up to watch a few moments longer before, hearing nothing but the rustling grasses and fauna of the fen, slipped back under. Silent would be worse, but I’m still too close. I’d go another half mile or so this way before I got back out and walked. At this rate, I was soaked through anyway.
–
Emerging half an hour and a full mile down the river – I’d given up on just floating and snaked my way the last half – I pulled every evasive maneuver out of my considerable arsenal and put it to use. In and out of waterways, turning my trail back in and around, never leaving a scent or so much as a bent stalk if I could help it, always moving in as northeasterly a direction as I could. There was no chance, at this rate, of taking up my original route through the fens, onto the moors, and, from there, cross-farmland up to the back gates of Elaine’s keep, no more than a sennight on foot. With today half-wasted already and not even a vague idea of my new starting point, it would be much, much longer.
I shook my head vigorously and started moving again, dark wet hair swishing and smacking against my face and neck. I twisted it up out of my way into a quick queue, but I knew it wouldn’t hold for long. At least it would dry quickly in this heat. Unlike the rest of me.
I stumbled a bit when my foot hit solid ground after the soggy mess of a route I’d been on, but I settled into my new gait quick enough, and quit with the trail-wandering soon after. If Otto found me so far down this way, he’d find me anywhere. Better to make camp in the light and fortify how I could. And quite literally no skin off my back if I lucked out and actually did lose him.
With solid ground came the gradual end of the fenlands. This far south, the fens didn’t fade directly into the moors. Somewhere northward they split, and the pocket between sported a fine, forested space, filled with tall grasses mingling from both its parents, maybe a mile across at its widest. I’d had a map at one point and had studied it pretty thoroughly, but not knowing how far south I was would possibly be the death of me – or worse, my quest. If I had come out too far south of that mile mark, I’d get stuck in the real wild country, which spread far, far beyond where I needed to be. With only my axe – is it still there? Yes, alright – to protect me, I wouldn’t make it through the night, nor find my way back through the Fey Woods. Best to head north through the forest for the rest of the night, and, if I woke up the next morning, start curving eastward.
As I walked, I realized the strange melding of fen, moor, and forest left it very difficult for anyone to sneak up on me – or me, them. Otto could maybe slip through on all fours, but I doubted it – he was more shaped for brute strength than creeping along, and that much bulk would wake the birds with a vengeance. As it was, it took the wildlife another half hour to settle down about my own presence. Why was he following me, anyway? I wondered, squelching with each step through the undergrowth. He could have spotted me on the hunt and decided I looked tastier than the local fish bar. Probably. Or I might have squished through his afternoon nap spot. Yeah, that had to be it.
Who was I kidding? Diarmid had to have sent him after me.
I stopped, sighed. I had to make camp. The sun was headed down, and everyone knew it set faster than it rose. I was running out of time. And if I stopped moving long enough before I was ready, my body would up and collapse. Evading Otto had taken more out of me than I’d hoped. Holding my breath, stretching my lungs, tracking back and forth and up and around – that all took energy I hadn’t planned for. Along with my food for the rest of the week. I had to make camp. I had to find a defensible place, firewood, bedding, food. I had to make camp.
I pulled off my leather vest, still wet and, alarmingly, rather pliable. Forcing myself not to panic, I stripped my wool shirt, also dripping, and laced the sleeves through its armholes. If nothing else, I now had pockets. I draped the contraption over one shoulder, shirt on my chest, spread the vest out on my back, and tucked both bottoms into my belt.
I moved on, then, if more slowly, stooping often to pick up any bedding or kindling I could find – debris, small and large sticks, clumps of moss – setting the sticks in my vest and the rest in my shirt. Leave no trace, I reminded myself. I have to think about not soft-stepping, so that wasn’t an issue, but I did need to pay more attention to how I chose my prey. And on top of that, the more I stooped, the worse I felt. But if I’d learned anything from Zorana, I learned where my limits were. She had pushed us in every possible scenario, had driven us into the ground and through it to get back up again and onto our horses to ride right back out and do it again. I had some time yet. Not as much as I’d planned to, but hopefully it would be enough.
I sank into a trance, spotting, stooping, picking, stuffing, walking, spotting. Step by step through the woods, holding my heading, listening for changes in the air. And then I wasn’t.
I blinked, midway through standing to stuff this latest stick into my bundle. It looked back at me, black eyes wide and round within a brown and green-scaled face, wiggled a little. I stood frozen. When it bit me, I opened my hand. It fell to the ground, rolled a little, and slithered off to find a better hiding spot.
Automatically, I reached for the upper pocket of my pack and my medical supplies. Instead, I hit sticks. This, I suppose, was what finally pulled me out. I wouldn’t die, not with those markings, but it would hurt, and I needed to keep it clean. Difficult, here, but not impossible.
Back at {school}, Training Master Zorana Ursto taught my cohort – my sibs – everything from taking hits to corroding courts from the inside out. I valued everything, every moment in that precious space. Not all of us made it this far, but we all made it as far as we have because of her. The lesson I leaned most heavily on was breathing. Not just how lungs pump air in and out, no. The art of breathing. Breathing for quick sleep, for underwater travel, for pacing oneself on long travels, for meditation. And my personal favorite, the Trance of the Elves. Long ago, the secret was gifted rarely, and only to those worthy of being Elf Friends. Zorana, an elf herself, taught the secret to the cohort she came up with, as well as any cohort she met during her century-long tour as a courier for Elaine’s family, as a way to keep them alive longer. Between the breathing technique and the whispered incantation, you slip into trance-sleep, aware without the need of a partner to rotate watch. You can’t use it for more than a week at a time, though, or your body starts shutting down.
I was on day three.
Pressing on the wound was all I could do for the moment, I supposed. I did remember to check the ground for spatter, and while rearranging the scene, plucked the immediate debris with the wounded hand to stuff into my bulging pocket.
I had to stop. Had to pay attention. I was rapidly waning, and I hadn’t even found a site yet – though by the looks of my pockets, I would be ready for one.
Breathing deep in another of Zorana’s patterns, I sidestepped my focus into space, rather than items, and started off again. “Find a site,” I told myself. “Find a site, then work outward.” I was used to living outdoors – often, my job required it. With a damn bedroll. Without my pack, though, I needed vigilance and focus. Two things, I knew, that fly quickly out of reach. “Shelter. Food. Bed. Remember?” Zorana had taught me better than this. I was better than this. I had to make it back, had to get this message to Elaine. I’d sent a copy with my horse, but if Otto had found me… I couldn’t think about that. Spirit and I had worked together for years now, but she could handle herself. She’d gone off to leave a false trail, equipped with her own missive should I be lost.
No. Don’t think. Just do. Once I looked, I saw plenty of options. Not so many, though, that I could defend easily on my own. Trees clustered together, sure, even a boulder. Mostly, though, I waded through grass up to my hips or slipped over untold years of leaf mold. At some point my vision started blurring, though not from the snake bite, I knew. For a heartbeat I was back underwater, dodging reeds thick as my wrist and praying I moved naturally enough to be missed, counting, counting, beat, beat, beat –
“STOP.” It came out a bit louder than I intended, but it broke through the rhythmic noises happening around me enough to knock me back into reality. “Stop,” I spoke again through the rhythms, breaking them up, “breathe.” Pause. Heavy, quick breaths, almost pants. “Breathe.” Pause. Fewer breaths, much less shaky. “Alright. Back to it.”
I moved too soon, though. Not quite out of my fugue, I froze again mid-step, tripped on air, and stumbled into a gap between two trees. My hands moved on their own, curling toward my chest – or trying to, since they slapped the trunks of the trees on the way in. They came away scraped, but not bloody, and my face stayed off the ground. Something, anyway.
I shook myself out, throwing the last of the panic with it, and centered on my surroundings.
Trees of all sorts stood in a near-perfect circle. An ash entwined its large crown with a hawthorn’s huge one, their mismatched trunks nearly touching. Oak and alder partnered near them, with white birch and tiny rowans filling in many of the gaps. And a cluster of yew to complete the set on the other side, their trunks so entwined as to look like gossiping spinsters at a party full of dancing partners. Ma would call this a fey ring, I thought, suddenly not wishing to disturb the peace with my scratchy voice, never you mind they weren’t mushrooms or daisies.
Stepping inside with a small bow, I pulled each pocket from my belt and dumped it unceremoniously to the ground, touching my axe in the process just in case. Before I did anything else, though, I scooped up a double handful of debris and moss and set it inside a bole of the yews. I didn’t want to anger anything, fey or otherwise, and offering something was better than nothing. “Can you stand watch for an hour or two?” I asked the circle, falling back on my old gods. I didn’t pray to them much, mostly just stayed out of their way, but when I asked nicely, sometimes they helped. I touched my hand to the offering and closed my eyes for a heartbeat, two. Then it was gone, and I settled down right where I stood for a nap.
The Crafty Medievalist 