Short Work
I finished a short story on the way home tonight. It's no big deal for some, but it's the first new piece of non-novel fiction that I've done in over eighteen months and the first actual short story in years. I blame all the positive reinforcement from the attendees and instructors at the Strange Horizons Workshop.
The little stack of pages is sitting on the other end of the dining room table from me. I've got a bit of research to do to fix some sloppy parts (lack of an Internet connection on the train and all) and some vocabulary to brighten up, but overall it reads pretty well.
The idea for this piece occured to me while getting coffee yesterday morning (was it only yesterday?). Today I've got 2600 words and a pretty solid outline for a follow-up story should this one find a home. That's how it works, I guess.
Oh, yeah, and I wrote nearly 7000 words on the novel over the weekend. I got to bring some of the dangling plot elements together finally. The introductory mystery has been illuminated -- they haven't solved it yet, but they know how it happened -- and The Speaker has finally shown up.
It's a fun day to be in my head.