My first published short story is here!
On Friday October the 13th of this year, on a whim, late at night, I wrote and submitted a short story to UVU's speculative fiction journal, Warp & Weave. Five days later I received an email congratulating me on getting accepted into the journal. The official release for this issue occurred on November 30th, 2023.
I was over the moon when I got accepted, and it lit a fire in me to get more writing done. Granted, it isn't what the industry considers a professional publication, per se, but it is the first external validation in sixteen years, from someone who isn't family or a friend, that my writing is good.
What happened sixteen years ago, you may ask. Well, that is a post for another time. For now, if you wish to read this story, head to the next blog post. If you wish to stay and learn a little bit more about my thought process behind this story, read on…
Horror and me go way back…
I knew I wanted to go horror — it was Friday the 13th, in October no less. The idea came to my head to write about a lighthouse that had gone dark on a world where darkness was a living thing. It began as an exploration of the world, and turned quickly into a whodunnit horror mystery.
The first draft took me about two hours to complete, just under 3,000 words. The limit for the journal was 5,000, but I had learned to set stricter barriers on my writing lest I bit off more than I could chew and ended up blowing past that limit.
The first draft was … not great. I hadn’t outlined anything, and it showed.
Using Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, I began workshopping what I had and figuring out what worked, what didn’t, and how to fix it. I simplified my premise. I tightened my focus. I settled on a theme. All this took about two hours of intense mental exercise and planning.
Finally, I began the rewrite. With a clear goal in mind this time, I began to revise, cut, add to, and clean up my original draft. I kept bumping up against that pesky 3,000 word limit, so I had to trim some fat. Then I would add some necessary material, and trim more fat. Soon, anything that wasn’t absolutely vital to the plot had to go. I jettisoned some fantastic paragraphs in favor of a few sentences of exposition and explanation. I simplified every sentence and phrase I could just to keep it under that limit. The result was lightning-fast pacing and a tightly focused narrative, if I do say so myself. This took me, again, about two hours.
Six hours of work. That was it. When I looked at the clock and saw it was after 10PM, I thought about going back through and editing it one more time, or trying to fix a few weak points in the plot. Then I thought about how most of my stories languished in perpetual editing because I was never satisfied with them. Knowing when to say “enough” has never been my strong suit. So, bucking up my courage, I sent off the email with my submission.
They liked it. I did some further revisions with an experienced editor on the publication team, and the final result is better than I ever could have hoped for (though it is now past 3,000 words, which is fine by me). The faculty member overseeing the journal encouraged me to keep submitting. That was a boost to my confidence for sure!
“The Tower on the Shore” awaits you. I could talk for a long time about the plot, the characters, the world, and the decisions I made about each, but I will satisfy myself with this: I love this story, and I hope to return to this world in earnest someday. Not every short story needs to be extended into a novel, but I like this world and these characters too much to let this be their only adventure.
Selah and the Navigator will sail again, and the Darkness will be waiting for them.
