Posts Tagged ‘short story’

Checking Into Copyright Law

Posted: February 6, 2013 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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Okay, so today I stopped by the school library to see about copyright laws (if you’re going to self-publish something, might as well be protected by law from people using your work illegally and without permission). According to the woman whom I talked to, it’s actually much easier than I thought to copyright your literary work. A little costlier than I thought, but only by twenty dollars. Compared to tuition money, it’s not too bad. And hey, if this is a success, it’ll be worth the investment.

By the way, I’ve been thinking of releasing a short story not in the collection as a little promotion for The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. What do you guys think? Would you buy one of my short stories if it was priced at ninety-nine cents? Oh, and if you’re uncertain, I’m choosing between a kidnapping thriller and a scary story involving neo-Nazis. What say you?

Update on “The Quiet Game”: Another Short Story Is Ready

Posted: February 4, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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The next short story in my upcoming collection of short stories, “I’m Going To Be The Next James Bond”, is finally ready for publication. This was the fourth short story I wrote over vacation, and it’s one that gave me a bit of trouble writing. Nevertheless I got it done and boy, do I like how it turned out. It’s weird, it’s creepy, it’s a little spooky. Hopefully readers will like it too.

I didn’t have to change much for the final draft. My beta reader for this short story, my mother Rabbi Wendy Ungar (yes it’s my mother, but she gives pretty solid advice, not just praise), told me to add in some creepy elements in order to better the story near the end, and that’s what I did. Now there’s a gross undertone with one of the characters, something that might make you a little afraid of that character too. Thanks Ima for the advice and for using Stephen King stories for it too.

I need three more stories in order to publish “The Quiet Game”. Hopefully my beta readers for those stories will also get back to me soon. In the meantime, I’ll keep you updated on the progress of everything as it coalesces. For the Facebook page for “The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones”, click here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheQuietGameFiveTalesToChillYourBones

“Enigma” Is Rewritten

Posted: February 3, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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And I think I’ve thought of a new title for it: “In The Lady Ogre’s Den”. Why I call it that, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to read the story to find out.

I like how this new version of the story turned out. Sure the ending might need a tweak or two, but I think this version is much better. Hopefully I can make it even better on the second draft. I’ll know once I start editing.

Unfortunately I had to take out the Navajo elements from the story. The black wolf character identifies itself as a death wolf, but that’s as close as it gets to the original Navajo themes. Also, I expanded the role of the main character Jason’s father, mostly because I thought that for this version his role needed to be expanded a little.

Anyway, I hope to have this particular short story edited and finished soon. Until then, I’ll just keep writing. I’ve got plenty of ideas, and they’re just screaming to be implemented and turned into short stories.

Hope for updates soon, so I’ll let you know.

I Love Getting New Ideas To Modify My Bad Stories

Posted: January 30, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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I often have ideas for short stories that start out promising but after I write them I look at them and I go, “How did I come up with this crap?” So I store the story away on my flash drive until I can come up with a way to make it better. Sometimes this takes days or weeks. Most of the time it only takes a few months, though I have one that’s been waiting for an idea for four years.

Remember the story I wrote over winter vacation about a possesion gone wrong? I had an idea that’ll basically mean total rewrite, but it’s a better story than it used to be. Perhaps I’ll be able to submit it afgter all!

Of course, this’ll have to wait until after I finish rewriting “Enigma”, which means there’s going to be a longer wait for the new stories I want to write. Virtual sigh, a writer’s work is never done, is it?

Well, I better get to work. Have a good night.

Updates on “Enigma”

Posted: January 29, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’ve been tackling ways to make one of the short stories for The Quiet Game a better read, and so far I think I’m on the right track. For those of you who haven’t read previous articles on this subject, The Quiet Game is a collection of short stories I’m putting together, and “Enigma” is one of them. At the center of the story is an autistic boy named Jason, who sees a wolf spirit symbolizing death. I had originally started this story with a large Navajo mythology component, but I’m afraid I might have to drop that.

In fact, I may have to drop a lot. This story is getting a total rewrite, and so far a lot has changed. In fact, the title of this short story may have to be changed to reflect its new nature.

But I’m okay with that. I did it last semester when I turned “Doll’s Game” into “Animal Child”, doing a total rewrite to make a better story. I’m not sure where “Enigma” will go as a story, what’ll happen later in the plot, or what the name change will be, but I hope that by the end of it, I’ll have a much better story than I did when I wrote the first version. I’ll let you guys know how it came out.

Oh, and if you want more updates on The Quiet Game, please check out the Facebook page I set up. The address is below:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheQuietGameFiveTalesToChillYourBones

Have a nice day.

A Whole Lot of Writing Starting…NOW!

Posted: January 26, 2013 in ideas, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Boy, do I have a lot of work ahead of me. I have two short stories I want to edit, plus two more I want to write first drafts for! I’m not sure if I can get it all done this weekend, but it can’t hurt to try, can it?

The first short story is The Quiet Game, the titular story of my upcoming collection. I want to see if I can shorten it a bit and change a few things I did with it, while also making it that much more scary than it already is, at least for me. It’ll take a bit of work to do, but I aim to do it.

The other story I want to edit is Enigma, from the same collection. However, I’d say what I plan to do with it is closer to a total rewrite. I’ve been going over the plot of the story for the past week and I figured out that the story itself is just not scary enough for my tastes. So I plan to go over it and totally change the plot around in order to make the story scarier, not only for readers, but for the main character, who I realize is acting way too calm for an autistic child thrust into an unfamiliar situation (for those of you not familiar with autism, those affected with the disorder, both children and adults, don’t like changes in routine or new surprises, so it’s hard for them to adjust. Overstimulation or too much change can lead to meltdowns if you’re not careful). So I’ll add to his terror, and hopefully to the reader’s terror as well.

As for the new short stories, I have two in mind. One I mentioned in a post earlier this week, based on a very dark period in my life and taken very much out of the context I experienced it in (it’s fiction written by me, so what do you expect?). The other is based on a dream I had last night, involving a new breed of moth that does worse things than get too close to your porch light. It’s positively disgusting!

I’ll try to get as much done as possible, especially since I’m sometimes prone to the weirdest distractions. I once spent an entire hour looking over news about a TV show I liked when I should’ve been writing! But God willing, I’ll get it all done. After all, I’m a writer, and that’s what writers do. We write, no matter what the circumstances.

Wish me luck!

“Old Sid” Is Done

Posted: January 23, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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The first draft is anyway, and it’s a good long draft, 3,732 words on twelve digital pages. Personally, I had a lot of fun writing this story, about a fictional urban legend at Ohio State University that becomes the center of a huge criminal investigation at Ohio State. The story is narrated in the first person al a The Virgin Suicides, which sounds something like this: “We thought about it a long time, ruminating over the possible meanings. Terry thought it was a psychological issue, while Jeanie Brooks and Jeanie Cunningham were in favor of a spiritual issue.” You see where I’m going with this?

I wrote this story as the second of two short stories I had to write for my creative writing class this semester. Truthfully though I’ve had this story on a sticky note on a tackboard since late August. I just wanted to save it for the right oppurtunity, and if you ask me this was the right oppurtunity. Not only does this story sound somewhat literary, which is the focus of my class, but the fact that we never really know who or what Old Sid is–or why he’s called “Old Sid”–makes the story weird and genre enough that I can write it.

I’ll probably edit it in a few weeks or so, before I’m supposed to turn it in. Hopefully my class will like it and be able to give me some good advice on what to do with it.

Oh, and spekaing of my class, tonight we did an exercise that gave me an idea for a short story. We were supposed to write down three childhood shoes we wore when we were young (or if we couldn’t remember that, something else from childhood) and write about something that happened while we wore those shoes. Since I couldn’t remember any shoes I wore as a child in vivid detail, I went with Halloween costumes…and remembered a low point in my life when I was really depressed. It gave me the idea for a short story, so when I can I’ll work on it and see what comes about.

Have to say, I love my school; it’s doing so much for my writing and the people here don’t even realize it!

My Next Creative Work: Old Sid

Posted: January 20, 2013 in Living and Life, short story, Writing
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As I sit watching Saturday Night Live, I’m also working on my next short story, Old Sid, a short story about a fictional urban legend at Ohio State University. I plan on narrating this story in the fashion of The Virgin Suicides (which means my narrator is a bunch of people talking as one without naming themselves), and I plan for the story to get progressively darker and twisted while keeping the short story within twenty pages, or five-thousand words, as we prefer to think.

I told my Creative Writing teacher about the idea behind me story, and he really enjoyed it. I hope to have it done within a week, even though it’s not due till mid-February. Still, I think I might enjoy this one. At the very least, it’ll be a challenge to write. After all, I’m not used to first person, and this is a very unique form of first person. Well, let’s see what I come up with, okay? I’ll let you know what happens when I finish the short story.

Oh, and guess what? I’ll be doing my famous SNL reviews later tonight. Can’t stop it, there’s Jennifer Laurence, Adam Levine, and Beiber. That last one I probably won’t like, but it’ll be a boost in my stats, no matter what I think of Beib’s performance.

This Coming 3-Day Weekend

Posted: January 18, 2013 in Living and Life, Politics and Leadership, Writing
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Well, it’s the end of the second week of the new semester, and I’m hopefully settling into a rhythm here with classes everyday and work 3 days a week. In the midst of all this I find time to write short stories (such as those that will be in The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. Coming soon in e-book format), including a short story for class. For this short story, I plan on the plot to center around the subject of a fictional urban legend at Ohio State University, my own school. I plan for the story to be written in the style of The Virgin Suicides, where a group of people narrate the story as it happened to them. I’m pretty sure this’ll work for the story.

I also plan on doing homework, because I have to keep my grades up. I also plan to relax a bit, maybe watch a new SNL with Jennifer Laurence hosting. But most of all, I’m looking forward to the inaguration on Monday. In fact, the movie theater near campus will be showing the inaguration live in one of the theaters, so I’ll go there to watch it. I can’t wait!

So have a great 3-day weekend, and I’ll hopefully write a few more posts as the weekend goes on, especially if I have any news to report. See ya!

Addict: The Post-Workshop Edition

Posted: January 17, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Well, it’s been a very busy day for me. I had two very long classes that had a lot of reading as homework, I had to work a shift today, and of course I had to eat my breakfast and lunch. But you know what? I managed to find time to work on “Addct”, one of the short stories for The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. I took most of the suggestions that my creative writing class gave me, the ones I felt worked best for this story, and incorporated them into the plot.

I gave my main character a little more to him than the static image I had before, adding in a best friend for the character and showing him actually interacting with people other than his own strange hallucinations. And even better, I managed to give the story a new, rather ironic ending. It’s the type of ending horror fans love: the kind that lets you know that the troubles are far from over.

Can you tell I’m happy with the final version? Sure, it’s a bit more literary than I like, but the very fantastical elements of the story makes sure I don’t get bored.

So this is the first of the five short stories for The Quiet Game to be fully finished. Four more to go, and I’ll be able to put the whole collection out. I just have to wait for my friends who are critiquing the other four to get back to me. At this moment, I’m predicting sometime in March or April I’ll have this out.

Keep with me folks, I’ll be published soon!

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