Posts Tagged ‘short story’

After Tonight’s Workshop

Posted: January 16, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Well, I got out of the workshop in one piece. And I’ve been given a lot of feedback on how to improve the story. I have a feeling that since the class is more literary focused, the suggestions will ultimately move the story in a more literary direction.

Oh well, I’m getting what I asked for, and there’s enough fantastical elements to this story to make it genre enough for me.

The story is called “Addict”, and it’s about a guy trying to get over his sex addiction. I wrote it in second person (“you walk into a bar, you see the man flirting with your girl, you snap”) because this story was inspired by the experiences of a friend of mine who battled sex addiction. Not everyone was thrilled with the second person thing, but I’m planning on keeping that. I may add a second character with a third-person perspective though.

I may also do some expanding of the plot to include some other elements, such as more weird hallucinations and a reason why the character tries to get off the sex and porn. This is going into my upcoming collection, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones, so my classmates won’t know how this story evolved until the collection comes out. I hope they like it, but even if they don’t they’ll get a mention in the acknowledgements section.

I want to get to editing, but first I’ll head home, shower, and then relax a little before I do. Have a good night and wish me luck.

Tonight’s Workshop

Posted: January 16, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Tonight my creative writing class will be workshopping my short story “Addict”, one of the short stories going into my upcoming collection The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. I’m looking forward to it,  because I want these stories to be of the highest quality possible before I publish them. I also like feedback from neutral parties such as my classmates, because they point out stuff we don’t even see. That’s one flaw we writers have: we’re so proud of 0ur work, we don’t always see the flaws in it that others might see and point out.

Well, whatever the outcome is, I’ll let you guys know how it goes. There’s nothing on TV tonight that I’m interested in, so after class I plan to go on an editing binge. If any of the other short stories I’ve sent for critiquing get sent back to me, it’ll be all the better.

So watch out for my post tonight. Until then, have a nice day.

Now I’m On Twitter

Posted: January 11, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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If the me of a year ago knew what I was doing these days, he may have a heart attack. Or possibly slap his future self. Or some combination of that.

Yes I, Rami Ungar, resistant to new technology and social media crazes, have gotten a Twitter. Why? For the same reason I got a Facebook: to spread my writing to those who may not be on this blog but may be on other social media websites. This twitter account of mine, @RamiUngartheWriter, will focus exclusively on my writing. Already I’ve published a couple of tweets advertising my upcoming collection The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. I’m very excited and I hope I gain a followship soon. You’re welcome to follow me if you like. Just know this: I’ve got a scary picture as my profile pic and it may cause some nightmares.

And no, it’s not of my face. Much scarier than that.

Also, I don’t know if any of my blog followers got a notification (do they send notifications for pages?), but I set up a new page that lists my upcoming books. Which means of course at this point only The Quiet Game is on that list, without even a picture, but I plan to rectify that soon. Check it out if you like, and have a great weekend.

“The Quiet Game” Page Is Now On Facebook

Posted: January 10, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Ha ha ha ha!

I’ve set up a page on Facebook for my upcoming collection of short stories, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. Granted, it’s not much yet since I only started advertising today, and I barely have anything to speak of. Hopefully soon though I’ll have plenty of updates to give and I’ll be able to spruce up the page a little bit. In the mean time, I hope you’ll all log onto Facebook and perhaps check the page out. Perhaps press the Like button if you’re sincerely interested. It would definitely make me happy if you did.

Oh, and for those of you wondeirng about the picture of the mask of comedy, that’s relevant to one of the short stories in the collection. You guessed it, the titular one.

“The Quiet Game”: Coming Soon!!!

Posted: January 10, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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I was reading an article on promoting your published work last night before bed, and one of the things it mentioned is that you should promote your work as much as possible, even before the actual book comes out. A year would be best for this. However I’ve got anywhere from 3-6 months to get my collection of short stories out, so I’ve got some work to do. And I’d like to start here on my blog, where everyone’s been so supportive and kind to me. So here goes:

Coming soon to a digital book store near you, The Quiet Game. A tentative subtitle would be: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. I’ve got five short stories that I’m definitely putting into this collection of short stories, and a few I might add in as bonus material. You’ll be able to download each short story individually, if you’re so inclined, but if you download the entire collection, you’ll be able to read notes I’ve put at the end of each short story, thoughts of what was going through my head while writing this short story, and special illustrations I’ll have commissioned for each story.

Not only that, but the collection won’t be much more expensive than an iTunes song, so it should be pretty affordable to you. I hope I can count on your continued support, and I hope to have more on this as time goes by and the final product comes into being. Wish me luck and thanks for being there for me all this time.

The Fifth Short Story For The Collection

Posted: January 9, 2013 in Progress Report, Reflections, short story, Writing
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Oh, my winter vacation assignment is done! Sure, it ended three days into the new semester, but I blame that on the fact that I had to wait until I got some research materials. Either way, Step 1 of creating this collection is done, so I’ll have to get to work on the next step in publishing a collection. But first, let’s talk a bit on this final short story:

The story is called “Enigma”, a title with many different meanings. For example, the main character, whom I named Jason, is a young boy with autism, and if there’s a medical disorder that can be called an enigma, autism qualifies. Current estimates suggest that 1 in 88 children might have some sort of autism-spectrum disorder, and yet the causes of autism, while most likely genetic in nature, are still unidentified. And every person with autism is unique in what they react to, how to treat them, and how they develop with or without treatment. It’s an enigma just figuring out all that!

There are other reasons why Jason is called an enigma, but I’m not going to get into that because it’ll reveal too much of this story, and we don’t want that. I will say though that this story draws a lot on Native American belief systems, especially Navajo belief systems, and uses a black dog spirit, or more specifically, a wolf spirit, which was believed to be an emissary of death in Navajo culture. According to the Navajo, death entered the world when mankind killed a wolf, so it made sense that wolves were associated with death. And I get to work that belief into the short story, so I’m definitely happy I did the research.

I’ll probably give this short story another look before I send it off to a friend who knows quite a bit on autism and other related disorders to look at and critique. I want to make sure that the story is being told from the perspective of a child with autism, and I want to see if I can heighten the tension during certain scenes. Maybe I’ll also work on the ending a little more.

Well, I’m done writing short stories for a little while, at least ones that won’t be used for creative writing classes. I’ll let you know how my collection is coming along, and hopefully it’ll be out by the time I start editing Snake in March. Wish me luck.

Done Researching, So Onto The Fifth Short Story

Posted: January 7, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Today was my first day of class in the new semester, but I only have the one class on Mondays, and then the rest of the day I’m free. So I got my homework done, ran a few errands, put a load of laundry through, and spent the rest of the day doing research for that fifth and final short story for the collection I’ve been writing. The research was specificially about Native American cultures and their belief systems. I focused mainly on the belief systems of the Apache, Mojave, and Navajo cultures, mainly because they are all in the same area, at least two of these tribes share a common ancestral tribe, and because a good amount of myths involving dogs, coyotes, and wolves come from those areas.

This story will be the one I planned involving a black dog spirit. Black dogs, as you may guess, are symbols of death and destruction and usually derive from the myth of Cerberus in Greco-Roman mythology. Of course, the Native Americans probably only first encountered Cerberus in classrooms where they learned the myths of the Greeks, but the fact that they have their own myths involving black dogs, wolves, and coyotes points to how large a role these creatures played in their belief systems. Either that, or Jung was really onto something.

I also learned quite a bit on the Navajo belief of Hozho, or beauty, harmony, balance, and health. Many ceremonies in Navajo culture are meant to restore this in someone who is feeling ill, and there are a variety of ceremonies, chants, and methods to heal someone who is suffering from any number of maladies. If you ask me, Hozho sounds like a very Zen belief, so score another one for Jung.

Well, I’m going to get to work on this short story before dinner. Hopefully I’ll be able to get this all done by the end of the week, though with my school work and my job taking priority and it being the first week of the semester, anything could happen. Wish me luck.

Getting Ready For A New Workshop

Posted: January 6, 2013 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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I signed up for another creative writing course this semester, though this one you have to apply and submit a portfolio to get in. The teacher was worried that I’d be unable to do well in the class because the focus of the class is literary fiction and genre fiction, which I prefer. But hey, some of my ideas straddle the border between literary and genre, so I might just survive.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the first class. I volunteered to write a short story and submit it to the class to be workshopped on the first day. The short story I’m submitting is “Addict”, one of the short stories I wrote during winter vacation. “Addict”, for those of you who don’t know, is based on some of the experiences of a friend of mine who was addicted to sex and pornography, and I plan on adding it to a collection of short stories I hope to put out by the end of the semester.

“Addict” is literary enough that I can submit it to the class and have them take a look over it. Just earlier today, I decided to take one more look at it before I submit it. I’m hoping they like this story; I wrote it out in a day, and it’s rare for me to be able to write any short story that quickly with that sort of flow. Whether they like it or not, I think it has potential, but I’m glad I’m having somebody look at it beforehand, because then I get an unbiased opinion.

I’ll let you know what the class thinks when I’m done with the workshop. Hopefully I won’t have to do too much editing, though that’s usually easier than the writing.  At least I’ll get the workshop out of the way rather quickly, and on the plus side, I’ll be able to set the tone of the class for a bit with this short story.

All for now. Blog on you later.

A Short Story That Is Not Going In The Collection Is Done

Posted: January 3, 2013 in ideas, short story, Writing
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If that’s not a creepy demonic possesion, I don’t know what is!

You know, I only have one or two more posts where I can use that sort of title before this collection of short stories is done with? Just shows how much progress I made during winter break.

Okay, so while I waited for the research materials I’ve been looking for to come in for me at the library, I wrote a short story about a possession gone horribly wrong…for the demon. It’s about ten pages and 2800 words long, and I already know which magazine I’m going to send it to. I hope this magazine accepts it; I submitted to them years ago when i first started writing short stories for magazines. I even got a letter back from the editor saying I had potential, which only spurred me to continue writing short stories and sending them to the magazine. However, after a few rejections, I decided to hold off, to wait until I had written a truly extraordinary story before I submitted to them.

And I think with this story, I could do it. I could get published in this magazine. The story I wrote is different than other stories about possessions, and my voice has really matured and become unique in the years since I last submitted to them. I’ve learned a few tricks, polished a few skills. Heck, I’ve gotten short stories published in other places! I think it really is time I sent something to them, and I think this short story, which I entitled “Ownership”, is the one I should send to them. I hope they like it after I send it to them.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you have a good evening, and I hope to have more writing updates in the time to come. The next short story I write will be about an autistic child attending a Native American healing ceremony, where weird things start to happen. I can’t wait to get the research done so I can start writing the final short story for the collection. Hopefully, I’ll have the collection out by May, when the Spring Semester ends for me, and then I can put it online.

And I hope you all like it. Because if I get good reviews and if a lot of people download copies, I’ll feel richer than Bill Gates, because I know people really like what I’m writing and they want to read it. That’s better than all the stocks in Microsoft combined, although the royalties from sales would definitely be nice, especially when it comes to paying for tuition, rent, and other needs I have.

Well, like I said before, good night everybody.

Another Short Story Idea Has Come To Me

Posted: January 1, 2013 in ideas, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Too bad I can’t add it to the collection of short stories I’m writing and assembling.

I just recently read The Dibbuk Box, the book by the current owner of the haunted box of Jewish origin that was the basis for the film The Possession, and then somehow had the good fortune to enter into contact with him. After that I started watching a scary movie or two involving possessions and watching a video on YouTube that was about an exorcism. During this time I started thinking about possession, and then a great idea occurred to me: what would happen if the possession was turned on its head? What if the demon ended up needing the exorcism? Needing it?

So I have a new short story idea that I’ll begin to write soon, possibly tomorrow since I can’t work on the next story for the collection until I’ve finished my research. I’ll probably write the story from the point-of-view of the demon, and I’ll also have to figure out what I want to do once the possession begins. Of course, I can’t add this to the collection; I’ve already written a dybbuk story for the collection, and two stories involving possessions is one too many.

Perhaps I’ll send it to a magazine. Or perhaps I’ll make it available online for ninety-nine cents. Depends on my mood and what I think everybody would like. Of course, I’ll have to write it first.

But seriously, I have to ask, would you guys buy the story if I put it online for less than a dollar? Let me know if you’d like that.

Anyway, got another scary movie to watch. Once again, Happy New Year.

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