It's November 15th, less than a month away from December 12th, the deadline for Scholastic's Art and Writing Competition. With the deadline so close, I'm polishing some works and finishing others. Here are a few of my projects.
The Resolute is the big one. I've been working on this short story since September. Not of this year, but of 2018. Like most of my writing, it's undergone some dramatic changes. The main characters of The Resolute were called Lark and Wren in the first rendition of the story. The bird symbolism got old quickly, so they became Armotte and Chandler respectively. However, the plot and themes have been unwavering. The Resolute was born out of the thought, 'ghost ships, but in space.' It's one of my best works to date. I vividly remember trying to finish it the day before the deadline last year and failing horribly. Hopefully I don't make a pattern out of this and complete it.
I've almost forgotten Sister, Unconditional. I can't believe I've neglected this one. It's another short story, another of my best. It's not as sparkly or lengthy as The Resolute, but it has an important advantage over it. It's finished. Sister, Unconditional is the story of a boy named Gideon whose dreams of being a professional pianist are ruined by a terminal condition. He struggles with his parents' divorce, and resents his step-sister, Kat, even though she's the one who loves him the most. It ends with Gideon's realization that Kat is his sister no matter what. He decides better brother after that, with a sad overtones as he's forced to face his mortality at his young age.
I don't like The Last Atherton as much as the others. It's an intense medieval-style piece, complete with a queen and a back-stabbing duke. I finished The Last Atherton last November, when I was experimenting with my writing voice. I look back on it now and surprise myself with how much I've changed. My voice in this one is strong, extremely strong. The thoughts and feelings of each character glow through the narrative. It flows back and forth between them, smoother than anything I've ever written. So why don't I like The Last Atherton? Another conclusion issue. The ending is more of a skeleton than a fleshed-out finish. It's an easy fix, with a month to work on it.
An Empty Practice Room suffers some logistic problems. Not ending problems like some others. It's an experiment on human relationships, which means it's in my best interest to write realistically. Unfortunately, it'll need a lot of fine tuning to reach that point. Some scenarios in this story just don't make sense. A new musician arrives at the school and asks for a practice room, but the only one that's empty has a melancholy history. A pianist and violinist struggle to that history explain to the new student.
Those are the short stories in production. I'm furiously editing some, and fighting to finish others. All of these works are what I like to call 'heart-hitters,' stories that are a celebration of life and all its conflicts. Of course, I still have novel projects on the side, but that's a headache for another day.