I finished a story

This past week has been difficult, and I should have seen it coming, but it came from a direction I habitually ignore - the weather.

I don't usually check the weather, because most of the time it doesn't matter or change much. It rains, or it doesn't. It's chilly, or slightly warmer than normal. Either way, it rarely affects my day, and when something like a snowstorm is coming, I have Meg to let me know to watch out. She is a weather watcher, and is very concerned about the daily developments, so I know if something big is going to happen soon, I'll hear about it. What I forget, though, is what truly cold weather does to me. 

Psoriasis and temperatures below freezing don't mix. Combined with blown hot air that we use for heat in the car, my job, and here at home, and I get very tight, dry skin that exacerbates my psoriasis to the point that my skin tears every time I move. Yes, tears, as in rips. We aren't talking bloody wounds, thank god, but we are talking about taking the top layer of skin that has settled into psoriatic flaking and literally ripping it apart. It hurts like a son of a bitch! 

Then, when I shower, the salt from my skin washes into a million micro cuts, which is exactly what it sounds like - pouring salt into a wound. But the shower is necessary so I can moisturize, which is a whole new round of excruciating pain, which last for about twenty minutes after I apply the moisturizer.. At that point I become human again, and can resume regular activity with only mild constant discomfort. 

I am, however, exhausted from the pain, and at that point all I want to do is relax and sleep.

Now, you may recall that I signed up for a short story competition, deadline yesterday. Well, I'm a pretty good procrastinator normally, and was planning around that character trait. I had reserved Thursday and Friday night to actually sit down and write the story. I had the story almost fully realized in my brain, which is nice, and each day waking up brought me new insight into what I had planned. Also nice.

Those two nights were entirely taken up by pain. Not nice.

Now, I could have pushed through, sat my butt down and written the damn thing, but it's very hard to force yourself to creativity under normal circumstances. I didn't even try under those. So it came down to Saturday afternoon, when I had a seven hour window between getting home from work and our Saturday night D&D game, run by the friend who introduced me to the short story competition in the first place. 

The story was capped at 2500 words, which is normally a problem for me, as I tend to write long and then have to cut down a lot to make word limits, but I thought I had  pretty good story for the scope I was aiming for. So I woke up Saturday and went to work, knowing I had plenty of time that afternoon, that the whole story would take me 3-4 hours to write.

Man, don't tell my brain it has extra time.

I got out of work a little late, got home, fed the puppy, and decided to take a nap on the couch. I woke up when Meg got home, around 2:30, and was groggy as all get out. One little asshole part of my brain was like, 'Man, no way you're gonna get this done, and it's not gonna come out the way you want anyway, so play a video game." 

I told that guy to go fuck himself, asked Meg to make me a cup of tea (it tastes better when she makes it. Yes, I know it's boiled water and a tea bag. Trust me, it tastes better.), and sat my butt down in the writing chair to get to work. I put on the local classic rock station, Q104.3, on iHeartRadio, and slipped my headphones on with the volume cranked, and started typing.

After about ninety minutes I had reached the 1500 word mark and knew I was going long. I took a break and walked around, and then I made another mistake. I asked Meg if I could read her what I had so far. Now, I was enjoying writing the story, and part of me knew that it wasn't up her alley in a big way, but I still had that little voice in my head that wanted encouragement, an I gave into it. She even told me no, keep writing, but I more or less insisted. 

Well, I enjoyed reading it to her, and it actually helped me see a couple of things clearly. That turned out to be a good thing. What sucked was when I turned around and saw her face. I mean, about 2/3rds of the way through she was playing with the dogs, so I knew I'd already lost her interest, but the look on her face at the end was crushing. Even though I knew before I started that she wouldn't like it, a part of me hoped she would. I was wrong. 

I walked to the kitchen as she stammered for words to explain. I said, "It's okay. Tell me." She said, "I like your voices." "Okay, but..." "Yeah, um, I guess it's....boring...." "Oh. Really?" "Yeah." "Huh. Okay. Thanks." 

So that sucked, but I kind of laughed it off. I was very into the story at that moment, and reading it out loud got me further into where I needed to be. I sat down and got back to work.

Two hours later, I finished. 

I had cycled back to the beginning a few times to make changes as the ending became clearer. It's a weird thing, but stories never come out on paper the way they originally appear in your head. Something happens during the writing process, and all the stuff in your head gets pushed aside as the story starts to tell itself. It's moments like that when I recall Stephen King describing writing as 'unearthing a fossil' that I really appreciate that image. You can't make this stuff up. It just comes to you, if you let it. 

That's why I don't like outlines. They force you to write to your original, made up, image. I believe that makes you less true to the idea, to the story your brain really wants to tell. An outline prevents you from getting out of your own way. It's also a barrier to the fun of writing, because the exploration of the idea and the realization of what's happening as you write, as it literally comes to you from apparently nowhere, is the fucking rush, man. It's where the good stuff is.

Of course, I had to go back and take about 200 words of the good stuff out to make the word count, but that's fine. 

So yeah, I wrote a story and submitted it to the contest. Now I wait. I think the judging takes place over the next two months, and the second round, should I be in the top 5 in my group, is in April. So I'll see what happens.

But yeah, fuck that. I'm not waiting. I woke up this morning with a couple of other ideas in my head competing for space, and I've been trying for two and a half months to get my groove back. So, I figure I'll write another short story today, and set some goals for February. I'll let you know how it goes before I hit the sack tonight.

Have a great Sunday. Thanks for reading. Comments welcome, as always.

See you tonight.