Writing a novel on your own isn't easy during the best of times. The real world can often work against you, making each page an uphill slog, facing down giants and monsters. I recently started a new job. This new time requirement has severely interrupted my writing schedule, my current WIP's fight for the high ground has slowed to a crawl. As writers, I'm sure this sounds familiar to you, it's an issue we all face, we fellow part-time writers still shackled to our day jobs. It's definitely something I've had to deal with before, and I've found the best thing to do, at least at first, is to just focus on the new job. Don't worry about the work. Go. Settle in. Establish your new schedule. Learn the ropes. After a week or two, you can come back, sit down, pick up your work, and start slaying those giants again.
Granted, sometimes this can be a whole new issue...
You must be worthy...
To combat this, I've decided on a new schedule, a somewhat flexible two hour block of writing each day, some dedicated time to sit down and work on something. Y'know... to ease back into it. It's a new thing. It's only been in place for a week or so, and to be honest it's only been mildly successful so far, hence the inclusion of the word "flexible", but I'm working on being better about it. An important facet is there's no pressure, just continual effort. Butts in seats, people. Butts. In. Seats. Focus on that. That's important. The rest will come.
Working on some side-writing is one thing that can help get you back into the fight. Blogging, for instance. Short stories, maybe. Or maybe, if you don't want to veer too far from your WIP, how about Flash Fiction? Flash Fiction is a style of extreme brevity, 300 to 1000 words. Short, sweet, and to the point.
Let's try it out, shall we?
I posted a picture below. I found it on-line, I'm not sure where it came from, so if it's yours, let me know. Otherwise, for the rest of you... Click on it. What do you see? Write it down, and if you're so inclined, post it in the comment section. It'll be fun. Just keep in mind: 300 to 1000 words only. Also, I recommend that you write your own story first, before you read mine, just to see how close--or how far apart--our worlds turn out to be...
Ready?
Womb World
by Jonathan Hansen
Harrison Holliday leaned on the chromed
railing, listening to the soft clink of ice in his drink and the distant groaning
dirge of nascent worlds ripening on the vine.
The great marshland steppes of the
World Garden stretched to the horizon. From high atop the lustrous ivory needle
of the Sales Tower, cool breeze tickling at his face, Harrison could see dozens
of young planets. They rose above the clouds, slowly coalescing, swaying on thick green
stalks as wide as a city. He watched oceans of water sluice from them, land masses heaving, cracking and rumbling, crashing together, thundering, booming echoes.
A sound from long ago, from the
days of his bone thin youth, days of panting in the stagnant heat, the damp-cotton-thick
humidity, knee-deep in squelching muck. Whenever the Overseers
and their spark-sticks and the choking diesel smoke of the Weeders were across
the fields, in those moments he would pause and look up into the azure sky. The
other Sprayers would trudge on, bent under their sloshing canisters of Pesticide, eyes
down and hunting for the small green shoots poking from the mud, but he would look
up, the huge sphere of a growing nu-world looming overhead, and watch the brilliant
white flights of marsh birds wheeling out of the sun’s glare, swooping among
the vines, soaring on slow wings.
He would watch them fly away,
a molten brand of longing twisting in his guts.
His eyes fell on the Work Camps,
the sprawl of muddy hovels clinging like a rotten fungal shelf to the Garden’s
edge, to a land of upheaval, shattered by giant arcs of twisted roots. He
tossed back his drink, amber fire burning down his throat, and looked up into that
same azure sky, seeing a far off gleam floating in low orbit high above.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
He turned. A smiling young woman
waited. He recognized her model. Beautiful in a pre-packaged way, precision
styled, bred in the Customer Service Vats to be preternaturally personable.
Sales. Lens embedded in the center of her pale blue eyes whirred and focused.
“Words can’t describe,” he said.
“Mr. Holliday,” she extended a slim
fingered hand. He shook, feeling warm skin that must have cost a fortune. “How
can we be of service today?”
Harrison glanced past her, eyes
skipping over the man standing on the other side of the Observation Deck. Big
and built, powerful, an aggressive, military grade model, with a neck like a
bull and a face like it was cut from granite. There was probably a titanium
chassis under his skin and a wolf’s lust for blood programmed into his brain. His
black suit hung on him like a Butcher’s Apron. The man didn’t move. He just
stared.
Harrison turned back, a friendly
smile. “I need to buy a planet.”
“Well, you have come to the right
place, Mr. Holliday.” She linked his arm in hers and turned him back toward the
slow creaking sway of the World Garden. “Voluspa Origins Industries is the leading
producer of Nu-worlds,” she said. “With our patented Hephaestus Forge Engine, we
now have over 6 dozen spinning in four different star systems. Building
Universes for future Worlds,” she chirped proudly. “Now, if you’ll let me know what
you’re looking for, I can help choose a world best suited to your needs.”
A quick wafting puff of perfume.
Subtle tendrils of lilacs, lilting,
soft as kisses.
He inhaled, felt it drag down into
his lungs, felt it wrap his brain. Intoxicating, stupefying. She smiled,
dazzling white. Harrison bit down hard, splitting the capsule hidden under his
tongue. A wash of icy cold clarity poured over him.
He blinked and grunted, suddenly wide awake. “Colonization,” he clarified.
Her perfectly arched brows drew
together, confused, examining him, lens re-focusing. “Artificial?” she asked,
probing.
“Human. Nu-worlds. New
possibilities. Right?” He said, “Just like the commercial.”
“Human colonization?” An indulgent
look, “The paperwork for an M-class is no small matter, Mr. Holliday, approvals,
regulations, controls, corporate licensing,” she said, “not to mention the
price...”
“We’re solvent,” He held out an
open palm, lines of data hanging in mid-air, sparking like chain lightning between his fingers, “I’m sure you’ll find everything
in order.”
Doubtful, but compliant and Sale-hungry, she reached out; a single
fingertip touched his own.
It was like a spark of static
electricity, a harpoon spike of data thrown across a vast gulf in that instant
of contact. She froze, mouth half-open. He gripped her hand, held her steady,
one eye on the Security Bull across the Deck. She twitched as her programming
was flayed. The virus was like a squirt of crimson into clear water, staining, infecting,
and then leaping across her uplink. She jerked and snapped, eyes rolling white,
falling in a heap to the teakwood deck. The Security Drone took a single step,
hand inside his black coat, and then he crumpled too.
For a moment, Harrsion Holliday let
the cool wind ruffle his hair, listening to the distant creak and boom. The
Program pinged as it ravaged the security net, once, twice, all clear. Far below
in the bowels of the tower’s command center, he imagined chaos, while out on
the vast marshland steppes, he knew the Gardeners were just now noticing,
turning in the swampy, fly-swarmed dank as the Overseers dropped and the big
chugging bulk of the Weeders rolled to a stop.
All right, that's mine. How about you?
He opened his commlink.
“Packaged delivered. Door’s open.”
High above, he saw the distant low orbit gleam
respond to his signal, blooming little bursts of orange fire. Tiny shapes darted away, the silver
glints of fast attack ships turning toward the surface in a wide arc, engines screaming as
they burned through the atmosphere.
Out in the Garden, the Harvest Charges thundered
and flashed, the virus igniting them. The stalks splintered and groaned and the nu-worlds broke free.
All the way out to the horizon, he saw Nu-worlds start to rise, half-crumpled balloons, too young, too soon. They cracked and crumbled and broke apart in the freezing vacuum of space.
“Nu-worlds. New beginnings,” he
said to the sound of far off cheers.
The End
All right, that's mine. How about you?
