I feel like I should explain a bit about the previous story and its “possible fanfic” attribution.
Yesterday was a beautiful late summer day, not as meltingly hot as it has been, and Nick and I had a picnic under along a trout stream in the next valley over. After dinner I watched the water ripples reflect on the willows and began to think about how I’d describe the scene in prose.
This made me very happy – my summer is such that I hadn’t written any fiction since June, nor even had much of a brain to think about fiction. Chaos is ebbing, my brain is starting to return, and ideas are once again bubbling up.
Last month I bought a copy of Elizabeth Bear’s Blood and Iron for my friend Laura since she hadn’t read any Bear and I was positive she’d like it (and she did). Of course I had to pull out my own copy and re-read it. I hadn’t looked at it since my first read, and now that I wasn’t as focused on what was happening, I could pay more attention to Bear’s prose. I think she writes fabulous sentences, and every so often she describes how she hones them.
Could I describe my streamside in something approximating the style of Bear? With a bit of story, and in exactly 150 words?
Having set myself that challenge, it seemed entirely reasonable to wish for a kelpie, and to borrow the title of Blood and Iron‘s sequel (though not so much Bear’s kelpie. And if you haven’t read B&I or W&W? Go, now.)
So how’d I do? It was good practice. The description is largely better than usual, which says more about my usual than whether I achieved what I wanted. I don’t think the story came through very well in the subtle way that I tried to get it across and given the word count. But then, I’m not sure its a bad thing that there’s more than one way to read it. I may try revising it to see if I can keep the same length and style constraints but more focus.
My commentary is now more than twice as long as the story, probably because it didn’t take nearly as long to write.
