To the Bitter End

"People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it." - Harlan Ellison

Yesterday I worked om a short story I wanted to have ready for submission by mid-October. I very nearly finished it, which is pretty amazing since I'd been stuck for a couple weeks on where to go. Still, as I continue writing, now that I've found the direction to take, I find that I don't love the story.

But I will finish it.

Can the story be salvaged? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact is, I hate to leave anything unfinished, so I will get to the HEA if it kills me. Then I will go back over it and decide whether it can be saved with a little writing CPR.

I like the idea. I think I'm going to like the ending (I love what I have in mind, so if it translates well to paper, it'll be stellar) and the characters are pretty cool, so hopefully it can be saved. The biggest problem is that there's a time limit for me to do this thing because it's a Christmas story. So it either gets submitted in the next few weeks, or it waits a year.

What do you do when you're writing something that you're not in love with? Do you take what you can from it (characters, setting, plot) and move on? Or do you finish it and see what happens?

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I'm taking my daughter to the fair today. One of the strange things I found about New Hampshire when I moved here is that they don't have a state fair. Just a bunch of little fairs all over the place. Today we're going to Deerfield, which is probably the biggest of the little fairs.

Growing up in California, I loved to go to the state fair. It was huge and exciting and there was tons to do and see. You could spend all day there and not take in everything. Here, we go early in the morning and are usually finished by afternoon. It's a shame.

But the daughter loves it. She loves the rides and the animals and the junk food. And she is excited to go all year. So, I suppose to her it's the same as the California State Fair was to me.