On writing a short story

I’m currently working on my bootcamp story, about a man who dies more than once, and the internet isn’t helping. I keep looking at my fellow bootcamp alumni websites and blogs and seeing references to the multiple stories they’ve written since they got back. That’s not helping.

At the moment, I’m tidying up my story and getting it finished as there are some plot problems with it, largely created in the rush of trying to get it done in time to get it critiqued by the end of the camp. However, not that I’m home I’m realising two things.

1 – it’s actually pretty good.
2 – The deadline helped me, rather than hindering me.

I think I actually wrote ‘above my weight’ because of and not despite the deadline factor. Now that I have as much time as I like to finish it, I’m realising that I tend to rewrite things too much, when really, the first draft as it comes out of my fingers is by far the best.

Funnily enough, that was something that Orson Scott Card said – “there’s no such thing as a second draft. Write it properly first time and then get rid of it before it stinks the place out.”

When he said this, I thought he was mad, or at least far more skilled than me in writing and so able to make a comment like that, but I’m beginning to appreciate the method in his madness. I’m also realising how valuable the enthusiasm and creativity he has to offer are to aspiring writers.

You really need them to motivate yourself. I met an old friend for coffee last week, and she is about to publish an amazing book – her first novel, set in Dublin and weighing in at a massive 220,000 words. To put this in perspective a light to medium novel is 80,000 and a meaty novel is around 110,000. She had a proof copy of it with her – Penguin are publishing it - and it was just the most amazing thing to see it come to life, but it’s taken her years to get it right.

It’s called Hellfire and her name is Mia Gallagher – I have no doubt it will be a success because it’s a clever idea full of interesting and engaging characters and it’s written by a clever and interesting person. Here’s the blurb from Penguin:

“On a glorious midsummer’s evening in 2003, Lucy Dolan returns to the Dublin Mountains, and to the scene of a mysterious and brutal atrocity that happened thirteen years earlier, changing forever both her life and the lives of those closest to her.

As the sun sets and the shadows deepen, Lucy waits for the showdown with the young man who is the key to everything that happened that night. While she waits, she summons up the ghosts of her past and recounts her life story. It is a tale spanning two generations of storytellers and deal-makers, fortune-tellers and gamblers, businessmen and warlords, and the people that fear, serve and betray them. With each twist of the tale Lucy revisits the world of her childhood and early adolescence, piecing together afresh the events that led to the crime that still haunts her.

But she knows she can never fully understand the mystery buried at its heart - nor get the revenge and retribution she is seeking - until the one to whom the story is addressed turns up to face her. But what truth will her old friend, her old enemy, bring with him?”

Sounds good doesn’t it? I hope it does brilliantly for her.It's published in September so keep an eye out for it.