We are just past halfway through the month and this is my third ‘what I’ve been writing for Story A Day’ post, covering another six days.
I have sort of kept up with writing a story every day. It is September 18th and I have written 18 stories, but there have been a few no-story days and a few days of multiple stories.
Aside from the daily stories and these more regular than usual for me blog posts, I am supposed to be finishing my novella. This week was not great for that because of a ridiculous amount of day-job work, but I’m hoping to do some this weekend.
On to the stories!
The day 13 prompt was mine, but it took me some time to decide on where to go with it.
I ended up with a story about a dying star looking back at their past life, over billions of years, and what was to come. Not much of a plot to it, more of a reflection, but it came out better than I expected.
And it sort of ties in with the novella.
The September 14th prompt was Caroline Kim Conjures Ghosts and I wrote another death-themed piece, because I’m cheery like that.
This one was about a person living in the underworld answering annoying questions from a new arrival trying to find their bearings. The story I wrote was not particularly long, but I quite liked how it came together and I am definitely going to go back and develop this further.
Day 15 was the Halfway House prompt and I made another attempt at a book-themed story, but this one went even more poorly than my previous one (so I’m thinking I’m not going to have a story for that call for submissions by October 1st!).
The story was prompt-adjacent, but very stream of consciousness and not particularly useful in the end. But that’s the way it goes and not every day ends up with a story you want to develop. Onwards!
I did not use the prompt on September 16 (although it’s one I really like), but expanded on a story I wrote during a short timed writing exercise in a class on Wednesday. It’s a weird horror thing about a doll that doesn’t have a proper ending yet, but I kind of like it.
The September 17 prompt Robin Stein Helps Your Character Escape, includes the great quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem Travel “. . . there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,/No matter where it’s going.”
I wrote another novella-universe prequel story about leaving Earth. So far this month I’ve approached this aspect of my novella-universe from a few different perspectives, trying to find the right angle for what I’m trying to get at.
I really like how different the prompts can be from one day to the next and how this encourages me to experiment with varying approaches (what if character A is motivated by x instead of y, for example).
And finally today, I wrote very much off prompt (the prompt was the llama one, which I do like, but didn’t fit with anything I was feeling like writing today).
But my story does include a groundhog, so there’s that.
Anyway, my story today was inspired by this story and ended up being about a team of aliens who travel to different planets trying to protect their life forms from various disasters.
And that’s it! More soon.
Monique Cuillerier 