I don’t know why I’m writing about my writing; it can’t be that interesting. My stories aren’t available to be read (yet!) and I have to be careful about what I share, otherwise, I risk spoiling things. I’m not sure how much spoiling your own work actually matters, though, when it isn’t publicly available and you’ve got less than 30 followers. Oh well, here I am writing about it and worrying about spoiling it anyway. After all, I’m doing this whole Substack thing mostly for myself.
When I was writing The Wheel, I had another idea. What if instead of <redacted> I changed it to <redacted>? That could be fun, right? (Who knows? It’s redacted.) Yeah, it could be fun but also feels like it’s completely out of left field so no, let’s stick with <redacted>.
See what I mean about this not being very interesting?
However, that second “<redacted>” had some legs to it and began to grow on the side while I followed Jack and Justin Colby around the UP to see where their experiences took them. As such, when I finally left the two of them together on a curious rock formation in the woods near Shingleton, MI, I had a short story idea ready and waiting for me. I dove right in.
If you read my post about The Wheel, you might remember that it was supposed to be my first short story. It was my attempt to shake off my more grand and overwhelming novel ideas and simply learn how to write and tell a story. Short stories are considered to be several thousand words but never to exceed more than 15,000. The Wheel was 25,000 which placed it solidly in novella territory (it went on to surpass 40,000 once I rewrote the first half). It’s my impression that novellas are sort of the purgatory of the publishing world so I was excited to write something that was actually short.
In Rue, I began following our protagonist, Scott Dean, through the fallout of what he thought was a cataclysmic breakup in the final months of his freshman year of college. He was a bit dramatic about the whole thing and his English professor, Patrick Doyle, could tell. Scott’s big final paper wasn’t done and what Doyle once thought was his star student had started to fade. Soon, Scott got tied up with another girl, Rue, who seemed to be everything he wanted and more, but was also more than a little strange. What was up with this girl? Well, he found out and it all ended rather abruptly, as any self-respecting horror/thriller short story should.
Oh, and it clocked in at just over 10,000 words. A short story had been written.
Rue got good reviews from my ‘beta’ readers: a small collection of close friends and family. My friend Nate said he liked it and one of his main issues was that he wanted more. Ok Nate, high praise that is, but this is a short story, pal, and it’s staying that way.
I had almost completely forgotten about Nate’s comment but I started to think that I really liked this Doyle character and I had no idea why. Maybe it was the tweed sportcoat he wore that was so similar to the one I inherited from my late father-in-law, maybe it was the calm and open-minded manner with which he handled Scott’s request for a deadline extension, or maybe it was all a bit superficial; the guy was a 44-year-old smoke show.
I was working on revisions for The Wheel while I mulled all of this over. What could I do with Doyle? What would his story be? He became such a thing in my mind that he soon morphed into the star of his own fictional action movie series. It got to the point that even my oblivious children were saying “Doyle!” In their best impression of me pretending to be a gritty voiced 90’s movie trailer announcer, followed by ‘dah dah dahhhh!’, his trademarked theme music.
Then it hit me. Doyle didn’t need a new story, he just needed to pick up where Scott left off.
As usual, Nate was right and I was wrong so my first short story turned into my first novel. Doyle made some new friends along the way and some curveballs came at him but at no point did he become an action hero worthy of his own theme song. So it goes.
Stephen King says (sorry, I talk about him a lot and will probably continue doing so) that your work needs time to rest and filter out of your mind when you are done with it; Taika Waititi apparently says the same. (See, I do listen to other people too.) Rue was set aside and when I finally came back to read it two months later, I liked it more than I expected. I spent the summer writing and revising other things and my circle of readers spent it reading Rue. The general consensus is that the story is good and golly is that a relief. It’s got its fair share of issues, though, but most of them are technical. “Do doctors say that kind of thing? Would a Police Chief actually do that? The dialogue in the first section sucks.” That’s all first draft stuff though.
Now it’s second draft time and let me tell you, I’m damn near obsessed with this project because, after 3+ years of writing, I finally feel like it is the only thing that stands between me and the world at large. I usually only write in the mornings before work and maybe one evening at a brewery (usually Earthen Ales1) after work. However, revising is a different beast than first drafting and is much more accessible, I find. As such, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends all week; working on the draft till midnight and waking up to hit it again in the morning. In short, I want it done as soon as possible so it can be read and tweaked one more time before I start using it to try and break into the publishing world. That whole thing still scares the shit out of me but I’m going to try.
What am I learning in the second draft, though? That mistakes can be fixed, shitty writing can be improved, and many many details can be added in. The biggest one is that I had no idea what town this story took place in when I first wrote it. All I knew was that it was in Missouri and ended up being about an hour-ish drive from The Lake of the Ozarks. Before I got into the second draft, I absolutely scoured Google Maps for a town that would fit the bill; I had zero interest in creating my own. I never found one, though, because my impression of where some of the events happened was too specific so I set off to create my own after all. It turned out to be a blast.
Welcome to Bellhaven, Missouri:
It’s near Elixer (I don’t even understand what that is but it certainly isn’t a town) right on the Little Niangua River. If you Google the area, you will find that it’s a wide-open section of countryside that is just begging to have a small town shoehorned into it. As you can see, I didn’t flesh the whole thing out but I did provide some landmarks for myself and my characters. I’m less than 20% into the revision, though, so I expect this to fill out further as I go but maybe not. My expectations for this whole thing have been repeatedly proven wrong.
Anyway, this is the story I’m going to try and hang my hat on for now but we will see how that goes. I wish I could tell you what inspired it because it’s a fun story but, well, that would be a spoiler.
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Fun fact: I’m at Earthen Ales now, drinking their Juniper Rye and wearing a shirt with young, Homer Simpson saying “English class? Who needs that? I’m never going to England!” How ironic.