I declare a thumb war challenge. 52 weeks of the year, 52 stories. I only barely won NaNoWriMo this year, and for an Overachiever (35k in 24 hours last year!) like me that just isn’t good enough. So this year, I have a new challenge. A new short story every week, for the whole year until its time to do NaNoWriMo again.
As with any challenge I set myself, I’ll keep the rules intentionally vaugue and let them develop over time.
CW: Body Horror Not all that glitters is gold. Blood too, glistens in the darkness. We all carry darkness within us, we all have folds of horror. You. You too.
Can you feel them? The bones, grinding there beneath your skin. You might be inclined to call them your bones. Your body, held together by your bones. Right? Wrong. So wrong. Most people don’t think about it. You didn’t, until now.
Olivia crackled fiercely, enveloped in a maelstrom of energy that was as green as her eyes. It rose around her and whipped up the once calm air. Mimicking this rise, she took off. Incongruously slowly, her feet rose several metres from the sodden earth as her eyes flashed fierce with ethereal power. The unshackled force spilled out across the sky like a supercharged aurora, dancing as if it were alive and gleeful at being let free.
Galactic Council Record No. 2020
All races across the universe undergo natural selection. Few go so far as to let it run its course unchecked, though this is true of some particularly proud or warlike species like the dragonlike Yywrack, feared pirates and plunderers. Some have escaped it to varying degrees of success.
Except for one. Humanity. They have beaten it back, killed it completely. But on the galactic stage, strength came above all else.
(The most ‘spacey’ one I could find!)
Writing Prompt: A colony mission sent from Earth loses contact, discouraging further missions. Hundreds of years later, the colony has established a powerful interstellar frontier and has regained contact with Earth, pledging their allegiance to the world’s leaders. Surprisingly quietly, the dropship’s landing legs settled into the dust, under the shadow of the gigantic ex-colony ship hanging in low-Earth orbit. Scarcely had the dust settled when the ship’s belly split open, a battered metal ramp crashing to the dirt.
I haven’t found my voice. I have, however, found more of it.
I don’t often look back at my previous work. Partly because when I do all I see is flaws[1] but also because my views have changed so much. For a variety of reasons[4], my world has opened up in the past couple years.
It’s more than that, though. My eyes haven’t just opened, so has my mouth. I’ve found a voice I never knew I had.
Even the above statement is not original. (No, really…you’ll see…)
All writers are influenced by what we read, whether conscious or unconscious. For example, my writing style takes several cues from Terry Pratchett, sometimes very deliberately.1 And there are no doubt countless unconscious influences feeding into my life in ways I don’t even realise.
So in that sense I am in no way original. But in that same sense, it doesn’t matter.
Foreword: My fiction muscle is horribly rusty. This is the first step towards knocking the rust off and as a result I am not proud of it. The fact it was written with minutes to spare before the deadline does not help. Regardless, I’ll publish it anyway. I might come back and rework the concept. Equally I might not. I am at the mercy of my Muse (she too rides a horse)
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.” ― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
Why settle for just one life. Why settle for just one world. When you can live lives, explore worlds that you might not otherwise ever have imagined.
If I can make just one person pick up a book who might not otherwise have done so, then all this writing — all this *Scribbling — *was not for naught.
I believe I wrote a few Scribblings ago about my observed law of good chasing bad and vica versa.
This idea tends to taint good times since I am expecting something bad around every corner. Always a few clouds in the sky as it were. I don’t hate it, though. It makes me better prepared for the inevitably of when those clouds roll across the sun.
The storm always hits in the end.
There are two paths to immortality.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. — Benjamin FranklinWhich will you choose?
I admit to cheating a little. Life’s unfair, after all, so why should we be fair back? I choose both.
I will do. I will do crazy things, just because I can. Better to ask ‘why not?’ than ‘why?’. And I will strive to touch the lives of others, in the most positive way that I can.