{"id":82,"date":"2013-09-09T12:21:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T19:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=82"},"modified":"2013-09-12T12:48:50","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T19:48:50","slug":"82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"Short Story Euphoria"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Monday. \u00a0It’s not exactly one of\u00a0those<\/em>\u00a0Mondays, though. \u00a0There was a little bit of traffic coming in to work, but it wasn’t enough to distract me from Roy Dotrice’s voice as he’s reading\u00a0Dance with Dragons<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0I’m a little bit sick, but it’s not so much that I can’t do my day’s work, or go teach Computer Club<\/a>, or go to band tonight.<\/p>\n

Today is actually feeling like a really great day, mostly because it’s coming off of yesterday, in which I wrote a 4000 word Sci-Fi short story.<\/p>\n

It feels so good to finish something! \u00a0All too often, I start projects, get somewhere in the middle, then stop. \u00a0The reasons I stop are varied, but it always feels like failure when I don’t finish something I set out to do. \u00a0Yesterday, I finished something. \u00a0I’m probably going to be floating a few inches off the ground for the rest of the week, buoyed up by this feeling of victory.<\/p>\n

The story itself is about bag handlers in a world where travelers stow their bodies along with the rest of their baggage. \u00a0Rather than suffer through long lines in security, cramped, uncomfortable seating, and layovers, people plug into a virtual reality while their bodies are preserved and shipped efficiently to wherever it is they’re headed.<\/p>\n

The idea came to me while traveling, obviously. \u00a0I was on my way to WorldCon when I thought about it. \u00a0While attending Sheila William<\/a>‘s Kaffeeklatsch, it occurred to me that I might actually write this story and submit it to Asimov<\/a>‘s. \u00a0Later, after looking at the Convolution<\/a> website, it seemed like a good idea to me to finish it quickly and submit it so that I can attend the Writer’s Workshop<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I remembered the cut-off date for the Writer’s Workshop as being this coming weekend, so I thought I had a much shorter time to get the story done. \u00a0Melissa went with me to Starbuck’s yesterday, where she sat and drank some coffee and read some stories while I worked. \u00a0To my surprise, and to Melissa’s, I finished before we left.<\/p>\n

It turns out that when I have an idea, I write at about 1000 words per hour. \u00a0That seems like a respectable pace.<\/p>\n

So I have something finished, and I’ve been sharing it with friends and family. \u00a0Melissa didn’t care for it that much. \u00a0She was left with questions at the end, so I’m not sure I did a good enough job delivering the story. \u00a0It may be that I need more exposition, which is an atypical problem with these sorts of stories.<\/p>\n

I’ve decided to let the story sit for a day or two, and revisit it once the excitement has worn down. \u00a0I know that there’s some places I’m going to want to edit. \u00a0I might discover that this isn’t the best I can do. \u00a0I might actually really hate my little story, which would be too bad.<\/p>\n

For now, though… I’m just so happy to have something finished that I\u00a0might<\/em> be willing to share!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Monday. \u00a0It’s not exactly one of\u00a0those\u00a0Mondays, though. \u00a0There was a little bit of traffic coming in to work, but it wasn’t enough to distract me from Roy Dotrice’s voice as he’s reading\u00a0Dance with Dragons. \u00a0I’m a little bit sick, but it’s not so much that I can’t do my day’s work, or go teach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}