Replies

> I have a million stories. Some of them are part written down, I just have a problem finishing anything.

Sounds like my problem :) I have several notebooks filled with story outlines, but I'm a perfectionist and I tend to want to plan the whole story out in my head before I put it down on paper, with the result that it doesn't get put down. Finally last year I forced myself to write down one chapter a day regardless of whether it turned out right the first time or not, and I got a 100-page novella done. Now I'm trying to figure out how to expand it to 250 pages, which I figure is how long it needs to be to publish it.

> Actually... a writing course! For a requirement. It's a fiction writing course and it's quite fun.

Cool! Any specific type of fiction?

> The pieces are too small, though, I can't work at 3,000 words. Heck, 30,000 is just getting started.

Yeah, I had that problem when I took a nonfiction class on writing articles and I had to squeeze it into 3,000 words. In fiction I've found I can only fit a story into that space if I start in medias res or something; sometimes I can also do it if I use an "O. Henry" type of abrupt ending. Here's one of the shortest short stories I've managed to write so far:

---
"Mooncrossed"

The farmer raised his axe at the last second as the wolf sprang from the trees out of the corner of his eye.

He had told his wife he would be back from chopping wood before dark, but the work had been long, and the hour had grown late. She had begged him not to take the risk when over the past month so many sheep had been found with their
throats ripped out and their bellies gutted by something that had been large enough to tear one of the sheep dogs to pieces. But with winter growing cold they needed wood, so he had no choice but to kiss her goodbye and promise her he would be back before dark.

Now in the dark he fought for his life. By a stroke of luck he managed to at least raise his axe to swinging height before the beast was full upon him, bearing him down with a weight closer to that of a bear than a wolf. With the strength of desperation he managed to wedge his left arm into the wolf's mouth, keeping its jaws from immediately ripping his throat out. Pain seared through him like fire as the canine teeth clamped down on his arm, tearing flesh and crushing bone, and the creature's powerful neck muscles began to shake him like a dog shaking its prey. Blocking out the pain, ignoring the hot fetid breath in his nostrils and the slavering over his face, he knew he had only split seconds before his left arm was torn out of its socket. Setting his teeth and summoning all his draining might, his right hand swung the axe as hard as he could into the wolf's front left paw.

With a soul-piercing shriek, the wolf bolted limpingly away on three legs, leaving a severed paw behind where the farmer lay in shock.

Slowly recovering his breath, fighting off the wish to black out, the farmer struggled to his feet. Grimacing, he patched up his badly wounded arm before starting off for home. He took the remaining distance in short legs, resting every few hundred yards. Finally, he stumbled through his door into his kitchen.

His eyes were greeted by the welcome sight of his wife sitting at the kitchen table. But to his confusion, she did not rise to embrace him. Then he looked and saw.

A bloody bandage covered the stump where her left hand had been.