After posting today’s Teratogenesis, I noticed that I’m nearing the final act. As Teratogenesis has been unfolding in “real time,” this also means that the best part of a year has also passed and, more importantly, I can get rid of the current theme- far too orange for my liking, but then it’s not meant to be my blog.
If I were to start the project again, would I do things differently? Yes. I certainly would. For a start, I’d probably use a Wordpress account instead of LiveJournal. I’d also do more marketing. Which is to say, I would do “some” marketing instead of relying on word of mouth and click-through traffic from around the web.
But there have been definite successes. It’s taken months of discipline not to reveal the protagonist’s name, although it’s should be fairly obvious now. There is also the issue of is he going mad (or has he already?) Or is there another explanation? There will be answers to that coming up as well. I certainly don’t plan a Lost-style ending which spends the final act raising questions and then copping out on the answers. Nothing has happened without purpose (well, there is a whole sub plot which is meaningless, but even then, that’s deliberately without meaning…)
This also means finalising plans for next year. The secret project is on a knife edge, but probably isn’t as time critical as I thought it would be. Characters are beginning to emerge as well as methods and means. Next year will probably be the year of the short story as I’ll be ramping up my output from an average of five hundred words every eight days to closer to a few thousand every week. In short (excuse the pun,) I’m planning a short story a week for a year. One day to plan, two days to write, one for the first draft, one for the second and post on a Saturday. This will also deliberately shape my writing habits around my day job. There is no way I can get fifty-two short stories done, what with Christmas and holidays and everything, but the point is to aim higher so that should I fall short, I can still hit something.
