{"id":212,"date":"2007-09-24T20:37:13","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T19:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=212"},"modified":"2007-09-25T20:51:28","modified_gmt":"2007-09-25T19:51:28","slug":"two-hour-short-story-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"Two hour short story (update)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote this piece about a short story<\/a> that I’ve been working on – for some time – in\u00c2\u00a0my head.<\/p>\n

The story is transcribed and\u00c2\u00a0sits on my laptop’s hard disk waiting for me to do something with it (‘something’ being an action like: edit it once more -for the 26th time;\u00c2\u00a0tinker with punctuation yet again – for the 33rd time… stuff like that).<\/p>\n

Despite the state of being ‘almost complete’ it continues\u00c2\u00a0to probe at my mind – but now with questions.<\/p>\n

Where would it fit in?<\/p>\n

It’s strongly written but, if I’m honest, it isn’t\u00c2\u00a0quite\u00c2\u00a0robust enough\u00c2\u00a0to stand as a work in its own right; it leaves too many unanswered questions and to answer those questions would turn the work in to a ‘not very short story’. This would miss the point somewhat!<\/em><\/p>\n

How can I turn it in to something useful?<\/p>\n

I don’t want to spend forever re-editing or continually touching it up. It’s really not bad and because it’s not bad it deserves a life, deserves some kind of readership.<\/em><\/p>\n

What can I do with it?<\/p>\n

What can I do? Hmmm… I could always\u00c2\u00a0parcel it up and mail to the troops in the Falkland Islands, or send to to a research station in the Antartic where – hopefully! – it would\u00c2\u00a0at least get read by an almost captive readership (hey, who said I was fair about this?).<\/em><\/p>\n

But then…<\/p>\n

Last night the penny dropped.<\/p>\n

This short story is\u00c2\u00a0the perfect opening chapter for ‘Helicopter’.<\/p>\n

Well yes, obviously ‘Helicopter’ already<\/em> has an opening chapter (and several other chapters too!).<\/p>\n

But this short would make\u00c2\u00a0the version I’ve written – which is\u00c2\u00a0a sharp, fast, punchy entry to the world of conspiracy seem…<\/p>\n

Drab.<\/p>\n

That’s how good this short story is.<\/p>\n

With just a little re-engineering it’s the perfect leading edge\/bleeding edge start that ‘Helicopter’ deserves.<\/p>\n

So the old one has to go – and I agonised over the look and feel of it for months!<\/em><\/p>\n

The excellent news is that I don’t need to change anything in the rest of the book; with a new heading to each chapter they’ll follow behind the new chapter one\u00c2\u00a0– in a retrospective way\u00c2\u00a0(apart from the last chapter of course – which now has a brilliant ending framed in my head, that closes the timeline and concludes the novel at the same pace with which it began).<\/p>\n

I’m tremendously excited by this one.<\/p>\n

Well… to be honest I’m excited by everything I write, but this one…?<\/p>\n

Yeah, it’s gripping.<\/p>\n

B<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote this piece about a short story that I’ve been working on – for some time – in\u00c2\u00a0my head. The story is transcribed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}