It's definitely not the first short story I've ever written, but it's the first in the genre that I like - which, briefly put, is horror. I like psychological thrillers but I don't know if what I wrote would fit under that. May not be scary either, ha! I think it is, though.
I pretty much dreamt up this story shortly after I left the hospital in July. I was on pretty strong painkillers and even when I'm on plain Tylenol, I tend to have bad nightmares or (if I'm on it for a while) minor hallucinations, which is why I never take them. As expected, after surgery it was kind of inevitable. The story was based on one nightmare and a dream within the story was based on yet another.
In any case, of my horror works, this is the first that I finished. My other two works are novels so I'm not even close to the ends of those, though I already know what the end of one is going to be (and have been super excited for it!). I am satisfied with the end of "Nino's Asylum" and can't wait to edit it and, eventually, submit it to magazines. I can't say if it's publish-worthy, but I want to try. I have to start somewhere, since publishing a novel often times requires a literary agent. If I can get my story in a magazine, my name will at least be out there and I can mention it in a cover letter to an agent. That was my plan with this story, anyway.
I think I mentioned this before, but I decided to hand-write this story to keep it on the short side, since I originally wrote it with a specific magazine in mind that had a cutoff word count of 5,000 words. It was quite the experience. The following is a snapshot of one of the last chapters, and you can see how much I already edit while writing, forget after it's done!:
I like that when writing something by hand, you can revisit previous words/passages that were 'cut out' during editing, and really get a feel for whether or not they deserve to be cut out. It's not like editing on the computer, where it's hard to keep record of every change made without having a ton of documents piling up on your computer. As such, I've decided to continue working on this story by hand until I'm happy enough with it. I'll be typing it into my computer later today for the sole purpose of having a backup online, and then I'll retype it when I'm done editing the original in my notebook.
That's about it, but before I end this post, I just want to put out a message to my fellow writers out there: never give up on your story. This story, like my two novels, has been incomplete since I started it back in August/September, and it has been easy for me to not work on it thanks to the exhaust of daily life. But do your best to keep pushing forward, because it's tremendously rewarding when you can write those final words and know that your story can be left to rest.
So keep on writing!!!! Haha. And to all those who happen to read this, hope you're having/wishing you a WONDERFUL, happy, and healthy 2013! 'Til next time. ('<>')>
~nikki
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