So last weekend was a long weekend here in Canada. I set myself a couple of low-grade writing goals: get a post written for Sustainably North (that’s kind of a given), and write a first draft of a short story. The Sustainably North post ended up a short rant about garbage and what to do about cat litter (I don’t have an answer to that last one – if you have any ideas, please let me know on the post!)
So that left the draft of the short story. I knew what I wanted to do – I found a market on Duotrope that wants short stories about monsters (and not the usual ones either). With a bit of thought, I decided to write about a monster from Imezza (specifically a kraken, because why not?) I originally started developing Imezza specifically to write short stories in it, so this seemed like an easy choice. Unfortunately, as much as Imezza is developed, there are still gaping holes in the setting. Which makes it very hard to stay focussed on writing in the setting right now because I keep getting sidetracked by research needs.
The main problem I was having last weekend was that I decided to focus on a character whose species hasn’t been very well developed by me to date (whoops!) And then the kraken itself started giving me grief. Do kraken look like octopus? Squid? What do their eyes look like? That last question sent me onto the internet for probably 45 minutes or so. I now know how octopus eyes see colour. But I never did track down what colours exactly octopus eyes come in (I ended up having to image search octopus eyes to see what colours they come in).
Despite all the research quagmires, in the end I did succeed in crafting a first draft of a story. It’s going to need a whole lot of work, but at least it’s a start. And in the process, I hit my writing goal for last weekend, so that’s a win in and of itself. 🙂
An Acquaintance with Letters 