Two of the writing prompts I follow on Mastodon ask, “How was this month for you, writing-wise?” It was pretty good.
I had a couple of distractions: I went to Worldcon and Philip Brewer came to visit. Those each took about a week away from my writing. But otherwise, I got a lot done.
I wrote a bunch of blog posts, including about The Mary Stories now at TheoReads, my Scarlet-A idea, several about Worldcon, writing affirmations, my birthday, and my teaching. But I was also productive in my fiction writing.
I’ve just about finished writing a new novelette called Bearly Believable. For several years, I’ve been writing little story fragments about a bear who acts as the fire-safety coordinator at a park. They’ve been among my most popular story fragments (which isn’t saying much, honestly). I think this is the very first one:
I wrote dozens of little scenarios about the bear as I fleshed him out in my mind. He changed a bit along the way and developed a backstory, which is what this story is really all about. Along the way, he was joined by a owl named Forrest who terrorizes litterbugs. And a little girl named Brunhilde who asks him thoughtful questions.
There’s a lot of world building embedded in the story. It has bits about the ecology of terraforming, lifestyles in a replicator-based society, and issues of freedom for non-human biological androids. At the same time, as with all of my writing, it’s silly fluff. I really don’t write anything to be deep.
It’s been fun to write. I just have a few bits to polish off over the next day or two. I would like to get it finished before the semester begins on Tuesday. If I quit writing this post and start working on that, there’s a good chance I’ll make it and finish writing for the month in style.