I wrote most of it a little over a year ago. In general I don’t plot out stories, I just start writing them and see what happens. But since I was inspired by The Gentle Seduction I already had a broad idea of where it was going.
I then sent a draft to some friends for feedback. One friend left about 50 comments in places where I’d been too abstract or given a vague description, with each comment literally just saying “like what?”
This was extremely valuable feedback but almost broke my will to finish the story. It took me about a year to work through most of those comments and concretize the things she highlighted. Then around the end of that I sent it to a couple more people, including Xander at Asimov Press, who did another editing pass (mainly toning down some of the overwrought parts).
I’ve read most of your stories over at Narrative Ark and wanted to remark that The Gentle Romance did feel more concrete than usual, which was nice. Given how much effort it took for you however, I suppose I shouldn’t expect future stories at Narrative Ark to be similarly concrete?
Ah, glad to hear the effort was noticeable. I do think that as I get more practice at being descriptive, concreteness will become easier for me (my brain just doesn’t work that way by default). And anyone reading this comment is welcome to leave me feedback about places in my stories where I should have been more concrete.
But I’m also pivoting away from stories in general right now, there’s too much other stuff I want to spend time on. I have half a dozen other stories for which I’ve already finished first drafts, so I’ll probably gradually release those in a low-effort way (i.e. without going through as much trouble to polish them). And then after that I expect I’ll only write the stories which feel easiest/most exciting to me, which tend to be the most abstract ones. So yeah, this is probably an outlier.
What was the writing process like for this piece?
I wrote most of it a little over a year ago. In general I don’t plot out stories, I just start writing them and see what happens. But since I was inspired by The Gentle Seduction I already had a broad idea of where it was going.
I then sent a draft to some friends for feedback. One friend left about 50 comments in places where I’d been too abstract or given a vague description, with each comment literally just saying “like what?”
This was extremely valuable feedback but almost broke my will to finish the story. It took me about a year to work through most of those comments and concretize the things she highlighted. Then around the end of that I sent it to a couple more people, including Xander at Asimov Press, who did another editing pass (mainly toning down some of the overwrought parts).
I’ve read most of your stories over at Narrative Ark and wanted to remark that The Gentle Romance did feel more concrete than usual, which was nice. Given how much effort it took for you however, I suppose I shouldn’t expect future stories at Narrative Ark to be similarly concrete?
Ah, glad to hear the effort was noticeable. I do think that as I get more practice at being descriptive, concreteness will become easier for me (my brain just doesn’t work that way by default). And anyone reading this comment is welcome to leave me feedback about places in my stories where I should have been more concrete.
But I’m also pivoting away from stories in general right now, there’s too much other stuff I want to spend time on. I have half a dozen other stories for which I’ve already finished first drafts, so I’ll probably gradually release those in a low-effort way (i.e. without going through as much trouble to polish them). And then after that I expect I’ll only write the stories which feel easiest/most exciting to me, which tend to be the most abstract ones. So yeah, this is probably an outlier.