As always, everyone’s writing process is different and the only one I can speak with authority about is my own. So perhaps this will click for you and perhaps it won’t. I hope it does.
Certainly, there are stories that arrive complete. They appear in my head and all I have to do is write them down. This is most likely to occur during the night, meaning I can rise, go to the keyboard, and bang it all out quickly. For example, “Pippa’s Smiles” arrived complete and ready to go, though it had its roots in some thoughts I had been mulling over about gendered narratives. Unfortunately, though, that’s not usually how it works.
For me, stories can start in a number of ways.
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Sold “Whose Face This Is, I Do Not Know” to Clarkesworld. That’ll be the fourth time I’ve had a story in there, the others being The Mermaids Singing Each to Each, The Worm Within, and I’ll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said. I’m pleased by this sale, particularly since they do a lovely collection of each year’s stories.
Had a FABULOUS time at Norwescon. My fellow panelists were great, and it was terrific seeing everyone, including (but not restricted to): Alma Alexander, Michael Alexander and his lovely wife Sheila, K.C. Ball, Nathan Crowder, Janet Freeman Davis, Caren Gussoff, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nancy Kress, Nick Mamatas, Mary Rosenblum, Michael Swanwick, Stephanie Weippart, whose surname I think I have misspelled, and Duane Wilkins. Particularly loved the Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading, which featured so much very good stuff that it was alarming.
Pippa’s Smiles, which I read the beginning to at the BCS reading, is now up on Daily Science Fiction.
I participated in the Locus Roundtable discussion of awards, and the first part of that is up on Locus.
Next up on my con agenda is Penguicon!
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
(science fiction, flash story) We have seen you come before. We have always resisted. We will always resist. The first aliens came as conquerors, ready to crush us, ready to destroy us. We went to ground, we hid. We fought. We picked away at them, bit by bit.
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