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To Dust
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This was a strange little story to write, not because of the contents, but because of the way I wrote it. Like Cherry Blossom (Inklet #16), it was partially a product of a Holly Lisle course I was working through at the time (I highly recommend her courses to anyone interested in writing).
This time, though, instead of an idea seed, I had a process that I wanted to try.
In addition, I had been teaching (high-school English) for a couple of years now, and for the first time ever through happy circumstance I had the opportunity to teach a semester-long creative writing course to a class of Year 12s.
Nothing, I thought, like a demonstration exercise in progress.
So I set out to write this story with virtually no idea what I was going to write, only the idea of this process: write until the story stuttered, go back and read what you’ve written so far and figure out what promises you’ve made to the reader. What threads have you included, what have you foreshadowed, what have you hinted might happen?
Fulfil those. Write again until you stutter, and go back and repeat the process.
Then, of course, I gave the first draft to my class as fodder for them to practice their critiquing skills on.
What is the heart of this story? I asked them. Where and how does it work for you? Where can you see the stuttering, and what would you personally do or recommend to fix it?
It was an illuminating experience, for all of us. And although I didn’t write another story this way again that I can recall, and although for many years after this I continued to basically outline most of my work, ironically enough I’ve now come full circle: the method I used to write this story is quite similar to a method called cycling that a lot of well-known writers use, and that I’ve been using for a couple of years now. When Worlds Collide, the third Sanctuary book, was written almost exactly like this, though I had to cycle back through books 1 and 2 as well to catch all the promises I’d made.
It’s a fun—and freeing—way of writing, and it’s funny coming back to this story and seeing in it the seeds of what would eventually become my main writing process.
It would be remiss of me not to finish by thanking the members of that Year 12 class (any remaining errors are, naturally, mine). Shannon, Bec, Becca, Lauren, Anna, Alice, Phoebe, Natasha, Laura, Shan, Vanessa, Sarah, Tricia, Ellie, Miranda and Reeva: you guys were a fantastic class of amazing young people, and I hope that by now, you have truly found your voice in the world, whether that be through creative writing, or through some other avenue. Thanks.