So, I've got this plan

           I’ve got a plan. I’ve been very frustrated writing short stories over the six years since my retirement. Every week I responded to one of the prompts, thought that what I’d done was good, but end up far from winning. I’ve had a solid think about this recently, and I came up with an idea that will improve my chances, make my stories more acceptable to the judging audience. 

           I wrote several successful textbooks when I was still a professor at college. And in each case I began the book by laying out what the chapters were to be, and the basics of what I wanted to say in each one. It always worked for me. I believe now that it is necessary to put that kind of planning into the short stories that I write.

           One of my usual strategies before coming up with my master plan was just to look at one of the prompts before I took our two dogs for a walk at six o’clock in the morning. What would usually happen would be that the beginning of the story would come to me, and I would start writing as soon as I got back home. The next day’s early morning walk would take the story farther. And I would be well on my way to completing the story. 

           Clearly that only took me so far, but not near far enough to succeed in my writing. The lack of positive response was the same for my other main method for starting a story. I would carry a pad of paper and a pen in my pocket when I walked over to the local Dairy Queen to get blizzards for my wife and me. I would have the staff put our blizzards in the cardboard container, so that I could put them down on the floor or the sidewalk while I put to paper the beginnings of a written work. Again, got me going after a fashion, but only took me so far, not far enough. I would typically get only a few likes from the readers. I wanted more. Clearly, I needed a plan.

The First Edition of the Plan

           The first edition of the plan went something like this. I divided my potential story into three distinct sections:

1)     Beginning – include a clever play on words in one of the early sentences to catch a fairly literate readers’ attention: “It was a stormy and dark night.”

2)     Middle – include as many alliterations as I was cunningly capable of composing.

3)     Conclusion – develop a surprise ending that no reader even suspected – like having the little girl, a toddler, become a vampire and devour one of the neighbours.

          I actually sat down for several hours in a row, twice during the ensuing week following the plan step by step. I was able to complete the work, but when I submitted it, none of the readers liked it. I had to admit to myself that I was not especially fond of the story either. It seemed kind of dull and unimaginative.

The Second Edition of the Plan

          I still believed that the idea of planning beforehand was a good one. Maybe it just was that I did not include enough planning in my writing. So here is what I did. I kept the first edition, but added to it in several ways. I divided each of the three sections of the proposed short story into smaller units. Then I would sit down at my desk and write out key phrases that would catch the readers’ attention. They included:

1)     “It certainly looked like a fish to me.”

2)     “I never in my life would think that a hat like that was in any way attractive.”

3)     “I was caught with my pants down, but not quite literally.”

4)     “But that’s not why they call it the blues.”

5)     “I’ve never heard of someone being named after her parents’ favourite tea before. Had she been a boy, the name given would have been ‘Earl”

           I submitted this second story a little over an hour before the Friday evening deadline, and I felt some confidence that this one, entitled, “The Ugly Blue Hat That Looked Like a Fish” would be frequently liked. I waited and I waited, but again there were no likes posted under the short story’s title. I had lost again.

The Next Week

           The next week I sat down for hours with my planning pen – I never start a story on a computer – but the idea of adding more planning to the story just did not seem to work out. Everything I wrote down, I crossed out. It was the first time in five years when I did not submit at least one story to the weekly contests. I had a distinct feeling of failure. What could be my next move? Should I give up on planning altogether, or maybe put a kibosh on the whole kit and kaboodle?

I Find a Way

           So the next Monday I went to get ice cream from Dairy Queen for my wife and me. I had been quite distant from her during my ‘planning period’ as I was calling it now, and I had been judging myself quite harshly, so I thought I had to do something that would make the two of us happy. Ice cream for two seemed to be the best strategy. 

           I am very much a creature of habit. Now that I am in my seventies I do habituated things without any conscious thought on my part. So when I was presented with my blizzards in a carboard container without asking for one I had a thought. I reached into my pocket, and, sure enough, there was a pen and a narrow pad of paper inside. I don’t think that my wife put it there, but it was possible.

           I was almost out the door when an idea came to me. I sat down in one of the two remaining chairs that had survived covid. And I started to write. The ideas flowed like a spilled milk shake. Within a short time, although it would feel much longer to my wife, waiting for her blizzard, I had written a rough draft of a story. I hadn’t been inspired to write like that in weeks, not even when taking the dogs for their early morning walk. Promenading the pups was not conducive to proficient planning. I would have loved to have had written that sentence for the middle part of a story two weeks ago.

           And, with a little editing back home, what I wrote is what you are reading right now.