Writing in the hothouse

The day after I returned from the World Science Fiction Convention I decided to turn a long short story into a novella.  I got the idea after listening to a talk by several editors there.  The challenge was that submissions closed at the end of August, and I had to turn a 9,500 word short story into a novella of at least 17,500 words by then.  Six days later I'd finished my first draft.  I had a novella of 21,200 words.

This was writing in the hothouse. I had two weeks to write, edit the story, and submit it before submissions closed.  I do write fast, but not normally this fast.  I spent somewhere between seven and nine hours each day writing, typing up, and editing the story.  It became my full-time occupation.

I doubt I would have been able to produce that piece of work if I'd had to do the original creating too.  But this story and its characters and situation already existed, and it's a story I've always loved, but never done anything with.  When I started to look at my original text I could see how far I've come as a writer since I wrote it.  The story was, in essence, just a collection of discrete scenes.   I hadn't provided any linking sections between them, and the story lurched from scenario to scenario.

But the characters were still as good as I remembered, and so was the basic situation . So I set about providing side-conflicts to the main challenge.  I invented a war between humans and the aliens they share Cabrini with.  This makes it tricky when humans have to defend one of the aliens against a product of their bioengineering.  And Alenis, my scientist character, acquired a dark secret in her past, something she'd been scapegoated for.  It then became a simple matter to reintroduce her nemesis and make her situation look really bad at the end.

Writing in the hothouse meant I had to make quick decisions about all these things.  I had to trust my intuition and my muses, and just go with the ideas they were suggesting to me.

 I had enough time to revise the story's ending.  The original one wrapped everything up neatly, and was a happy ever after closure.  Originally, Alenis's project was wildly successful without much of a struggle.  Now I've done the complete opposite, and re-introduced her nemesis at the end, giving her another big shock.  Her future is ambivalent, but generally hopeful.

Working in the hothouse was an interesting experience, but I wouldn't want to work that hard every day.  I salute those of you who are going to attempt NaNoWriMo.  I don't think I'd have the stamina to write at that pace for a whole month.