The Time Traveler Introduction and A Regular Introduction

Welcome to my new format. No longer am I going to use this space to not write blogs. This is now a place where I will write and post short stories. One story a week. Every week, or else (the else in this situation is me not writing a story that week).  I was inspired to undertake this kind of project by my friend Andrew, who's 365 photo project last year, was a year-long source of enjoyment for me, as a viewer, and a year-long pain in the ass for him, since he had to take, edit and post a photo every day. I'm not nearly as ambitious as Andrew, nor am I photographer, so my project will be a lot less visual and updated with 1/7 of the frequency. I can't promise there stories will be good, but they will be short. And hopefully, by the end of the year, we'll have all learned something about writing short fiction and ourselves. So, without further ado, here's me talking about the story you haven't read yet:

Have you ever gotten a collection of short stories and the stories all have introductions by the author that reveal information about the story and the introduction is on the page before the story, so you haven't read the story yet, but you feel compelled to read the introduction first, because it is first, chronologically? That's what this is. I recommend reading the story before you read this.

Have you read it? Ok. This is the first time I've written non-master scene prose in a long, long time. It was not a smooth transition for me.

When I was in writing classes, specifically short fiction classes, I read a lot of bad short fiction. I also wrote a lot of bad short fiction. One thing that was discussed frequently in these classes was having a good hook; having a good lead that would get the readers attention and want to make them read more of the story. Some people wrote really good hooks and really terrible stories. I think their process was to come up with the most lurid, crazy thing they could think of, write that first, and then try to make a story around it. That's what I did with this story, and let me tell you, writing the hook first, then writing your story is not the way to go. I didn't know where this was going until about 3/4 of the way through it, at which point the story just became world-building and exposition, then I got tired of that, so I switched perspective and changed tone completely just so I could get this story somewhere close to an ending.

Anyway, I learned from Andrew's project to set the bar low early on so you're not having to come up with a masterpiece every week just to stay consistent. So there it is. Week 1. The Time Traveler.