THE COST OF LIVING
316 Words
THE COST OF LIVING
Sometimes when you ’ re writing, a germ of an idea will embed itself into your brain, and the only way to rid yourself of it is to write it out of your system. In my experience, that usually does the trick. Occasionally, though, it might not go to plan. For any number of reasons, the story you end up with might not say what you wanted it to say, or you might go off in a different direction and, before you know it, you ’ re back to square one.
That was what happened with THE COST OF LIVING. The initial idea came to me many years ago while I was writing the early AUTUMN books. I tried to develop the story as an AUTUMN short but, because of the technicalities of my invented infections and the ‘ rules ’ of the AUTUMN world, it didn ’ t work. So I put the idea to one side and planned to come back to it later.
Post-HATER, I tried writing the story again, and the result was a four thousand word short named PRIORITIES. It was okay, but it wasn ’ t quite right...
Sometime later still, when I was asked to write a piece of seven-hundred and fifty word flash fiction, I again returned to this same idea, wondering if I could say more with less. Though the piece was well received, I still wasn ’ t satisfied. It packed a decent punch, but the characters didn ’ t have sufficient space to develop.
Looking back, I decided that the length restrictions I ’ d imposed on the different versions of the story were the problem, and I decided to start again. This time I was just going to write without worrying about word counts or formats, until I was satisfied I ’ d told the story properly.
And I think I ’ ve finally done it.
- Writer
