Ray Daley's Blog, page 52

New story written!

Considering all I had was a title and a tiny outline of an idea with no middle or end, that wrote fairly easily. 1750 words, not a great ending but it can be worked on in the future at some point.

Good to have written something & finished too.

I came up with the ending on the fly, I literally pulled it out of nowhere.

It’s week 21. That was story #52.

I could stop now. If I wanted to.

But that’d defeat the point of the challenge.

It wasn’t to write 52 stories.

It was to write at least 1 a week for 52 weeks.

There’s more than half a year left yet.

I have no idea how many there will be by the last week of December.

Origins of Magic Words

After seeing a friend post about Abracadabra on Facebook, I looked into other magic words.

Apparently most “Magic” words have their origin in Religion.

Abracadbra in Hebrew may refer to the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit.

“Open, Sesame”. Sesame in Hebrew means open in the “name of heaven“.

“Hocus Pocus” is corrupted from the latin for “This Is My Body“.

The exception to the rule is “Presto” which is Italian for quickly.

And now you know. I love Wikipedia, me.

Ray Bradbury Challenge, Week 21.

This weeks Bradbury Challenge story just finished, 2441 words.

Ending was a bit weak but hopefully I can work on that later.

It was an easy enough idea to write. At least it’s finished and I am done for another week.

I’ve got 2 more I typed up to do, I’ll get to them when ever.

Yay! Writing!

Just hammered out 2056 words in a little over an hour, despite feeling very tired and hungry.

Quite pleased as it was a fragment of an idea that just seemed to develop itself as I was in the toilet.

I get a lot of story ideas in the toilet. You’re there alone, it’s quiet.

It’s quite condusive to getting an idea or 56.

I always joke I should write an anthology called “Tales From The Neccesarrium”.

Anyway, I’m going to eat my dinner. Maybe have a snooze after that.

Ray Bradbury Challenge, Week 20.

This weeks story has just been finished.

It was 1039 words, from a reddit prompt.

It might get a little longer with revision but not by much.

It was pretty easy to write, took about 50 minutes.

I’ve now got 49 stories in the Bradbury folder.

And it’s only the start of week 20.

They Don’t Understand, Nor Do They Care (A Flash Fiction Story by Ray Daley)

Never argue with invading aliens, especially not ones who are twenty-three feet tall, dyslexic and have teeth as long as an adults arm.

But they totally weren’t here to invade us. Or eat us, or enslave us.

It was the weirdest request. “We wish to take part in Sprot,” they asked.

Sprot? What the hell was sprot?

“Yeah, sprot. We can probably help you out in that area. Accommodate your sproting related needs, so to speak. Erm, what kind of Sprot, exactly?” Our intermediary said.

“The running sprots, the throwing sprots. We wish to take on your very best sprotspeople.” they explained.

And then the penny dropped. They meant sport. So we hosted them a sproting event unlike any other. Where the point was explained very carefully to the athletes of Earth, “Listen, no matter how bad they are – let them win.”

Even the great Usain Bolt threw his race, and did it with a smile and extreme diginity though you could tell he was dying inside at being told to lose on purpose.

But the aliens were overjoyed at their total victory. “We are happy to have beaten your greatest sprotsmen. Thonkyar Earth creatures.”

And then we waved them off, back on their merry way to their own planet. Let the errors go man, we survived an alien invasion for crying out loud.

We are not alone. Someone else in the Universe also loves sprot.

THE END

I’m In An Ezine!

http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/

My story “First Impressions” is now available in Ezine 14 of The Sirens Call. It’s on page 13, unlucky for some but not me in this case. I’m totally overjoyed at getting one of my horror stories accepted as it’s not really a genre I am very well known for.

You can either read it online or download the Ezine for free.

Any and all feedback is welcome.

Ray Bradbury Challenge, Week 19.

Finished this weeks story, 1926 words about a weird reality gameshow.

It’s in present tense so it MAY require a bit of a rewrite.

I may end up leaving it that way just to see how it reads after a few weeks.

I was pretty happy with the story and the way it flowed and the ending.

All done until next week now.

When Do You Give Up On An Idea?

How long do you leave something in “development”?

I’ve got stuff that dates from a few days old to a year, two years, and even as old as over 16 years old.

When do you, as an author, finally say “I can’t take this any further than I have it”?

Because I have no clue.

Authors can be hoarders.

I don’t want to throw things away but I know one day I won’t finish everything I’ve started.

I can say this:- I would like to finish everything I’ve started.

I’ll probably die before that happens.

Writing Update

Just hammered out a story, 2537 words.

Slightly inspired by reading Maze Runner recently.

I had an ending, which I decided against on the fly so I changed it midstream then had to come up with another ending which I got to eventually.

All in all, I was quite pleased with the outcome and the story in general.