Last year, when I was living in Mexico, I didn’t have access to any in-person writing workshops or cons. In an effort to continuously improve my craft, I found some wonderful writing workshops online.  I attended The Brainery’s Science Fiction Fairy Tales class, in which I wrote the first draft of the story THREE LITTLE VISITS, which will be out later this year in the After the Happily Ever After Anthology.

The goal of the workshop was to create a science fiction re-boot of classic fairy tales. Every week we would read a new fairy tale, then we would find alternatives to the classic tale across different cultures and time periods. After that we would focus in on a science theme and do some research (starting with some great curated material from the instructor). Finally, we would come up with our own new short story. Sometimes it was just an element taken from the original. Sometimes it was the structure or the theme or a certain type of character. Sometimes the story came out so far off that you couldn’t tell that it had any inkling of a relationship to the original fairy tale.  The class was fantastic and I highly recommend it. I wrote 9 new short stories in a 12 week period.

THREE LITTLE VISITS began as a retelling of the Three Little Pigs. This is probably one of the most recognizable of the fairy tales. The many retellings of this story often stick fairly close to the original circa 1886. I loved the rule of three in this tale but I knew I didn’t want to anthropomorphize animals. I focused in on the wolf character and the science. The science topic for this fairy tale was animal testing. That’s a topic that could’ve led me back to my old vegetarian lifestyle.

The science that interested me the most is xenotransplantation: the process of grafting or transplanting organs or tissues between members of different species. I’ve been fascinated by this for years because of the potential in transplantation. And of course, the species has to be a pig to throwback to the original.

This is a story that doesn’t look much like The Three Little Pigs, but it’s a wild, fun ride and I am thrilled that it will be published and available later this year.

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It was much longer than I expected it to be. It was a scary dry spell of no writing. It came after a plateau. And a problem with my first writing group.

I decided to start taking chapters to writing group from my current work in progress. I left writing group after each chapter with a handful of notes and revisions planned. The problem…I wasn’t finished with the story. So in one hand, I had a half-written story and I required momentum to plow through to the end. And in the other hand, I had a stack of revisions on the beginning of the story. I edited the first chapter (not the right choice, by the way) and went back to writing group with the next chapter. I left the group again with a stack of changes in one hand and no momentum to move forward.

I froze. Should I move forward? Should I go back and make changes? I can assure you the answer (for me) is not “go back and make changes.” But how do you move forward with a stack of problems from the beginning? So I did neither. Since I was mid-project, I didn’t feel that I could abandon it for something else. I wrote nothing. Not a word for months.

That dry spell taught me something very valuable about my process as a writer. I can’t interrupt the flow of a story and start the feedback process until its DONE. Completely done with the final words on the last page DONE. It ruined my momentum to learn about changes that were inevitably coming. Do I know all first drafts are going to need changes? Yes. Do I think it’s okay to bring a first draft to writing group? Yes. But, for me, bringing the first draft of an incomplete project spelled disaster.

I’m back at writing again and back in full swing. But that valuable lesson is going to stay with me and to ensure I don’t interrupt the flow of my creativity.

I have a new writing group and I set strict guidelines for myself now. Nothing that is incomplete goes across my desk to the group. Nothing. Maybe others can balance doing both at the same time. Maybe the strict and heavy outliner would be unaffected by feedback on their beginnings. But I know that I can’t put myself in the position to have to split my brain that way. I know what I need to make my process work. An uninterrupted first draft is a must.

Sometimes a tough spot is just a valuable lesson waiting to expose itself. I actually accomplished something with that hiatus. Because being keenly aware of my process and the guidelines I need for myself are a must.

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