As I write this entry, the short story “The Last Friend” is entering into its 15th draft. It is an odd sensation to be happy when a story is rejected. With rejection comes a twinge of pain and an opportunity to improve—and “The Last Friend” is greatly improved.

It has been said that rewriting is the majority of a writer’s work. I know when I was a teenager trying to break into writing that I did not understand the role of rewriting. I thought rewriting was just clearing up a few points of grammar and making sure my spelling was correct—with my specific learning disability, checking my spelling was a time consuming task in the days before spell check on word processing programs. As an adult, I spend hours with my second best friend—a thesaurus—re-reading and re-wording narrative and dialogue in a quest to find the best combination of words to bring it to life.

The “Last Friend” will go through three more drafts before I send it to a professional editor to make corrections and recommendations. Then another draft or two after that and I will send it out again.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more information on the stories I write and other events. Please also note that I have changed the schedule of my blogs. The new schedule is on my website.

“The Tower” has taken more time than I had budgeted for this short story. Finally I am working on drafts 7 through 12 and will get it to a professional editor before I submit it in hopes of publication. Rewriting never ends, and I am grateful for that. The story is not where I would want it to be yet. I do not feel the suspense is there and some of the details are glossed over too much at this stage. These are things I will be correcting as I bring the story in to the 2nd to final draft.

The concept of “The Tower” has driven me to keep writing. I will admit that there were times when I thought about filing the story and maybe coming back to it someday. It would not let me. This science fiction story is more about today than it is about the future. While set on a world parsecs away and 5 millennia in the future, it examines human rights, the rights of native populations over those who encroach and about the future of terraforming and handling of the green house effect.

It ultimately explores the question: if we were to try to inhabit a world that we must terraform and discover that there is already life there—should we do it? Well, the question may be ethically no. Easy right? Lets raise the stakes. Pretend for a moment that you are now the last of mankind. You (and those few with you) do not have the fuel to travel to any other worlds. You are stuck there. Now…is the question so easy?

I actually do not make it clear that there is other life on the world until near the end. There are hints through out the story, some hidden, some blatant when the reader goes back. I want the reader to see the situation from the eyes of the human characters and discover the truth when the characters do. I do not answer the ethical question above; I want the reader to close the story in their mind asking that question. If I do that, then I have done my job.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for blogs and updates to my articles, short stories, novels, and novellas that I am writing.

I am posting this on all my blogs. Due to an extra project at my “bill paying job” I have been finding it hard to find time to write, nevertheless blog. I hope to have that schedule under control soon. Please keep checking for updates. I hope to have one up by the end of the weekend on all of these.

Thank you
David Alan Lucas

If you have read my Coffee with David blog on March 6, 2009, you will have read about the more complicated juggling act I am doing between my “bill paying job” and my “writing career.” With that juggling act, in many ways, I feel like I am stuck between two stories I am trying to get out the door so I can turn my attention to some Crime Drama stories, Fantasy stories and back to work on my novels. I do have many things going and it is time to stop juggling all these balls and start hitting some out of the park. Especially as I will now be expanding my writing into a new arena.

In June, I will be giving a presentation on self-defense for the Saint Louis Writers Guild. For those who have not visited my website, I am a Nidan (second degree black belt) in Chinese Kenpo. As I begin planning and writing this presentation it has come as self-evident revelation that I should combine the two arts and start writing non-fiction about the martial arts as well.

While I have many projects going on and feel that I am not making any progress on them, I do know one thing. I at least have the safe harbor of a “bill paying job” and that a writer is never spread too thin until he does not have any more ideas to write about.

Thank you for reading. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more information on the blogs, short stories, and novels that I write. Soon, the new category will be added.

The short story “The Indebted” has already entered in to a rewrite—or a retry. When I first started writing the story from the third person point of view. While it was flowing at an acceptable pace, but I realized that there was something missing. “The Indebted” is a story that is to pull the reader into a possible dark future that is meant as much as a warning as it is meant to draw the reader into the tragedy of the story. As I moved along, I realized that the writing was not as in depth as it should be. The story was being written from the third person, but lacked punch. I found that punch in changing the story to first person.

Now I am over 3000 words at this time. However, I have a new fear. This fear is that “The Indebted” will not be a short story, but a novella. That is not what I intended by any means, but I am going to let the story evolve as it will. The story will be reduced in size as it goes from draft to draft. So hang tight and lets see what happens on the plains of Antarctica.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for updates on the blogs, short stories (hmmm..maybe novellas) and novels I write.