Fiction, Short Stories, Writing

Written While You Watch

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In July 2018, I undertook a small experiment and wrote a short story while readers “watched.”

Naturally it wasn’t quite like that. I wrote and published the story on Medium.com, so nobody was actually looking over my shoulder. Instead, I inserted comments as I wrote, indicating some of my thought processes and points at which I took breaks. The result was “Zoe,” one of my most popular Medium stories to date, not bad for a first draft. Two weeks later, I published the final version, which contained substantial edits. You can read both versions here:

I like to think the story proved popular because it’s good, but a lot of writers found it valuable in another sense: they got to see some of my thought processes. The experiment proved so successful that I repeated it in more detail. The result was “The Test.”

“The Test” was presented in three versions, a first draft, a revised draft, and a final draft. The first draft included notes written while writing. The revised draft included notes about what I revised and why. The final draft was the completed story without commentary. If you’re interested in seeing how a story evolves, “The Test” provides a deeper look. You can read all versions here:

If you’re interested in the writing process, I hope you enjoy these experiments and find them valuable. And if not, I hope you enjoy the final versions. Thank you for reading!


Fiction, Short Stories, Writing

Rummaging Through the Past

In the main, my stories are pure fiction cobbled together from ideas no doubt informed by my experiences but not directly borrowing from them. But there are exceptions.

As 2019 dawned, I wrote a short story based on a writing prompt, a list of words on the theme “wishing well.” (A link to the story appears at the end of this post.) The prompt happened to coincide, give or take a few months, with some research I had been doing that led me to the Celtic goddess Caolainn, the guardian of a magic well in western Ireland. Caolainn used the well to grant wishes, but often her gift was cautionary in nature: be careful what you wish for!

This confluence of events led me to feature Caolainn in the story, with a small twist on the cautionary nature of her generosity. But before I got that far, I had to have someone to make a wish. I found two someones, a young couple named Ian and Piper, hiking not through western Ireland but the western United States.

The change of venue is a nod to my own youth. When I was in junior high school, my family lived in Sacramento, California, where as part of a Boy Scout troop I spent many wonderful days camping and hiking in the mountains. Once, while tripping down an old forested dirt road in the Sierra Nevada, we came upon the shell of a building whose floor was littered with core samples.

The building might once have been part of an exploratory operation by a mining company. All they left behind was the building, the small rock cylinders, and possibly the road itself. No other traces remained. We all picked up a few cores and took them home for souvenirs. I kept mine for some years, but eventually it vanished along with a number of other interesting rocks I’d collected. I don’t know what became of it.

Now that particular ghost inhabits a story. Ian and Piper stumble upon the building, speculate on its significance, and pick up a few samples of their own before moving on. Initially I plugged this reminiscence into the story merely because I wanted to, but then it took on greater significance. The couple find another ghost, an abandoned fire tower, and through these encounters their characters are revealed before Caolainn, who herself possesses some ghostlike qualities, offers to grant them each a wish.

So there’s the story behind the story. As for the story itself, here you go: The Wish. I hope you enjoy it.

[ Image courtesy SidLitke via Pixabay. CC0 Creative Commons. ]

Baha'i, Bahai, Publishing, Short Stories, Writing

The Great Enemy

In his song Friends With You, John Denver marveled at what a wonderful friend time was, giving us children, wisdom, stories to tell, and more. He had a point.

But some days, time seems to be our biggest enemy, or rather, lack of time does. We end up with so much on our plates that we can’t possibly attend to it all, and things end up not getting done. As ‘Abdu’l-Baha once said after noting that he hadn’t written to his sister in a long time, “When the most important work is before us, the important must wait.”

That’s why this blog has languished for some time. I have four jobs right now, and blogging is part of the one that gets done in my “spare” time. My day job pays the bills. A side gig I have with a former employer adds a much-needed boost to the kitty. My sideline as CEO and President of One Voice Press doesn’t pay us anything, so we’re in the process of shutting that down. Even so, it takes up some of my time. And then there is my writing, which pays me about enough for a tank of gas every month. Blogging is connected to that, so it often doesn’t get done.

Still, I have good intentions. I hope in 2019 to return to more active blogging.  In the meantime, I’d like to share with you a holiday story I wrote for Medium.com about a cat, an artificial Christmas tree, and a meteor. It’s called “Falling Star.” I hope you like it.

Whatever holidays you celebrate, I hope they are filled with joy, love, and friendship. I’ll see you again in 2019, or if time permits, maybe a bit sooner.

The offiical website of author Dale E. Lehman