Ferry tale
Posted on | February 9, 2007 | 8 Comments
Still working on the short story I’ve been yammering on about for nearly two weeks now. I think I know what I want to do with the end, but I’m not sure anyone’s going to like it. Endings are hard, because you want to bring a story to some sort of resolution, but not everything wraps up neatly and unhappy endings are sometimes unresolved ones, sort of like the way “The Mist” peters out.
This weekend I’m going to take a stab at taxes. All I’ve done so far is install TurboTax and enter the tax information we’ve received from our day jobs and banks. That’s the easy stuff. I always print out our check register so we can both go over everything to identify tax deductible expenses. Then we comb through the credit card statements to do the same thing. I have a separate electronic file where I keep track of writing income and outgo for my schedule C. All I have to do for that now is group individual expenses into categories (postage, photocopying, etc.) so I’ll be ready to enter that into TurboTax.
Grey’s Anatomy was good last night. A nice book-end device with the bathtub and Puget Sound, and a cliffhanger. Even better, though, was C.S.I., with the resolution to the Keppler subplot. I’m glad, though, that Grissom is finally going to open that dad-blamed carton on his desk and we get to revisit the miniaturist story which seemed to be wrapped up earlier this year. I had the impression that Griss was writing Sarah a “Dear Jane” letter while he was away but changed his mind. The fact that she put his parting gift—the cocoon—in his office doesn’t bode well for them, either.
Thoughts on Survivor: Good to see an established show take some risks with new formula. The woman did a good job of balancing the teams and making sure Rocky and Dreamz weren’t on the same team. I’ve seen message board threads that sounded like their middle-of-the-night debate. I would be seriously worried about all those poisonous snakes, which are supposed to play into things within the next week or two. I wonder if the next person who goes to Exile island will also find out that the idol is near camp and so on, which means that eventually a lot of people could know to look around camp. And since the camps are on different islands, doesn’t that mean there must be two idols, one near each camp? Else the other team wouldn’t have access to finding it.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
February 9th, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
Yep, there’s an immunity idol at each camp. Most likely the “bad camp” one is buried 300 feet beneath the ground half a mile offshore in a nest of jellyfish, while the “good camp” one is gift-wrapped in their fondue pot. I wonder if this means there’s no team-swap scheduled for this season, or if somebody could actually find both of ‘em?
They’ve also tweaked the immunity idol rules a bit, where you have to present it BEFORE the votes are read but after they’re cast.
February 9th, 2007 @ 6:30 pm
It’s nice to know as a writer you think of us the readers but I guess I’d ask who do you write for? Do you write for the reader, or do you write for yourself? I personally like to read stories that unfold naturally and lay itself out as it needs to. Sometimes just as in real life the endings are messy. I know a lot of people didn’t like “The Cell” because of the ending. But to me it was the only true ending you could have. Only time would tell us the answers. I thought it was a book in need of a sequel. So for me I prefer a writer to write for themselves, after all it’s their story to tell.
I would have voted Rocky off. Lots of coconuts & snakes…I’m pressing coconuts for oil and having fried snake! Just don’t understand why fire takes them all so long. But then again I was mom to two boys & I’m a former scout leader. It seems to me the tribe always needs two people to do nothing but work on fire.
February 9th, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
I just finished our 2006s with TurboTax. What a pain in the butt… but it sure beats the heck out of the OUT-FREAKING-RAGEOUS amount of money the accountant charged us last year. I went to TT because I got this electronic workbook from her (similar to the stuff I’d already been doing, just like you) and I realized that once I filled it out, she’d simply download it into her tax program (some pro version that normal peons are not allowed to know about), spit out the forms, and charge us 20% more than last year. Screw that. $100 bucks for the TT Home & Business; I won’t even shock you with how much we saved on what she would have charged us, but then I turned around and did my Dad’s, saving him the $85.00 that same accountant would have charged (at least, $85.00 was her 2005 rate). It took me a good week of fighting with some of the weirder aspects of investments, but it was definitely worth it… plus next year it will be a little easier. I figure 2006 had a first-timer’s learning curve in it. So there.
February 10th, 2007 @ 8:31 am
No question, I write for myself. But at some point the story is going to have to pass judgement, in the form of an editor who is going to have to be sold on the piece. So if I’m worried that a certain element of a story might not go over too well, my primary concern is that it’s not going to sit well with editors, which means it won’t get an audience and you’ll never have a chance to see it. King’s original ending to Carrie had the girl turn into a huge monster with snakes extruded from her head and all sorts of other ghastly excesses. That’s what he wrote for himself. The editors had other ideas and fortunately had enough faith in the story to accept it and then suggest he go in a different direction.
Fire—such a challenge. The ultimate humiliation must have been the end of last season where the two women couldn’t even start one with matches.
February 10th, 2007 @ 8:35 am
Interesting twists. What happens, I wonder, if one idol remains undiscovered before the merge? Does it run the risk of getting abandoned if they decide to move to the other camp?
The idol played no part at all the first year it was used, and last year it was never actually played but was a huge influence since Yul admitted to having it. With the new rules, the strategy will have to be different yet again. Good on ‘em for keeping things mixed up.
February 10th, 2007 @ 8:37 am
This is my third year using TurboTax, so I think I’ve got it down pat. I use the Deluxe edition, one level below the Everything-Under-The-Sun version since my schedule C isn’t all that complicated. Plus the cost of the software is tax deductible next year, even though it’s only $35 at Wal-Mart.
February 11th, 2007 @ 10:50 pm
Yes, I understand. Even life is like that. We want to be true to who we are, as much as is true but not hurtful to others. It’s not always easy. It must be a very sharp edge you walk to get your story told as you want, and as your editor thinks will sell. I bet there are more readers like me, those that want to see the story out as it it written, but how do you get the powers to be to believe it?
I would have loved that ending to Carrie! Like the pent up teen years packing a real punch of angst.
But Carrie was not one of my favorites, I love his short stories. As far a novels…most of them, not sure why but Bag of Bones & Insomnia always rise to the top as just enjoyed reading them. I don’t try to analyze my likes or dislikes.
Fire…yes as a woman I wanted to reach out and smack someone…they had MATCHES…….owww the pain.
February 12th, 2007 @ 6:32 am
Editors are a useful part of the process. While King restored the material that was cut from The Stand, he justified that by saying that it was removed not for story reasons but to keep the cost of the book down. On the other hand, Salem’s Lot was extensively edited, and for good reason. When Centipede Press reissued the book with deleted material restored, they correctly did it as ancillary material, like deleted scenes on a DVD. Most of it did not belong back in the book.
King is proud of his editors. He talks about how the first draft of Lisey’s Story came back from editor Nan Graham with more red marks on it than his high school French papers. It’s a collaborative effort—the editor helps you see outside yourself and sometimes picks up on things that you’re too close to a story to see. I like nothing better than when an editor accepts a story and suggests ways of improving it. I get a little nervous about the ones who accept something as is, or with only minor grammatical/typographical fixes.