The Blog Novel
OK, technically “Phantom’s Don’t Kill” is a short story. But I like the ring of “Blog Novel”. It is the term that popped into my head for the writing process that resulted in “Phantom’s Don’t Kill”.
There are many choices to make when writing. On choice is to plan out the entire story first, or to let it evolve as you write. As far as process goes, I find the latter much more rewarding. I also find that the blog format, with each post being a segment of the story, worked perfectly to facilitate and inspire the writing process.
I’d written a few short stories before. It always seemed that until I was done with the entire story, I was not done. And that it took forever. With the blog format, I was able to write in short bursts. Which, inevitably became longer bursts once I started writing.
My original plan was to finish “Phantom’s Don’t Kill” over the span of days or even a few weeks. I thought I’d be able to put my creative restlessness at ease having completed a segment. I still hope future projects evolve this way. But I discovered an unexpected side effect. I wanted to write the next segment because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. It also was a challenge, because once posted I tried very hard not to change the segments. I stayed true to this, adding only a slip number when I could not think of a plausible way to work around this omission and I chose to change the title from the original “Grid Phantom” to “Phantom’s Don’t Kill”. The URL still has the working title. In a sense the title change didn’t really count, as it did not change the story. No one who had read a posted chapter would have missed any of the story.
The Blog Novel process was a great tool of inspiration. And I hope the shorter online segments faciilitate online readers and inspire them as much as it did the writer.
- the Muse
