I’m working on a short story while a friend who is a great editor takes a look at my novel. Once you ask someone to read your work-in-progress, you have to hit pause on your own editing. Otherwise, their effort is a moving target. It’s an opportunity to pursue other projects.
If writing a novel is a marathon, creating a short story is a sprint. A novel can encompass the world, but everything extraneous to the plot of a shorter work must go. In my case, that included the original title, the protagonist’s name, the backstory, and several of my darlings: humorous scenes that didn’t propel the plot, loving descriptions of setting that slowed the action, and historical details that only I would find fascinating. Writing short fiction, you dive right in and keep your nose pressed to the plot.
Here’s the opening.
As Tom Martin approached Clenston Mews from Seymour Place, his Danger Meter stirred. He had learned to rely upon it, an essential organ for someone in his line of work. While he was never eager to enter a blind alley, today he was certain he was being observed. Vasily would want to ensure that his visitor – he knew Tom as Edgar Wilson – came alone. Why else had the Russian chosen a flat at the end of the long mews, with its sole access fifty yards distant? Given the nature of their business, Vasily had reason to be careful. He would be especially nervous now, the moment he was most vulnerable to betrayal.
Tom passed along the row of flats converted from garages, or maybe stables, chafing at each exposed step as he felt eyes boring in on him. Arriving simultaneously at the end of the mews and the height of a foul mood, he rang the bell at Number Eighteen, an unwelcoming black metal street door beside an equally unwelcoming black metal garage door. It began to rain.
“Open the fecking door, will ye?” he muttered, leering at the fisheye security camera. Working out of CIA’s London Station, he found himself slipping into a lazy, indeterminate British accent while adopting some of the more expressive local usage. But, fecking? When had he begun cursing in Irish?
The lock clicked, allowing Tom to push into the miniscule landing. Wiping his feet on a filthy dishtowel left as an excuse for a floor mat, he noted a door to his right. The garage. Coat hooks sprouted from the wall to his left. A short, steep staircase beckoned straight ahead. Looking up, he muttered fecking hell and began the climb. This is turning into a bloody marathon. The scuffed wooden treads creaked underfoot. He paused halfway up, then again near the top, breathing heavily. This was more exercise than he had experienced in a month. Damp from rain and sweat, he summited the stairs in need of a drink.
The flat had seen better days, but then, so had Tom. An efficiency kitchen unit occupied the far wall. Installed by someone with limited culinary ambitions, it could have been the galley of a modest American RV. A small wooden table with three lime green plastic chairs waited before it. Nearby, a sofa and two club chairs, their leather seats dry and cracked with age, rested upon a worn carpet. In one corner, a masonry fireplace sporting a gas hob produced only negligible heat.
I intended this story, now titled The Sale, to be a novel, but it wasn’t meant to be. Engrossing as I hope it is, after about 4,000 words I hit a resolution that I could not coax into a second chapter no matter how hard I tried. What am I supposed to do with the rest of it –50,000 words? It could potentially become its own novel, but only with a different protagonist. As always, the story leads the way.