R.W.W. Greene’s story “The Stars Don’t Lie” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 29 June 2018.
“The Stars Don’t Lie” started out because I wanted to write about someone overcoming a disability. I teach high school, and most school days I visit a little coffee shop run by kids in the special-education program. It’s one of the best parts of my day. The idea of a human attending a centaur school came from that. Lesa, the main character in “Stars,” is not disabled in her own world, but in a world made for creatures who are taller than her, have more legs, are faster and stronger, etc. she faces challenges.
The rest evolved in the writing. I was in a bit of a slump after hitting a dead-end on a rewrite, so I started pecking away at the story. I do a lot of my first drafts on manual typewriters. It’s easier for me to get into the zone and stay there when I write on something that can’t connect to the Internet. I usually write in small blocks that fit here and there into my schedule, so getting into the zone quickly is important.
I researched while I wrote and came up with the idea for the Divination College, and, since I often warn my college-bound my students about the dangers of college parties and drinking too much, a story was born.
The first draft topped out at 8,000 words, the second draft climbed to 10,000, draft three dropped to about 9,000, and that’s where it stayed.
As headed toward The End, the story started getting ambitious and whispered that it would like to be a novel. Hopefully, by the time you read this, the first draft of that will be cooling on the rack.
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