February Sweeps, Day 13

I was determined to get started on my actual version of my story for Marshal Latham's Journey Into Journey writing contest today. I believe I mentioned last week that I wrote a little 2,000 word flash fiction piece about an Imperial Biker Scout trying to make his way after the empire has fallen. He's hiding in a podunk outer rim moon, kind of like Nazis that fled to Argentina to escape punishment. Anyway, that one's not my official entry...or at least I don't think it will be.

On my drive home from work today, I turned on my Voice Memo app, and recorded myself as I drove. Recording myself seems to be necessary to keep me on task in brainstorming a story. Even if I know I'll never listen to the file later, I still manage to stay on task when I'm recording. Maybe it comes from long years of podcasting. Maybe I feel an obligation to entertain the audience by continuing what I'm supposed to do rather than just drifting off into my own thoughts. All I know is that it really helps. I keep trying until I get some planning done.

My story is going to be called Still They Ride. It's this Journey song:



I'm going to make it into a space western, with a cowboy who is called back to his hometown to help out an old friend who is in jail for a crime that he swears he didn't commit. I think I've got a lot of really cool elements, and while I didn't get the entire story planned out yet, I'm well on my way. The main character is one that I've had in the back of my mind for years named Simon Lazerfist. I was going to make a goofy movie, a kind of fake trailer, with my then four-year-old kid playing the main character several years ago. I even made a logo for Simon Lazerfist:

He was going to be fighting another guy I'd invented who went by the name Bluestar. This was the rest of the movie title:

I don't know if Bluestar will ever make an appearance in a Simon Lazerfist story, because the character has evolved substantially since I first came up with that stuff back in 2016. I do know, however, that there will be many other Lazerfist stories before I'm done. This one is just the first...though not the first in chronological order.

Anyway, I'm afraid Lazerfist may turn out to be quite a long story, considering all the elements I came up with on my way home tonight. So, I fear that the finished product may turn out to be too long for Marshal's contest, where only 7,000 words or less are allowed. So, I guess it's good that I did that biker scout story. I can use it as my entry after all if I need to.

Anyhow, today I got 1,049 words in. Some on Sunny & Gray 2, but most on Still They Ride (Lazerfist Version).

That puts my picometer at:

EDIT:
New progress meter.

14890 / 30000 (49.63%)

49% of the way there. Damn. If I'd written 110 more words I'd have been at exactly fifty. Oh well. Tomorrow is the halfway mark, after all, so I'm doing just fine.