After competing the square on my Kree story about a dozen times (math teacher humor that sadly even my students wouldn’t get), I have finally completed the first draft.  Yay me.

I rode a nice wave of inspiration for about 5500 words, good strong words I was very happy with.  Then I started to get into the sticky scientific parts and I ground to a halt.  After much forehead slapping, I finally backed up and changed the events of the climax.  Another dead end.  And another.  And another.

Originally the protagonist was supposed to make some grand discovery about theKree, the aliens they shared their moon with (not peacably).  That was going to end up being another 4000 words that diverged completely from the original plot.  Not a good thing.  So I tried a more warlike approach, squaring the protagonist off head-to-head with one of the Kree.  That technique didn’t work either.

I eventually discovered that the story really wasn’t about the Kree at all; that was why my climaxes kept falling flat.  (What would Freud say about that one?)  I needed the story to end the way it began, about people.

There is still a nice little Kree battle.  I need to set the story aside before making my editorial run at it.  There’s probably a lot to cut out, foreshadowing from the original ending and the like.  I know of at least one thing I need to add.  I’m saving it for editing.  This will end up my first submission to OWW, so I’ll have some crit-for-crit work to do to get people reading it.

I finally came up with a title: “Poison Inside the Walls”.  I like that it’s got multiple meanings in the story, but it just doesn’t seem as catchy as my normal titles (“Leech Run”, “Glow Baby”, “Thinking Out Loud”, “Decisions, Decisions!”).  Maybe I’m evolving past the catchy?  We’ll see.

-Oso

PS- I put Oso Baker in the byline.  It may come back out in editing.