Back in college, I began writing a story with such a gruesome, gory beginning that would make any reader stop and consider if they wanted to continue. This piece was for a writing class and I had written it out of frustration for my teacher. I knew I had a captive audience and college is a great time to explore different writing styles. What I had no idea, but now do retrospectively, is that this little spite piece would end up being my most engaging and immersive story I’ve written to this day.
In my sophomore year, I took “Intermediate Fiction Writing”, which was an in-between of beginning and advanced. I won’t name any names, just as I don’t think they deserve any attention from this article. After one of my writing assignments, in which I believed to be amazing as I usually do, I became bitter. My professor didn’t think the same and so I began writing a short story, voicing frustrations. I made sure to take all of her comments and work on the issues of the past while making sure this would be a horrible (in a good way) read.
The idea came from one of my professor’s own publications. In this story, she highlights extremely controversial topics and in the first few paragraphs, I was disgusted. Immediately, I thought, “Maybe this is the way to being published”. I took inspiration and started cooking up a story that explored genres and topics I never could’ve thought of previously. Now, four years later, I have a novel-in-progress that is my longest bit of writing ever. It’s funny to think it all started as a spite piece.
Beacon Chasers
We open on the scene of a brutal murder of an unknown woman. Two men, Porto and Leif, are inspecting the area, looking for something in particular, although they seem to not be able to find it. They’re looking for a “beacon”, which in the short story version is never detailed beyond just the name. The two men eventually find the beacon, but it’s broken, and so they call Rex, a skilled hacker and jokester. She hacks into Leif’s body and fixes it, then Leif and Porto watch as the “tracer” (to see the steps taken before death) shows how the woman died. Leif grows sick and they visit Doc, the friendly scientist in their complex, and he’s healed. Porto and Leif go out for a celebratory meal for a successful mission and hell breaks loose.
I could go on and finish the story, but the events that take place in the short story lead into the events of the main story. Therefore, I guess you’ll just have to read for yourself what happens to our little ragtag crew.
I never considered myself a science fiction writer until I began writing this. Before, my speciality (if I had to say I had one) would be realistic fiction. For example, I would write stories about things that happen in reality with absolutely no science or magic. Reality, as I think of it, is way too interesting to need all of these fictional elements. Nonetheless, I got behind the desk and started writing, creating all of these things that don’t actually exist. It seemed everyone in my workshop class did the same, therefore, why can’t I?
Short Story to Novel
At the time of writing this blog, I’m at just short of 130 single-spaced pages of writing. I have no plans on stopping anytime soon unfortunately, both for me (who wants to look into publishing soon) and for the wannabe readers (you’ll have to wait a bit longer). I began working on this novel in July of 2024 and we’re coming up on my first full year of writing. There’s been days I’ve wanted to set it aside and work solely on short stories, days my writer’s block kicked my ass. I kept pushing, kept writing and editing and producing content that I could be proud of.
I have a separate document to house all of the little details like names, places, technology I’ve made up. Having this document has really helped me through and will be a great help to finishing this novel. If I had to give a deadline for myself on when I want to get this novel ready for publication, I would say by next July. My birthday is at the end of July and it would be a special moment for me to celebrate a birthday with a printed copy of a piece of writing I’m extremely proud of.
As I close in on this little spite piece of mine, remember this piece of advice. No matter what you write, there will be someone who thinks it’s bad. No one in the history of the world wrote something everyone agreed upon. Don’t take it personally but continue writing; if not for someone else, but for yourself. Writing is a beautiful art and we’re lucky to have it in our world. Writing, like painting and drawing, is subjective art. Don’t stop being yourself for anyone. And maybe, one day, your spite piece will turn into something much more, something beautiful.