I scribbled down a list of questions I had about the Halloween story, in an effort to determine where it was headed and to get it going again. By the time I was done, I had a decent list of questions, but I was feeling tired and considering just going to bed.

Instead, I thought I'd try one of the writing exercises in an article I read today by Bruce Holland Rogers. The article was entitled "Why Writers Are Cranky...and Five Emergency Tools for Writing a Short Story," and is available as an Amazon Short for a small fee.

I tried the second 'tool,' writing a parallel version of an existing story. I went through a few books before I found one with an opening I thought I could work with. It wasn't terribly exciting at first, but then I noticed something interesting happened after a few paragraphs: a new story idea popped into my head, just like that!

Regardless of whether this opening leads to anything, that's still another 215 words done. Now I'm glad I didn't go to bed earlier, and I was able to exceed my word quota for the day :) Meanwhile I shall have to ponder the Halloween tale some more....

Oh, and there's another interesting article by the same chap, entitled "On Being a Minor Writer --- and why all writers are minor." It's well worth the asking price, and can be found here. I also recommend his Short-short story subscriptions--they're only 5 bucks a year, and he sends you 3 stories a month. They're usually pretty good, too :)