When I think about my plunge into the emotional smoothy-blender we call “writing fiction,” I usually credit an experience from late 2002 that inspired me to write a novel, tentatively entitled When the Sun Stood Still. (And aside from the fact that you can’t actually pronounce that title, I still like it.) I quickly discovered that I didn’t know the first thing about writing a novel. So I began studying fiction, writing short stories and such. And I have a long list of short stories from 2003 and 2004, some ridiculously unpublishable, others only half-finished, and a few that might have shown promise if only I had possessed half a clue what the hell I was doing.

So that was a healthy 8 or 9 years ago, long enough that now I clearly ought to know what I’m doing. (And whether or not you consider that my writing is still incompetent, at least I can comfort myself that I know what I’m doing and write that way on purpose.)

But over the weekend, I remembered a story attempt that predated When the Sun Stood Still by several years.