Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

As promised (or threatened, depends on your position on reprints) lets get back to the matter of works-in-progress (aka wip). We have, figuratively lying on the metaphorical floor in this imaginary place, something on the order of five or six stories.

What? oh, man… how could we use any other music vid, with an opening line like that!

We have two serial stories running on alternating Thursdays, over at the Six Sentence Story bloghop:

• ‘the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf‘
• ‘the Whitechapel Interlude‘,
• (plus) one interrupted/paused serial, ‘the Hobbomock Chronicles’.

Completed, but not yet final edits, there is:

• ‘Almira’,
• ‘the Case of the Missing Starr’, and
• ‘Blog Dominion’ (a Sister Margaret Ryan story)

Started but not completed:

• ‘Home and Hearth’ (a Sister Margaret Ryan story).

So, in the coming days, I’m thinking I’ll be ‘reprinting’ this post, as I attempt that most onerous of tasks required to find a literary agent, the synopsis. Which, so far, for us, is, like, the apocryphal fifty page term paper on Russia that we all heard that one teacher in Junior High School required. To that extent, this is not merely a requirement to pass the course, it’s like not throwing up during the job-of-your-dreams interview.

Share you thoughts on the writing/publishing process, down in the comments.

So, which story do we return to first?

Before we try to get synopsistic on one of the above… I didn’t list the one that started it all. ‘The number you have reached is no longer…’

Well, if the way the title rolls off the tongue isn’t provenance enough. let me say, the idea, (of this story), came to me in a dream in the early days of this blog. For what it’s worth, I have yet to develop the confidence to try it. Again.

I did make the effort to write this story, back in, maybe 2012 or so, at a site called ‘Writers Cafe’. I saved a copy. You know, for those, ‘What was your writing like, before you became successful?’ moments. Funny about this Wakefield Doctrine, it can self-improve a body, without being obvious.

You know, how a clark would, like, totally feel all projectile-embarrassed upon re-reading something written in the first phases of development? Well, we would.

Worse, in a way that only Readers who are clarks, will identify with, we’d read through this sincere-if-not-crude-attempt and, even if we’re alone, engage in a half-dialogue* about how it’s not so bad… we shouldn’t feel discouraged… we tried real hard…maybe someday we’ll be able to do it right.

That is what it is being an Outsider(clark). It’s an example of some of the most self-destructive behaviors, disguised as being a reasonable compensation for our shortcomings, tendencies of my people. In effect, we tell ourselves that we need to explain ourselves…to ourselves.

(Just in case a scott or roger is still reading…. I’ll just say, “Ask a clark, they might, (or might not), explain that last.”)

Back to our story’s story: aka practicing syncopistic synopsae.

The ‘hook’ of ‘the Number you have reached…’ remains a favorite. (Note: How new at writing was I at the time? My biggest fear was that someone might hear about the idea and write it before I could. I’ve come to realize the real challenge in writing fiction is not a lack of ideas. It’s having the skill and talent to tell the story in a manner that allows any reader to be caught up in the plot.)

The hook:

Our protagonist is awoken by the buzzing of a cell phone. The room is dark. Answering, he hears a familiar voice, “What happened to you last night?” As dawn breaks, the details of the room become discernible. He is on the single bed, in the college dorm room of his undergraduate days. The simple act of jumping up from the bed without a thought, an ache or, even looking first, brings home the fact he is inhabiting a body that is thirty years past it’s ‘Use Before’ date.

The voice on the cell becomes increasingly insistent and disturbingly out of place, given the apparent change in time.

…sorry, running out of time (lol… real time, here in the ‘real’ world)… so the core idea: our protagonist is living in the body of his college-age self. Ok, familiar, almost meme-level time travel story plot. But the cell phone he uses to speak to the people in the world that formerly was his present is at 97% charged.

…for now.

* half-dialogue not a ‘real’ thing, but should be…well, it is, in the personal reality of the Outsider

music?