Creativity Workshop: Week in Review

As part of the creativity workshop I'm participating in over at Merrilee's place we're required to post a review of the week just past, while at the same time recap our goals for the coming week.

This week in review: I chose to open the first four-week sequence by writing a sci-fi story. I think overall I would call this a success. I did some research into the genre in general, developed characters, setting, and plot, and began writing the story. Unfortunately, I'm having difficulty wrangling the short story form. Used to be, back in the day, that's all I ever wrote. Now it seems that I'm novel-fixated. The story I plotted quickly mutated into a screenplay in my head but no matter how much I fought with it, the best I could do was begin a novel. Which, in the end, I don't count as a failure because it could turn into an awesome novel. I'm certainly quite pleased with the 3500 words I managed to write over the course of the week.

Recap of next week's goals: This is where I start fidgeting. The three remaining genres I plan to write in this first four-week block are western, horror, and detective. For some reason detective freaks me out the most so I'm saving it for last. I already have an idea for a western novel which I'm going to cheat and use as the basis for the western genre story I plan to write...so basically I'm just going to start that novel. Horror has me...well...horrified.

I know absolutely nothing about horror as a genre, at least in literature. My only exposure to horror has been in movies, and even then it's been limited because I just don't watch horror films. I really hate slasher flicks, and don't consider them "real" horror because they're just gratuitously bloody. So, where does that leave me? I could go with psychopathic criminal kind of horror...but that makes me uneasy and I don't think I can write about that. I find bugs horrifying, but I wrote a horror story about bugs already so I should try something else. For some bizarre reason I find myself amused by zombies - probably because they're so ridiculously unrealistic as to be humorous.

So I guess basically I have no plan for this week other than I'm going to write a horror story. I'm going to fly by the seat of my pants. Maybe I'll write it as a micro flash fiction so it's over faster. We'll see how the whole thing turns out. Wish me luck.