Grimgreen actually started around the 7th January. Alyssa Evetts – an author in her own right who also has a regular feature interviewing authors (which is always interesting in itself) – posted a quote:
The fact that the real world could have involved dragons, unicorns, magic, time travel and insane adventures but instead has things like taxes is why I read so much
Another classic quote from that great author, “Unknown”. (I must look up some of their other work sometime). Anyway, my reply was that in such a world, surely the fantasy fiction involves accountants. And during my recent spell away from the office, the story took shape in my head.
Admittedly, it was originally a much longer story. There was a bit about the four of them arriving at the hotel and meeting up. Grimgreen had a much longer speech. And there was a parting scene, and a scene bringing it all back together the next year. None of that made it into the first draft.
The first draft was on a Tuesday, and by the Saturday morning I hadn’t done any more work on the story. Nagging me at the back of my head was the need to put all this extra stuff into it. So I re-read everything, ready for drafting it, and to my surprise, it didn’t seem to need it all. Really, it needed a few tweaks here and there and some rewordings in a few places, but otherwise, it was pretty much ready to go. In fact, the biggest danger seemed overdoing the editing and breaking things.
So I just edited. Carefully. Very carefully.
I hope you enjoyed the result.
My thanks to Alyssa Evetts for permission to link to her page, and to the post.
The post “Behind The Scenes – Grimgreen” first appeared on simoncollis.com and is Copyright © Simon Collis 2018. All rights reserved.