Teddy By The Numbers

My debut short story -- "Teddy's Favorite Thing" -- was published in the September/October issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Because I'm a compulsive note-taker and work-logger, I thought I'd publish my notes and calendar tracking the creation of this 1000-word flash fiction story.

(Spoilers follow below for the story).

The idea for Teddy came from a real-life event, when my company staged a layoff on "Bring Your Child To Work Day." This was low and indecent even by the standards of video game development, and it became a go-to anecdote when talking with industry friends about the worst things I've seen in the business.

Sometime in 2022, I jotted it down in my jumbled-up idea file:

Layoffs through the eyes of a child that is brought in on bring your kids to work day. Wants to play with the toys in the boxes but knows he will get in trouble. Wants to pet the old dogs. Finds what must be a toy gun in his dad's drawer. Finds a nerf dart and remembers how it was more fun last year when a nerf gun war broke out, takes the gun and hides for when dad comes back. And of course sees all the chaos in the office as people are fired. That was Teddy's Favorite Part.

That's pretty fully-formed compared to most of the stuff in my idea file. Every element made it into the story, even the note at the end which (almost) was my final title.

Work began in early 2023:

1/11 Market research for flash fiction markets. Would like to do this one as flash fiction, around 700 words. Set up my template and measured out the length -- about 2.5-3 pages.

I wanted to try flash fiction to experience the form, setting an ambitious target of 700 words. Flash is generally defined as 1000 words or less, but that 700 target comes from the guidelines at Shotgun Honey. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine was always going to be my first market, but if Teddy came back I didn't want to exclude myself from Shotgun Honey.

My research identified 24 markets for flash, but only nine that paid. If anyone wants to see my list, drop a note in the comments.

1/12 Just splattered out ideas and scenes in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, need to shape it into an outline and then find the voice. 

1/14 Wrote the whole damn thing. It's 1400 words so my revisions will entail some trimming. And I need to work on tone and viewpoint a little. But I should take some pleasure in this, having been so "blocked" these past couple days. Worth remembering that sometimes I just need to think about things for awhile, consciously or subconsciously. Then it comes, or I find it. Patience and steady effort.

A virtue to logging my work is recognizing this pattern of being "blocked" only to have an outburst a day or two later. It's happened enough with this and other projects that I don't think it's an accident. Understanding this tendency lifts my spirits during creative dry spells.

“Patience And Steady Effort” is an overarching motto found in many of my logs and note files, and here I was reminding myself of it.

1/15 Cut down to 972 words, and made the Daddy a bit of an asshole. Decided my target is 1K words. Need to spend those last thirty words wisely.

Here I gave up on that 700-word target, which was fine -- every other market on my list would take flash at 1000 words. This story also wasn't proving hard-boiled enough for Shotgun Honey.

1/16 A sanding pass. Approaching the point where I will set this aside, but not yet.

I like to get to a complete draft and then work on something else for awhile. A big reason I write short stories, aside from the joy of creation and developing my craft, is to stay active while taking a break from longer work.

1/17 Late start and I have a cold today. My ending doesn't work. I need some misdirection so that the shooting is more of a surprise. And I need to drive suspense. It's still just a premise.

1/18 It really is just the ending. Wrestling with it, getting closer. Fifty words heavy now.

1/19 New ending, and because it is happy it never occurred to me before. It's better, not perfect. Will let it sit a bit.

1/20 I think I'm done. 999 words! Just needed to find my way to the happy(ish) ending and understand this was a suspense story, and the rest fell into place. Will let it marinate while I return to “No One Will Believe You.”

I can usually be relied upon to provide a happy ending, after first trying all the unhappy ones. Original drafts concluded with Teddy shooting his father dead.

Recognizing this was a suspense story was a key insight. Once I moved off "Teddy shoots someone" to "Is Teddy going to shoot someone?" I found where I was going.

“No One Will Believe You” is a longer short story that kicked my ass all through the first part of this year. It is still working through the submission queues.

2/8 Light edits with an eye toward submitting to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Sent link to Rita.

Rita is my lovely wife, and sending something to her usually means I think I am done. But I'm not. I just can't find what's missing in a story until I let it go for her to read. Sometimes what is missing comes from one of Rita's observations, but just as often it's the act of sharing the story that kicks loose the things I still need to do.

2/9 Tried a re-write with the father's arc in the spotlight.

That reference to the father's arc meant better understanding where he was in life -- failing marriage, hating his job, a jerk to his kid. It is softened a bit in the story because of Teddy's adoring point-of-view, but it's all in there.

Crucially, it is the father that has the story arc in Teddy. The boy doesn't change, but the father does. Embracing a happy ending allowed space for the father's growth and turned "Teddy's Favorite Thing" from a premise into a story. Note how late this came together!

2/10 Revision and new ending in place. Sent it to Rita.

2/14 Submitted.

A different story had just been rejected by EQMM, so that spurred me to submit another. Teddy was ready so off it went.

(“Teddy Was Ready” also sounds like a story title to me).

3/21 Sold to EQMM.

This was the best news I've gotten in what has frankly been a deeply shitty year. Still flying on this.

4/17 Contracts come in, signed.

4/25 Payment received.

8/13 Published and issue in hand.

My notes above are from before I tracked time estimates for work sessions, but I estimate Teddy was ten or eleven hours of work, overall. That aligns with my general session times from earlier in this year. It also aligns with the recorded time I spent on “Agua Fantasma,” another 1000-word flash story written in Spring of this year, and which is now winding its way through the submission process.

Hope to be back with more tales of success soon! You can see status updates on all my work on my Stories page. 

Thanks for reading!