Mid June 2026: 9 Goals Accomplished

It's midway through June and I accomplished another one of my writing goals. This is goal that feels to me like it is becoming a new yearly ritual. That might be because I had the passing thought of, "Hey, maybe this should be a new yearly ritual." I always have different types of stories I set out to write, and because I have begun to enjoy writing horror stories and I have seen some success with them, I got the idea that I should write at least one horror story each year. I did it in 2025. So, as you can see, the third box that is now checked, Write 1st Draft of Horror Short Story. I did it for 2026 too.

Last year, the horror story was, to break it down simply, a ghost story. It was also based on real experiences, as some of my stories have been. For this one, I decided to completely invent it all. I decided that I wanted to do another ghost story, but I didn't want it to feel too typical. Even though, in my opinion, there can be thousands and millions of ghost stories to exist and they all have the potential to be interesting. But I still wanted to try something a little different.

So, I had to create my own lore. My main character is Native American, and proud of her heritage, and many traditions have been passed on through the generations. I decided to do a little alternate history by also creating my own "undocumented sub-tribe" so that I could create my own lore, but in researching beliefs of certain tribes, make it feel similar to them and adjacent to them.

I created my own structure for how the soul goes. It starts in Life and hopefully after life, it goes to the Afterlife, whether good or bad. Our beliefs with ghosts are usually that they caught in between. That is where my name for that comes from in this story, the In-Between. It's the poorly English translated version, of this I am aware, but I do think on a second draft I need to go back and poke a little fun at it so it's clear. But then, I added another level. There is also a level in between Life and the In-Between, translated to the Mid-Between. Souls are not really supposed to wind up in the In-Between, it is only when they have unfinished business. And no one is ever supposed to wind up in the Mid-Between, it is only for those who have been cursed to be there.

There's a whole lot more that goes into it, but that's the basic gist of it. I first had created the characters, and I thought I had the relationship between them perfectly cemented. I then began outlining, finishing that lore explained above, and then kept going through the outline until I got to the end, and then I realized I needed to make a big change with the characters.

I like it when that happens, because I was certain I had created the characters correctly, but then as soon as my outline progressed, it became crystal clear how they needed to be for everything to be perfect. And then I really KNEW they were perfect. It's a good reminder that no matter how linear we try to make our creation process, it will always not be perfectly linear, and we have to be flexible to that.

I became so much more passionate about it once I got the most important relationship solidified. I was excited to write the story already, but that little detail coming to light... ooh, I couldn't wait! And then the scenes between these two characters were so much easier to write. Their relationship was semi-complicated but they were fairly respectful to one another. After this detail, their relationship became far more complicated and even though they loved each other there was more animosity between the two.

I wrote the entire first draft and I was a little worried it would go too long because I had so much going on this world I had created. I honestly felt like I could've written a full-length book, but I did my best to write it in the style of short stories, and luckily, it was right in the range I wanted it to be in! A nice surprise since that rarely happens to me. It will need another draft done at a later date, things will need to be added, removed, edited, the whole shebang. But in the meantime, I'm extremely happy with my first draft and my new goal accomplished.