I guess it's done

I'm at the "I guess it's done" stage after finishing my short story--the one I started last week and got stuck on the ending.

I'm not sure what I expected. Usually I come up with some kind of idea and character, and I start writing about the characters and let them do their thing, and they figure out how to end it. I just kind of trust them and usually end up surprised by how well it fits.

So this time I created a character who didn't do that for me. But what did I think was going to happen after the way I wrote him? The guy is ignorant, insecure, selfish, and passive, so I don't know why I thought he'd be better at carrying a story than he was at living his life. I kind of had no choice but to just let his flailing be the story, and ended it with him cementing his denial and choosing to believe fantasies that make his life more comfortable.

Because of this, the story feels like it doesn't have much of a message except "hello, I'm a mediocre fortyish guy and I pretend to understand things I don't understand and am satisfied with thinking I outsmarted the world that is out to confuse and lie to me, even though I demonstrably have outsmarted no one in my entire life." But I guess I can't always write about the most interesting person in the room, or the most talented, or the most competent, or the most "moral." It's a challenge, I suppose, to make an interesting story about someone you probably don't want to read about.

Oh well. At least the story contains gay astronauts.

My science fiction short story, "Everyone's Gay in Space," is complete at 6,600 words. Voilà.