Excerpt: An It Harm None

I headed to one of the nearby parks and selected a sunny spot among the trees to sit down. The air was cool and the leaves crunched under me as I settled in. Next time, I promised myself, I would write a story that I made up entirely so that I could make sure that it had something of a happy ending. This one was tougher to tweak because everything that I added to it risked the threads of the narrative falling apart; I had only heard about it over drinks but I found the story fascinating, if sad. Someone told me it would make a good horror tale, but there weren't any clear-cut monsters in it, and I didn't write suspense well. What I had was the beginnings of a gripping human drama, but one where the main character tells the story by bitching and complaining about everything as if he has no responsibilities to anyone; I had tried writing it in the third person but it just didn't feel write. I really needed to get inside his head to make this story happen, and his head (or at least what I imagined of his head) was a pretty miserable place to be.
I took a look at my notes. I had taken down a spell he had tried using, and a poem of pleas, but I wasn't sure where to use them. I had originally planned on making this a story that actually involved dark supernatural powers facing off with the quiet faith of a Pagan, a Pagan whose belief in magick was mocked by many because it seemed ineffectual, but I am a bit of a skeptic so that was tough. Besides, if I made his powers useless against the darkness, you end up with a story that pisses off your readers.
I really hated writing novels.