Writing a short story: "The Bone Spinner"

Started writing "Bone Spinner," a short story I've been percolating for awhile. 

It's amazing how I pull from my own experiences when I write a story, even if they aren't really comparable in reality. It's the emotion and the details I can use to fill in. 

"...we all have triggers to any stage of emotion," Hugh Jackman says about acting. "It’s not always easy to find but it’s still there."

The same is true of writing.

The protagonist is a foreign exchange student, circa 1966, who has fallen into a friendless depression and spends most of his time in his dorm room.

This cuts a little close to home. That's what happened to me at the U of O the first time around. I basically quit going to classes. Deep depression. 

I've tried not to revisit that time too much. One of the ways I came of of the depression was to stop trying to regain what I'd lost, but to start over from scratch. It's dangerous to wallow.

But it exactly fits the needs of the story so I'm going to try to get it over quickly and move on. 

This story has so much potential that I'm once again aware that a better writer could really do something with it. But I'm the writer the story has, so I'm doing it.

I'm doing a stereotypical Russian in the story, quaff-er of vodka and burly comradery, but that's a shortcut to getting the story going--that's what I mean by a better story writer could write a more realistic character. I've done some preliminary research. I want there to be rock and roll music in the story, but it has to be as early in the Cold War as I can reasonably make it. I'm choosing 1966 so I can include rock groups I listened to. There were American students in Moscow then, somewhat to my surprise and fortunately for the story.

I pretty much have the tone and the concept of the story, but I'm lacking an ending. I'm hoping that will come to me as I write.