I finished a new short story.
Why is this worth commenting on? Well, because I haven’t actually finished a new short story in several years. I think the last one was in 2004.
When I start really cranking on novels, back in 2000, they swallowed so much time and, frankly, gave me the illusion that I had finally “made it”—I’d all along wanted first and foremost to be a novelist, not a short story writer—that my short fiction muscle atrophied.
I’ve published about 50 short stories. I know well respected writers with Big Names who haven’t published that many short stories. I actually got fairly good at it and I look at my oeuvre now and I’m damn proud of those stories. Some of them, I think, are pretty good.
But inadvertantly I let go of the skill when it seemed I’d be doing novels, like I wanted to.
Well. I’ve actually missed being able to do short fiction and it would be nice to resurrect that part of my career since it seems that my novel career is in limbo. No rejections, mind you, but no acceptances, either. I can only do so much. It would be nice to sell a couple of short stories now and then, just to keep up my presence.
So a couple of weeks ago I had a remarkable event. An appreciation from someone over something I wrote, and the someone was one of my… I don’t want to say idols, because I don’t idolize anyone anymore, but…was one of those for whom my respect is enormous. It gave me a bit of an unconscious kick in the pants and I started working on a short story for which I had the opening scene done long ago, but no clue how to end it. This is not abnormal. I’ve had short stories take as long as four years to be finished. It sounds cracked, I know, but these things sometimes just can’t be rushed.
Well, I say I’ve finished it. That is to say I have a first draft, and it is an ugly, nasty thing to behold. It will require a lot of work on the rewrite and even then it is not going to be a cuddly story by any means. It is at heart a nasty piece of work. Those are often the hardest kind, because you need to sell them, and people don’t often like to be mugged by a story.
So it may be that this will be one of those that will not sell. No matter. I finished the sucker, that’s what counts. If it remains unsold for long enough, I may post it here just to get it out. But for the moment, today, I mark it as a Good Day.