I’ve been having a productive month. This morning I polished up and submitted the fifth short story in two weeks. Granted, most of them are rewrites, but a couple of them are such thorough redrafts that they might as well be all new, like the one I finished today.
Normally, I let a story sit for a while before sending it out, but right now I just want material in submission. It has been a long time since I’ve had this kind of productivity in short fiction and I want to take full advantage of it. Of course, it would be nice if some (or all) sold, especially to the markets they’ve been sent.
Soon, now, I’ll have two novels to start rewriting, once the notes are finished from the two people going over them. Then I will set the short fiction aside and bury myself in the lengthier pieces. There was a time I could finish a novel and write a few short stories with the left-over energy, but since about 2004 I have been in full novel mode almost continuously. (The last brand new short story I sold was Duty Free for Lee Martindales Ladies of Tradetown anthology.) During these past years, I either haven’t been able to finish the stories or they’ve come out crooked, sorry beasts requiring much T.L.C. and more time than I’ve been willing to devote.
Plus there have been the almost nonstop worries that are deadly to the creative process. For whatever reason, those worries seem to have receded for the nonce. Oh, they’re still there, they haven’t been solved, but they aren’t looming over me with Damocletian malevolence.
For the time being.
The other thing that has been distracting me, of course, is this thing here. This. The blog. It seems my need for short work is satisfied by spinning out the varied and sundry expository forays here. Granted, I usually pick a topic that I’m interested in, that I have, I think, something to say about, but really, I am no pundit, and if I were really good at this wouldn’t I be doing it for money?
But I do it and since it’s my blog, I say what I please, and that serves a need. Sometimes I do this in order to codify my own feelings. There’ve been a few times I’ve written something and found that I’d changed my mind about the subject by the time I finished. Not often, but it’s happened.
However, I want to say thank you to any and all who come visit me here. Whether you agree with me or not, even if I piss you off, the one thing I hope I never do is bore you.
I have another non-boring, froth-fomenting post coming up soon, but I wanted some breathing space between the last and the next.
Have a good weekend. I’m going to do some more fiction now.