Yeah, sorry Story A Day. Like National Novel Writing Month, it's a great concept and got me really worked up and (this is important) set me on a more productive course. I have generated and written more complete drafts in these past two weeks, than maybe ever.
This happened because I tried this challenge, but failing it has showed me something about my process. And this year is all about me figuring out my process. How to generate and manage new ideas while drafting material and shaping them into stories. And how to keep up with revising what I wrote last week. I would like to write a novel starting in 2013, but I don't want to entirely give up writing short stories so there's a lot to figure out.
I discovered that yes I can generate and draft a flash fiction story in a day, but I also found out that I cannot know how long any given story will be once I start writing it. Starting something requires an emotional committment, which means I must to see it through to the end even if doesn't happen for 6,000 words or more. Given my commitments I cannot hole up for 25 hours to write a novelette so Story A Day, while it's wonderful - is not a great fit for me.
So I've set some new goals. Actually they're old new goals as in ones I've set before, only this time I seem to be achieving them!
- Write 1,000 words a day (That gives me one standard length story a week or a couple shorter ones.)
- Keep up with revisions
- Try to submit one story a week (it won't be that week's story because, you know, revising)
For now to heck with deadlines. It's all about keeping things moving through the pipeline.
No comments:
Post a Comment