It seems I have some work to do. If you follow me on social media, then you know that I did something Saturday that I haven’t done in a long time: I submitted a short story to a literary magazine for publication. I wrote a lot of short stories when I first turned to fiction writing. In fact, the first social media site that I joined was Writing.com back in 2007, which encouraged writing short stories for various contests. I enjoyed it immensely, but was puzzled as to why I was getting great reviews on the site, but the stories were consistently rejected when I submitted them to other writing sites or magazines. I knew that writing novels came easier to me. It’s strange, but I struggled more with the shorter pieces than the long projects. Still, short stories and flash fiction were something I wanted improve and succeed at writing, so I kept at it until I got caught in a whirlwind of writing novels in 2010. After writing Splinter for National Novel Writing Month, I decided to let the short stories go for a while to focus on strengthening my novels and getting published. It paid off by numerous projects, and it was just this past weekend that I came back to dust off my short stories and realized with remarkable clarity what the problem was:
They sucked.
Seriously, they're terrible. It only took me reading through three or four to realize that I had a collection of pieces that made great writing exercises, but not much that amounted to something significant. The folks at Writing.com were flattering me, plain and simple. Not that their feedback was without merit. They were invaluable in helping me to craft Blurry and Anywhere But Here into publishable ebooks, but the truth is that I completely missed the mark with short stories. I didn’t realize that writing short stories and flash fiction are completely different arts than writing novels. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if many of the other members got it, either, as most of us on Writing.com during those days were actually aspiring novelists that were trying to make the leap from short stuff to longer stuff. Those contests, while fun and inspiring were writing exercises, plain and simple. And I didn’t get it – until this past weekend.
Oh well. Lesson learned.
I’ve spent the weekend praying and meditating on this, and have come to the decision that I want to try with short stories again. If I can learn to write publishable novels, then I can learn to write publishable short stories and flash fiction, darn it. I enjoyed it so much before, and believe that it’s something that can bring joy and variety into my writing again, if I’m willing to stretch and learn. So this is a new writing mission: to improve at writing short stories and get them published. I enjoy writing a variety of things, and I believe that with the Lord’s help and guidance, I can succeed at bringing readers the blessing of inspiration and entertainment through novels and short stories. I’ve written two stories that were published a couple of years ago (Nonstop to Nowhere and November), so there’s something in me to work with. Now to dig it the rest of the way out, clean it, shape it, polish it, and make it shine!
I’m not giving up! I failed at this before, but then again I’ve failed at other things, and went on to succeed. Haven’t we all? Isn’t the definition of success: to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm, until you reach success? I think so. I know that’s not exactly how the saying goes, but that’s how reality goes, so there you have it.
That’s all today. Take care, and have a great week.
Bye!
They sucked.
Seriously, they're terrible. It only took me reading through three or four to realize that I had a collection of pieces that made great writing exercises, but not much that amounted to something significant. The folks at Writing.com were flattering me, plain and simple. Not that their feedback was without merit. They were invaluable in helping me to craft Blurry and Anywhere But Here into publishable ebooks, but the truth is that I completely missed the mark with short stories. I didn’t realize that writing short stories and flash fiction are completely different arts than writing novels. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if many of the other members got it, either, as most of us on Writing.com during those days were actually aspiring novelists that were trying to make the leap from short stuff to longer stuff. Those contests, while fun and inspiring were writing exercises, plain and simple. And I didn’t get it – until this past weekend.
Oh well. Lesson learned.
I’ve spent the weekend praying and meditating on this, and have come to the decision that I want to try with short stories again. If I can learn to write publishable novels, then I can learn to write publishable short stories and flash fiction, darn it. I enjoyed it so much before, and believe that it’s something that can bring joy and variety into my writing again, if I’m willing to stretch and learn. So this is a new writing mission: to improve at writing short stories and get them published. I enjoy writing a variety of things, and I believe that with the Lord’s help and guidance, I can succeed at bringing readers the blessing of inspiration and entertainment through novels and short stories. I’ve written two stories that were published a couple of years ago (Nonstop to Nowhere and November), so there’s something in me to work with. Now to dig it the rest of the way out, clean it, shape it, polish it, and make it shine!
I’m not giving up! I failed at this before, but then again I’ve failed at other things, and went on to succeed. Haven’t we all? Isn’t the definition of success: to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm, until you reach success? I think so. I know that’s not exactly how the saying goes, but that’s how reality goes, so there you have it.
That’s all today. Take care, and have a great week.
Bye!
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