I have a confession, dear reader, although I doubt it’s a shocking one.
I’m a perfectionist.
In the past month, I have abandoned not one, not two, but three separate short story manuscripts because none of them were really working out.* Probably about 3-4k words total. My goal for this Substack has always been to produce high quality short stories, or as high quality as I’m personally capable of. This takes time, effort, and a lot of research. But the longer it takes, the more pressure I tend to put on myself to ensure that the results are worth the wait. It’s been nearly three months since my last finished story, and I’m all too aware of this long delay.
So, right now the big question is how to move forward. I still want to submit a piece to the next Macabre Monday writing contest, so I’m going to try to write something for that. I’ll also work more on my somewhat-neglected novella. Beyond that, I’ll just have to play it by ear and hope I can get through this slump.
Thanks as always for your support and especially for your patience. Hopefully this next month will be much more productive!
*The Suff and/or Google Docs also devoured the first few paragraphs of another story I had started.
What I’m reading:
2001, a Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
Somehow I had never read this sci-fi classic before. Very imaginative and well written. Also very trippy in parts. Hey, it was the ‘60s, right?
Chasing the Boogeyman, by Richard Chizmar
This was a pretty good fictional true crime memoir set in a small town in the late 1980s. There was definitely an undercurrent of supernatural horror as well, but I thought that more could have been done with that part of the story.
A History of Fear, by Luke Dumas
This was definitely more of a true horror novel. I’m not done yet, but I’m enjoying the combination of multiple perspectives with an unreliable main character.
Thin Air, by Michelle Paver
I read Dark Matter by the same author a few years ago. It’s one of my absolute favorite ghost stories. Thin Air was pretty good, but the combination of 1930s British class issues and a remote and unforgivingly cold location made it feel like a rehash of Dark Matter at times.
Are you a fan of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Try not to put too much pressure on yourself. As writers we are always learning and the more we write the better our writing gets (hopefully). Just need to put stuff out there and some people will like it and others won't. Writing along with other art forms is subjective. A story will land where it will. You need to learn to let go and let your stories fly free.