Ate the Elephant For a Time…
Had To Sit Down and Take Deep Breaths…
You see, I have four big whiteboards on one wall of my office. They have the titles of the short stories that are in the first 50 issues of Smith’s Monthly. I stopped at Issue 50 because I ran out of room on the boards. There are 220 titles of stories written up there.
220 stories, covers an entire wall.
I hope to do 365 stories this year.
I happened to glance up at the wall of story titles and my mind went, “That is just 2/3rds of the number of stories you hope to write this year.”
Wham!!! I went from writing one per day to eating the elephant. Took me about a half hour to get the attitude adjusted and see the wall as a goal to build toward one story at a time as I did when filling those boards originally over four years of one magazine issue per month. But wow, seeing all those stories up there clearly gave me a start for a time.
I do not want this challenge in any kind of real perspective like that. I just need to pretend it is possible every day as I finish one story that day. No perspective on the size of the elephant.
And yes, got the February 1st story done. It’s a Detective Crunch story called “The Woman Who Squinted.” I am having far too much fun with that character, that’s for sure.
WORKSHOPS…
The five regular February workshops are available now. They start on Tuesday.
- WRITING INTO THE DARK
- TEAMS IN FICTION
- WRITING WITH DEPTH
- ADVANCED DEPTH
- KILLING THE CRITICAL VOICE
All are six weeks long with assignments. They are on WMG Teachable.