Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Dark night

I was so discouraged with my writing that my last blog was about sheep. Sheep are my respite. I had been struggling with two short stories, one that had been accepted and was back for a rewrite and the other that I couldn't quite jam into the call for manuscripts. I couldn't make it funny enough, and most of my readers didn't understand the basis of the story. Imagine Joseph's Technicolor Dream Coat set in the early colonial period on an island off the New England coast. Submission date was bearing down fast on me, so I made a few last minute fixes and sent it off with no hope for it. Too off the wall, too obscure. But done.
The second story was on my desk with notes from the editor. This time the story had more requested changes than I was willing to make. Police women in 1889? I don't think so. I have to figure out some way to satisfy the editors without making a mash up of my story. I can't change the weapons, since the story depends on the rifling marks on the bullets. Yes in 1889.
Under pressure from deadlines and not at all sure I could make either story work for the publications they were aimed at, I was beginning to wonder why I bothered. I could chuck both stories and start again.
I might just need to start something fresh to get out from under the burden of stories I couldn't seem to fix. Forget that I had deadlines and submit elsewhere. That would give me time to work through them more carefully.
Or maybe I needed to do something else like pay more attention to the sheep, write something new, take a cooking class. Or housework.
Or maybe I needed to suck it up and get back to work. I complained to all my on line buddies about how hard it was.
What keeps writers chugging along through the dark night of the writer's soul?





5 comments:

  1. K.B. I don't know what keeps us going. Maybe it's because we have so many ideas for stories that need to come out. I do think taking a break like caring for sheep or knitting helps us to regroup much like a vacation from any hard job, and writing is hard work.

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  2. I've always thought it was slightly delusional thinking.

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  3. New ideas and answering, “what if” questions inspire me. I have to find out what happens.

    When I get really discouraged and quit writing stories, they eventually show up as reoccurring dreams. So, I may as well write them down :)

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  4. When I run out of enthusiasm, it's time to do something else to recharge. Time away will either give you a new perspective or provide changes, or it will allow you to step away from a project and start something new. Either way, you win.

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