Life, Writing, Weirdness

So I have a lot of stories that need to be edited so that they can potentially find a home somewhere. As of this moment, if I count things between a completed first draft and a not-yet completed final draft, I’m down to only 49. If I count things at novel-length, that number goes up to 59.

But let’s stick with the shorter stuff for now.

January’s theme was supposed to be “Back to Basics” where I drafted four short stories. I reinterpreted that at some point to take in editing short stories, although I did draft 4 flash pieces in between things. I’ve mostly been looking at Novelettes, though two of the pieces I moved up one draft are technically shorts, they’re both in the 7k-word area. I also did a lot of work getting to the end of the editing pass on Volume 2 of The Memory Project. More on that another day.

For the purposes of this particular writing report, I’m going to devote a very short paragraph to each of the seven stories I completed an editing pass on during January, in order of “completion”.

I wrapped up the third draft of “Hear Me Roar”, originally drafted in mid-2019, on January 1^st, and the story now comes in at a little over 7,000 words. This is the closest thing I’ve ever done to a dystopian setting. And by closest, I think it qualifies for the word.

“Replaceable”, originally drafted in mid-2018, also went to third draft status in early January, coming in at about 6,800 words. This is a bit darker than my usual writing, a very limited number of characters in a confined SF setting.

Still looking at third drafts as we move into novelette territory, we have “Betting Pool”, 7,600 words of what might happen when the obsessive betting culture of an alien sapient species being observed takes hold in the space-bound culture of the observers. First draft completed in August 2016.

“The Trees Walk” hit its third draft as well. First draft also completed in August 2016, it’s set on a planet where plants are mobile and follow the sun at paces around normal human walking speeds. Sitting at just under 8,200 words.

From there, I picked up three novelettes that I haven’t looked at since closing the first draft files.

“Welcome to the Swamp”, originally drafted in 2019, is one of a couple of stories I’ve written set on a planet with a Pangea-like continental setup. Rainforest on one coast that moves into a swamp that then gives way to a grasslands area that’s suitable for human habitation and then thousands of kilometres worth of desert before you find the ocean again. In this case, two humans have to walk for days through the alien swamp after their transport crashes. Second draft brought the count up to 9,500 words.

“Island of Heroes” is a slow-burn superhero story originally drafted in late 2016. I say drafted, but this is a story I dictated during commutes and used software to go from voice to text. The second draft required a lot of cleaning and grammar fixing, which added more than a thousand words to the transcription version. Solidly 10k at this point.

“Closing Time” was intended as an ancillary story to a set of interlocked novellas that I played with off and on for years and finally took to final draft in 2020. This piece was drafted in 2012, though, and hasn’t been looked at since. The second draft, which I finished just yesterday, only added about 450 words, finishing about the same distance above 11,000 words as the first draft was below it. That first draft read very well for something I wrote more than thirteen years ago and the story was coherent and consistent.

I still have 3 more novelettes to crack open the first draft of. One of those is seventeen years old and was one of the first stories I finished when I started taking my writing more seriously. I’m actually kind of afraid to open that file. The other two are from 2013 and 2018 respectively. There are six novellas to look at after that, one of which is actually a week older than that novelette I’m afraid of and one of which is only a few months younger. They fall into the range from 17-25 thousand words. I may do a few more recent flash pieces and shorts before I’m brave enough to attempt those.

Honestly, it’s a bit frightening how long some of these have been waiting for an editing pass. One of my objectives once I get caught up is to not ever fall this far behind again. But that’s not the primary lesson I’m taking from editing stuff I wrote years, or even a decade or more, in the past.

No, the lesson is that I think I’m actually a decent writer (and a better re-writer) and should be working a lot harder to get my stuff in front of other eyes. I’ve blown or outright ignored the “Submit XX Stories This Year” goal for a number of years in a row, and have managed to not get around to a lot of the indie publishing goals in the same period. All the while, the number of stories I have to finish, finish editing, or have fully edited continues to grow. The number of non-book-length things that should already be out looking for a home is a three-digit number. And there are 49 more to add to that, not counting things I’ll have drafted by the time I catch up to right now.

It’s time to put some real effort into the submission engine. I just don’t want to wind up dedicating all my writing time to that effort.

Be well, everyone.