Life, Writing, Weirdness

Okay, maybe not daily exactly, but something that I want to start doing in the second half of May. It’s time to start sending out stories again. Past time, really.

I know I’ve hit this note before, but I have a lot of things that should be out looking for a home or maybe being prepped for indie publication in at least some cases. The current count of stories that have reached final draft status:

• 66 Flash Pieces
• 71 Short Stories
• 3 Novelettes
• 6 Novels (Yes, 6, although 3 of them take place in same universe during the same conflict and I could have written them as one coherent 145,000-word story if I’d wanted to. I could still put them together that way with a little effort.)

If 146 seems like a lot, then I should probably note that it’s even worse than it seems. There are 88 stories of various lengths that are at least first draft complete but something less than final, as well as 38 more that are at varying points in the first draft stage. And we’ll just leave the things out that I’ve only plotted or partially plotted.

Always writing, rarely submitting.

Which is dumb. History tells me that during those periods when I’ve been submitting regularly, I’m placing a story here and there. Is there something psychological at work? Is it just another piece of my impostor syndrome?

So I’m going to try to fix that, at least in part. Starting in the second half of the month, once the daily minimum plans have been hit for word counts, if there is still time available for creative work, I’ll try to find a place to send one story before I re-open a current story file.

This does not mean one submission every day. It means one submission on every day when there’s time left over. Based on recent experience, that will be once or twice a week, and that’s okay. I’ve got a lot of things I’m trying to make progress on at the moment.

But getting my work out into the wild should be one of those things.

Be well, everyone.