Hello, dreamers. It’s been a long time since I made one of these posts.

For those who haven’t been with me since the very beginning, for years I posted my “Short Story Sunday” posts every week, in which I’d apprise readers of my current short fic projects. That…feels like a lifetime ago. I was honestly shocked to find the last such post I made was written in 2017.

Much has changed since then, obviously. The last time I made one of these posts, I was just starting out as a writer. I had only recently made my first five short story submissions, and amazingly, I honestly expected them to go over well.

Now, I’ve finally broken through to the short fiction market. I’ve won a short fiction contest and sold two short stories. And though I’m generally focused on my novel projects, I’m not done with short fic. Not even close.

Though I used to use these posts to update readers on my current short fic projects, I ultimately stopped making them because they became repetitive. That happened because I’d yet to learn that the process of writing is seldom a straight line, and that goes double for short fiction. There are times when I’ll write an entire short story in a day. Usually it takes about a week. There have been stories I began, set aside for years, then picked up and finished. And for every story that makes it to “THE END”, there are at least half a dozen that just never get there.

So in this first renewed Short Fiction Sunday post, instead I’ll be clueing readers in on my short fiction pipeline.

How a Sketch Becomes a Story

For years now, all of my short stories have begun as one of my “daily sketches”. After completing my morning sketch, if I feel the story has promise, it gets its very own file. And that file is placed in my “Projects” folder.

That folder is separated into two subfolders: “Active” and “Inactive”. Once a sketch has its own file, I’ll work on it periodically. During my weekly short fiction review each Sunday, I’ll comb through my actives first. I open each file, read what I’ve written so far, and see if something catches.

But as I said, most stories I begin don’t really work out. The longer I go without actively writing a story, the further I get from it; I can’t really capture the emotion I need to write it. Eventually, if I just can’t get back into it, it goes into the “Inactive” folder. As I said earlier, writing isn’t a straight line. I frequently move stories between the “Active” and “Inactive” folders, based on what I feel like writing at any given time. But once a story has spent enough time inactive, eventually it either gets shelved or simply deleted.

I used to have a hard time fully abandoning a story project. After all, good or bad, I’d put work into this. I made this. And to be fair, I wasn’t always so prolific; it’s harder to just delete a story in progress when you’re not sure when the next good idea will come along. But over the past year, one of many things that’s changed about my writing is my willingness to move on from a project. Now, I tend to look at my works in progress with a far more critical eye. I consider not only how I feel about a story, but also how well it might sell, and whether it’s too similar to other pieces I’ve written.

As I mentioned earlier, I can sometimes take years to finish a short story; I’ll write a paragraph or two, let the story sit around for years, then inspiration strikes and I polish it off in a week. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again. But increasingly I’ve found that, when it comes to finishing a short story, time is not on my side. My writing style has developed so rapidly I often find myself unable to pick up older stories and finish them without a complete rewrite.

However, every so often, one of them will make it. I’ll finish a story, whether it took days or months or years. After writing “The End” and going through editing, the story is converted to manuscript, and joins my growing queue of submission-ready pieces. There was a time, not long ago, when I viewed that as effectively the dead end. I’d sub the story to various markets, maybe enter it into Writers of the Future, and once I whiffed out it went into my trunk.

But now, at last, there is hope. Two of my stories will be appearing in print next year. Those publishing credits will strengthen my case to potential markets. And thanks to my new critique group, I’m confident some of the pieces I have to shop around now are my best yet. As this year ends, I truly believe the best is yet to come.

To conclude this post, I’d like to say “thank you” to all the readers who’ve been with me since the last time I made one of these posts. When I first began this site, I really thought I had it all figured out. And obviously I was dead wrong. It’s been a long and winding road to get to this point. So to all of you wonderful people, thanks for sticking with me as I found my way. Until next week, as always, dare to dream. – MK