Had a bit of a complicated day yesterday but still managed to submit my application for the Clarion workshop for this coming summer. I was really proud of my stories about a week and a half ago or so but as I kept working and working and working, I found myself not feeling any emotional connection to them anymore at all. By the time I submitted them, I actually thought both of them were terrible. I know they aren’t, but I think I was just emotionally done with them. Anyway, they are now out in the world, along with a few “less than 500 word” essays about what I hope to get out of the workshop and what experiences I bring as a writer, critique partner. All in all I am happy with my application. I should hear in about a month or two and I don’t intend to sit on my laurels while I wait. I will be submitting the two stories for publication soon as well. I decided to wait a few days to give them one last final look through and then pick markets for both of them that I will run down. I know where I want them to be accepted… but honestly, I will be happy just getting them submitted anywhere. That has been my biggest fear and sticking point: finishing and submitting. These will be my 2nd and 3rd shorts (not flash) that I have submitted (if you don’t count the one I sent out from my college room in 1993). I have at least five more stories that are “close” to being done, including one I have subbed but pulled after getting some comments on it. I feel like it needs a total rewrite (the POV character in the current version is a young child but several readers wanted to age the character up to get a more “adult” experience of the world rather than the child-like experience). But several more are very close and I do want to finish them up, and get them out.
A concept from the Damon Knight book I read recently (Creating Short Fiction) keeps coming back to me. I won’t get the quote exactly right, but his point was that to improve as a writer, it isn’t enough to keep editing the stories you already have. It is possible that those stories are as good as they are going to be. Instead, you need to practice concept to drafting to revision to completion on a new idea, and do that over and over. Perhaps that will result is some garbage to throw away or trunk, but the goal is to get better at the whole process and be faster and more efficient. I know that my stories tend to live in my head for a long time before I start to draft and write, and then a long time of editing, and I am scared to let them go. I think that practicing writing rapidly is the next tool I will try to improve my fiction.
But first, I will begin doing some major edits on my novel. I have a critique partner (THANKS A!) who has read the first 25 or so chapters. We are meeting weekly to trade critiques and she has given me a lot of ideas to improve. The good news is, she thinks the story has bones, and she loves the concept and the story. I will be working on higher level things such as character motivation, voice consistency, and character interpersonal dynamics. I also will have to comb through and be more deliberate about how I release information. Rather than have 3 chapters of plot followed by a chapter of backstory, new characters and planets, I need to carefully delineate the information so it doesn’t overload the reader. Put another way, it is all perfectly clear in my head, but my reader doesn’t have the same contextual background that I do. Who could? I’ve been thinking about this for 35 years!
Wish me luck on my applications, my submissions, and my editing. I finally (for the first time in several months) feel like I am ready to begin this work!