I’ve made a decision to drop Kaiju Story for now. I’ve read the reviews. Some were favorable, some were not. There was a lot of conflicting information. But it pointed there were many fundamental problems with the plot and characters that couldn’t be resolved in simple revising. It’s like three stories in one – documentary, science fiction, and horror. The beginning does not match the end. And moreover, I just got annoyed with the story itself. I didn’t want to waste time polishing a turd when there were more interesting things to write.
And it’s not because I’m done with Black Hole Son, because I started on Old Dragonslayer Story and that one seems exciting, even if the reaction was more lukewarm. Kaiju Story was an attempt to write something marketable that I was not necessarily interested in (well the big idea I was interested in. I just had no story to go with it). The revising would be more arduous than normal. And this should be fun–I’m not getting paid for this (yet).
This marks an unprecedented move for me. I’ve never thrown away a short story since I started writing them (although this isn’t really throwing it away–I can always come back to it). It takes one away from the stories making the magazine rounds. But even the best writers have attempts that miss the mark. I remember Gaiman once having to apologize for not delivering to a anthology because the story “crumbled to ash in his hands and couldn’t be salvaged”. So it’s better not to dwell on fixer-uppers and move on.
