Well, the work has continued. The study lingers. I still feel like a novice, but a practiced novice. Is that an intermediate? An amateur? An apprentice? I feel like I understand seventy-five percent of what a short story looks like in today’s world and how to make one.
My skill is improving, but I’m still looking forward to getting this done and getting back to novels. There have been some… interesting stuff spewing out of the factory lately, but I feel like there has been quality improvement, especially if I look back at when I started this gig.
But here’s the question I keep bumping into. I don’t think I’m going to have fifty-two short stories when 12/31/24 hits. Good, fast, or cheap, you can have two of the three. So if I want to make it good enough to be worth something to someone, it’s going to take time. Especially when I’m unpracticed. If I was a mechanic, I could put a car together. But I’m going to do it slowly because though I know enough to do so, but it’s my first time. Careful, methodical.
So the question is what does a year of short stories mean? Does it mean only working on short stories for a year or does it mean having 52 short stories at the end, one for each week. I mean, the more there are, the more that won’t be bad (statistically speaking). But the goal here is to be published. And from my observations, quality is key (because there’s plenty of quantity). From what I’ve read, some of these authors spend as much time on these short stories as I do on novels, and they end up in the “Best Short Stories of the Year” anthologies.
I think I just figured it out. On 1/1/25, I can go back to my novels, which are wandering around in the daycare right now, wondering if I’ve forgotten them.
