Does the time fly…life’s been busy in good ways and bad ways, but it’s given me a lot of time to think.
One of the markets I was preparing to sub to announced it was closing. Realms of Fantasy was always one of those short fiction markets I admired and it’s sad to see it go. I hope everyone who had subscriptions and/or stories on sub there find a new home or can be compensated somehow.
As for me, I’m just waiting on the finals for Song of the Swallow. I’ve been writing some short fiction for the past few months, but have been struggling for them to find a home. That’s led me to make some decisions.
Deep down, I truly believe that my strength is with novels over short stories, so I am going to concentrate more on my current novel. I’ve been finding excuses to avoid it for far too long. I do believe it has a lot of potential and I am really excited for the characters.
In other reflections…
I kind of like what Stephen King had to say about his younger writing self. His early writing was larger shaped by writing seminars he had gone to which promoted “that one is writing for other people rather than one’s self; that language is more important than story; that ambiguity is to be preferred over clarity and simplicity, which are usually signs of a thick and literal mind.”
In other words, he found his original version of The Dark Tower to be filled with “pretension.”
Now, maybe it’s easy for King to talk about this as a best-seller who can do whatever he wants, but I feel there is a lot of truth to what he writes. I don’t think we should ever forget our audience or work to improve our prose, but we can’t forget the heart and soul of writing, of creating a story we love, for something for ourselves.
I’m trying to keep that in mind as I transition more away from short story telling, which I don’t find to be my strength, and into more novel writing.