One Word at a Time

Writing again. Slowly. Painfully.

Opened up one of my abandoned shorts.

Moved the character from the porch to beneath the tree.

Something bad happens there.

That's good, for me.

Alas, it's bad for him.

I fear he's not going to make it.

(Hell, who am I kidding? He's not going to make it.)

I remember vividly beginning this one.

On a beautiful spring day.

Filled with inspiration.

I abandoned it halfway in because (I told myself) I didn't know where it was going. But in truth, I did know.

The real reason I stopped writing is the same reason everybody stops writing.

It sucks. It doesn't make any sense. I suck.

The dreaded inner-editor rearing his ugly head.

I've got a half-dozen such stories abandoned similarly.

But you know what?

Finishing what you start (even if it does suck and doesn't make any sense) is what makes a writer a writer.

And I don't have to send the damn thing out anywhere. I just need to finish it. And when it's done, I'll let it rest awhile and then read it again with new eyes.

Maybe . . . just maybe . . . it won't be as bad as I fear.

So the plan is, finish this one up, revisit two other abandoned tales, finish them up, and then decide which one gets sent to Necrotic Tissue before January 31, their deadline for submissions for their next issue.

And suck or not, NT is getting one of these stories.

The worst they can do is reject it.

But at least I'll be back in the game!

February will bring a sequel to "Hope Town."

But that's a story for another day.