Notes on punishment

So after a very satisfying first novel draft, what does a tiny scrum like me do to unwind from the constant weave and buckle of making a super long story? Make much shorter stories.



I've always believed in the advice that you need to let a book stew for a bit before returning to it. I've somehow expanded on that by jumping wholesale into another novel - sometimes with ideas half formed, sometimes with a solid foundation - and waiting ages to return to the last/s. This has led to an unhealthy backlog of books that need editing, beta reading, and re-editing, and all of them with the sole exception of two need to have solicitation packages built for them. And those packages need to be sent to agents and/or publishers.

So it can: sadness. But nothing really replenishes that spilled pitcher of language like the end of the first draft. Now I throw myself into shorts that have been stewing for a bit. Sometimes years. Now I attack with new fury the  littered path of literary submission. I set a binder with a draft finished years ago (2010, late) in front of me for the first line by line edit - in bed usually. Another binder (2010 still, early) has the line by line and it needs to be transcribed. This is for the morning. Sometimes its only minutes at a time. And as the days creep by I see the next magnificent and terrorizing dream glowing in the periphadistaway. An outline is forming, crystallizing . . .

It goes on.

For February and March I'll be working on the following:

- Submitting short stories and the kitchen werewolf novel ALL SHAPES (2009) for rep/pub.
- First edit of A STRAY LIGHT FROM TOMORROW (2010)
- Second draft of MY SLEEP DEBT (2010)
- Writing "The Cold Slope Incident", and "In the Tall Trees", two noir shorts. Writing "Eye of the Manipulator" a fantasy short. Writing "Cruel Myth", a literary/degenred thing.

On April 1st, 2013 I hope to begin my next novel, THUNDERBIRD. It's about a girl who is looking for her missing older sister.