Having looked over more of the stories that I plan to gather together into a collection I’ve concluded that meeting my self-imposed deadline of year’s end will require winning the lottery so I can devote all my time to writing, a miracle on the level of something that would make for a snazzy short story or some combination thereof.
The main problem is that although I have a lot of completed stories, they are not finished. Most are first drafts and a number of them are rough first drafts or simply reflect a level of writing quality that I feel falls short of what I am capable of now. Why toss a bunch of mediocre stories into a collection? That’s not going to make for good dust jacket quotes. “From the author that brought you the so-so collection 10 Pairs of Shorts comes his latest average novel!”
Instead of mildly freaking out about this as I once might have, I’ve adopted a more sanguine attitude. The collection will continue to be worked on regularly but I’m no longer going to pressure myself with the arbitrary deadline of December 31, 2013. Besides, everyone will be drunk that night and won’t want to read, anyway.
Going forward I’m going to work on the collection at a more relaxed pace, dive back into the next draft of The Ferry and start doing the prep work for my NaNoWriMo 2013 novel, which will, I promise*, be a spectacle to behold.
* promise subject to change without notice
