So far, so…great?!?

Yeah, so 2021 so far has been a mixed bag. While I haven’t touched Darling Orphan again yet, and have only final edited a couple of stories for The Doll Collection: Volume Three, the daily short stories have been going, well, daily.  I have several dozen of them completed so far, but here’s the thing: 21 of them were more than a page long, and seeing as how the whole point behind 366 Stories was to have one single-page story per day of the year, this wasn’t going to work well. The average number of pages for those 21: Three. At the rate I was going, the book was going to be around or well over 1k pages. No one’s going to buy that because no one wants to hold a 1k+ page book, and sorry–I’m no longer adding titles to Kindle. So the best course of action, since I really like these 2+ page stories was to cut them and set them aside for their own collection, then do my best to stick to 1 pagers. The past week of this has gone according to plan (WHEW!) I haven’t made up for those 21 stories yet, but I will. Some mornings I get lucky and write two stories instead of one, but that’s a rarity at the moment.

That said, something I have come to realize about writing versus going out in the world: novel writing can tolerate that, because they like to mull and stew; they thrive on that solitude. Short stories do not. Short stories crave constant input and activity, change and stimulation, and that is making this project much more challenging than it should be. Until the pandemic tapers enough that I can again have a social life and see my people, I have to make do. I guess it’s good that I have more than 300 stories left to write, even though I think most of those will still have to be conceived as the first 15+21 have been. I guess I will find out how good or bad that makes them once I start giving them a read.

On a completely different note, I have suddenly become obsessed with going on a cruise. I’m guessing this is stemming from the desire for a drastic change in scenery, and as someone who is currently landlocked, I cannot imagine anything being more opposite of where I am now than that. I’ve never been one for the idea of cruises or even tropical locations, but I guess that’s changed! Again, and thanks to the continued selfish behavior of many, though, I won’t get to have this opportunity for some time yet. At least I can start dreaming about it and work out a plan.

Stay tuned.