I wasn’t sure what I was going to write for the 3rd quarter entry of Writers of the Future that I promised myself I’d do. I’ve tried to do writing goals before that were more aggressive, and while I can keep up a more aggressive pace, I have other things that I like to do. Plus a day job. So, I haven’t been as focused on story creation.
And, for some reason, I keep coming up with story ideas. And rather than letting them lie, because they’re really weird, I’ve decided to try writing them without concern for how weird they might be. I can’t say how good these stories are, but they’re written.
After all, there’s no way to determine whether a story is good or not until it is written. When the voices in my head try to keep me from writing a story because it won’t be any good, they are arguing from a false premise. A story isn’t anything until its written (or told, I’m not knocking oral tradition here).
Neither is a book. I’ve been percolating a book for several months now, and while I’ve written bits and pieces, I haven’t really hammered at it. I go back and forth, thinking that it’s a good idea and some people might appreciate it, and then thinking it’s a stupid, privileged idea and some people might hate it. But the truth of the matter is, it’s probably both of those things, and more. Even the most beloved books have 1 star reviews on Amazon, and, well, in order for people to hate it, they’d need to find out about it. So if people hate it, at least that means people know it.
I’m going to get that book written. And I’m going to publish it. I might even – gasp – promote it, at least to my circles, small as they may be. Because I will not know until I write it how it will be received. If I want to find out – and I do – then I must buckle down and write it.