Last year, I decided to get into the short story market. Now, short stories aren't something I've ever really focused on until I started finding short stories hidden in each of my series. I wrote a collection of short stories for my series, The Swamp Children, that is called The Swamp Witches. This is where i discovered how much fun they could be.
So I decided to start sending out some shorts into the big, bad world of short story magazines. Soon after, the rejections started rolling in. As expected. But I would write more and resend the old ones until just recently.
I have three short stories that have come back with the feedback that they seemed more like beginnings than short stories. I could definitely understand what the editors meant. I love writing beginnings. It's my favorite, easiest part of each story, so it makes sense that quite a few of my shorts ended up like this.
I didn't want to go back and destroy the shorts because I liked them. I liked the story they told and the worlds I'd created. And now, I finally know what I'm going to do with them. Serialization has become a real thing in the indie book world again and that's where these bad boys are headed. Though a pantser by nature, I know I'm going to have to treat these differently. They'll need to be planned because I can't go back and fiddle with them once they're out and about. But its a new challenge and something different for me to try.
Excited. Now I must finish all the other work I'm in the middle of first... while maintaining good, life-affirming habits. Not sure how this is going to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment