There was a moment of insight at Conflux that I haven’t spoken about yet. I was talking to the fabulous girliejones about all things writing, and the words came out of my mouth - “I need to develop a process for revising and rewriting my short stories like I did with my novel writing”. The thing was, I hadn’t realised this was the truth until I said it.
It’s clicked my brain into a new thought pattern regarding my shorts. Earlier this year, I came to accept that my first drafts of novels are more about discovery and planning than they are the actual story, and I need to look at my short stories in the same way. I need to get out of this idea that the ‘stream of consciousness’ sort of stuff that happens when a first draft flows is just that – a stream, no actual planning, probably not even really a plot or a story. The first draft will reveal to me the essence of the idea, the setting, the characters, but generally the plot needs a whole lotta work.
Years earlier, I recognised a first draft is not a novel and I worked out a complicated process to objectively study every aspect of the novel and work out what was really going on. But I’ve been continuing with just tidying, maybe tweaking, a first draft of a short story and thinking that was revising it. It’s not. Until I look at it objectively, judgementally, and consider all the aspects and whether they are actually working or not, it’s just going to be a shadow of what it could be.
I had another insight about me as a short story writer as well, just before Conflux. I’ve been approaching writing shorts from the wrong mental perspective, in that I think I’m no good at them, even as I sit down to write them. Gee, wonder why they haven’t ever been that good?
Interestingly, I’ve never had this perspective with my novels. There is one project I did several years ago which I started wondering whether I was ready to do this yet. I don’t think I was, but the concept fascinates me and I’ll undoubtedly go back to revisit it. Otherwise, when I sit down to start a new novel, it’s generally about the story – is this a novel-length concept, does the plot/setting/characters work, can I make them work or not? It’s never been about me thinking “Well, I know I’m no good at writing novels, but I’ll give it a go…”
So why start my shorts with “I know I’m not that good at writing short stories, but…”
Well, I’ve come to realise that I can write – my years as a journalist, my initial success as a novelist prove that – and after having had a dozen short stories published, I can write shorts. But in order to write the best shorts I’m capable of I need to a) start every short story confident that I can write and thus focussed on the story itself and b) revise and rewrite.
There’s a few anthos around at the moment that I want to submit to. November is going to be a break from book two of the trilogy, so I’m going to spend some time on working on my short stories to see if I can’t make 2010 even more of a bumper year for me as a writer.