Writing Update

When I last mentioned writing on here, I was deeply entrenched in writing a novel. Well, the novel is sadly progressing very slowly. It seems like I can only make progress when I have several hours of un-interupted time, which, if you are also a mom, you realize is just laughable.

It was so demoralizing to get out a paragraph a day and never see an end in sight, that I started to write short stories just to feel the satisfaction of having finished something, even if that something was only a rough draft. It was also a way to get down ideas that didn't really fit into the storyline of my novel, and a way to let my brain just explore those ideas without committing a great deal of time. Sometimes it just seemed easier for me to wrap my scattered mind around the plot of a 5,000 word story than to plod through another chapter of the novel.

Well, 5 months later, I think I may be a short story writer. I never thought I could do this, because to me the short story is the hardest form of fiction. It's also my favorite type of fiction to read and I admire most writers who can do it well. Besides feeling woefully inadequate, I also assumed I could never write a good short story because my natural writing style is just so slow-paced. (For example, look at the average length of my blog posts.)

But after reading a ton of stories by other writers and fiddling around with some of my ideas, I'm starting to consider actually submitting one to a magazine. On one hand, it has to be done at some point, on the other, I'm absolutely sure that I'll be rejected, and once that happens I won't want to do it again. So I'm thinking I'll take one story that I'm not completely emotionally invested in and submit it to the best publication I can. Then when it's rejected I'll keep on going down the list until I find someone to publish it. If I make the list before going through the rejection process maybe it won't be so bad?

My stuff tends toward the fantasy/magical realism/speculative fiction genres, though not always. I would say I like sci-fi too, except that I really know relatively little about science and so whenever there is a sci-fi element in my stories it's usually just in the background. I also have an affinity for characters who are mothers, which makes me feel just a little unimaginative. That said, there are several magazines I read that publish fiction similar to what I write, it's just a matter of rating them at this point. This is going to be a long process, because you often don't find out if your work has been accepted or rejected for several months, so I guess I'd better get going!