Just Write

Well, I dropped down to one post per week, and there was no rioting in the streets. I'm not sure anyone even noticed. And that’s fine. I know my content's been a little underwhelming as of late. I'm going to blame it on work. Basically, my schedule got all switched around, and I've been given new responsibilities. It just exhausts me. So I'm sorry my writing regimen has sucked lately.

I think I need to think more about seriously publishing. It's the goal, after all. Now, the rom-com I'm writing right now will never be seen by human eyes, so obviously I'm going to have to do some new writing.

But what? The age old question. What do I write?

Well, if I'm really, earnestly trying to get published, I need to write what publishers want. I'm thinking short stories at this point, not novels. I have a big ol' list saved of different literary magazines with different genres and different requirements. So what I should do is go through the list, see what genres there are, decide which ones I might have ideas for, and start writing stories tailored to what each magazine wants. And then submit them.

Sounds super easy on paper, doesn't it? Pick a genre, adhere to some guidelines, write a story. Easy cake oven. But it's not that easy. Not for me, anyway. I have sat down with the intent to write a sci-fi story, or a horror story, or an occult detective subterranean romance story, and it just never comes out the way I want it. Something is lacking in or between planning and execution. Plots are hard, man.

I need to stick to a schedule. I know that. Work on a story every day for x number of hours. Come up with a plot, some characters, flesh them all out, write a god damn outline, and then write the actual story. It would be so easy. But damn it, I'm lazy. When I get home, sometimes I just want to watch silly youtube videos. Sometimes I want to put way too much effort into Excel formulas to calculate my paychecks. Sometimes I want to spend two hours trying to remember who that guy was who had some people over, said "I'm tired, I'm going to bed,"  promptly went upstairs and committed suicide. (It was George Reeves, if you're wondering.) That's what I do with my free time, in the middle of the night. I'm not good at being focused.

So I guess the first step in all this is developing some kind of routine. I don't want a set in stone, "you have to write two hours every day or you're a failure," kind of arrangement, because then every time I miss a day I'll feel like shit, and that's not helpful. I want structure, but not too-structured structure. I need to make writing fun again, so it's something I want to do, not something I have to do. So I'll muck about with this rom-com, maybe spit out some flash fiction, maybe even try for some six word stories or two sentence horror stories. Start small and work my way up. If 50,000 words are too much for me right now, maybe I'll aim for 2,000. Maybe I'll just try to write something, regardless of length. Maybe I'll just write. 

I'll see you… next week.