Musings on the procrastinatory process
Inktears, who have previously published a short story and a flash fiction of mine, are celebrating five years of “helping people enjoy a little bit of fiction in a frantic world.”
To mark the occasion, they are re-issuing the flash fiction stories placed in last year’s competition. You can read them here and here. Mine is in the latter – The List by Kathryn Clark.
Back at the end of last year a very short story of mine was highly commended in the Inktears Flash Fiction Competition. Along with the other winning entries, you can read it and give feedback here: http://www.inktears.com/
Mine is “The List” by Kathryn Clark
Still going steadily on NaNoWriMo although I haven’t made it to any of the local meets and I did collide with a writer’s block yesterday. However, armed with advice from one of the many useful NaNo tips I receive via email and twitter, I karate chopped it into tiny pieces and fed it to my pet dragon.
I’m over 35,000 words and still, miraculously, have more to say.
Strangely, while I have been mostly directing my energy into this project, two other happy writing things are also going on.
I’ve been attending a weekly writer’s workshop with Writing Events Bath. As in the town Bath Spa, not the tub for washing oneself. I arranged this as an intervention against myself. I needed to get out there talking to people who are going through the same things re writing, but mainly to get over the dread of reading one’s own work out loud to other people and taking feedback. Two weeks in and that’s already getting easier.
The other great thing is that one of the flash fictions I entered into the Inktears Flash Fiction comp earlier this year (after my prolonged writing drought), was highly commended and will be published on that website in 2014. More news from Inktears coming soon…
All this makes it sound like I have given up on procrastinating. Don’t worry, I am still doing plenty of it, mainly around domestic cleansing type tasks. Why is white generally considered the most appropriate colour for sanitary ware? I suggest a sludgy shade of dust might be the way to go.
On 30th July, my submission count for the month was at zero, instead of the four I had promised in my self-imposed “treat-writing-as-a-job-this-year” campaign. There was a competition I definitely wanted to enter – Inktears Flash Fiction.
I got my act together and submitted two pieces of flash, then went on to the site to catch up with Anthony’s blog. I discovered this:
http://www.inktears.com/Inktears/Thoughts/Entries/2013/6/5_Should_I_blog_or_should_I_write.html
which really says it all.
I’m only here because I should be doing something else. And there you have it, the blog about procrastination has eaten itself. I’m supposed to be writing. Not a blog post, either. On January 1st, I resolved to submit four stories a month and I’m struggling in June to submit one. The anti writing gremlins are still staying with me, and as they’ve been here a month, they’re getting somewhat tiresome. They are little worms burrowing into my brain, with their negativity. Much like the person, who having kindly given me a top, size Medium, looked at me wearing it and said, “I should have got you the Large.” The AWG’s have the same effect on my self esteem when they whisper “You’ve read David Mitchell, haven’t you? Hilary Mantel? What are you still doing with a pen in your hand? What makes you think you have any chance with this writing lark? Give up now, loser…” etc etc “Oh, and by the way, you are too old and fat to wear sleeveless tops.”
Not only the writing worms are saying this to me, but an actual editor too. Yes, the one I spent all my time creating a pen name for, rather than concentrating on writing a decent story. A polite letter arrived with the killer sentence – “we felt the story line was a little too weak to hold the reader’s interest.” Arggh! Stab me in the heart with a fountain pen, why don’t you?
But you know what? This feedback, like all the other critiques and comments I have received over the past couple of years, makes me think that editors are really rather good at their job. Without fail they manage to pin point, far more accurately and succinctly than I can, what I’ve been vaguely feeling is wrong with my story.
A story may be weak, but it is never dead. And this one’s still got a chance of life. I’m planning to turn it into a flash fiction. In the spirit of rallying my writing reserves and getting some work out into the public domain, here is one I prepared earlier. My first ever piece of flash fiction, it was placed third in Flash Fiction World’s March 2013 competition. Read it here: http://www.flash-fiction-world.com/going-back-to-frank.html