How writing works for me

It’s pretty often that Ill get an idea for a story and decide to start writing it so I don’t lose the idea. It’s hard to say how the story will go, because I don’t plan or plot out my stories or books.

Sometimes I want to write a short story and I’ll start it just to find that I can’t tell it in the way I wanted to, and it isn’t going to be the short story I thought it was.

This has happened a few times. The other day, I started what I thought would be a cute short literary story about a man and his dog. Four days later, I ended up with 8,000 words and 18 pages.

This annoyed me for two reasons. One, the story was now too long ( and now too sad) to work for the submission call I intended to write it for, and two, I also lost four days of working on finishing the second book in the trilogy I’m currently publishing.

Once I get started on writing a story, it all has to come out. That’s how I write, kind of a stream-of-consciousness thing. It’s why I’m sometimes surprised by turns of events in my own work.

So now I’m going to stick to spending time on wrapping this book up so I can get it to editing, and closer to publishing. I want to get a date set on that, because I really do love this second book, and because I think readers will too. Then I can get some short stories out. THEN I can get the third book in the trilogy going.

And then I have two more books started. Because if people love the trilogy, I’ll hopefully have faithful readers who will want more books, right?

Right? Love to you all. Back to work.