Update - Week 24+

Once again, I've failed in delivering a story every week for at least a couple of weeks. I thought it would be worthwhile to explain some of the "why" behind that.

Although there has been a lot going on around the household, I'm not making that excuse. Yes, I've been busy... but not that busy.

No, this has been more about disappointment. I started this project to do three main things: (1) Improve the quality of the fiction I wrote, (2) Improve the quantity of fiction I wrote, and (3) Begin building an audience.

Perhaps a story a week was too ambitious, perhaps not. Either way, I did well for many weeks and then fell off the proverbial wagon. I'm disappointed that I've not kept up with the schedule I set for myself.

Regardless of the schedule, I'm the most disappointed because I don't feel like I've improved on the quality of stories I've written. In part, that's because I'm often writing them hastily at the last minute to meet the self-imposed deadline. Speed is often the enemy of quality.

More importantly, I think, it's because I'm not taking the time after I write a story to read it, take lessons from what went right and wrong in it, and use those lessons to improve the next story. So I'm achieving my goal of writing more but not writing better. It's good writing that builds an audience so I'm failing there too.

So here's the plan moving forward...

Starting with the next story, which I'm still developing, there will be two posts to this site each week. The first post will be that week's story. The second will be my analysis of the previous week's story, including any feedback submitted by the readers. I'll talk about how I intend to improve the next one.

When I reach the mark of 26 stories published here, I'll take one month off from writing new stories to do rewrites of the existing stories based on everything I have learned to that point.  The goal that month will be at least one rewrite of a story per week, but preferably more. Hopefully that will improve the learning and the quality of stories available here.

Speaking of learning, I've recently been reading a book called Story Genius by Lisa Cron, which is helping me see at least one major reason why I'm unhappy with most of the stories I've published here. More on this later, but suffice to say that I at least understand one major problem I have and I'm beginning to see how to fix it. That's why this latest story has been delayed. I'm running it through the advice in that book to make it better before it goes up here.

Thanks for your patience.