Whenever you do any activity for an extended period of time you will eventually get to the point that you start asking yourself some deep questions regarding that activity.
Just doing the activity used to be enough for me. I do miss those days when just doing was enough. I find myself getting wistful for the simplicity of those times. But as you age and progress you get more time to sit and consider your situation then I guess such questions are inevitable.
So, there I am sitting writing and I hit a bit of a stumbling point in my writing. The sentences all look wrong, the paragraph structure doesn’t make much sense and I’m wondering where this is all going. Not so much where this particular story is going. That I have a handle on but where am I really going with this whole writing thing.
Is anything that I write really all that worthwhile reading?
I’ve been dallying and switching back and forth between science fiction and literary fiction for the past couple of years and I’ve been thinking of combining both into the sub-genre of literary science fiction, a really rarefied form of literature that would be quite difficult to produce.
In my local writing groups I’ve seen a couple of younger writers plunging on and taking their stories to their editors and looking for publishers and generally getting on with producing their work. They’re totally committed and fearless in moving forward.
Meanwhile I’m sitting on 2 stories that I could at the very least send to an editor and get some honest feedback before moving on to the next stage. But again I have to ask myself what is the point of this whole exercise? Am I doing this just to exercise my imagination and my typing fingers or do I want to get something published?
I don’t think I want to keep all of this private and to myself. I do want to share what I am writing with a wider audience. Being in contact with actual writers, with editors, and other writing enthusiasts has broadened my horizons considerably in the last few years. Particularly in the last year that I’ve spent with members of the Houston Science Fiction writing group.
I don’t think that I will ever make a fortune writing or that I will even make a good living but I do think that I want to release some of these ideas out to a wider audience.
I am currently thinking that my focus should go back to what I know best and that my first story should be a familiar theme that I know well and that I am more confident in. A nice “easy” science fiction story that I can work with my editor on and get ready for publication.
I wish I could do something more literary as my first effort but if I’m going to take the plunge into publishing I think that I need to do something where I can build up my confidence and my experience first before tackling something more substantial.
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