I have come to a conclusion about 2007

[truepenny]

I wrote too few short stories in it.

In fact, I wrote one.

The fact that I turned around and promptly sold it to Weird Tales does not change, or even ameliorate, the fact that it is the only story I wrote successfully finished in 2007.*

I don't like this. It is not the plan.

Of course, now is not a good time to do anything about it, since hello, novel-with-deadline sitting around like a woolly mammoth in the living room. But I wish to register my displeasure with this state of affairs.

I already knew I don't like myself when I'm not writing. Apparently I can add to that the knowledge that I don't like myself when I'm not writing short stories.



---
*Except for the novelette for the Sekret Projekt, which is an entirely different ball of fish, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It was much more like a very small novel . . . and okay, how I conceptualize the difference between "novel" and "short story" is something I apparently need to think about some more. But anyway, it's not that I forget that I wrote "Dexterity," it's that I forget to think of it as a short story.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

OMG IT HAS A WEBSITE!!!

::faints dead away::

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Of course from a reader’s point of view, your 2007 was quite prolific. We did get The Bone Key, The Mirador, A Companion to Wolves, a story in Best American Fantasy, a story in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror XX, and a story in The Year’s Best Science Fiction XXIV. That’s not too shabby.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in dog years from my point of view, that's all work that was actually done in 2006 at the latest. More likely 2005. And some of it even earlier. The most recent story in The Bone Key, for example--"Listening to Bone"--was written in 2005. The earliest story--"Bringing Helena Back"--was written in 2000. (And no, it's pure coincidence that the internal chronology happens in these cases to match the external chronology. The others are all higgledy-piggledy.) So what, for readers, was a bonanza year of me in 2007, was for me mostly a matter of pay-off. Very nice pay-off, mind you, and I'm not complaining, but it's all backlog, not new stuff. As will be the stories published in 2008 (with the honorable exception, as mentioned, of "The Yellow Dressing Gown").

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

Maybe, just maybe if you thought about the difference between a French "Nouvelle" and the English "Novella" or "Novelette" or "short story" you'd get some internal help to "conceptualize the difference between "novel" and "short story".

[after-nightfall.livejournal.com]

Sorry to butt in like this, but your talking about short stories has made me want to reread some of your old ones, and it looks like the link for Under the beansidhe's pillow on the right is broken - it can now be found here (http://literary.erictmarin.com/archives/Issue%2022/pillow.htm). I noticed it because this one was the first short story of yours I read, and it made me cry.

So I'd definitely say that you writing short stories is A Good Thing.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Fixed! Thank you!