52 stories in 52 weeks

Hey all,

I know it’s been a month since I’ve posted.  I’m temporarily putting my 52stories on hold.  It seriously is hard to write a story every week, and at first I was riding a wave of confidence and self-esteem, but as soon as my life got crazy with a second job that demanded much more of me than I originally expected, writing just went out the window.  I’m sure my friends can all relate; sometimes you have to give things up for a while and come back to them when you’re feeling a little better. 

Right now I have a pretty good idea for a YA novel, and I’d like to try to write it this month as part of NaNoWriMo.  I’m working out the plot and scribbling notes about the characters. I probably won’t share this novel online, but I will definitely send it to people to critique when I’m ready.  Criticism is so important!! Ok, that’s all for now, wish me luck on NaNoWriMo.  I will probably come back to the short stories as soon as it’s done.

Just posted my eighth story. I’ve been seeing an increase in people needing charity lately, taking their guitars to mall parking lots and putting out signs saying they’re out of work and need to support their families. And I keep hearing politicians talk about “tightening our belts.” I don’t think that’s the real solution. I think something is broken in our whole way of life, and when people talk about cutting education or social security what we are really doing is passing on that broken way of life to our children.

Well, I didn’t think I could do it, but I finished my seventh story at last.  I guess I’ll just count it as my seventh, although it puts me several stories behind my goal.  It was hard writing this one, and yesterday and today, I was becoming depressed and irritated with the characters.  It has a lot of flaws, but it’s not bad and I finally pushed myself to get it all out and done with.  And I feel so much better for having done so!  Sometimes you do need to step away from things, but other times, you just need a friend to complain to about them until you can begin to see them in a new light. :) 

I have once again adjusted my lifestyle to provide for some writing time for myself.  I have learned to get up at 5:30 every morning and write until my daughter wakes up at 7:30.  I haven’t woken up that early since I was in high school.  I hope this new habit will help me to continue to work toward this goal in addition to working these two jobs.

I finally have about half of my seventh story up on the site.  It’s a very long one and will probably take me another week to finish.  I feel so behind… Since it is so long, I have decided to break it up into two parts and count them each as a story!  Hey, it’s still close to 4,000 words!!

Thanks everyone for your understanding.

I am busy at work writing my seventh story, and currently it is coming out somewhat long, maybe a novelette.  I keep thinking of more things I need to say, more scenes.  Probably a sign that I’m going to have to cut out a lot of it when editing… But I will try to get at least half of it posted by next week.  It may be tricky though because I am also going to start working 2 part time jobs as of tomorrow.  I hope that I will be able to continue doing this!

This week’s story is about a teacher who is debating doing something wrong to correct a greater problem that may be impossible to solve.

Every week, it seems I begin many more projects than I finish.  I get an idea for a story, follow it for a page or two, then decide it’s still too half-baked.  I try again.  For this reason, I haven’t been able to turn out the longer word counts that my first two stories had.  I’ve been writing flash fiction instead.  It’s something I think is still useful practice in figuring out what kinds of things I like to write about and how I like to do characterization and plot. 

Sometimes I am inspired by events in the news.  The Atlanta cheating scandal inspired this one, although the character is very different and so are the circumstances.  Hope you enjoy!  Leave me feedback here.

Writing these stories has so far been a definite learning experience.  Sometimes they come out good the first time, sometimes they need a lot of work.  My fifth story, just posted, originally had a different ending.  I wanted to write about how police are very under-appreciated and vilified by political groups with radical fiscal agendas, but it sort of became a “political diatribe,” to use the words of one very honest and smart writer friend from my weekly writer’s group.  Besides, I set it at a Relay For Life as a cancer research fundraiser, and the fight against cancer gets pushed aside by my other social views.  Reader feedback is SO essential to getting better as a writer, and I have found that as I open myself to receive honest feedback from others, I open myself to new heights of creativity.  So, I realized she was right, and I changed the ending to focus on my character’s most noble traits—his compassion, his willingness to give of himself.  These are common traits to most police officers, and I think that the story now reads a lot better for it.  My personal views are still in it, and you can take them however you want.  But I hope that, in this version, they don’t hijack the story so completely. :) 

My third story is a flash fiction, and I wanted to submit it to several flash fiction contests which have deadlines coming up soon.  Since they require unpublished stories, and since I’m not certain what their criteria for “unpublished” are, I decided not to post this story up here just yet, until I get word one way or the other.  The story IS coming, I’m just not posting yet.  Thanks for your patience!!

Just wanted to share that I have been joined by a very talented writer who has already been writing a story a week for a while now, Kwee Lewis!  You can find Kwee’s stories at http://kweewritings.wordpress.com and at http://akweelife.wordpress.com!

I’ve posted my second story!  Both of the stories I have on here so far need a lot of work, but the second one needs even more work than the first.  I’d like to revise it more but then I wouldn’t be able to get a third story up next week… So I’m thinking of leaving it alone for now.  I may do a total rewrite another week and use that as my posting for that week.  Another idea I had is to just try to keep cranking out new stories this year, and then when the year is over, I’ll start another year of choosing maybe 20 of the stories and revising them or rewriting them.

I welcome comments and criticism always.  Your comments really help me to write better!