As a quick aside, the Kickstarter for And Then I Shall Transform is going brilliantly! It’s funded, we’ve hit the first stretch goal (which means I’ll spend at least some time over the Easter long weekend doing some artworks for the book, hurrah!), and we are closing in on the next! If you’d like to jump in on an early copy of my next collection of short stories, now’s a great time. Come take a look, or share it with someone you think might be interested <3
AHEM.
Okay. So. This is a celebration post. Why? Because for the first time IN MY ENTIRE WRITING LIFE, which is to say IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, I am A YEAR AHEAD WITH PUBLISHING. Whhhhuuuuttttt!!!!!
Not only do I have all three releases for this year DONE and ready to GO and up for PREORDER (here, here, here), I ALSO have finished a book that will be coming out in April next year! I’m so pleased by this. So so pleased. (I will be EVEN MORE pleased when I can start adding full-length novels to the publication schedule again, but patience, I hear, is a virtue – or something, bah humbug, grinchy mcgrinch.)
How did this happen, exactly? Well. Those of you following along on Instagram will know EXACTLY how this happened.
I’d love to claim it’s because I’m more organised now than ever before. That would be a lie. If 2022 taught me nothing else (which, 2022 practically exploded my brain it taught me so much, so), it’s that there was never anything wrong with my organisational systems. So: it’s not that.
I’d love to claim it’s because I have more time to write now – and okay, this is at least a little true. I *am* writing more than I ever have before, or, well, I think I am. I’m not tracking my word count or time spent writing AT ALL, you see – and that’s a first ever for me too, and it’s another thing that 2022 taught me (that took all of 2023 to sink in): writing CANNOT be about my productivity, about goals reached or milestones, uh, miled. Stoned? Reached. Whatever. You know what I mean.
For me, writing is fundamentally critical to my mental health. I’m not sure why, exactly, except for ephemeral ideas that humans are born to create things, and that for me, writing is the closest I ever come to meditation, where my own thoughts completely shut off and there is QUIET in my damnably loud brain, and there is true, genuine, single-tasking flow unlike what I can manage in any other activity. The constant litany of thoughts, the rushing tap of electrical activity, is, for once in my life, quiet, coordinated, and focused. Mmm. Writing. (Do I still have procrastination and perfectionism issues that make me avoid it, even though it makes my brain feel so much better? OF COURSE I DO *jazz hands*)
So. Writing, fundamental to mental health. Remembering that helps with the procrastination, which usually comes because some part of me is fearful of the story decisions I need to make. Which means this year I’m taking the leap and NOT tracking what/how much/how often I’m creating. I’ll still be able to check roughly at the end of the year, because Scrivener keeps a record of that for me (a discovery I only made last year, even though I’ve been using Scrivener for like a decade, *insert self-directed eye roll*), but yeah, it’s not front-of-mind at all, in any way.
…Where was I?
Right, why am I so far ahead for a change. Yes. It’s a little bit because I’m writing more regularly… but it’s a lot because I’m learning to actually just trust the writing process.
I had a… let’s call it ‘container’ last year, metaphorically, that gave me shape and time constraints wherein I had to write 5 stories – the stories that make up the bulk of And Then I Shall Transform. But I like 6 for a collection. April Showers is six stories, and it just seems to be a nicer length – around about 20,000 words, a little over a hundred pages, just long enough to bother making a hardcover as well as a paperback. *framing hands emoji here*. Which meant I needed one more story.
I tried writing it….. and it ran long. Like, much longer than I wanted for the collection, to the point where it would have made the collection unbalanced.
I could have tried to curtail it. Could have tried to rein it in. But… the story didn’t WANT to be short. It WASN’T a short story, it was a novella, and I had to let it be what it was, if I wanted it to be a story I was proud of. (Aside, but related, one of the ones I wrote last year for that ‘container’ ran long, too. I trimmed it down to fit the container I’d been given, and it Did. Not. Work. Instead, I not only put it back to its original length, in final proofs I realised it needed to be EVEN LONGER.)
It’s okay! It means you have this gem to read as a standalone now, coming out in June, and yes wow, I am proud of this one.
But… I still had a short story collection to finish, and somewhat of a deadline, because, you see, I’d Done A Silly last year when I thought I was writing the climax of Touchstone, and I’d put Touchstone up for a March preorder, back when I was younger and more naive and thought that was plenty of time to finish the book. *cue mad laughter here*. Amazon being what it is, I couldn’t delay the preorder by more than a month without losing preorder privileges for an entire year – not a great look when I also publish other people’s work, right? :’D So my compromise was to push it back the month that I could, and switch it out for And Then I Shall Transform.
Which meant I needed a 6th story pronto.
So I tried again.
And, uh, that story spiralled as well, and also became a novella. …Oops?
That novella, inspired by the myth of Hades and Persephone, and also a dream I had in I think 2020, is the one that will come out in April next year, titled Mint Grows Even In The Dark I think, or something like that, we’ll have to see.
But… A 6th story please, brain??????
So I sat down to write AGAIN, REALLY HOPING that this time ‘trusting the process’ would get me a story of approximately the right length because omg if it went long AGAIN, I was going to have to just release a 5-story collection and call it done.
Thankfully, the 3rd attempt ‘worked’. The story capped out at a fraction under 6,000 words, which is about as long as I want my short stories to be (though 7,500 is the cut-off in most markets for short story vs novella), THANK GOODNESS.
The bonus? This new story is so, so connected to so many other things I have going on in my story worlds, and it’s made me absurdly excited for what’s to come.
Because, lovely reader, there is so much to come. I’m not going to say anything in particular, except this: read carefully, from now on – though this applies to some of my backlist, too. Just… read carefully. You never know what you’ll discover if you do 😉
I have no end point in mind for this post, except I guess that I can synthesise it into a few Life Lessons(tm): trust the process, and you’ll end up with a greater bounty than you were even aiming for, even if it cuts your deadlines fine, even if you have to rejig some things that naive!you had scheduled in, even if you can’t see how it’s all going to fit. It’s absolutely worth it in the end. <3