In touch with writing, again

Earlier this week, I closed down the laptop in my office and moved to the living room, taking my notebooks with me, where I managed to do quite a lot of short story planning work. I wanted to be away from the distraction of the internet to see if I got any more work done without it.

I'd already brainstormed a few short stories that would have to be somewhere over the next month or two, but in the end I disregarded three and kept four. I have so many other short stories already in various stages that I decided I didn't need many more. So I culled the new ones.

It was really nice getting back in touch with my writing, and using a pen and notebook. I've been watching a three-part docu-drama on the telly about Shakespeare and it inspired me to start writing with a pen more.

The session was so successful that I did it again the next day. I set up shop in the living room and carried on doing longhand work, which included this week's diary.

Having done the short story planning work, I was able to accurately allocate 1-hour diary slots to the different stages of short story work. I've also gone back to working on several short stories at once, which I always did when I was prolific, back in the day.

This is how the schedule looks this week:

• brainstorm (e.g. Digital Love)
• outline (e.g. The Ace of Swords)
• write draft 1 (e.g. The Mucky Duck)
• revise/redraft (e.g. Killer Queen)
• proofread (e.g. Take Your Pick*)
• submit (e.g. The City of Glasgow*)

Then I start again, but this time everything moves down one:

• brainstorm (e.g. Fallen Angel)
• outline (e.g. Digital Love)
• write draft 1 (e.g. The Ace of Swords)
• revise/redraft (e.g. The Mucky Duck)
• proofread (e.g. Killer Queen)
• submit (e.g. Take Your Pick*)

(*Take Your Pick and The City of Glasgow have already actually gone out to market, but I'd sooner write those in now and cross them off as 'done' than have blank spaces. The OCD doesn't like blank spaces… The OCD doesn't like things out of order either, but this was the better way of doing it.)

And then I go back to the beginning again and everything moves down another one.

I realise I'm probably going to miss some of the current calls for submissions, although I'm going to try darned hard to hit them. But if I do, it's not a big deal when I do it this way. I still have other markets to send things to, and I still have my own publishing schedule.

Also, if a future call for submission comes along and I already have something suitable, either in stock or in the system, then I don't have to rush to turn something around.

This system replicates what I call my power board. (I'll write another story about my power board.)

The problem I've had recently is that as I'm just getting back into the swing of things, the deadlines are too close and I've only been able to work on one story at a time. And that bores me rigid, it really does. Plus, if I missed the deadline, I stopped working on the story.

Prolific writer Dean Wesley Smith advocates writing for fun first and then seeing if it fits somewhere. And if it doesn't, put it straight in my own publishing schedule. All my writing life, I've written for the market. I hope I have fun trying to write for fun first for a change.

Stories in my own publishing schedule, then, go like this:

• submit to call for submission first, if I miss…
• send it to market, if it comes back (or when it's released back to me)…
• publish it in Words Worth Reading
• 1 month later, publish it as a standalone short story
• in the future, add to as many themed collections as I wish

I'd love to get so far ahead that I could do the same with novels and novellas but at the moment that's unlikely, and I'll probably just publish/serialise them straight to Words Worth Reading, my quarterly magazine filled with original fiction from yours truly.

I already have the bulk of the content ready for Words Worth Reading Issue #1 (the October one was Issue #0), apart from the novella. Take Your Pick and The City of Glasgow are currently at market. But I'm expecting responses this week.

If they're accepted, I'll have to replace them with new short stories. If they're rejected, they'll stay in the schedule. In future, any new stories will have already been to market and I'll know if and when I can use them myself. For now, though, I'm still working up against the wire.

And that, in a nutshell, is how my own short story-writing schedule works.

Do you have any systems or processes you like to stick to? Are you the kind of writer who writes whatever pleases you at the time? Or do you prefer to just work on one thing at a time?

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This article is © Diane Wordsworth. It first appeared on my website on 16 November 2023.

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