Toe in the Water

Recent Concerns

Recent Concerns

Sometimes I worry about the quantity I produce in WdC. It’s not like me to be so productive. Since joining the group, I have written far more (and more varied) stuff than ever before in my lifetime. Just as an example, in the year so far, I have written thirty-eight short stories. That’s unheard of for me - Before I joined WdC, I’d have been lucky to produce as many as ten of them in a year.

I’m not saying they’re all good. In fact, that’s what is worrying me. Since I write now under tremendous pressure to produce something, it seems to me that the quality suffers. Not so much in the writing - I don’t have a concern about that, apart from the occasional typo slipping through (and that’s irritating enough). But in the ideas department. I just cannot force original and interesting ideas from the old brain on demand.

Sometimes I get so desperate at the lack of ideas that I start without any notion of where the story will take me. The number of unfinished stories mounts in my storehouse. On occasion that method will work and I’ll have a good idea while I’m writing. But, too often, I finish the thing and it turns out to be, if I’m honest, pedestrian.

By which I mean that it lacks that zing, that special shine that denotes something fresh and different. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself - others seem to find my stuff reasonably good. But maybe they’re just being polite.

Not that I’d like the output to slow down or be limited to good stuff only in the portfolio. This abundance of writing is so new to me that I enjoy it even with the worries. If I can produce the occasional gem, I don’t mind if it’s surrounded by mediocrity. Let ‘em dig for the good stuff, I say.

Anyway, that’s my moan for the day.


Word count: 320