Yesterday, a character I never intended to die, died. It was as if I had no control over the situation, as if what spilled onto the virtual page of my writing program happened entirely of its own accord. I’ve known this character for years, and through all of this I knew that their story arc would one day end, but I never thought that it would end so soon. Of course, I could go back and undo what has been done, but what would be the point? Once committed, I must stay on this course and see where it leads. In reality, it’s strengthened the story, the characters around the event, and the arcs that spring from it. It’s also given us insight into how another particular character thinks and feels; insight that I believe will give us the ultimate pay off.

There was a time when I was terrified of characters dying. I tried my hardest to prevent it from happening. It was rather silly of me, considering people die unexpectedly every day, even those we love the most. There’s no way to stop it, and yet, in stories, I was ignorantly pushing back the inevitable. But when it finally happened, it was as if a great weight lifted from my shoulders, and made my writing feel more organic. I was able to move forward, and give the readers what they most desired: reality. Well, as much reality as the fantasy and science fiction genre will allow, but reality nonetheless. Even though this particular character is now gone, in their wake they have left something far greater than what even they themselves could ever have provided when they were still alive.

There are authors out there that I believe handle death graciously. There’s a great deal of pomp and circumstance in the deaths of some people’s work, such as Tolkien and McCaffery, and then there are the sudden deaths that completely shock you. James Clemens provides plenty of these in his The Banned and the Banished series. While reading, there were times when the death of a character was so shocking that I was unable to finish the paragraph for a few days. It affected me, because Clemens pulled no punches. When it happened, the person was here one moment, and gone the next. There was nothing anyone else could do. It resonated with the forces that affect life and death in our world, and it made me consider character death from an entirely new angle.

I don’t regret the character dying. I will mourn them only in the sense that they will no longer affect my story. Their particular oddities won’t grace the pages, and what actions they may have eventually taken won’t be part of the foundation that turns the pages from here onward, but they have left a lasting impression. And, in all honesty, it’s these impressions that make the best story imprints. After all, we read because we want to know, and we want to know because we are fascinated by the things around us, and without the threat of death, well, would we care as much? I don’t think we would.

I’m over the 160,000 word hump of editing Serpent Skin. The one thing about editing, like writing, is that the further into it I get, the more I just want to reach the end. The difference is that there’s a definite end in sight, whereas, I’m crafting the ending as I write. Still, it doesn’t mean there’s not a lot that doesn’t get added or subtracted to the finished product one way or another. I’ve found myself taking out great chunks of the book, while adding other equally large chunks to fill in gaps, flesh out scenarios, or better explain some of the circumstances surrounding the characters. This means I’m doing just as much writing as I am editing. Then again, no one ever said that rewriting your novel would be easy.

I love how my characters have progressed as individuals over anything else. Sure, I’m fascinated by the stories, but the characters are the reason why I continue doing this. Whether it’s Emeraldwind’s quiet resolve, or fiery passion, or Randel’s battle with both indecision and understanding, I’m captivated by them. I especially enjoy the interaction between the two, and the way the past, present, and future seem to collide into one jumbled mess that lands in their laps.

That leads me back to the first book, The Awakening Key. I recently re-read it, and I was taken aback by its focus. For the better part of a decade, The Awakening Key was a story I wanted to tell. Emeraldwind is an old soul for me, considering I created her some thirteen years ago, and seeing her grow into this living, breathing wonder always leaves me a little thunderstruck. When I read her dialogue, I can her hear distinct voice, and the quiet power that resonates in her words. She knows what she wants, and how to achieve it, but her head, and the conflicted heart beating in her chest, sometimes push her down other paths. She could be considered somewhat neurotic, having had her entire life striped from her, but she is well-adjusted enough to know right from wrong, to define what life should be, and to live how she needs to be happy. When I follow her, I feel this within my own soul.

It’s also the supporting characters that draw me back again and again. I feel as if I know them, whether it’s Hassan’s fierce determination not to see any of his compatriots come into harm’s way, or Fayses’ psychotic manic depression. When I listen to music, or think about where the story will go, I immediately know where each of these characters are in the world, what is happening in their story, and where they will be when the end comes. For some, it makes me smile, for others, I’m saddened, but they all make me glad that I’m a writer.

I have another slew of letters to send this weekend. The internet is a wondrous tool in that I’ve been able to look up a good portion of the agencies and find out what I need to send, instead of just referencing my Writer’s Market book. This is a boon, because some of the information in Writer’s Market has changed since publication of the 2009 edition. It would be somewhat embarrassing if I were to send off a package to a place that was no longer accepting fantasy or science fiction submissions. But I’ve also had the chance to make submissions through email, which some agents prefer. I’ve had rejection after rejection, which allows me to tighten up my submission letter and package every time. I’ve even had a few helpful suggestions on what I can do for the future, advice which I will take to heart. There are a sea of no’s but it only takes one yes for everything to change.

Which reminds me... everyone and their mother is trying to get published. I’ve noticed people who never talked about writing trying to get a book out there. I wish them luck since the endeavor can be both disheartening and satisfying. If you’ve never written a novel, or anything longer than 10,000 words, then you’re in for a treat. Typically, novels are 100,000 words or more, with the heavy weights weighing in with as much as 300,000 or 400,000 words. It can feel as if finishing the rough draft takes forever, but you will finish it if you keep at it every day. Don’t worry if it doesn’t read so great once you’re done -- everyone’s first draft needs a ton of polish. That’s what editing and rewriting are for! Just stick with it, and you will finish. The first one might not get published, but subsequent ones down the line may fare better. It’s all about learning and making connections.

That’s all from me for this week. I will have a little more to say next week when I’ve had time to really think more on some of the submissions I’m sending out this weekend. Until then, friends!

Returning after a long hiatus can be tough. If you haven’t written in quite some time, putting words on the page, and making sure it makes a lick of sense can be a challenge in itself. Then there’s the fact that you might not have much to write about. But you try, because something is always better than nothing.

I’ve been working on Serpent Skin, the second book of the Crystalline Beauty series, while waiting on responses to the first book, The Awakening Key. Between trying to at least write 2,000 words a day, and all of my other commitments, it can be hard to give something your full attention. What’s been helping me is the network of people who support what I’m doing. There’s always a little angel on my shoulder telling me to keep writing, keep editing, and blocking out all of the little distractions. It’s so wonderful.

Thus far, I’m 141,000 words into the rewrite. I can’t give an accurate word count as to what the finished product will be, but I’m shooting for under 200,000. Luckily, with this book, everything was mapped out, and there wasn’t too much I needed to add. Anything new was added to clarify the original idea in the outline. New sections were few and far between. But there were enough changes that made reading through it almost like a new experience.

The Awakening Key, however, could stand another rewrite, so when I’m finished with this, I’ll go back and comb through it to see if I can strip off another 20,000 or 30,000 words without taking out too much of the story. One of my problems is that, while I feel I’m concise in my writing, I like to dig into the character’s psyches, which can make some of my passages a tad verbose. I should probably cut down on that. Leaner is always better.

Beyond that, it’s business as usual -- too many ideas, not enough time. Once I’m finished with the rewrite for The Awakening Key, I would like to release it in podcast form. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the Mad Writer Fictioncast recording and editing sessions, and I think doing a chapter every couple of days for the Awakening Key would be a load of fun.

Plus, there’s the flash fiction I’ve been wanting to concentrate on. It would be great fun to explore the world of Crystalline Beauty through flash fiction. They would be stories about the characters’ lives before the series. I’m still toying with the idea, so there’s nothing concrete yet.

Busy, busy, busy. I should be back next week with much more to say. Until then.

There have been a series of rewrites. Out of nearly 200,000 words in Serpent Skin, the second book of the series, I’m at 130,000 of the rewrite. The best part of this story was that it was completely outlined by the time I sat down to start writing it.

I knew the plot line from front to back. The Awakening Key, the first book, was a bit more disjointed, being that it was a short story beforehand. I had the basis for the story, but it had to go through many more rewrites before I was happy with it. Unfortunately, after a few years of being intimate with it, then working on other material, a revisit is in order, and I have a feeling that a major rewrite will come out of it. I need to find a way to trim 64,000 words, to make it a lean 200,000 word story, while also reworking the ending, and some of the plot points it affects.

What does all of that have to do with my Sunday and the music videos I created? Playing Rock Band 2 with my wife, we were hammering away with our band, Volume to 11, which contains characters from my books, when it dawned on me that every time I play Rock Band, I work on my stories with a new sort of vigor. It’s as if having visual representations of my characters, regardless of how limited it may seem, gets me excited for my stories. I have been working on these novels for some time, with another in the pipe, and I’ve had trickles of good news here and there. You can get a little winded going through the process of submissions and rejections over and over again. Rock Band 2 seems to reinvigorate me when I feel myself sliding.

Out of pure boredom, we set up a camera, input all of the codes that prevent you from failing the songs and took the user interface off the screen, plugged in a mic so we could sing along quietly, and recorded what was playing on screen. It was a little messy, but video did come out of it. Granted, direct screen capture would have been infinitely better, but I don’t have a device to record directly from my TV screen yet. I may have to go buy one. After a little editing magic, we had our videos. I would love to show them, but Warner Music Group took them down on Youtube (they were up for all of fifteen seconds), and I haven’t had time to upload them to my personal web host. That may come in the next few days.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve lived with these characters for so long, or maybe it’s because writing big stories can take a lot out of you, but whenever I’m feeling uninspired, I pop in something to remind myself why I’m doing this. Or at least see what my characters would look like rocking out on stage.

This weekend, I spent part of my time rewriting a short story I had written a year or more ago called “The Truth about Earthquakes and Snowflakes.” My intention is to sell it to a magazine, or see if an audio podcast will pick it up for publication. It leans on the science fiction end of the spectrum, so I’ll have to find an audience receptive to that kind of thing.

But what excites me most about finishing this story was that it was an idea that I had, and completed, in a little less than a week. Unlike flash fiction, which are experiments as much as they are keeping myself fresh, this particular story is something I fully intend to have professionally published. So it’s that next step that I’m beginning all over again.

I don’t know how other authors are, but I get all sorts of terrified when I begin a query letter. It’s almost ingrained in me that there will be rejection, so that I continue writing, continue submitting, and don’t get too crushed when something doesn’t go my way. Yet, I still feel a cold sweat pour over me just as I begin working on the query letter. How do I spin my story? Will they be receptive to the number of words? What about the plot line? Do my characters come off life-like? Is this story even worth trying to sell?

Despite all of my inhibitions, I’ll work on that query letter, and I’ll submit it. There will be rejections, there will be questions about rewrites, and there will be ideas bandied about regarding the beginning, middle, and end, yet I will trudge on, and continue to do what I do best.

So it seems my week is filled with another round of queries. I wonder if this one will be easier to sell, or if it’ll be as difficult as the novel has been. I suppose I won’t know until I send them out. Time’s a wasting.

Going over some of the stuff I’ve written, especially the flash fiction from April and May, I realize that I had some pretty good stories. Some of them needed a couple more passes at editing, mostly to hash out the rest of the tale, in the case of the ones that are less than two hundred words, while others just needed another grammatical pass or two. Rewriting is one of my favorite parts of writing, because it’s the first chance you get at really shaping the story into what was going through your head.

Which leads me to believe that the stages of writing are all worthy, but that the first rewrite is the most important. Of course, you want to finish your book first; without it, there’s nothing to rewrite. But it’s during that rewrite that you finally build the house that sits on the foundation of your story. That’s when you add hundreds of pages, and throw hundreds of pages out. It’s also the first time you get to see the full breadth of your characters’ adventures, instead of the slices that you view while penning the book.

Sometimes you can become so muddled in the foundation of your story, that you forget the overall plot, or specifics that changed several hundred pages back. This happens to me quite often, as I’ll change the way a scene turns out because the way I envision it as I’m writing is much different than the way I laid it out when I was putting the outline of my story together. This can become increasingly problematic when you’re not pausing to write any of the changes down into character sheets, for fear that fiddling with support documents will slow you down as you’re writing. I need to find a better method of doing both things, so that I can reference changes in the stories without having to rely on the rewrite for that.

But there’s a reason why the story isn’t finished until after the first rewrite. Once you’ve re-read it to figure out what needs to be changed, and put all of the new information into supporting character sheets, you have a chance to change anything bothering you. Several passes of this, and your story begins to resemble a real book. Some might say it’s query ready.

Funny enough, rewriting is also the bane of every writer’s existence. Not only do you grow sick of your story, but you also spend far too much time fiddling with a few sentences here and there over working on that next project. It’s a shame, really, because many more stories could be told if there was no need for editing, if we could simply publish the first draft of our stories. Then again, most of what you would see would end up a mess of words, so that’s probably not the best idea.

It’s been hard finding time editing my stories on a weekly basis with all of the other commitments I have. When the time comes, I want to go back and edit some of my older stories; spruce them up, if you will. A few had plot lines that seemed like they would be fun, and I’d give anything to hammer out a few more words around them. But, of course, once I’ve done that, I’ll have to do a rewrite. Then again, that’s always the best part.

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t particularly like the book at first. Eggers writing style in this book, a pseudo-stream of consciousness, was jarring. I don’t often read “memoirs” (I’ve consumed two in my life), so it took a little getting used to. Not to mention, the first chapter opens with his dying mother sitting on the couch, then switches to his sister watching his dad in the driveway, and flips between these two events, among a plethora of others, quite readily. Looking back on it now, however, I appreciate it; it put me in his head space, and showcased just how fast things seemed to happen in that span of time. But what ultimately made me continue with the book was this very, at first, jarring style that Eggers wrote the first few chapters of the book in, that soon became second nature. I just had to realize exactly where it was coming from.

Stream of consciousness writing takes a special skill. On the one hand, you have to balance the ability to tell the complete story, or at least what you can remember of it, while also making it feel as if you, the main character, are trying to weigh all of the options. Not everyone can do it, and not every story with stream of consciousness is as great as Eggers debut novel was. It’s something I’ve never considered, even though one could say a blog is stream of consciousness. I wouldn’t put this on the level of Eggers book, however, and I don’t think you should either.

What really kept me reading, however, was the section about living with his brother, Christopher (affectionately known as Toph) in California. There was something about both the simplicity of it, and the way he took care of Toph, that resonated with me. I don’t have a brother, and I’ve never lived with my sibling outside of our time under our parents’ roof, but I think I would have done the same as Eggers, if given the chance. There was also something in the way he described that time, when things seemed surreal. When I was in college, things felt surreal, and when I think back on it now, it feels as if it didn’t happen, even though I have all of these memories telling me otherwise. I feel that Eggers penned exactly what it feels to be between the ages of nineteen and twenty three, without ever explicitly coming out and saying it. We feel as if we can take over the world, as if the dinosaurs that came before us just “didn’t try hard enough.” Little do we know that what “success” is painted as, is only the material success; it’s the other, little successes, that matter the most.

What really got me thinking about this, and even more interested in Eggers writing, was the new movie “Away We Go,” which was written by Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida. Allison, my wife, and I are huge fans of The Office, and huge John Krasinski fans. Seeing him in another role (since watching The Office, we’ve suddenly found him in tons of other movies we already own, that we never even thought about, like Jarhead) is fantastic. But it’s the movie’s story line that’s hooked us. Having come out of a bad set of years in our lives, we can identify with John Krasinski’s and Maya Rudolph’s characters, and the trials and tribulations they go through as they experience them. You can immediately see Eggers touch with the story. For me, it’s a match made in heaven.

I see myself becoming something of an Eggers fan going forward. I’m thoroughly interested in his fiction, since it’s the fiction stories I love the most. There’s something about his writing that resonates with me; something about the struggle, the fear, and uncertainty, that brings out the best in a person, even if that best never saves the world, nor saves a life, nor even saves themselves. It’s perfectly normal to have no clue where you’re going, or how you’re getting there, but that trying is always the best part. I suppose that’s why his stream of consciousness writing in “Heartbreaking” eventually made sense to me. Like everyone, I saw a little of myself in the book. And that’s perfectly fine.

For those that know me, it’s no secret that some of the most important elements in my writing have to do with balance, family, and the crawl from despair to happiness. All writers have themes that anchor their words, and those seem to be the ones I return to again and again. There are a vast number of points in my life to which I can reference and say with great certainty that they spawned the inspiration for those themes, but I’d like to focus on Jackson’s contribution today, since we’re still so close to his death, and the eeriness of it has yet to go away.

I lived in Texas in the late 1980s, moving there from Japan, a country where I came into contact with the culture that would shape a good number of my viewpoints for the rest of my life. Moving to Texas was when I came to know Jackson. My parents owned the Thriller album, and I was old enough to differentiate his music from others in their collection. It seemed magical to me.

Fast forward by a year or two, when we moved to Ohio. Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album was the cassette I played regularly. I knew all of the material, and I danced in my room. This was also when his music began to resonate with me in a way that music just hadn’t before. It was also the same time that I became interested in girls, began to understand what racism was, and started to find my place in the world.

This is where the start both begins and ends. Writing crept into my life nonchalantly, and made its home. Jackson’s music did the same. And one of my favorite songs was “Black or White,” considering that just a year earlier I had experienced the first (but not last) bout of hate aimed directly at me for being black. It was surreal. Imagine, for a moment, that you’ve believed yourself to be equal to everyone around you for as long as you have lived. Your best friend in Texas was a little white girl, you spent time with a latino boy playing video games, your black friend down the street always knew where the best trees in the neighborhood were to climb, and no one’s parent said anything racially charged, at least to your face. But now, no one hides behind thin veils. So when someone comes up to you, and tells you that their mom said you were dirty because you were black, it affects you.

I was confused, because, for the life of me, I had never considered myself any different than anyone else. I was Warren, a boy who loved playing games, played on the computer all the time, rode bikes with my friends, loved to skateboard, and found everything, and everyone, interesting. It seemed Michael knew this more intimately than I did. When I really listened to “Black and White,” it dawned on me that he was saying what I felt -- that I am no different than anyone else, and that my skin color does not define who or what I am, but is simply a part of me. And, for as long as I have known, when something particularly unnerving happened in which someone put down another person based solely on skin, religion, sex, heritage, or appearance, my brain would sub-consciously start playing that song. It was as if that song, coupled with the moments when my own person was in question, were forever ingrained together.

But he also gave me pride. For as much as I love people, even at that young age I could tell there were discrepancies. My cartoons typically had only one black character, if there were one at all, who was usually a male with virtually no speaking role. If he did speak, it was deep voiced, and overly masculine. I could not identify with that, because I’m not overly masculine. Movies I enjoyed were much the same, with the nerdy (what I would end up becoming) role being filled by a skinny, white guy with glasses. Any black characters were stereotypes. Everywhere I turned, there were no characters for me. No one felt like a real representation of what I knew to be black.

We can say what we like about him, but there is no denying that Michael Jackson was a black man. There is also no denying that he was talented beyond measure. At the same time, he was also accepted by my white friends, my latino friends, my asian friends, and my black friends. He was not overly masculine, he was soft spoken in interviews, and his opinions, and thoughts were intelligent. He was like me.

There was also his “Remember the Time” video. Until that moment, every representation of an Egyptian that I had seen was a blonde haired, blue eyed male or female. This didn’t match the dark skinned hieroglyphics that were in my text books. But “Remember the Time” was beautiful in its imagery. It portrayed ancient civilization the way I see it. It portrayed the people the way they were. This was a stark contrast to what was taught in schools, where we glossed over much of the Egyptian sections of history, learning virtually nothing about the people, and a few things about a few important pharaohs, and focused on both Europe and the northern half of the Americas.

Four years after the release of “Dangerous,” “HIStory” came out, but I had moved on by then. I did have some interest, but being as it was a 2-cassette (or CD) album, and I didn’t have steady income, I couldn’t bring myself to pay the exorbitant $25 or $30 price tag. Like most people, his legal troubles began clouding my view of him, and I eventually shelved everything I owned by him. It wasn’t until years later, when Alien Ant Farm did a cover of “Smooth Criminal” that I remembered how great he was. But by then, my tastes in music had changed, I was coming out of a phase where I hated all things Pop (thanks high school), and I couldn’t bring myself to pay much attention to anything he was doing. Of course, sometime before or after this, he released “Invincible”. Sadly, I can distinctively remember asking myself “He’s still relevant?”

Until he died, I hadn’t thought much about Michael Jackson. I remember seeing the press conference about his come back (and retirement) tour. I had no interest in it, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard any of his music. But something came over me when my sister called to tell me the news. I looked at my wife, and a mixture of emotions swam through me: sadness, surprise, and regret. It’d been over sixteen years since I’d last really listened to anything the man had recorded, yet I felt as if it were only yesterday. And, like most everyone over the course of the last six days, I spent a good portion of my time reliving that magic, and celebrating his life.

Thank you, Michael, for bringing light to my life, and helping shape my world view. Without your contribution, I wouldn’t care as deeply as I do about all of the cultures I’ve experienced, nor would I have the patience to listen to people’s plights or opinions. You will be remembered. Always.

How important are computer calendars to you?

A long time ago, I only relied on sticky notes to get me where I was going. There wasn’t a lot to juggle, so I never had a problem organizing them, or even remembering that certain events were upcoming. Now, however, my life has gotten loads busier, and it’s become something of a pain to try and remember everything I need to do in a given week.

A couple months ago, I loaded up my computer’s calendar program, and put the first few entries in. I’d never bothered using it before. I wasn’t really maintaining a blog, or doing any podcasts, so the only entries in the program were the default birthdays that it pulls from my address book, which is very handy, by the way.

I believe my first real entry was a reminder to put up a Diary of a Mad Writer blog, which you are now reading. Then I conceived the Spinning Old Tales blog, so I put that in there, as well. I knew I would remember to put the blogs up on the days that they tend to go up, but I thought it would make me a little more organized and timely. Funny enough, it has.

I ended up adding a great many items to the calendar. Now it’s exploding with color, all of which tell me what to write, what to record, and when it needs to be completed. It’s kept me from wasting time during my day, and it’s relieved quite a bit of the stress of trying to be a prolific writer in today’s rush, rush culture.

The reason why I ask if computer calendars are important to you is because I just recently started putting my updates into Google Calendars. The benefit of this, is that I can allow other people to see my calendar, namely my wife and a few friends of ours, and synchronize them to my iPod Touch (and, eventually, iPhone). The changes I make will appear in Google immediately, and everyone with access can get the new information without me needing to tell them. I never knew just how freeing something like that would be. When I get an agent, I could even keep them updated on my writing progress through the Google Calendar.

I’m beginning to wonder if technology advancements like this -- and I know a good portion of these have been around for awhile, but I never knew the benefits until now -- are what keep professional writers on top of their game. I’ve yet to read a book where the writer talks about all of the technology that they’ve benefited from. If there is one, I’d love to know about it. I find it fascinating to know what helps keep a writer organized in their hectic lives.

Well, I have a few more entries to add to the ol’ calendar. I suppose it’s time to head off and do that. Until next time.

Back in April, I told myself I would write a new flash fiction story every day. Flash fiction, by its very definition, is fiction that is 1,000 words or less. I didn’t know how successful I would be, whether the idea I proposed each day would be any fun to read, or whether I would actually be able to finish my intended goal, but I set out to try. Honestly, I’m impressed that I was successful in my endeavor. It’s not that I lacked confidence in being able to complete it, but that dreaming up a new idea every day, then putting it into action, and posting the story in a timely fashion did push me to the limit on a number of occasions.

However, doing that allowed me to revisit some older ideas. I didn’t take characters or story arcs from those ideas, but I did pull out themes. One particular example, which ended up being one of my favorite stories, was about Desmond, a captain of a star ship. When I was in school, I wrote a very short (500 words or less) entry in my short story notebook about a star ship captain faced with something he knew he would eventually regret. I never did much with the idea, but the flash fiction challenge was a way for me to come back to that theme. In that particular instance, the idea of a star ship and a captain were generic enough to reuse without stealing dialogue, names, or even events from an idea that had been written down nearly a decade earlier.

It also gave me a chance to really stretch myself. Typically, I’m comfortable in the fantasy space, but I had the chance to do other kinds of stories. Some were dialogue heavy, with little description, and others were heavy description with no dialogue. Sometimes there was a protagonist, and sometimes there wasn’t. Sometimes a love interest, but typically there wasn’t. There were even some ideas I threw out, because I didn’t feel they were suitable for the flash fiction challenge. I might just revisit those ideas in stories somewhere down the line.

One of the things I realized from writing flash fiction is that I love long tales. It’s why I love writing novels, even though mine are generally close to 200,000 words. Because of this, there was heavy editing to be done on my tales. There were stories that crossed over 2,000 or 3,000 words, which I had to condense by such a great degree that it still pains me to know what I threw out. Other stories, though, felt natural at only a few hundred words. It’s amazing how an idea can just have its way with you.

But writing flash fiction also made me love the short fiction form. Not just flash fiction, but short stories. There have been more than a few ideas I’ve been kicking around, some of them from those same flash fiction tales. A number of them, however, were ideas I had before ever doing the flash fiction challenge. Some I’ve finished and need an edit or two, while others are waiting to be written.

While I wait for word on whether I have secured an agent, which I am still trying to accomplish, it would be prudent to finish several of these stories and try to have them published. I feel that more than one or two of them are strong enough to be fun tales; mini-novels, if you will. I started looking into publications this past weekend, and narrowing down where to send my work. Perhaps there will also be a podcast or two willing to accept and read them.

There’s something to be said about staying fresh. Sometimes, an idea I have for one story makes its way into another. Other times, these tales stand on their own, even if they are extremely short. I’ve enjoyed my time writing them. If I keep this up, I’ll have enough for a book. And you know what? That doesn’t sound half bad.