I have a bad habit of starting stories that I’m not skilled enough to tell.
I lose my temper at them, shelve them – and then fail to forget them, like a normal writer should. You know, those writers with hundreds of short stories in their backlist? Not me. I feel like I don’t want to waste the original inspiration and effort. So as I become a slightly better writer, I go back and look at the damn things every few years, from different angles. Maybe work on a few revisions. Set the mms aside again. Repeat.
I have another bad habit: I’m addicted to revisions. To poking at a story until I see better ways to tell it.
Usually, what was once a cheesy bubbling mess stays a cheesy bubbling mess. But over the last two years, several short stories have either grown into much longer ones, or tightened dramatically. Enough that I feel comfortable aiming them out on submission.
I’m finally finishing one of them today, in time to sub it to a magazine’s themed call tomorrow. The title could change without notice, but here is the blurb I’d use if I were self-publishing it:
Collier is a failure as a writer. Her illegal AI helper is a failure of programming. Serial killer Marc Jacona is a failure of humanity. Because life and death have changed in the late twenty-first century, all three of them might pull off a triumph instead.