August Debrief and What's Next

I'm drafting this up now, on the 29th, though I plan on posting after the end of the month. I want to get some thoughts down about my experience with the 31 stories in 31 days challenge, because it has been enlightening.

First, I want to shout out to the team that created the challenge, and the community on Discord that was incredibly supportive and enthusiastic throughout the entire experience. The team put out prompts every day (sometimes multiple prompts), worked on giveaways, engaged the community members to discuss what was going well, what wasn't, and being overall incredibly encouraging for all of us. I don't know how many people actually managed to hit 31 stories - I know I didn't, but I also figured pretty early on that writing more days than I didn't each week was what I needed to get things going for my brain.

I have been having a rough time with regards to my mental health of late. 2020 was not kind to any of us, and the combination of that, some physical health struggles, and just general brain goblin shenanigans have made the last year and a half more of a struggle than they need to be. I've been on more ups and downs than the average roller coaster, and it's been a challenge to convince myself to write anything. There's been some kind of wonderful alchemy this past month, though, of not having a word count to hit, not having to work on a specific story or slog my way through a part of my story that I'm stuck on, and knowing that all I'm doing is coming up with draft zero, which may very well not turn out to be anything beyond scribbles on a digital page - all of that together has been freeing for me. 

I know that, in a true definition of the term, the things I've written aren't short stories. They don't have developed plots or characters, there isn't any kind of meaning or depth to them, they're just scenes that I thought would be fun. Several of them tie back to the world of the Infinite Library, which is a novel that I started drafting for Nanowrimo last year and realized I was getting stuck on, and so I took the opportunity to flesh out bits and pieces of the universe in which the Library exists, as well as play with some ideas from the overarching thought of "a library where all of the world's literature exists and characters can travel between their books." It's not an especially unique idea, but it was one I'd wanted to play with, and I like some of what I came up with.

Some of the things I wrote came from a couple of decks of writing prompt cards that I've had kicking around for ages - the Reckless Deck series. Even then, I didn't use the cards quite how they are "meant" to be used, because I didn't necessarily write using a character or world that used all of the traits on the cards that I drew. I looked at the combination of cards (which included things like costume, weapon, integral feature, home land, etc.) and let it inspire something. There was no planning, no plotting or outlining, just a vague notion of "it would be neat if" or "what could be cool would be" and just going.

It's taking me a while to build up to saying this, but I actually like some of the things I wrote this month. I'm well aware of their faults, because obviously - everything's a draft zero, there's been absolutely no editing, and again, there's no depth to the narrative or characters. But I feel like I managed to do some fun things with words that turned out pretty well. I've gotten some positive feedback from people, as well, which is never going to hurt my feelings. Overall, this is probably the best I've felt about my writing in a very long time, and it's writing that I did with very little planning or taking the time to overthink things.

So what happens next? Well, there are two things, separate stories that I started, that I want to go back to and flesh out a bit more, see if I can turn it into something a little more polished and engaging. I've roughed out a shape for the pattern with pencil and graph paper, and now I want to go in and clean up the edges, push out the corners and see if I can make it into something that looks a little nicer overall. I may try to send them out into the world and see if anyone wants to print them, I may decide to just put a prettied-up version on my blog, but either way, I think they're stories that I would like to tell to more people if I can.

At the end of the day, I tell stories. It's what I've done since I was a little kid, and it's what I love to do. Writing stories down, making up characters and worlds and putting them out there for other people to experience, it's all something I like doing. I don't think I'll ever be a professional writer, and I know I'll never be comfortable making a living with nothing but my writing - I'm far too anxious and crave stability in all things, so having an income that varies based on sales of books would be a quick trip to a nervous breakdown, and I've already done that before, thanks much. But coming up with stories and letting other people read them if they want to? I can probably do that.

I want to keep writing more days than I'm not, but I don't think it'll be a new short story each time, like it was for August. I may spend September fleshing out the things I want to hang onto from August, or finishing up the multi-part stories I started - if you have any strong feelings one way or the other about what you'd like to see, let me know in the comments! And thanks. Having you read my stuff, knowing that at least a couple of people in the world are looking at what words I'm putting on a page, has been a really nice boost to the psyche. I'll try to give you more to read if you want it.