Finally Writing

I just finished my first post-graduate piece of short fiction. It's not bad, but the fundamental problem I had with my fiction before I went back to school still remains. I can create characters, dialogue comes fairly easy, building conflict, describing setting -- all of that I think I can do fairly well. For the life of me, I cannot come up with compelling plots. The plots tend to center on subtle character development, especially in my short fiction. And while I see the development, it's sometimes lost on my readers.

I've promised myself to have a cohesive collection of short fiction by the end of the summer. I think if I had fifteen to twenty pieces, I'd have a fair selection from which to pick for publication proposals, with perhaps ten to twlve being in the final selections. Right now, I have three fresh pieces and I think I have three more that I can polish up. None of them are too action driven. That's OK, if I can come up with some stories in which something really happens. But taking the glass-half-full view: almost a third of the way! I'm going to devote the rest of June to short fiction, exclusively. Then July is going to be divided between new fiction and polishing up my academic pieces for my writing portfolio. Come Labor Day I want to move on to a collection of essays based on my acting experiences -- and begin to start submitting my short stories.

And I'm just going to ignore that little voice that screams that my writing is mediocre. I'm sure I'll get enough in the way of rejection slips to confirm that suspicion.