Summer was set to burn itself out the day before my girlfriend arrived from Germany, but it stuck around an extra day to give her a sweaty “hello” — the next day, sheltering from the rain at a covered picnic bench, she became my fiancée 😊

On the writing side of things, it’s not going as well. Or it is, depending on how you look at it. 

As a Christmas gift for her, I wrote a short story every day of advent in December, twenty-eight shorts in total. Some were merely flash fiction, the shortest being six words long (“Hi, dying of cancer. I’m dad.”), the longest being just shy of three thousand words. I would often finish it and press Send only seconds before my daily deadline of just before she wakes up for work. This had a few unintended side effects. 
First, it gave me some distance from Kill The King as a manuscript, which put me even further away from the person I was when I plotted it and broke it down into beats and scenes.
Second, it made me realise exactly how concise I wasn’t being in my longer-form writing.
Third, it raised my standards for my own storytelling. Finishing a story, whether anyone else reads it or not, does that. Even (and especially) if it kind of sucks.

Ira Glass put it best when he talked about the Gap:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass

( You can also watch it here )

Taking a break from the manuscript to execute that Christmas present of twenty-eight different stories levelled me up a little, as a writer. The only problem now is that I’m wiser than the 2021 Matt who wrote the outline for Kill The King. As 2023 Matt, I still like to outline a story and break down into chronological scenes and beats, but I’m less formulaic and am struggling to see why I need to hit every beat that I set for this story at the end of 2021.
Because I’m so far into it (105,000 words and just breaking into act three) it would be monumentally stupid of me to abandon it and start a new project, so I’ll stick with it. I hope to have it finished by the end of March, if it doesn’t kill me first.

Will be back with news about some short stories later.

Love you all.

I have returned to Australia! Spent the best summer ever in Germany, still a bit jet-lagged and I have a sore neck, but I’m settled back in. The twenty-three hour layover in Doha was a pain, but I did knock out a few thousand words between flights.

The moon story is finished, I didn’t love it but it got some good feedback, so I guess that’s what second drafts are for. 

I’m learning a lot. My confidence level with plotting and executing a novel is good, and I foolishly tried to apply that exact same structure to short stories. That was a lesson learned the hard way. They’re two entirely different disciplines and “discipline” is definitely the word for it. The more I write shorts, the better I get at all forms of writing. 

I did finish one this year that I liked enough to post on here, so I’ll give that a polish and put it up this weekend. 

I miss German beer. 

I turned 34! Got awesome presents: some in a care package from my loving Mina, and two from my sister are worth a mention. The Batman pop vinyl, and a bottle of scotch. The Batman movie was spectacular, and the booze will be drank (drunk?) when I finish my next manuscript.

Short stories don’t count.

Speaking of, I have written a couple, but they aren’t ready.

The commitment to writing short stories this year has really thrown me for a loop. I’m unfamiliar with the process and generally prefer novels 99 times out of 100, and it’s dealt a blow to my mental health. Therefore, I’m treating myself to beginning work again on the abandoned action thriller Kill The King, which has been given a second look through the anti-glare glasses of Hindsight, and I will start proper work on that next week.

In the meantime I will still keep trying my luck at these short stories. It’s honestly like learning to drive manual after a decade of driving automatic.

Have also been under the weather with one malady or another, so have been playing a lot of LEGO Star Wars.

Will have something new to update with soon.

64 days til Europe!

Here’s a four word short story for you:

RIP Brian…
Now Hiring!

I’m deeply into the Sloth Stage of choosing a next project to focus my efforts on. 

There’s half a dozen novel-sized ideas I’ve got my eye on next, from sci-fi horror to serial killer mystery, but next is some short stories. I’ve been reading a lot of them, some amazing (O’Henry took me by surprise) and some crap (Hemingway). 

Books on writing have been my latest obsession. On Writing by Stephen King is worth a read by anyone who has any kind of creative bent, and Save The Cat has an interesting view on story structure. 

I’ve even been watching more movies to get a broader idea of what I should write next, though I doubt I’ll dip a toe into screenwriting any time soon. Parasite was great. 

I’ll return when I’ve written something worth sharing, might even throw a short story or two up on here as posts.

Stay safe, everyone. 

Quick one today.

I’m hard at work on the novel, which I feel like I’m writing in collaboration with Drunk-Matt. Some weekends he’ll give me 10 pages of compelling prose, others he’ll hyperfixate on fact-checking and leave me with 700 words of crap that I have to rewrite. I’ve all but booted him from the project, which my liver and waistline are thanking me for.

Speaking of wordcounts, I abandoned that exercise. I now know that I have 54,674 words (138 pages) and I’m well into act three.

Last chapter had some brutality in there, hope I haven’t gone too far.

Just re-read On Writing by Stephen King, I’m going to start making that an annual tradition. Can’t recommend it enough if you’re a writer, or any kind of creative, or just like his work.

Also breezed through Devil’s Advocate by Steve Cavanagh, the latest in his series on the con-man-turned-lawyer Eddie Flynn, good stuff.

Will post a snippet of The House Always Wins when I’m happy with it. For now, I’m back to the keyboard with a tall glass of water.