Writing or Working

A post appeared, scripted by a young-ish lady, that said she was tired of working. No great shock there. I am quite sure that most of us, at some time or another, have expressed a similar emotion.

The next line bothered me somewhat. 

She wrote, “I have decided to become a best selling author.”

Just like that.

Apart from the idea that she is going to write some beautifully crafted tale it occurred to me that she was setting about writing a story as opposed to working.

Writing is not work? A novel idea – no pun intended!

I write every day. Without fail or exception. It is this constant practice that helps me to be more proficient at writing. Being good at setting down ideas does not mean that the stories are better it just means that the stories are better written.

The story, in essence, remains the same.

There is no doubt that you might argue that my stories are not very good or that they are not very well written but having read back over some of my original tales it is obvious – even to me, that they have improved. 

Well, OK, that statement is not without some clear bias, of course. 

Nevertheless, it is definitely apparent that even the difference between consecutive stories shows improvement. That is something that gives me great satisfaction.

So I stress, the stories are the same. The ideas behind the stories are the same.

There are many short stories included in this series of ‘Blogs’. Should I decide to rewrite any of them they would be better for that rewrite but only in the crafting of the tale. The essence remains the same.

Which brings me to my next point.

Over the last week I have been tasked by the publisher with two things: Firstly, would I see my way clear to either cutting eighty thousand words out of the ‘Adepts’ or splitting the story into two parts of, roughly, ninety thousand words each.

Secondly, what about increasing the word count of ‘My Name Is A Number’? It is currently a shade under forty-three thousand. That is novel length – just.

The first task has been addressed. “The Adepts: Book 1 – Furato” is now in ‘Parts 1 and 2’. “My Name Is A Number” is currently under review but, before starting that I returned to “The Adepts: Book 4 – Despair”.

Having not looked at ‘Despair’ for over a week I discovered that the gist of it remained but the details were consigned to a mental bin. It was necessary to re-read the story to get back on track with it. The tone, the emotion as well as the weave of the story needed refreshing.

In re-reading I discovered that there were a couple of things I did not like about it. One of them was the start! It needs writing all over again. There is not enough ‘bang’ in it.

The publisher just called. 

“Could we,” they said, “Manage a couple more short stories for the anthology? About two thousand words each…”

‘We’?

Then I read the post from the lady who has decided to become a best-selling author.

Writing as an alternative to work!

They do say that laughter is the best medicine…