Well this is never a good sign: I’m back to old bad habits; starting stories that begin as sentences and flow to paragraphs and…stop.
I’ve gotten lax and lazy, I would think, to put the effort, the work, the actual planning, thinking, doing that are required to fulfill a story beyond the creative spark of mere idea.
Perhaps it is because of the semester break. Perhaps it is because I’m off in so many narrative directions–gaming, text, movies, visuals, poetry, long story, short story, the technical and philosophical.
I have in my portfolio one really (I think) decent story that has been with me for six months or maybe longer. It has been skillfully edited by someone else, and I’ve gone through this almost final rewrite yet I’m stopped at just a page or two of ending.
Somehow I think the discipline of another semester of creative writing will put me back on track, and too, it focuses on short, short and flash fiction. But story length is not my problem, although that does enter into the refinement and the final product whether story ends here or there. But if I stop at just the teaser, just the opening paragraph as I’ve been wont to do, then, well, there is no story at all then, is there.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology