Viable Paradise week-long writers workshop with my increased productivity and my ability to turn in stories that need little-to-no editing. But there’s a bit more to the story than that.
So what happened?
I’ve taken on a lot of projects, made a lot of promises, and have a zillion deadlines (well, not quite, but it feels like it). I know I wrote at least one novel’s worth of words for all these projects combined, maybe two. In the process, I rediscovered my voice. One of the VP writing assignments, plus a comment Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta made at Dragon*Con 2009, caused me to pull out an aborted short story and recreate it as a steampunk story instead of a modern day fairy tale. It was good, but it wasn’t fantastic given that I only had about 10 hours of writing behind it. But while I wrote, I created this beautiful world where World War I came early because Prince Albert Edward (the real-world King Edward VII) was murdered.
I loved this world so much, I couldn’t stay away. Constantly looking for publishing opportunities, I found several open anthologies I wanted to apply for, including Lee Martindale’s The Ladies of Trade Town. Unfortunately, I ended up so busy that I forgot to write my story and the deadline passed. I met Lee at the 2010 Nebula Awards and asked her about the anthology. I thought I was just being polite, but found out I’d misremembered the deadline date. The anthology was still open for subs. Lee thwacked me (metaphorically) over the head and told me to send in a story. So I wrote “Silk and Steam” and based it in my new steampunk world.
I wanted to impress Lee. I worked and polished, doing about six rewrites before I deemed the story acceptable. My SO / in-house editor told me that it was the best piece I’d ever written. It took me a while to digest that. When I did, I informed him that I’d found my new gold standard.
Before this, I just wanted to write a good story, but I didn’t have a bar. Now I do. Every story I now write gets compared to “Silk and Steam.” Every story has to match or exceed those standards. Even my previously written, but unpublished, works are being revised with this standard in mind. It drives my SO nuts when he says “this draft is good enough to send,” and I refuse to send it because the work hasn’t come close to my bar. But he indulges me and goes through another rounds of edits.
When I told my SO about the editing phenom, his reply to me was “See, that’s what your exacting standards has earned you.” And he’s right. But you know what? I can still do better. And I will. My goal is to write stories that put my best story to shame.
Which leads me to ask: What are your personal writing goals?
