The Story Wall

Before I tell you stories, I have to tell myself stories.

I don't mean that I tell myself the stories I write. Those emerge as I go and often I don't know what they are until they are finished, if they are ever finished.

The story I tell myself is about being a writer.

I was six decades on this earth -- making my living writing, but never as a writer -- before I decided to write stories. I plunged headlong into a novel in 2017, "finished" it in 2022, and started writing short stories to fill the gap between my first novel and my second. The first of those stories -- "Teddy's Favorite Thing" -- was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in 2023. EQMM bought another of my stories late last year. I've also just sold a nasty little story to Shotgun Honey, which will appear in March 2024.

Yay, me. Writing short stories wasn't the plan. I only tried it to avoid working on novels! But writing short stories has become my way of telling myself a story that I am a writer. It is an immense boost to my confidence when my work is published.

Problem is, stories are only published a few days of a year, while I write every day. The excitement of a story appearing in print fades quickly. And short stories are ephemeral. Often they're online, with no physical artifact for my shelf. If they appear in magazines, they come and go as issues leave sale. It is easy to forget they were there.

I've already blogged about how I am mad for tracking data around my writing. Part of this is to understand the true cost of things, in terms of hours and effort. But a larger purpose is to create a firm record of the work I have done, especially if it has not yet borne fruit. If I feel like I'm not writing enough, I can look at my log and see I worked 450 hours last year. Is that enough? Too much? I don't know. But I know how much I worked. It's proof of a real thing.

My story wall is another form of proof, and a primary way I tell myself stories about being a writer. As I complete each piece, I list it on the wall. I put up a title and a word count, pick some evocative bit of placeholder art, and list the status of a story. Usually it is in "submission." Sometimes it is "publication pending." Rarely it has gone all the way through the process and been "published."

But whatever the state of a story, it's there on my wall. When I get discouraged, I can look at the wall and see what I've built so far -- where everything is, and where it is going. Over time, the wall grows. Putting a new story on the wall is exciting for me because it means my work is ready for the market. And even if that means shoving an orphan into the storm, with months or years to elapse before it comes back, rejected or accepted ... it's on the wall. I can see it. The whole future is still ahead of that story, and ahead of me as a writer.

It's mostly for me, but I hope you'll check out my story wall. I guarantee it's the most up-to-date page on this site!