Feeling Like Frodo

I had the most curious feeling today.  I wasn't sure I really even wanted to finish incorporating the changes to Forever West that my brother Greg had made, even though he put so much work into it.   Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars and time was worked to show me the flaws in my own work.  Artistically, one is wise to not seek to knit the perfect sweat but insist that one's older work is flawed and move on which leads to greater, better works.

My short stories are a lot better than when SFWA told me to shrivel up and die and dont write more sci fi.  A few, like Mr Hamburger and Waiting for the Monsters to die are REALLY good, to the point I'm considering posting the older stories just here, for free while selling them on Amazon.  I've already done them in the podcast.  I'm starting to realize that I really just want my stories to be heard, preferably liked, but I feel I have something to say and would like someone to hear it.

But novels are acts of faith.  You start writing them, vast oceans of words, trusting your future self that they will finish and edit and polish and sell.  But...I'm kind of over it.

Writing seven novels is on my bucket list and I've done six.  Seven will be really really really hard.  Heliotrope has been sitting for months since I wrote it because....I just KNOW it isn't as good as Forever West and I just KNOW it isn't as good as many of my favorite authors.  So why even release it? I mean, I probably still will but I writer has to believe in their own writing, and I just don't.  Sophistries with Rhombus Ticks aside, I just....I KNOW I can write some great stuff and love these flash fiction pieces at places like Naked City or the 500.  Novels are titanic behemoths.

Thank god I'm waiting until visiting Scandanavia in three years or so to do a 'thriller/mystery' novel set there, because I just dont feel sequels to any of them in me; even though Heliotrope promises interesting things.  Should write Tossing Grenades at Windmills, but my flash fiction piece in the 500 got published....Grenademan isn't being bought.

So am I going to finish Forever West? Indubidably but....I keep pushing it out.