I hate it when authors hint at some new project they’ve started but can’t reveal any details. Why waste my time? Just tell me when you can speak freely, okay? Otherwise it feels like someone dancing around singing “I know something you don’t know! I know something…” Terribly annoying.
So I’m sorry. I just started a new project I can’t tell you about, not entirely. I’ve been invited to submit a short story to a new anthology which is a big deal in my little writing career. Sure, I’ve published my own short stories and my own anthologies, but this is the first time I’ve been invited to work on someone else’s project. Truth be told, I’m nervous.
I’ve always written short stories to sharpen my storytelling skills without thinking about where the stories would end up, or what message they might send. There weren’t any expectations other than to be entertaining and I was free to follow all the twists and turns my subconscious fed me while I was banging away at the keys. Some stories worked out better than others but they were always breezy and entertaining. The story for this anthology project is refusing to come together like that.
The challenge is I’m writing with the door open, which is another way of saying I’m splitting my attention between my story and how I think it might be received. I’m letting my inner editor whisper worries about genre expectations, appealing to readers, and impressing other authors when I should shut the office door and let the story come out naturally. It’s an old challenge of mine and just when I think I have the problem beat, it outsmarts me and finds a new way to wriggle back into my thoughts. No matter how often I change the locks on the office door, the neurotic inner editor always picks his way through. I’ve had to fall back on an old trick from the first novel: turning up the hair metal and typing as fast as I can.
So while I can’t tell you what I’m writing about right now, I can tell you I’m writing it with Guns N’ Roses blasting over the keyboard’s clickety-clacks. My screen is filled with little red squiggly lines from spelling errors caused by touch typing skills pushed too far. I’ll tell you more about the story when I’m allowed, and when you read it, see if you can pick out the places where the guitar solos influenced the story more than they should have.
