The Year of the Word

I hit a wall in late 2016. I finally reached a point as a freelancer where I had to many balls in the air and they were all about to start dropping. Worst of all, most of them were underpaying or not generating revenue at all.

I could feel it. I was about to break down. So, before I went completely insane, I decided I needed to stop. I focused on wrapping up or flat out abandoning projects. I started saying no to new projects, no matter how exciting they sounded.

It was time to clear the decks.

I decided 2017 would be the year of the word. I would focus solely on writing. No film projects, minimal nonprofit work. I would keep only the freelance jobs that paid their own way. I started saying no to anything and everything else that came along.

I had been sporadically working on a historical novel for over two years. I set a goal of finishing the novel by September 2017. I had not written a short story in decades, so I set a goal of one new short story every month.

I set a strict writing regimen. I would spend seven to nine days each month on a short story and the rest of the month would be dedicated to researching and writing the novel. I set a minimum word count of three hundred words a day, seven days a week. Three hundred words a day isn’t much. I intentionally set the bar low. Success breeds success.

I picked a handful of top and mid tier literary magazines that paid for short stories and began to submit, one new story a month. Breaking into these publications is a tough nut to crack. I did not expect to be accepted and so far, five months and five stories in, I have not been disappointed.

To date I have garnered four rejections. When a rejection comes in I immediately send the story to another publication. I decided I would submit each story to at least three magazines before turning to self publication. I want to be clear; I do not consider self publication to be a last resort. Sure, there is a healthy portion of self published writing that is amateur but there are also plenty of respected, successful writers who self publish. Three submissions may not give the story a fair chance to find publication, however, the submission process is a long and drawn out process. It sometimes takes four to six months only to hear you have been rejected.  I didn’t want to take over a year for these stories to reach an audience. I am a determined cuss and a slogger, but I can also impatient.

The goals for 2017 are to finish the novel, write a minimum of 12 short stories, procure a literary agent for the novel, begin self publishing the short stories, eventually break into having the short stories published in respected magazines that pay, and begin to build a following for all my writing.

And that is where this blog comes into play. In Metaphor in a Hat I will discuss the novel, short stories and my personal writing process. I will invite other writers to share their process.
Hopefully you will find this effort entertaining. Hopefully you will find this site informative. Hopefully you will support my work through sharing it and purchasing the stories as they come available.

Let’s tell some stories.

In the next post I will introduce the novel:  We’re for Smoke: Outlaws and Outliers of Panther City.