365 Stories is Almost Done!

So, holy crap guys, I’m less than 20 stories short of completing this 365 stories project! I have to admit, when I first started on this I was less than convinced it was going to make it this for. I know for a lot of people it might seem like no big thing, a story every day, and most of them under 500 words, whatever. But for me? This was HUGE.

So looking back, what have I got? Well, if I’m being perfectly honest, a lot of it was pretty bad. Which is fine. That’s what I was expecting to end up with. These are all first drafts, and a lot of them were written just to get a story written. That’s writing, folks.

A lot of the stories seem like they could be the start of something bigger, like a series or a book, something like that. Some of them were clearly prologues to something much bigger. A few of them are actually pretty solid, stand-alone stories, or will be after a fair bit of editing. And a good bit of them will likely end up being stuffed under the rug and forgotten.

I’m especially happy with the 100 word stories. These were inspired by a friend, Eric Boyd, who posts regular six word stories. I wanted something with a bit more meat to it. I feel like telling a complete story in 100 words is an interesting literary challenge. I often found myself with a story at 105, or 112, or something like that. And I’d have to go through and figure out what I could cut or reword for the sake of brevity. That’s an exercise I’d recommend to any writer.

So, now that I’m almost up to 365 stories, I have to say that it’s about time to end this project. I won’t be writing daily stories anymore.

The whole point of this, after all, was to get myself writing every day. I feel like I’ve achieved that. The problem now is that, since I have so little time to write in a day as is, these short stories are starting to eat into my other projects. As fun as it is, and as useful, I think it’s time to take what I’ve learned and move on.

And, really, flash fiction is great, but there are things that you can’t do with it, and there are things I can’t learn and skills I can’t develop if my stories are all under 500 words. I need to learn to develop characters, and build arcs and so on and so forth.

So I’ll still be writing every day. Just that most of the time it’ll be part of something bigger. Like a longer short story, or even a novel. My goals for the year include writing a novel, and a screenplay, and I have some big comic book projects coming up (campaignersblog.tumblr.com). If I have something I feel is appropriate for the site, or if I just feel like cranking out a 100 worder as a warm-up, I’ll certainly post it. But otherwise, it’ll all be going elsewhere.

I actually thought about asking who might support a Patreon for more stories, but the more I thought about the more I realized that just didn’t feel right for what I was doing here. I might edit some of these and collect them, put an anthology up on Amazon, at some point in the future. We’ll see.

So, in the coming three weeks-ish, I’ll be winding down. I think I’m going to keep going through the end of the month, which will be a little over 365, but I fudged by posting a few older stories right after my daughter was born, so that should make up for it.

Thanks for reading, and for faving and reposting. And if anyone out there has any favorite stories or just wants to say hi, I’m here.