The Josef K. Stories

2012 was a hell of a year.

I didn’t meant to quit writing. But it happened. A month of not writing became six, and it was okay, I told myself. It was a difficult time, and it would surely end. Then I stopped justifying it to myself, and finally, stopped even worrying about justifying it. That’s how I quit writing for well over a year.

Part of it was from lack of a plan. When I started, I challenged myself to write a short story every week. This led to many a 4am night, blearily editing absolute nonsense, but it worked. Then I decided to give myself the room to play with longer ideas, and removed the arbitrary deadlines. Soon I was finishing work on a monthly basis, then bi-monthly, then it might take me a half a year. And this was when there was nothing else required of me. The moment fatherhood and a difficult pregnancy were my dominant concerns, writing slipped away.

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Hello all,

I had a good weekend for writing, finding the time to work out a new short piece, First Souls, (that I will be posting within the next day), and getting some good solid editing on some other work. Runner B stopped mid stride in the last couple weeks, as I’ve found little time to work on it from home. I’m currently on paternity leave, so my time to write is dictated by the nap schedule of a capricious id that cares little for quiet, uninterrupted working time.

First Souls was something that bubbled up between running and a bout of what I hope was food poisoning last week, and it needed to get on the page. If I didn’t give it a shot at life, it would have eaten away at me while I tried to work on Runner B. I will return to Runner B, but for some reason it’s proving more challenging than I’d thought.

I’m trying to take writing much more seriously now, scheduling out the tasks I need to address, including research of markets, agents, and publishers. Finishing Runner B is next on my task list, followed by final drafts and submissions of two other pieces. No more rejections or acceptance letters have come back in, and I’m about to send queries to some of the more tardy markets to see if I can goose them into a response, if only to free up the pieces for other submissions.

Two other things of note on the publishing front:

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As I submit polished stories for publishing, I’ll be removing the corresponding scraps of the rough drafts that were posted here. Many markets consider any online postings as prior publications, and although the final drafts I am submitting are usually quite changed from the rough drafts you’ve read here, I want to make sure there is no room for confusion.

If the pieces are rejected from enough venues, I will likely update the pages to share the final drafts with you. What this means is that some stories will be unavailable while their polished counterparts are in submission, and potentially forever if they are accepted, in which case, you will not be able to get me to shut up about it.

If you’d like to read a draft that is no longer available, please email me and I will be happy to discuss.

This is a temporary post to solicit feedback on the new site before I switch over entirely and to test the Facebook and Twitter linking. It’s very similar to the old layout, albeit with a sexier URL, but I please let me know if there is anything you’d like to see or have changed before the switch. Just comment here to let me know, and thank you in advance.

I’d also love to crosslink to your personal site if appropriately themed, just send me your address and let me know. I’m trying to find ways to promote and evangelize this new address, and I’m afraid I really don’t know how to do that…

Thank you for following me here.

For those of you that have been around a while: I’ve been away. It’s easy to stop working hard on a thing you love when you let it be a lesser priority. It’s my fault, and I lost a year for it. My sincere thanks to people who emailed, poked, and prodded during the absence. Without you, I’d probably have stayed gone.

So now that I’m back, and you’re still here, let me ask one more favor of you: Be brutal. I want to hear what you think, I want to discuss these stories. But I want you be savage, and honest, and hold nothing back. Knives out. Teeth bared.

Today, my wife read and did a cursory editing pass on Dogs in the Drywall. When I asked her what she thought, she replied: “Not your best,” and when I pressed, she admitted she hated it, and she told me why, quite eloquently. And for the most part, she was right.

I need that critical eye. I’m posting these pieces in their rough forms almost as soon as I finish them, not because I want to hear you tell me you like it, but because I want to know what’s wrong with it. What’s almost there, and what will never get there and what needs to be trimmed away. I want you to ask me what the fuck I was thinking, because If I can’t just justify it, then its not worth saving. I’m thick skinned, I promise. I’m starting to think I might be a good writer, but I want to get better.

Okay, I lied. Of course I want to hear if you liked it. I especially want to hear if it scared you, got under your skin, or provoked some other emotional response. That’s useful too. But only if it’s the truth. I trust you. You’ve got good taste.