Overcoming Writer's Regret
Acknowledging what this means
My current financial situation is such that, were it not for the generosity of my sister and brother-in-law, my life would be much harder, perhaps unbearable. But, as things stand, I can pay them for room and board and still have money for my healthcare and other necessities, gas for my car and a little money for my hobbies. If I were to get sued -- and that could happen even if I never made a penny on the book -- I might find myself with no money at all, or very little, for a long time. That’s too big a chance to take. I would become an incredible burden on the kind and generous folks that let me live with them. I can’t let that happen.
On the day I post this article I will remove all the “When I Was Donnie” stories from my old blog and from my new blog. Temporarily, I’ll leave a placeholder blog article with the name of the book and a brief explanation of what I’ve done. Part of that explanation will include a link to this article.
I’ve tried to accommodate folks who bookmarked one of my stories for later reading. A lot of people have done that on twitter after I tweeted a link to the book; I stopped tweeting links on July 18. I hope the bookmarker folks will have already read the story they bookmarked before I take them all down. My twitter account is linked to my facebook account; it was affected the same way. I stopped posting story links to my google plus account a few days earlier. If you want to comment on my decision or the stories you’ve read, please do so on the table of contents page for this article. The placeholder article I mentioned earlier will eventually be removed from my blog.
I’ve gotten some wonderful comments about the stories so far. Only two people posted comments on the blog itself but lots of people have commented on Facebook and twitter and Google plus. And, according to the blog analytics, a number of other people have visited my blog and looked at those pages and chose to not make a comment. If all you did was take the time to read, I thank you. If you read some of the stories and commented anywhere on social media, you should know that you’ve made me feel great. Those comments did a lot for my state of mind. If you’re looking forward to the next stories I am sorry to disappoint you. That’s the part that makes my decision painful: knowing there might be a few who were anticipating the next story or even the completed book. That’s not going to happen now and I’m sorry.
I don’t see this as a personal disaster; I’m just facing my previously ignored realities. I admit it is reminiscent of my failed efforts from the past – those novel attempts that never made it beyond the first few chapters. That troubles me. But in those cases I just stopped writing and pushed the work out of my mind for months or years. I’ve not given up on writing this time. I’ve just stopped working on this one particular project. In the future I will be writing some political articles and some personal stories that don’t involve other people, and at some point I will begin working on my novel. I’m not ready for that yet. My canceled project was supposed to help me get to the point of where I could deal with a project that big. I’m not quite there.
I have a number of ideas about blog articles. I’ll mention a few. One thing I’m considering is writing a political essay and following that up with a story involving characters who are dealing with the issues described in the essay. The essay will go in my blog’s Political Commentary section and the story will go in the Creative Writing section. That seems like a fairly original idea and I’m probably going to give it a try sometime in the next few weeks.
I may also write a few politically motivated stories that have no essay as companion piece. The idea of making a political point using fiction appeals to me. Ayn Rand is my inspiration for this. It sounds like an interesting challenge.
One project I’m considering is writing and publishing to my blog some of the back stories for my novel. I’ve already written one or two back stories in rough draft form. In case you’re wondering, a back story is a part of the story that doesn’t end up in the novel. It just gives the writer a foundation for the characters he’s writing about. I could write those back stories, develop the novel’s main characters and, instead of keeping the back stories to myself, I could post them to my blog. If I go forward with this project I may just call it Back Stories. Something about that simple title appeals to me. If you have another idea for as title, please leave a comment.
go to The story that revealed the problem || go to Rethinking my writring