Are you young and ambitious? Then take heed. I had to ponder this week, and work out if anything I’d done in the last year was a Good Idea. Mainly because it’s been an entirely different year from the one before, when I wrote not a word. The garden is an utter disaster, the pond is a strange colour, and I still haven’t mended the toaster. And writing is to blame. Lots of writing, endless writing, and then the reading in between to find out what other people were writing, or to be able to interview them, have conversations which sounded even vaguely informed, and so on.
I launched greydogtales when I was coming up to my fifty eighth birthday. Since then I’ve completed and put on line almost one hundred and seventy pieces, some of which run to well over 3000 words. Articles, special book features, lengthy updates and about fifty interviews with writers, artists, publishers and the occasional fictional character. It’s all a little shocking.
At the same time, I was writing fiction. Perhaps not enough fiction and not fast enough, in fact, given my age, but quite a lot of it. I see people thirty years younger than me considering their writing career, and think Oops, left this all a bit late.
So I looked at where I was, and this is the summary position, by current status. One novella and twenty five stories in just over a year, on top of greydogtales and the recent Occult Detective Quarterly work. It’s not so bad, but whether it’s good enough is the question…
The Revenance
- A Stranger Passing Through Blood, Sweat and Fears (Nosetouch)
- The Preacher’s Tale Coming from Ravenwood
Tales of the Last Edwardian
(includes Carnacki, his inheritors and their associates)
- A Dark Trade Carnacki: The Lost Tales (Ulthar)
- Grey Dog Carnacki: The Lost Tales (Ulthar)
- One Last Sarabande Self-published (Smashwords)
- A Word with Mr Dry greydogtales.com
- An Intrusion Self-published (Smashwords)
- Loss of Angels Self-published (Smashwords)
- His Heart Shall Speak No More [under consideration]
- In the Sight of God
- A Study in Grey Novella (18thWall Publications)
- Hoodoo Man [accepted]
Other Period Tales
- A Persistence of Geraniums Coming from Ravenwood – chapbook
- The Jessamine Garden Coming from Parsec Ink
- The Dragoman’s Son [accepted]
Wolds Weird
- Something Annoying This Way Comes greydogtales.com
- The St Valentine’s Day Mascarpone greydogtales.com
- Horseplay
- The Horse Road Coming from Lackington’s Magazine
African Weird
- With the Dark and the Storm [accepted]
- The Death of Beauty
The Technosophy (SF)
- An Age of Reason Coming from April Moon
- On Abydos, Dreaming [under consideration]
- Spirits of Earth
Contemporary Weird
- Messages Cthulhusattva (Martian Migraine)
- We Whose Breath is Dust [accepted]
Not a dedicated young man writing in a specific genre with a plan, then.
It seems patently obvious that I need to write larger, longer pieces. And maybe even settle on one area to concentrate my mind. One novella and multiple short stories across a number of genres/niches are not going to butter the parsnips, as we say up here. If we’re old. So it seems that I really must face the task of avoiding so many short story calls, and focus more on what I ought to be doing during the year of being 59.
If I come up with a proper answer, I might tell you. Not that you’ll care, anyway. I wouldn’t.
Next time: Something interesting…
Hello, John!
Congratulations on what seems to me a very respectable output indeed. I read this post with particular interest since I too am 58 and have been neglecting my house in favor of writing–a sprinkling of flash fiction and several novels, one of which I self-published and another of which I’ve been trying, as yet unsuccessfully, to find an agent for. Like you, too, I’m a bit unclear on my best genre. Alas, I still need to work full-time, so the pervasive sense of never doing enough/never doing it well enough is likely to persist for a while. Best of luck to you during year 59!–kmr
Hi, and thanks. The best to you too – I have no doubt that we can still be productive and break new ground. I wish you luck in finding a decent agent as well – they’re like hen’s teeth nowadays, and most are as booked up as the publishers. But we prove that not everyone needs to be a thrusting young thing to get somewhere. 🙂
What you ‘should’ do is less important than what makes you happy.
Thanks, and it’s true, of course. I’ll be pleased if I sell enough writing (the process of which makes me happy) to feed the longdogs (which also make me happy). I’m not too ambitious. 🙂
I turn 58 at the end of October, so perhaps there should be club started (especially if my math is correct: qualifying members were born in 1958 and turn 58 this year). And, like you, I made a recent “life shift” toward fiction writing (away from more academic stuff, in my case).
I find the larger projects more satisfying, even if it’s my series of short stories that formed the “composite novel” or my stage playlets that will hopefully surrender to forming a full-length stage play.
In contrast, my one-off audio dramas–separate but vaguely thematically related–now sit in their cyber-retirement home, hoping someone, somewhere, listens.
Take the advice of a younger man: think big.
Good Lord, man! You look about twenty years younger than me. That’s a shocking revelation. And I too am looking at ‘arced’ short stories to form a collection (possibly because it sounds less horrifying than writing a novel). I shall copy your excellent Vera Slyke, change a few names and details, but not tell you…
I am also a writer returning to write in my fifth decade…I think we tend to forget that decorating our writing history were the distractions of the boom of the 70’s and 80’s, the crash of the 90’s, the all-but-death of traditional publishing in the 2000’s, and the rise of almost incomprehensible change to every aspect of our lives over the course of a “mere” 20 years… I don’t know about you, but it messed with my mind and my imagination….(too bad I don’t write science fiction!) I see you as a bit of an inspiration — someone who is writing better because you are clearly more comfortable with yourself. This blog is proof. And if it is any indication, I should be reading more of your work….
Thanks, K C. Ironically it’s the blog that slows my writing down a little, but I do find that I write more fluently now I’m older – I think time gives you perspectives. 🙂