“I’m taking too long with my stories. Get on with it and set deadlines again.” Wise words I thought (okay, spoke to myself, but don’t tell anyone) while heading to the gym today. Continuing my mining of Moleskine 2, I found four stories that were summarized and should have already been written. At this stage, with all my basic tools not in place, I have to stop worrying about the perfect (whatever that means) story. Instead, I need to concentrate on telling lots of stories. That should help cut down on my consternations and endless thinking about a story.

While this sounds terribly optimistic, I want to write one story every two weeks. They don’t have to be perfect, well formed, or even interesting—and length doesn’t matter. I need to get used to shorter deadlines and push myself harder. I start on something and I work it through until something comes out—no need to worry about quality. That’s not true. What I mean is that there is no reason to worry about polish. I’ll work harder on forming better and deeper (again, whatever that means) stories later. I also have to stop saving my good story for a later time. I can always go back and rewrite a story or reuse a story idea. Nobody will mind.

To this end, I’m setting myself a deadline of next Friday, 9 July, to finish The Pink Sweater, a story that takes place during a parent-teacher conference. I’m sure you’ll all be waiting expectantly.

Story Idea: Crazy old lady; irrational relationship; good friend listening to rant (never hearing it from the girl's pov); his description of movie love; long soliloquy