I know that's not the way a writer should think. I should be telling myself, keep churning stuff out and eventually you'll get published. Not just because that's what they tell you in writing workshops, but because I've seen it work in the few pieces I do have out there. It's no fluke that I've had mostly flash fiction published when flash fiction is the majority of what I write (excluding the novel). But putting in time to write longer stories, and a lot of them since that is most likely what it will take, just doesn't fit my current situation. Sure, I'll be devoting a lot more time to the novel, but in the end the pay out will be so much greater. At least, that's how I feel. Is it naive to think that my first novel will get published when it takes me so many tries to get a good product out of shorter works? I tell myself that in a way it's not my first novel because I'll have created so many drafts of it (and radically different ones at that), but I do the same thing with short stories and flash fictions and I have more of those sitting around my hard drive than I do in the pages of magazines.
Still, I'm excited to begin work on the novel again in a month or so. I've been getting a lot of great comments from my friend Copperhead, not to mention the great advice my wife has given me. I can't wait to hear what else Copperhead has to say and hear how some of my other readers react. I have lots of ideas, both my own and from others. I really should try to find time to write some short fiction before then, but time is sparse and the circumstances for me writing this are not normal. It's low and the priority list and, emotionally, I just don't know how to change that.
Until next time, I'm Eric and I'm an unpublished author.