When I first agreed to publish a story in an anthology, I thought it would be an easy way to get my first story published. Instead of doing the easy thing of using an existing story and polishing it, I decided to make an entirely new story, with new characters and everything.
I’m not sure why I thought that would be easier. Maybe it was the idea of trying the whole process, end-to-end, creating a story from scratch to use as a test to discover the steps. Maybe I wanted to test the waters with characters and plot that were less near and dear to me. That way if I make lots of learning mistakes, my investment wasn’t too much to toss away and start over.
I’m glad I did that, because my anthology story has been fun to write. I was pushing myself to write faster and I feel I’m getting better at it. At the same time, now I’m excited to publish my other stories too, and get into the swing of writing more often.
Have any of you published your own stories? Leave comments below…