Why do we have to study History? I must have heard that question every day I was in a history class. Invariably, the answer was always the same…we study history so we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Considering the staggering number of things I would be glad to not see come around again, this seems like compelling logic.
Just when is History though? 10 years? 25? 50? 100? How about about yesterday? How long does something have to stew around before it becomes good enough to learn from? To place a rather broad lens on the whole thing, anything that is past is history. Operating on this logic the sentence before this is now History, and the opening paragraph is may well contain fossils.
It is true though. Over the weekend I decided to branch out from merely writing stories to expand upon my knowledge of writing as a craft. I have several grammar books and general guides for good story writing, but those can only really take you so far. So I searched around and found a message board full of aspiring writers and published authors who were sharing advice back and forth, stories of what worked and what did not. I registered for an account immediately after reading a post from someone who got their submission rejected for what I would consider an unimportant detail; correction, would have previously considered an unimportant detail. Now thanks to this free exchange of information the same will not happen to me, or others who read the post. Preventative history on display.
So I’ve been mulling over ideas and suggestions, looking back at what I have written so far and seeing what could be done better and what can be left alone. So, for the next little bit I’m putting future writing on hold and going back through what is already written and applying some of the tips I have picked up to this point. At roughly 10k words written in The Mark, I have already blown past the Short Story and am heading firmly toward Novella, perhaps some of this information can give it a little more push and it will land in Novel.
It certainly wasn’t my goal to write a full length book right out of the gates, especially based upon what, at the time, was a piece of one-and-done flash writing. However, I feel like I owe it to the ideas that I do have for full length books to explore the craft of writing more in depth before setting pen to paper for those treasured adventures.
