On the plane flight to San Francisco I finished Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, as well as the most recent issue of Glimmertrain Stories. Then I dove into The Best American Short Stories, 2009. Boy was that a mistake.

Don’t get me wrong: the stories are fan-tas-tic. I especially enjoyed Ethan Rutherford’s The Peripatetic Coffin, even going so far as to email the author after Googling him and stumbling upon his web site.

After all of the reading done over the holiday break, I realized that in the last year or so, I’ve taken the first few steps in what will undoubtedly be a marathon of writing, rewriting, editing, hair-pulling, rewriting, throwing away, and writing even more. The rejection slips are piling up, tangible evidence that I can stick to a routine, draft stories that are engaging to at least one reader (namely … me), and not get too discouraged.

But the sheer volume of short stories I read over the holidays has shown me that there are so many more ways to think about moving through something: an action, an emotion, a series of events, a premonition. I need to stretch myself even further than I’ve been doing.

The story I’ve been working on lately is about a United States Marine recruiter, and by the time I’m finished with it I will have spent more than twice the amount of time I typically spend on a story. One evening in particular, I spent three hours furiously rewriting what I’d already drafted, then wrote one more paragraph to move things along before calling it quits. My word count had actually decreased after three hours of writing.

Writing is like peeling back the layers of an onion: there’s always another layer to explore, always something new to learn. Sometimes, it can be so frustrating you just want to cry. And I’m okay with that – another layer of the onion peeled, digested, assimilated into the daily grind of it all.

This year, I’ve resolved to read more than last year, and to spend just as much time writing as last year. And to slow down, savor the words a little more, and dig deeper into each sentence, paragraph, and story.

“Who’s Eddie?”

“A silly boy in my class.”

“What’s he like?”

“He wants to be a clown when he grows up. And Sarah wants to be a State Fair owner. She’s going to have Eddie come and be a clown at her State Fair.”

“I’m training for my rainbow belt.”

“Well I’m training for my one thousand black belt.”

“The rainbow belt is after that. Duuuuh!”

“It is not.”

“Is too.”

“Then I’m training for my pink belt.”

“Do you know Red Apron?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t get your pink belt. That’s required. You know … RED. PINK.”

“And so is Evading Form Seventeen.”

“Do you know Shattering Mirror?”

“No, but I know … Dubious Reflection.”

“What about Stare of Death?”

“So what you just … look at them funny and they die?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know that one either.”

“You better get on that.”

But the opposite actually happened. Getting away from the city and the computer for a few days was the best thing that could have happened. The overdoses of sugar, junk food, hyperactive children and fresh air acted like a kind of spa treatment on my brain, flushing all of the crap out of there so that when we returned last night I was working with an almost blank slate.

I’ve just started a new section of the book and am switching POV for awhile, and was having trouble settling into the new character’s skin. Today when I sat down to read what I’d completed so far, I scrapped the whole thing and started over. The result is much, much better than what I had going into the weekend.

It takes a ton of routine and discipline required to plug away at a book which could never see the light of day, but I’m finding that it’s going to be important for me to step back and build in regular “off the beaten path” experiences as well to ensure that the creative juices keep flowing.

Some notable quotes overheard this weekend … maybe future fodder for a story line or scene:

• 8-YEAR OLD GIRL: “My dog ate my brother’s umbilical cord.”

• 6-YEAR OLD GIRL: “[Redacted] just hit me.”
• PARENT: “Aren’t you in karate? Next time he does that, you should karate chop him.”
• 6-YEAR OLD GIRL: “That wouldn’t be appropriate.”