Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Shelving "Flight of the Lark."


I have decided it's time to shelve "Flight of the Lark."

Not because I don't like the story, far from it, but I'm not ready yet to commit the resources that are necessary to doing this story right. Shelving a story does not mean that I don't intend to get back to it. There are many reasons that a story can get shelved, and in this case the reason is pretty specific.

I set a goal of writing twelve publishable short stories by the end of the year. Now that it has become obvious that "Flight of the Lark" is not going to be a short story, I need to set it aside so I can get back to work on the original goal. "Flight of the Lark", is going to take a lot of research and I've already spent time doing that when I should be focusing back on my primary mission.

For instance, I spent a sizeable part of this morning researching the type of milk cans they had in 1900. Those are going to be the kind of details that this story is going to require. Not to mention I'm going to have to research Brazoria in 1900. That's a lot harder than Galveston. I'll probably have to take a trip there.

Apparently historical fiction is a big pain to do if you want to do it right. But I don't intend to do it wrong since I have to live with whatever I publish.

Anyways, back to short stories and genre fiction.

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