How often do you write a new short story? I probably write something completely new a month. And then I have a few that I'm playing around with at various stages after the first draft is done. But, yeah, I think it's one completely new idea a month on average. I'm pretty predictable when it comes to the initial writing of short stories. There are a few exceptions, but it tends to take me three writing sessions to complete a short story and this is usually done within a week. Then a few days later I like to clean it up and really look at what I've got. From there, it's all edits and revision which is less predictable and a longer task. It often takes me much longer to figure out what's wrong or off in a piece. Sometimes I do get it down fairly quickly, but, still, I am continuously revisiting my work. I guess this goes on until I sell the story or forget about it. So, what's your process for adding new stories to your roster and how often do you do it? I do think there is a benefit to regularly writing new stories while polishing up old ones.
I have a novel going through the copy editing process right now. During the course of writing the book, a lot of characters got introduced and to flesh things out and develop those secondary characters in my mind, I try to jot down short stories of them, concentrating on things that highlight their personalities and quirks. I guess they could be called "character studies" but I am kind of thinking that in the series these short stories could show up in a stand alone collection and introduce these characters to my audience. I'm writing a crime/thriller series (or trying to) with a co-writer. We have the kidnapper, a rookie cop, the rookie cop's mentor, the rookie cop's partner, the rookie cop's sergeant. The kidnapper doesn't have a partner, she has victims, but she does have a legit job and legit co-workers that I am trying to develop. When it comes to the edit and revision, I don't really do that myself because I find I tinker too much. I usually ask someone who has read the book if they like the background I have established on Detective X or whomever. I have an example of descriptive wording thread in the descriptive forum I think..... The weirdest thing I have found is that one of the minor characters, the detective I was talking about is taking a much more prominent role in my head than I ever envisioned for him.
