Stories

There are all manner of stories in the world. Some are silly stories you make up for your close friends and children and ornery cat. Other stories are uncovered as you walk throughout your day, and while they are not "big" or "important," you know immediately that they are worth some writerly attention and a broader circle of readers. And others are the stories worth owning--the books  for which you save up your money and pay full-market value. These are books that deserve to be on a library shelf, be it public or private, books that are worth the trees it took to print them.

We writers would like to think that every story in our head deserves to be sold and treasured and to become an immediate, wild success. As proof of our megalomania, we flood the market full of books (and even bestsellers!) from the first and second categories: silly fluff and unimportant fiction that wasn't worth the manpower, money, or ecological burden that publishing demands. This doesn't mean that only Caldecott- or Newberry-worthy fiction should be disseminated and read. A writer should come up with all sorts of stories in her lifetime. The trick is knowing how to use each story as it is meant to be used.

I am attempting to do this in my own writing. I know I will not always get it right, and I do not expect to make the proper judgment in every instance.  But I am trying.

"Random Bits" are the little bits of stories and poems and words-for-ornery-cats that I don't think anyone should pay half a money to read. Judge them for what they are. 

"In Market" contains synopses of the stories I am submitting to publishers. I market them because I think they need to be read, and that they are worth the trees it will take to print them, worth the money it will cost to buy them.

And that middle section of stories, the ones I know are valuable and need to be read, but aren't worth $20 or an entire corporation of editors, designers, marketeers, etc--that sort of story I'm still figuring out what to do with. I have some ideas that should play out here before the year is up.