Like Spinning Plates...

Sometimes, writing short stories very much feels like spinning plates (or what I imagine spinning plates feels like, anyway); trying to keep the momentum going on so many different things so that they don't all come crashing down. Trying to keep so many things in my head. Currently I am:

• Writing the first draft of a story called Fifteen Minutes which is about a girl who wishes (in the fairy tale sense of the word) to become famous... and does. (If the gods want to punish us yadda yadda.)

• Writing the first draft of another story which I'm not going to tell you the working title of because it's shit, but is one of my attempts to do something different with the poor, misunderstood zombie story as per the rules I set myself in this post here...

• Writing the third draft of a story that was called Handwritten and then was called Calligraphy but is now called Mirror Writing (but which might be called Calligraphy or Handwritten again by the time I finish it...)

• Trying to keep track of the edits from assorted beta readers for the core stories that will be going into my second collection.

As well as all the non-writing bits like keeping on top of markets to submit to etc., blogging etc. 

Of course these are no one's problems but mine, and sometimes as a writer you do have to accept the sound of smashing crockery and admit that yes, you've screwed up and that story is now as useful as a cracked cup (I think this metaphor's run its course, don't you?) But at the moment, I do seem to be trying to do almost too much.

But anyway, two stories of mine should be out for people to read in the near(ish) future - my story for Luca Veste's anthology Off The Record 2 as well as a piece of flash fiction called The Men Who Value Everything In Money which will be appearing in the next issue of excellent Polluto magazine.