30 Shitty Short Stories

For a long time I had a post-it note on my whiteboard in my office, with the text "Everyone says they would write a book, if they had the time. So will you actually do it, or is it all talk?". It was meant to motivate me to write stories for a book I have been planing for years, but never gotten done.

The Project

I don't even remember when I decided I wanted to be a writer. I've always liked writing, and making up fictional people, places and events. I learned early on that short stories were the best option for me. I have a hard time focusing on the same story or project for too long, and writing a full length book feels like a long time commitment. Writing short stories is a much more surmountable task. A collection of short stories is more like a series of small manageable tasks, rather than one big project.
I realize a full length book can also be considered a collection of chapters, but in that case I would still have to stick to the style, theme, setting, and storyline throughout the whole book. With short stories, I can jump between my creative universes every few pages.
Some years ago I came up with the title "30 Shitty Short Stories". A project that was meant to take a month, where I would write and edit one story every day. By the end I would hve a full book, ready to publish. It was a solid idea, but that was not how it went.

I had, for a long time, been wanting to write something good enough and extensive enough to publish, but I never managed to find the right motivation to get it done. For the longest time it was all talk. The 30 day project was meant to be a heavy motivator, to push me to write a lot, and get something done. To feel that sense of accomplishment.
As it turns out, writing a short story every day is more of a challenge then I thought. I had forgotten to factor in the time a writer spends not writing, even when sitting at the keyboard to write. Trying to come up with something that can become a story. I was hoping the time crunch would motivate me to just write anything. Simply start smashing words on the page, and then make the best of it, and most importantly, accept that it might not be very good (30 SHITTY short stories). It was never meant to be perfect. However, it didn't really work.
I did write more that month, than I had in a long time, and some of it was pretty good. But some of it was also absolute garbage, and the result was around 10 stories. Nowhere near the 30 I had planned.

During the month, I tried several things to bump the motivation. I switched my settings, instead of writing everything at my office, I want to other rooms in the house, with a laptop. I went to coffee shops, and even a hotel bar at one point. I tried different kinds of music in the background. I tried different writing programs and fonts, to jolt that inspiration. To some extend that all worked, but in the end I still had too many 'down' days, where I wrote only part of a story, or nothing at all. Halfway through the project, I started to loose faith that I could pick up the slack. Falling behind on a 30 day project, means exponentially more work in the coming days, to catch up, and I didn't have it in me. I tried to convince myself it would be ok, but I couldn't quite let go of the feeling of defeat, even before the project was done.

By the end of it, I felt both depressed that it didn't work out as planned, but also amazed that I had actually given it a shot, and I was proud of some of the stories.
I decided that even though the project didn't go as planned, I would count it as a mixed success, and keep the stories and working title, but give myself more time to write and edit the stories.

The Stories

Since the 30 day project, I have written a lot more stories, and edited all of them, to a point where I am almost satisfied with them. But I still don't have 30 stories ready to publish. I did have 30 stories done, but some of them have been excluded from the book project, for different reasons, while several other stories are on the chopping board. One story ("Neverland") was excluded because it is based on Peter Pan. I never read the original Peter Pan story, so my inspiration is the Disney adaptation. I don't think I am infringing on any trademarked aspects of the story, but I am not entirely sure, so I have decided that it is better to leave the story out. I don't feel like risking a lawsuit from the big D, and I also think it is better if the stories are my own, and not leaching on other, well established works.

Another story I decided not to put in the book is Rooftrellen. The reason for that one, is that it is based on a concept that came to be, during a Twitch stream, where the streamer and viewers were creating a fictional world, for stories that he was planing on writing. The Rooftrellen character was one of the beings created in the session, and I decided there was more to him than we had explored during the stream. I then proceeded to write the first two sections of the story, shortly after the stream, and I already had an idea for the third section. It took me quite a while to find the time and motivation to write the last part, but I am quite happy with the result. I talked to the streamer about the story, and about maybe using it in my book, and he seemed ok with that. However, I still feel like the world where Rooftrellen takes place is not mine alone, and certainly not one I should profit from (Assuming someone buys my book). That all led to the decision to post the story on my website instead, and leave it free for anyone to read and enjoy.

I now have 18 stories that are written edited and ready to be part of a published book. I also have 11 stories that are written and edited, but I am unsure if they should be included. Some are a bit too short, and other are just bad writing or unfortunate themes, that I am unsure of I should include.
Stories under 1000 words are more like flash fiction than short stories, and they can have their place in the collection, but they need to be extra good, to justify being included. Some of the flash fiction I have written is not.
Stories need to make some kind of sense. Not that they have to be realistic, but they are too far out, it is hard to convince the reader (you) that they should invest their time in the story. For example, could a space mission go to the surface of the sun? Even if the sun turns out to be very different from what we thought? The writing of that story has to be very convincing, and I am not sure my version is.
Stories also need to capture the audience and make them feel invested or at east entertained. If you finish reading a story, and think to yourself "Why did I waste my time on that? What was the point?", that is probably not a good experience. I don't mind leaving the reader baffled or puzzled. They can have questions, or even a small existential crisis after reading my stuff. But if my stories feels like a waste of time, like they only exist to hit the 30 story quota, that means I have failed.

Status?

I am still planing on publishing 30 Shitty Short Stories, some day, but I want the finished book to exceed expectations, by a mile and a half. People should feel they get a lot better stories than what the title promises.

As of today, I don't know when the book will be finished, and published, but I am sure I will post about it here on this site, and on my SoMe channels, when I get there. Until then, feel free to contact me to ask about the progress, if you are curious. You can also follow my socials, listed in the top-menu of the page.