…and every bit of it he did shred.

Like I wrote earlier, somewhere in the 2013-2014 range, I wrote a whopping 10,000 word chapter. Whopping, because a chapter should be bite size; the 1,200-2000 words range is plenty. This week, I had some down time. I decided to shred it.

I still like my characters. I still like the “situation” in which they have found themselves, but it was atrocious. Shawn Coyne was exactly right, the more you read the more you grow. As much as I like what I wrote in 2014, the more I now think it was total garbage on several fronts.

• The protagonist was essentially bullet proof. He simply didn’t have problems and everybody liked him. Who is going to care about that? I would have hated the guy if I knew him.

• The truck was perfect. There wasn’t an ounce of chrome that was needed to complete the package. Well, a truck is meant to be a journey and that’s not a journey. If all you’ve known is going to the car lot and picking out a car and driving off and never even adding anything more than floor mats, then you may not understand this concept.
• I was writing way too much comedy in as if it were comedic relief.

All in 10,000 words. It was just junk. So, I wrote about 2,500 words on Monday and Tuesday spread out in three chapters and it was very much more appealing. I will start writing some short stories here to give a taste; like 1,000 words short stories.