Metacognition: The Short Story Process

My problem with writing is that I love reading. I've learned to tell when a story is well written and worth my time, as opposed to an unoriginal waste of paper. Unfortunately, this makes reading my own writing difficult.

I would never willingly read my fiction if it were another author’s work. If I were forced to, it’s likely I’d criticize the lack of new ideas or intriguing plots. To put it simply, my stories seem like they have been written twenty times already.

This is less important in blogging. My blog is supposed to reflect my perspective, which is slightly distanced from all other viewpoints. But a short story is more about generalities. And this is where the issue of unoriginality comes into play.

It’s true that I may notice this more than others would, because I typed the words in the first place. I know that I almost never find ideas which I feel urged to turn into story. I am less interested in anecdotal details of people and situations than philosophical concepts.

In my first attempt at a full story, I tried to use philosophy as a basis. Instead of giving my narrative the backbone it needed, however, the half referenced ideas just dragged the entire piece down. 

The story was so far gone that I couldn’t imagine reworking it, and instead started again from scratch. But I faced the same problem as I’d started with. There was nothing to write about.

            Because I didn’t feel any compulsion to commit my thoughts to paper, the words were slow in appearing on the screen. In the midst of this process I forgot one of the vital rules of writing; don’t be afraid to write a terrible first draft.

            I kept deleting entire paragraphs, and even started over after half of a page of work. Instead of pushing ahead, I continually looked back. I could not find a reason to just get the writing out.

            Looking back I can say that this was a huge problem, but not the root cause. Instead of planning out my story line, I waited for the story to come to me. Of course this didn’t work, and so I stalled and fixated.

            Instead, I should have planned the story out in the same way that Mr. Allen later showed us, with a description of the process the main character goes through in the book. The plot itself would still be contrived, of course, but at least the language would flow more freely.

            In fact I have decided that the best way to gain from writing assignments like this one is to focus on the style and details of the story. I shouldn’t expect that I have something important or original to say; I have only been alive for 16 years.

            But in the future, when I am older and more experienced, I may want to write something I have learned. While I don’t care much about my short story now, it will hopefully teach me good habits to use at a later date.