February: One Goal Accomplished

Early February: I've completed the first of my 2025 goals! Ooh it feels good.

I put together a list of writing goals for the year of 2025. Admittedly, I assume there will wind up being more that pop up throughout the year, but I wanted to put down some things that were most important to me, and then try to get through as many of those as I could. It was 16 different goals I jotted down, and I assumed I wouldn't get through them all. But I wanted to try to get through as many as I could. Give myself constant goals on the horizon to strive for.

So far, of all my goals that I have on there, the ones I had been working on mostly were getting published, and the rough draft of my novel. I've been submitting to many publications, waiting to hear back from plenty, getting rejected by plenty, the usual. And I've been working on my novel. But I had a short story that I wanted to focus on too, so I set aside some time to work on that one. I had actually posted it on both Vocal and Medium. It was called "Looking For Color."

First off, I realized the title was almost there. But not quite. I changed that to "Searching For Color." Sounds better to me.

Now, the reason I wanted to work on this story was one, because I knew I could make it better. And two, I felt like this story could work well as IP. IP stands for Intellectual Property. I'm no expert on it, but I know more than I knew a few years ago, which was nothing. It basically is this... know when you watch a movie and it says "Based on the novel" or "Based on the short story"? Well, the person who wrote the story, sold it as Intellectual Property, IP, and then someone was able to make a movie out of it. There's quite the hunger for buying up IP in Hollywood, looking for original content to make movies out of.

Being someone who also writes screenplays and often thinks of my stories as having cinematic qualities much of the time, that was something I knew I wanted to focus on. I feel many of my stories could work as IP. So, I have been polishing up the ones that could work that way. Many of the things that I wrote on Vocal and Medium have that feeling, and since I want my stories to be available to be sold as IP, I have been going through my older stories, seeing what could work in that regard, taking them down, and fixing them up.

I'm quite thankful for a lot of the contests that I entered on Vocal. The prompts that they had that sparked a story idea in my head. I hoped to win these contests. I didn't. But I liked the stories I came up with. And now, I am looking at them and thinking, maybe I can do something else with this.

That's what happened with Looking Searching For Color.

(Ha! I used the Strikethrough! That was fun.)

I had to go back and see what contest prompted this story. It was the Improbable Paradise challenge... where an unlikely pair meets on a tropical island. I really liked the story I came up with for this. It had some adventure, some war, thriller components, romance components... it was a pretty different story for me. And I felt like it had potential to be cinematic.

I went back and reread it and it had... brace yourself for the cliché metaphor... good bones. But it needed some serious fixing up. Like a person with good bones and bad skin who walks into the skin doctor's office and says, "Doc, I need help." And the doctor says, "No bones about it."

Or something.

I thought the story was still excellent but there were plenty of issues. The flow was off in some parts. A lot of short-- halted-- sentences. Too many so it didn't create a fun and interesting juxtaposition to the rest of the story. It just got somewhat annoying. And I saw that there was plenty of room for expansion. In the contest, the story had to be under 4,000 words. So, like a good little contestant, I adhered to the rules.

But as I reworked it, as is usually the case with my stories, it grew. It grew quite large. Like the same guy who went to the doctor, the guy with good bones, and... you know what? No. Let's not defile this perfectly fine piece about editing a story with a "growing bone" joke.

I'd say I'm better than that.

I'm not.

I'm just not going to do it.

Anyway, the story grew in length. (Heh.)

Usually, when someone takes a look at a short story and sees it as potential for IP, they imagine a lot happening in between the lines, in between the scenes. The story is going to expand regardless. I had plenty of ideas to expand this story... so I did. And maybe that would help the next reader to imagine even more expansion. Maybe someone would read it and say, "Now, there's some IP. It's got a little humor to it too. I like that in IP. IP Funny."

(Told you, I'm not better than any of this.)

For instance, the movie "Spiderhead" starring Chris Hemsworth, that was based on a short story "Escape From Spiderhead" by George Saunders and was first published in The New Yorker. I believe the story was around 5,000 words? Takes about a half an hour to read. The movie was over an hour and a half, I'm pretty sure. So, as is fairly obvious, these stories get expanded on when they're turned into a movie. But it doesn't hurt to help them out as much as possible.

Anyway, I got to work on the story, I pinpointed areas that I really liked and didn't elaborate on... and then I elaborated on them. Have you read anything by me? I'm wordy. Love to elaborate. Big elaborator.

When I finished, I looked at my new short story, and I was proud of it. I think I turned it into a much more solid story. Perhaps one worthy of IP. Perhaps it's one more I'll add to the arsenal that I am pitching to agents. And most importantly, I completed my first of my 16 goals for 2025. It feels good to cross that one box off. I've officially made tangible progress. I'll get back to the other goals, working on the novel, submitting stories everywhere. My goal list is helpful, it helps me organize, and it helps keep me accountable. It's out there in the world. So, I have to keep working at my goals.

They are things I want to complete. And it's a simple enough process. I just have to work towards them-- every day-- as I have been doing. Eventually, I should get to cross more of them off. For now, I got one. It feels good to share my progress. It feels good to achieve.