eliminating competence

[eimarra]

Okay, not eliminating so much as transcending, I suppose.

It's hit me that several of my stories I've always known are just competent--I tend to refer to them as "workmanlike," actually. They're stories, they may not be technically flawed, but there's nothing special about them. So I'm retiring them. Why continue to send them out when I know they're nothing special? This includes one story on my to-be-reedited stack, and at least two that are currently out courting markets.

Enough!

Some quotes for thought:

"Nothing average ever stood as a monument to progress. When progress is looking for a partner it doesn't turn to those who believe they are only average. It turns instead to those who are forever searching and striving to become the best they possibly can. If we seek the average level we cannot hope to achieve a high level of success. Our only hope is to avoid being a failure." -- A. Lou Vickery

"Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or man." -- Horace

"Anybody who accepts mediocrity - in school, on the job, in life - is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises." -- Charles Knight

Comments

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

And there's that signature quote someone on FM has:
"Good enough never is"

[eimarra]

Ain't that the truth!

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Caution: It's common to see the choice as being between average and perfect work of genius.

[eimarra]

I'm never going to hit "perfect work of genius." It'd be nice, but I'm realistic. I would like to be outstanding. Better yet, I would like to be outstanding enough to regularly get published in professional venues. It's not going to happen with average work, and there really is nothing in these particular stories to make them stand out.

I'm still submitting, still editing the things that I believe show promise, still writing. I'm just trying to cut out the deadwood here. :-)

[chanphenglew.livejournal.com]

It's probably good to let those stories rest for a while. My advise is to give them a few months then look back on them again with fresh eyes. There must have been a spark that had gotten you going in the first place - maybe TOT (tincture of time) is a good choice.

There's really nothing too ordinary that can't be written about - maybe take a break and check out some stories by award winning authors Ali Smith, Zadie Smith (just won the Orange Award for On Beauty, or Anne Tyler. Ali Smith's stories are just full of atmosphere, but don't seem to follow any of the rules. Zadie Smith writes about ordinary life with cross-cultural twists. And Anne Tyler's stories revolve around Baltimore - in her latest work, Digging to America, the outside world - Korean orphans and Iranian refugees - converge on a neighborhood in suburbia.

[eimarra]

It's not that they're too ordinary to write about; it's that the writing is too ordinary.

And they have been resting. Two of them I haven't looked at since March, another since December or January. And with the the detachment that comes with distance, I can see that they're really not special. *One* of them has an idea that might be worth something if I take the time to develop it better, but it's got to go on the back burner of the mind-stove for a while and mix with the other ingredients to see what comes up.

[bonniers.livejournal.com]

If it's nothing more than competent, that's probably the right decision. *applauds*

[eimarra]

Thanks. And yes, I think I'm fairly safe saying that "Seeds of Drought," for example, is simply competent.