Sunshine

I did a desperate thing this week: I bought Woman’s Weekly. Worse still, I bought their Summer Fiction Special. All with the idea of writing for the magazine and trying to earn some money. I was really depressed about my life, and my lack of money didn’t help. I’d read a book about short story writing- I think it was in the Teach Yourself series- where it gave this advice: that you don’t even start writing your short story without having a market in mind.
When I first started writing short horror stories, I wrote them with no market in mind. I’d read M.R. James or whoever, I’d get an idea, I’d write the story and then read it to my Writers’ Group. Sometimes I’d send them away to Writers’ Forum magazine. Later, I began writing for competitions. I discovered the Microhorror site, and began sending them stuff. Other than that, though, I didn’t have a market in mind, I wrote purely for my own enjoyment and, hopefully, for my Writers’ Group.
Lately, though, I’ve been wondering whether I shouldn’t start following this advice. So I began looking around for paying markets for short horror fiction. It seemed to be slim pickings. Horror fiction doesn’t seem to have to the following it once did. I must admit that the recent row I had with my wife left me wanting to show her that there was some point to me. Ever since that row, we’ve been distant. I’ve never shown her my stuff on Microhorror. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. I don’t think it would mean anything to her, and she wouldn’t realize what it meant to me.
Finally, I started reasoning this way: that if I could make some money, any money, through my pen, it would be a good thing all round; and to that end, I should simply start with a magazine that bought short stories regularly, hence Woman’s Weekly.
It could have been worse: it could have been The People’s Friend. I started reading through these magazines, not with any great enthusiasm, I must admit; but I read three of their stories and, surprise surprise, they weren’t too bad. I don’t know if I could emulate them, or if I could ever crack that market, but anyway, they weren’t the Siberian salt mines.
And then some nice things happened. I began re-reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I keep mentioning this book, but believe me, if you haven’t read it, you need to, it is brilliant (and also Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones and Dorothea Brande’s Becoming A Writer). I would recommend The Artist’s Way to any human being. I don’t know how Julia Cameron does it, but she made me feel good about being a writer again.
Microhorror published another of my stories. I discovered another site, Every Day Fiction, which publishes stories of up to 1,000 words, and the first story of theirs I read was a horror story.
I came across a website, Dark Markets…can you guess what that is? A resource for horror writers. With a list of magazines looking for short horror fiction.
There were other good things. My wife and I went to the cinema. We saw The Great Gatsby- her choice, not mine, but I enjoyed it. I still think it’s a camp melodrama, though, but it wasn’t the slog I was expecting.
The sun came out. I had a day off, to myself. I had a good walk, a good sleep, and I managed to watch a film from beginning to end.
I started writing practice again. Memories, all involving my late dad. Painful, but I felt better afterwards. And I think, unless I’m working on a first draft of something, I’m going to pursue this practice every day.
I learned that Etcetera Theatre Company are holding a competition
for horror radio plays (go to http://www.londonhorrorfestival.com/stagefright/).Which excited me.
Finally, touchingly, my wife had a 25-1 winner at a horse race, and shared her winnings with me. So maybe she thinks there’s a point to me anyway.
Maybe she always did. Maybe I’ve been panicking. Getting desperate, forgetting to have fun. Maybe it’s a choppy sea I had to sail through, but now I’ve reached dry land again. But things are looking better.