I finished a short story! How did I get to that point? It’s a grand, romantic odyssey.

One day I was diddy-bopping along and thought, hey, I should write a story. What is a good story to write? I manufactured an idea in my brain. I’m not sure how the idea got to its end point. I simply pondered the premise up from nothingness.

I decided to try a “build-up” writing process on this story. I built the idea up from a single sentence to a three-sentence plot. I built those three sentences up into a paragraph. I built that paragraph up into a page. Meanwhile, I wrote down all of the characters and a couple of paragraphs on who they were, what they wanted and what happened to them in the story.

A terrible first draft followed. Lamentation followed the terrible first draft when I realized how much work was needed to make the story even ten percent readable.

Daunted, I fled the story in horror. It took time to assimilate the disgust I felt from looking at the wretched mess I had created. It also took some time to admit another horrible truth—research would be required. Further daunted, I attempted to burn the story, but its vileness made it immune to fire. I took leave of it to grieve my lack of writing ability.

Eventually, I forced myself to do the research. I put all of my reference material at the end of the story, below the biographies. I then had about three pages of story and about ten pages of biographies and research material. This caused gagging. I took leave of the situation, ingested copious amounts of Sprite to soothe my nausea and found solace in the warm glow of the TV. Why put myself through writing when there was so much TV to watch? TV did not demand. It only gave.

But like the swallows returning to Copenhagen, I forced myself to return to the story. I knuckled down and battered the first act into something I thought was !AWESOME! So impressed was I that I wanted to share the !AWESOME! with another person, which I don’t normally do at that stage.

The person proceeded to read my !AWESOME! first act.

They “did not know what was going on and did not like it.”

Licking my wounds, I accepted that I was not a genius languishing away in anonymity and the unwashed masses were too simple to grasp my brilliance. I rewrote the !AWESOME! first act into something more clear and let the reader look at the section again.

They responded with super positive affirmation: “I think I know what is going on now…I guess…”

I think I know what is going on now, I guess!

How could I not be motivated by such praise? In fact, such praise motivated me so much that I again ran from the story in horror. I ran so far that I circled the Earth and somehow found myself facing the story once more. Resigned by this development, I started grinding and shaping and shaping and grinding and grinding and shaping. I then ended up with a story that finally had some sort of structure. Well, it was more shanty than structure, but at least I could see the vague shape of the thing. Unfortunately, what I saw made me violently ill, and I retired to the bathroom to consult the toilet.

Acting upon the toilet’s advice, I returned to the story once more. I realized I couldn’t do what I did with my main character in the first act because it would make the reader dislike them too much too soon. This required the addition of a second character. This additional character then lasted throughout the story. Did he need a biography, too? No, I hate writing those things. They aren’t the story. I need story to finish the story, and there is so much story yet to capture — a demoralizing amount.

Re-enter TV into my life.

But yet again I returned to the story.

Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Grinding.

More grinding.

Followed by more grinding.

Followed by, you guessed it, more TV.

Then more grinding…

Egad! The story was no longer completely horrible! With much satisfaction, I deleted the biographies and research material and had a shining word count of nearly six thousand words. A story has appeared! Repeated, a story has appeared! Why didn’t I put my nose to the grindstone from the get go and get to this stage months ago? Because I’m a procrastinating moron, that’s why.

Or maybe it was because my first drafts were that horrible.

I mean, truly, they were heinous.

The story was not done yet, though. It has been revised and polished, but now it needed to be perfected. I decided to show it to a couple of readers. So much suspense! What profound suggestions would they offer that would enable me to take the story to the glorious heights of perfection!?

“You know that one part where they ask that one character a question and then they talk about other stuff and go back to the question? I forgot the question while they talked about other stuff…”

Okay…that was not the type of feedback I expected, but I can work with that.

“The opening was also kind of confusing…”

You mean the first act that was so !AWESOME! I rewrote it fifty times and then added an additional character to it to fix the entire story? It is STILL confusing?

“Yes…”

Fine. Whatever.

Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Grinding.

And suddenly, I don’t hate the story anymore. Suddenly, it is not the most disgusting thing ever put to paper. Suddenly, I think, wait a second, this story almost actually works. This might actually be one of the better short stories I have written in a while.

Time for submission! I’ve got a good feeling about this one!

I submitted the story.

It was promptly rejected.

Oh well. I then submitted it to another place and commenced waiting once more.

…

I guess I may as well try to write another story in the meantime…and that’s how I write a short story.