New Tactic

I have given myself the month of September to finish the rough draft of my whole collection of short stories. This will, in theory, leave me with a novel-length collection that will serve as the foundation series for my own universe/mythos. The particulars will be for a later entry, that's not what this is about.

My tactic has, thus far, been to finish the rough draft of an individual story and then send it out for comments, critique, feedback, notes, what have you. This has proven to be rather a poor idea, as nobody save for one former classmate of mine has ever actually gotten back to me with any sort of feedback. What it has served to do is enable my procrastination and slovenly behavior by allowing me to put off writing anything new until I "finished" my current story. I haven't written anything since completing my last short story several months ago because I have been waiting on feedback from people.

This, it occurred to me recently, is not only an untenable situation, but a completely unnecessary one. I know the direction I intend to go, as well as many of the particulars of how I intend to get there. I do not need each individual story to be completed in order to progress to the next one. All that waiting around has done is a fat load of nothing. And while it did allow me time to steep my brainmeats in their juices, unless I act on them while the flavor is full and the aroma is fragrant, that marinating time will quickly turn to fermentation. Stagnant creativity often leads to unhappiness with the very ideas come upon in the creative process. So rather than wait around for the never-to-arrive feedback or story notes, I am going to simply move forward with rough drafts of all my remaining stories and then edit them all later.

What remains is only two short stories and one novella. I am going to be diminishing my social activities so that I may devote extra time to completing these tasks--which is a task well within my capabilities, I wrote this much when I was in school. Once these are completed, I will begin revisions and edits to all the stories, as well as ordering them and making the superstructure more cohesive for the reader.

TL;DR: Do not feel obligated through some sense of thoroughness to stop all progress in a creative work simply because you've asked for feedback. Feel confident enough in yourself to move forward. You can always go back and edit later, but you should never forgo an opportunity to create something new.