Creative Crossroads

So…today marks the one year anniversary of when I got my critiques for the third draft of my fantasy novel Beautiful Monster. Ever since then, the quest to rebuild it from the ground up has gone…slowly. I’ve written back stories for Honey Valley (the main setting) and the Magetan religion (part of the elven culture). I’ve also created character sheets for anybody with a first and last name so that I can keep their extreme tendencies in check. I’ve taken several trips to Google Land so that I can learn more about the psychological aspects of my story. But as far as editing and rewriting the actual novel goes, that shit hasn’t happened yet. I’m taking plotting instead of pantsing more seriously this time around and I don’t want to fuck up on an apocalyptic scale like I did last time.

But here’s where my creative crossroads come into play. You see, the reason progress has been so slow on Beautiful Monster is because of all the mental exhaustion I’ve been experiencing throughout the year, which I owe to autism burnout, schizophrenic avolition, and the world being a general cluster-fuck of tiring news. Any little bursts of energy I do have are spent on other projects such as book and movie reviews, poetry, shorts, etc. I wear a lot of hats as a writer, but I only have one head. The creative process would be much easier if I was a hydra or a hellhound.

Beautiful Monster is a long-term project that will extend beyond draft number four. The last time I published something tangible on paper was in 2020, when I submitted Emilio & Marigold to the Hollow Hills anthology Raining Cats & Dogs. The last time I published something on my own was in 2018 and that was my third poetry collection Lunatic Justice. I’m not saying I’m in a rush to continue my legacy of publishing, but if Beautiful Monster isn’t going to see the light of day for a long time, it’d be nice to have something to tide me over until then.

I have a backlog of short stories and poems that could easily fit into another collection. I have 78 fantasy shorts, 69 nonfiction shorts, 83 contemporary shorts, and 252 poems that are just sitting in my folder doing nothing. Shorts and poems are less time-consuming to edit and rewrite since there’s less to keep track of than a full-length novel. But I also realize that some of these shorts and poems have aged poorly throughout the years and shouldn’t go into any collection whatsoever. Hell, Keith Richards drinking a jug of expired milk has aged more gracefully than some of my creative writing pieces. 

The best thing to do about this backlog is to hire beta readers to look them over and see which pieces will make the cut and which ones won’t. I’m also keeping my ears open to any suggestions on how the ones that have aged badly can become the best versions of themselves they can be. Don’t kill a bad story; fix it. But as I look at the prices of some of these services, I’m wondering how much it would cost to do fifty micro-stories or a hundred poems in succession, which is how these collections are going to be packaged. Would I be charged per poem or story? If so, how much would fifty or a hundred of them cost if there’s a minimum price? And now I feel like I’m a contestant on the Price Is Right. I better not overbid or else those sad horns will blast in my ears.

Here’s what I need advice on. Should I reduce the number of hats I wear as a writer and focus specifically on Beautiful Monster or should I take a minor detour and put out another collection just to keep my workload from becoming monotonous? Ultimately, it is my decision on what I want to do, but it’d be nice to hear other opinions as well. What do you guys think?