Over the past eight years or so, I have revisited the short stories I wrote in the early to mid 2000s and, if I thought their core concepts still had merit, tried to rewrite them to a publishable standard. This has paid dividends in a few cases; ‘The Larval Stage’, ‘Starting from Scratch’ and ‘Mere Symptoms of Living’ were all stories I wrote prior to becoming a published author.
In recent weeks, however, I have had a volley of rejections from markets that typically at least shortlist my stories. I soon detected a pattern: acceptances were coming for newly written work, while old stories were getting rejected. Some introspection led me to conclude two things. One, the remaining old stories probably weren’t very good. Two, I had been hanging on to them and putting them through the submission process because I was anxious about the dwindling number of stories in my CURRENT folder. In effect, I had been hoarding old stories for fear of having nothing to submit.
Now, I’m no hoarder – in fact, I detest clutter and have no qualms about throwing out things I know I will never use again – so I decided to move any stories that were second-string into my TRUNK folder and use the diminishing CURRENT bullpen as impetus to write fresh material. If I don’t publish anything for twelve months, so what? Better that than sending out substandard stories and praying one gets the nod.