Writing - it's a process

Today I finished the frist draft of the first short story for which I’ve ever finished a draft.

The main problems I run in to when I try to write creatively are my two-paragraph attention span and my unbelievably high standards.

I blame the fact that I tend to read a fair amount, and I a fair amount of what I read tends to be good literature. Each book I read tends to be in a slightly different genre, or at least approaches writing in a relatively different style than the one before it. And each book inspires me - so I tend to want to write within whatever genre I’m currently reading.

That’s a problem because there’s no way I can write even a short story in less time than it takes to read a novel.

Since most of the books I read are actually pretty good, I end up holding my own writing to ridiculously the standards of the more successful (or at least better spoken) published authors. I also constantly try to sound like Jacob Brown. Neither of these are very reachable goals, but then—why try for less than I want?

Regardless, it’s exciting to have finished putting down events in ridiculously ugly english for my first short story. Over the next several months I’ll have to go through it at least six million times, change the plot, rename the characters, and generally rethink my diction.