Astute, even obsessive readers might realize that yesterday’s post has vanished altogether, that my musings of a dreary Thursday afternoon have been lost to the aether.

Let me be candid, friends: said musings sucked, and were largely inspired by my wish to be out of the living room and in the office, as my boo was dealing with the onset of a migraine that she thought she could avoid with a little quiet, darkness, and solitude.

There was the germ of an interesting takeaway in that post–that it’s not unwise to plan for the prospect of success now and then–but it was mired in the cobwebbery of less pointed noodling. Let us think now of a web made of noodles and move on.

One of the great gifts that comes with something like maturity is the ability to recognize when something hasn’t worked, isn’t working, or will not work. The turning of the year is a decent time to think about such matters meta-existentially, but yesterday’s writing made for a respectable specimen of a Modest Mistake.

What does one do with a Modest Mistake? In this case, deletion seemed like an ideal option. One of the perils of the modern era is the tendency to double down, to commit to errors more vehemently instead of owning up to them, dealing with them, and moving on. Doubling down is how more Major Mistakes are born in many cases.

It’s a good thing to think about as I prepare to make space for a few new shirts in my dresser and decide what I want to do with some fiction currently in circulation. Half of the Art of Failure is Letting Go, which is one of the harder things we have to do in this life. The other Half is Being Honest, which is generally a little bit harder.

In the case of the dresser, it will be a minor thing. There are tee shirts I have not worn in all of 2024, and which might in fact not even fit any longer. Weeding through them should be easy, all matters of nostalgic attachment notwithstanding. I’ll need to weed through my Fiction Submission Tracking File, too, however, which will involve a little more existential investment.

In one case, for instance, I must face the terror of Follow-Up Messages, which will oblige me to pester a couple of publishers who have held on to manuscripts for a good, long time. It’s a tricksy epistolary genre, as one tends to be about 15% politely inquiring and 85% apologetic, but it can be a needful one in terms of planning for the future.

The more fraught element of Tracking File spelunking is deciding which stories need to be rewritten and which ones might need to be retired. One story, for instance, was written specifically for an anthology focused on clowns, and the editor kindly wrote to inform me that they’d already accepted a similar story for that collection. That’s one I can file away and tinker with over time. Another story of mine called “Leavings” has a zesty cosmic horror premise, so I’ll need to stow away the idea and mull over ways I might execute it better. And a couple stories have been rejected a dozen times apiece for reasons unknown. That’s not an especially high number in the realm of writing, but it’s one that gives a critter cause for pause.

With writing, happily, one can always delete or revise. Sunk costs tend to bedevil most writers, and it’s tough to know when to give up when subjective matters of “fit” are on the table. I try not to make the same mistake too often, but Being Honest about the quality of one’s own writing involves fairly rare frames of mind. I’m not in that frame this very second, but I might be after I shower, or after I visit the grocery store.

And that’s how one attempts to remedy a bland, noodlesome blog post, at any rate. I also need to reach out to my BackerKit followers this weekend with a Chancers update as well, so let’s hope this confessional post has worked the tedium out of my system a bit.