What underpins your story?

Underpinning:
1a solid foundation laid below ground level to support or strengthen a building.
2a set of ideas, motives, or devices which justify or form the basis for something:

I’ve been struggling to complete my novel(s) - Why? If I knew the answer to this question then I could solve the mystery myself.

I love writing. I write because I want to capture an idea that has floated into my conscious mind. Sometimes I wonder if I’m running on empty, perhaps this is why I’m struggling to complete my novel. Again I’m not sure.

I do get distracted and I like to think that I write about different things and yet I know that most of my writing ideas are along similar themes. I write about people and their interaction with the world.

People who have read my work or heard me read it have said that my writing is often charged with emotion.

Short story ideas keep surfacing and I find it far easier to capture these ideas.

For me a short story should be a piece which captures a moment in time. To me, as a writer, there’s completeness in writing a short story.

And sometimes if I’ve portrayed that moment well, the reader may be left wanting more than I have to offer. But perhaps to a reader my short story is more like a taster…

I want to enter one of my newest short stories into a competition and yet I fret that it is not long enough and that it might be too emotional for the judges. At 770 words it is definitely a short story.

So far six people have seen this story; each reaction has been the same. Shock!

It means that I’ve achieved a false sense of security and then delivered the unexpected. The shock factor has not been liked, because it has turned the story on its head, twisted a moment and knocked it out of shape.

Often my short stories do not include a twist, its not my forte. However the response to the latest twist has grabbed my attention. The hard work begins now as I revise my short stories and try to find the missing twists, add them/it to the story so that my work turns the readers head.

I was at the beach last weekend and stood for a while to watch a man build stones into towers, not quite as simple a task as it sounds. He had an immense amount of persistence. Each stone was selected with care and consideration and then positioned and placed, one atop another. If he rushed the stones collapsed and scattered. He was patient the reward was obvious.

So maybe I just need to persist.
Keep writing.
Keep entering competitions.
Keep submitting my work.