I was reading an article recently:

How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published?

It’s an interesting article, mostly about tips to self-assess how close you might be to reaching publishing success. But there was a quote from Chuck Sambuchino near the beginning that struck a chord with me.

If you think the story has a problem, it does—and any story with a problem is not ready.

I do this. It’s so easy to sweep that pesky problem in your story under the rug and convince yourself that no one will see it. It’s obscure. It’s not important.

You know what? They always see it. If you see it, other people will too.

So, my resolution: Do not fib to myself about problems in my stories. Admit that they are there and fix them before I send them out into the world. No more lazy, “90% is good enough” for me.

While I’m on the subject of interesting articles… I also read this theory by Cory Doctorow about how we bring characters to life.

Cory Doctorow: Where Characters Come From

He asserts that we all have a people simulator in our head and that we are constantly running simulations to allow ourselves to explore how people might react to us and to help us determine the best way to approach them. We do this not only with people that we know, or have recently met, but also with characters that are fictional creations, either ours or someone else’s. He asserts that these characters come to life in our simulator, and the more we simulate them, the more we learn about them and the more accurate our simulator becomes. The more accurate our simulations become, the more life-like the character becomes. Fascinating stuff and a great way to think about characters.

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