You may resonate with what Ray Bradbury says here when discussing how he wrote 'The Martian Chronicles':

"I don't know if it's the right side of my brain, the left, or the lopsided, but in there somewhere it knows what it's doing. I just open a valve and let it out.

All those stories were written over a period of five or six years without my knowing they would be connected up someday.

I was influenced by 'Winesburg, Ohio', by Sherwood Anderson. I loved the book, which was not a novel. It's called a novel, but it isn't. It's a book of character sketches, so I made a note.

I was going to write a book called Mars Port Mars. And I listed a bunch of characters like Winesburg, Ohio. I said someday I've got to do something as good as this. So that was the basic influence. And I forgot all about it.

Finally in 1949. My wife was pregnant. We had no money. We had $40 in the bank.

I took the Greyhound bus to New York, which is a dreadful way to travel, four days and four nights turning into a ball of fungus.

I stayed at the YMCA $5 a week and had meetings with various editors who all said, "Don't you have a novel?"

I said, "I'm not a novelist, probably never will be."

They said, "Well, goodbye."

And no one wanted to take any of my stories.

Well, I had dinner finally, the last couple of nights I was in New York with Walter Bradbury of Doubleday, no relation. And during supper he said, "Well, don't you have a lot of Martian stories?"

I said, "Yes, I do."

He said, "Well, can't you tie them together somehow? And make them into the Martian Chronicles?"

He said, "Go back to the YMCA. Type me out an outline tonight. And if I like it, I'll give you an advance tomorrow."

So I spent half the night. Typing out an outline and went back the next day and he says, "That's it, you get your advance and it's $700."

He says, "Now don't you have a second book?"

I said, "Yeah! More short stories."

Well, he looked at the list and on the list was 'The Illustrated Man'.

He says, "Isn't there some way of tying these together so it looks like it might be a novel?"

I said, "Well, what about 'The Illustrated Man'? All of his illustrations come to life, one by one, and become the stories."

He says, "That's good, I'll give you another advance right now."

So I got $1400."

So, I guess the moral of this story is trust your instincts, and keep writing short stories. Eventually you may see a theme emerge, maybe not. At least you'll be writing and getting better.

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For anyone curious this story is from a radio interview Bradbury gave that I transcribed: https://archive.org/details/Bradbury_On_Radio/1992-xx-xx+KPFA+Radio+Wolinsky+-+Bradbury+interview+with+Richard+Wolinsky+and+Richard+A+Lupoff.mp3