I dug in.
I figured that challenging myself to write one short story per month would be exactly that: a challenge. And two months and two stories in, I’m finding it to be a comfortable one.
A few years ago when I set out to write a novel in my newfound state of semi-retirement-slash-unemployment, I spent a couple months world building. I had a grain of an idea but wanting to focus on a proper character-driven novel in a quasi-science fiction setting, I had long decided I couldn’t just sit down and start writing. No pantsing that.
World building can be a whole discipline in itself. One can get too easily lost in fleshing out elaborate imaginary places for your beloved characters to find themselves existing.
I locked in, though. I built an alternate reality at the edge of my own, fabricated a make-believe city mashed together out of the two places in the world where I spend most of my time, gave it a new name and mixed in a paranormal science-fiction vibe.
—then I wrote the better part of three novels there.
It is within the world of that same city where I have been penning my short stories.
Short story is a curious art form and so much different than writing a novel, and having a world that is pre-built in my own mind—and previously experienced through a fiction writers eyes in three previous novels—has been immensely helpful. Two or three people encounter something strange and unusual in the mundane day-to-day of life there, and it makes for ready fodder to build an interesting tale.
I’ve penned two stories so far, have my third queued up, and am getting my head around an editing plan for each. I’ve wrapped this challenge in many things: habit and public accountability, sure, but making it part of my larger project, too.
Writing shorter works becomes an act that not only further fleshes out my world for future novels but becomes artifacts in their own right.
Terms FROm this POSt
- pantser
- I the writerly sense, one who storms ahead writing without much of a plan, mostly just a direction. By the seat of their pants, as it were.
- science fiction
- I write this stuff. Or, I try to. Putting a finger on a definition for how to define this genre that encompasses everything from intergalactic alien space battles to insidious stories of near-future techno-dystopias… well, that’s more difficult. I read and watch a ton of this though, so you’ll almost certainly get some references on this project.
- semi-retirement
- Not quite working, not quite ready to throw in the towel on a professional career: this is secret code for mastering the final boss of wage slave capitalism and playing the game for fun from this point on.
- short story
- Usually averaging about three thousand to even ten thousand words, a work of short fiction is an exploration of a big self-contained idea in a small space, leaning into clear and intentional writing with an eye for literary economy.
- vibe
- There are many words that try to encapsulate the ineffable feeling or aura of a thing or an idea. Vibe is yet another comfortable and trendy stab at trying to pin down a definition for something that is hard to define about those very things. It often implies an alignment, positive or negative, with the feeling given off by the subject of the vibe.
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