8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Tag: short stories

Chapter List

  • Short Stories Branch · Part Two

    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. 

  • Short Stories Branched · Part One

    As October arrives and I’m just a few short weeks away from turning fifty—five-oh—and of all things to be worried about, I’ve been thinking about my approach to writing fiction.

    I’ve got a half dozen half-written novels stored away on the very computer that I’m writing these words, dangling tales parked on my hard drive and glued in place with countless good intentions to finish each and every one of them.

    Now look, the problem with making some big public proclamation is that there is just as good a chance that I’ll trip and land on my face as cross that distant finish line with my hands triumphantly up in the air. I write for another project all about running, and the thing about running is that it is all about setting out one step at a time and taking each activity, each race, each recovery as it’s own thing—and occasionally you literally do trip and land on your face (or smash into the trunk of a large tree with your shoulder, but that’s another story)—but then you get up and keep running.

    I have a goal for my fifties and it’s something of a marathon of short fiction writing.

    See, all the while that I’ve been accumulating half-written novels, I’ve also been penning an occasional short story. They’ve always been side projects.

    Short stories are not just an important medium in their own right but (going back to that running metaphor) training reps for writing fitness. They train us to think about plots that resolve in a meaningful way. They train us to build daily stamina for nurturing characters. They train us to write good, cohesive fiction.

    So about that goal… Starting in October, my last full month of my forties, I’m going to write and post a single short story. And then I’m gonna write and post another one in November. And another in December… and, well, I’m just going to keep writing a new story every month.

    We’ll try that for a year. 

    And maybe it’ll build a new habit for my fifties. 

    Or maybe I’ll trip and land right on my face. But I gotta try.

  • Short Fiction

    I’ve always had a space in my heart for short fiction.

    Short story is a form that is often under appreciated, and I would chalk this up to a couple strange reasons.

    First, I think it’s a value proposition. I figure it probably costs about the same amount to publish, ship, and market a twenty page book—something that will take a customer a lunch-break to read—as it does a five hundred page novel. Thus, they cost the same at the store. We get around this by publishing anthologies, but I think the whole equation often breaks down for people standing in a bookstore: buying a bunch of small stories glued together in one paperback, or a whole novel—most people, I wager, pick the novel.

    Second, the mental investment. We do like strong characters and getting to know imaginary people through the course of a five hundred page-long story. Ideas are important, too, but my experience with short story is that it often leans more into exploring an idea than it does exploring a fleshed out character—that’s the realm of novels with the space to do that well. It’s not impossible in a short story, but I think you can only create so much personality out of ten thousand words. People like people, so I think we tend to gravitate towards novels about people over stories about ideas.

    Just my speculation.

    In the coming months I want to write more short fiction, I think, filling that gap in my heart with explorations of big ideas and crazy concepts. 

    I fully expect it to be under appreciated.