Short Story September Update#2

The storytelling collective ‘course’ is delivered as a series of letters. The last letter covered two ideas. The first is about the spectrum of options between planning your story in great details at one end and writing by the seat of your pants at the other. Most of us will naturally be somewhere on that spectrum, but as new writers our method doesn’t have to be fixed. It is worth creating a plan and trying to stick with it, or trying to just write unplanned to see how it goes. The challenge is to find the balance for you, and to accept that this is not a binary division into two camps but a spectrum along which we may all move up and down the scale over time and ideas and attitudes change.

The second idea in the letter was about what to do with your story once it is written. There is an element of self doubt, would anyone what to read what we write, and anxiety over submitting stories to literary journals or publishers. This is something that I don’t have to worry about.

I started from the point where I decided what I wanted to publish, massively underestimated how difficult it would be, and then started writing to meet the brief. Rather than writing stuff and then trying to get it published.

It also helps that I have a self-publishing background, adequate book layout and typography skills, and the knowledge of how to publish on multiple storefronts. I have the concept, and the end goal, it is the bit in the middle I need work on, the bit where I actually do the writing without producing crap.

The final idea is that writing should not be hard. If you are struggling to finish a story then you are more likely to give up on it. We won’t do stuff that is hard or not fun. I think that is important. Life is too short to go looking for more stuff to make us miserable. If your story is fun to write then it will probably be fun to read and therefore a good story.

I like the positive attitude.

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