You Should Write Short Stories

You Should Write Short Stories

It’s strange to me how people are increasingly consuming short-form content like TikTok videos or Instagram Reels, but won’t read short stories. Some flash fiction is short enough to read in a few minutes, but the desire for novels and series of books instead of short stories is probably an effect of the decline of the magazine. This doesn’t mean authors shouldn’t write short stories. Some incredibly famous authors like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Kurt Vonnegut used to have their short stories published in magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction, Playboy, or Collier’s. Even modern authors like Ted Chiang have found success with their short stories despite the limited audience. I started out my journey as an author by writing short stories just to get the ideas out of my head. These stories focused on a singular concept and explored it in a few thousand words. A lot of speculative fiction revolves around a dense exploration of “what if” scenarios...
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How to pivot as a writer

If 2020 has taught me anything, it's how to be flexible. It's quite difficult to predict what will happen in a year, let alone one with such a massive global event like COVID-19. Fortunately, writing is a solitary activity, so writing new stories isn't terribly difficult when I'm forced to stay home. Unfortunately, this pandemic has been such a historical moment that it's difficult to ignore it in anything written in the present day. While I had plans to write a rather dramatic story set in the real world and in present times, I'm now considering moving it out a few years to gain some distance from COVID. Hopefully, this whole mess will be done by the time I start writing this book, and I'll have a bit of hindsight to help mold the characters and plot. So far, I've already gained a few key points that I want to integrate into the story that will certainly be familiar to anyone...
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Why you should NEVER throw away a good idea

When I first heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I thought it sounded like quite the novel idea: commit a full month to putting words to paper and by the end of it you have a first draft of a book. While my first year was quite the challenge, once I had completed it, I knew it was in the realm of possibilities. Even though writing 50,000 words in 30 days is a challenge, I was already starting to think of ideas on how to break up this daunting task into smaller, more manageable chunks. One of my ideas was to write about my experiences on Colorado’s 14,000+ ft. peaks (known locally as “the Fourteeners”). Since there are 58 named peaks above 14,000 feet, I would have to only write 863 words about each mountain to accomplish the NaNoWriMo challenge. As a result, I will be writing the first draft of the aforementioned “Fourteener” book this November. Ideas are easy,...
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