Just finished my fifth short story! OMG – does that feel good:)
This one really could be a novel, but I’m not quite ready to write one yet. I feel like I need to get a few more short stories under my belt – I’m definitely getting better with each one.
There’s a lot of elements at play when you’re writing – the story of course is the main thing. But I love learning how to tell it through the mechanics of language – first, second or third person? Sentence structure? Dialog? Linear or nonlinear use of time? Hyphen, comma, or perhaps semicolon? Character development? Finding a voice for each character?
Here’s another cool thing I’ve discovered: Sometimes the story isn’t about what you originally thought it was about. Like in this one, I started out thinking the focus would be on one thing, but by the time I was through it turned out to be something else entirely. The characters kind of showed me what it was really about as I wrote it.
It turns out that it’s about children, something I know fuck-all about. I just listened to what they told me – seriously, I’m not kidding.