One of my first successes as a writer was in high school. I wrote what one psychologist described as “a very convincing suicide”. It was entitled “Who is Going To Feed My Fish?” and it was the thoughts of a man from the time he picks up a gun until it goes off. In my junior year, it appeared in our school’s literary magazine and I did a dramatic reading that brought the house down.
I wrote more my senior year, but nothing that touched how well that had been received. I put down writing for a long time, picked it back up, and started contemplating how I was going to make this how I made my living. The money, I expected, was in novels.
Novels are what get turned into movies. Novels are what come to mind when you think of the great works of literature. There are poet laureates, renowned biographers, outstanding screenwriters, and of course famous novelists.
I don’t even know there’s a name for a short story specialist.
One day I sat down and finally started working on an idea that I thought would turn into my first novel. I told my story. I was proud of it. It was, however, a short story. A mere ten thousand words. Technically a “novelette”. Definitely not a novel.
Later, I discovered NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know what that is, National Novel Writing Month is a collective project in which writers encourage each other to write fifty thousand words in the span of the thirty days of November. I tried it a couple of times and didn’t get very far, but once I got a full fifty thou down. I was ecstatic. Finally I had my novel.
Then, I checked how many pages that was. The answer was not enough.
I reached out to an author I admired who I knew sometimes answered emails from his fans, Stephen Brust. I asked what his works were. A lot of his stories are on the thinner side and I could usually blow through them in a day.
He said ninety thousand was the standard, eighty thousand was fine, he’d have no issue handing in a seventy thousand word manuscript, but fifty thousand did not a novel make.
I threw that one in the proverbial drawer. Maybe one day I’ll come back to it.
Around this time, the ebook market was opening up. Chez Bezos was making it possible for authors to self-publish with ease. There were people turning their “one day” into “right now” and I wanted in. I still didn’t have a novel, though.
I turned back to short stories. I had a number that I’d written on one of my old social media platforms. I had that ten thousand word bit that I could offer. I decided to offer a short story collection. A sampler of sorts. In fact, I’d do two: one that was comprised of stories that occurred in the world we knew and one that happened in the realms of sci-fi and fantasy. I decided I would, kind of as a gimmick, offer ten stories for ninety-nine cents and call it “Ten Cent Tales”.
I was very proud of Just Next Door, the first collection. I put it up in August of 2012. I was so interested in promoting it, that I gave it away for free on New Year’s. I got a ton of downloads. I got a review or two. However, I had nothing else to offer; advertising only really works if you have something to advertise.
I got a few sales, probably from friends and family more than anything, but by June I had a new collection: The Gears of Strange Machines. Again, I was very happy with my work. These two were never intended to be what launched me into professional writing, but samplers to get people into what I had to put out. Again, I got good reviews but nothing really took off.
I wrote a novel after that, which was a NaNoWriMo project that I worked on for months after; it topped one hundred thousand words. I also wrote a sequel. I offered my two collections now and again as freebies to get people to try my work. I also got some hard copies to sell to people who weren’t into ebooks.
In 2019, I got to do a convention. I brought copies of everything including my shorts and I sold a copy or two, but that was about it. I was told that people liked the ideas and the pitch of my short story collections, but they were thin.
I went back to the drawing board. I pulled stories from both collections and shuffled them to make Evil Works, which I released right before the lockdown. At forty-thousand words or so, it was not a novel-length work
NaNoWriMo has come back around and I wasn’t sure what to work on. I don’t do it every year and I thought about skipping it this time. I have some half-started things that would be suitable, but I just wasn’t sure what I had the energy for.
Then I looked at my Reddit history. See, on Reddit, there’s a place where people post writing prompts.
I already had thirteen stories averaging about a thousand words apiece. If I could add another fifty thousand words then shuffle it back down, I’d have a new collection.
I dove into the project and, halfway through the month, I’m almost done. I’ve never written this much this fast. I look up the sub, choose one or three prompts, then play around with them. I petitioned my friends in real life and got a couple of juicy ones. I even took inspiration off of a Tik-Tok personality.
One of the best parts about this project is that I’ve fallen in love with short stories again. These bite-sized bits of madness are a wonderful playground for outrageous concepts that would be hard to keep going convincingly for three hundred pages. If I can create a world that makes sense for four, then once you read it I can wipe the slate and then give you an entirely new world. I get to experiment, get weird, and take things to the edge of the absurd.
It’s not just been a productive month so far. It’s been damn fun.
Once I get through the last few thousand words and the last two or three tales, the work of revision and editing begins. After that, I need to winnow it down. I want to keep it to fifty to fifty-five thousand words, somewhere over two hundred pages or so. I cannot wait to hand the finished project off to the world and see what people think (if I don’t convince myself it’s all trash first. Spoiler: It’s not all trash.)
Whether it sells or not, I am grateful to those who offered inspiration. Whether this helps me close the gap between “published author” and “successful author” or not, I will have enjoyed this just for the pure pleasure of writing it.
Maybe one day they’ll call a Short Story Specialist a “Stephens”. That would be kind of awesome.
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