Over the weekend I clocked in about 16 hours remodeling my house, so I'm lucky enough to be pulling off this blog post, though I can't promise much in terms of length and cohesion (ladies...).
I was having a think about writing, marketing, the use of this blog, and other independent author-esque things. I want to have more opportunities to showcase my writing, but that is difficult due to the fact that my first manuscript is 100,000+ words and my second novel is already 30,000+ words, and neither one is completely ready to be published. As such, I recalled that some of the best works that I read while growing up were short stories, an artwork in and of themselves.
In my mind, short stories make a lot of sense to the emerging author. Yes, they require a different style of writing and they could potentially take time away from your primary work (assuming your primary work is in full length novels). However, there is a great appeal in this challenge, and not a lot to lose. Learning to write short stories helps a writer to form a tighter narrative, to develop characters quickly, and to be as descriptive as possible in as little space as possible. It boils down to the core details; being able to leave everything in is easy, but paring down a work is hard.
My thought is that I (or anyone else who would give it a go) would work on short stories whenever the opportunity presented itself, such as those evenings where I'm banging my head against the wall, unable to work on my larger manuscript, stuck in a rut without advancing the plot. The change of pace and freedom to try new things would shake things up, and likely only help me when I turn back to work on my full length stuff. Moreover, I think it would be rather nice to post the short stories on my site, allowing interested readers to get an idea of my writing style and genre, scoring marketing points as well. And any stories I don't like are just as easily wadded up and thrown out, no damage done to my larger novels.
As with anything new, I'll need to set some time aside to give it a go, and that's always a challenge with everything else going on, but I'm rather keen on this one, and hopefully over the next couple weeks, I'll get some snippets posted and see where things go from there.
A.C. Harrison
Support indie authors! Like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
I was having a think about writing, marketing, the use of this blog, and other independent author-esque things. I want to have more opportunities to showcase my writing, but that is difficult due to the fact that my first manuscript is 100,000+ words and my second novel is already 30,000+ words, and neither one is completely ready to be published. As such, I recalled that some of the best works that I read while growing up were short stories, an artwork in and of themselves.
In my mind, short stories make a lot of sense to the emerging author. Yes, they require a different style of writing and they could potentially take time away from your primary work (assuming your primary work is in full length novels). However, there is a great appeal in this challenge, and not a lot to lose. Learning to write short stories helps a writer to form a tighter narrative, to develop characters quickly, and to be as descriptive as possible in as little space as possible. It boils down to the core details; being able to leave everything in is easy, but paring down a work is hard.
My thought is that I (or anyone else who would give it a go) would work on short stories whenever the opportunity presented itself, such as those evenings where I'm banging my head against the wall, unable to work on my larger manuscript, stuck in a rut without advancing the plot. The change of pace and freedom to try new things would shake things up, and likely only help me when I turn back to work on my full length stuff. Moreover, I think it would be rather nice to post the short stories on my site, allowing interested readers to get an idea of my writing style and genre, scoring marketing points as well. And any stories I don't like are just as easily wadded up and thrown out, no damage done to my larger novels.
As with anything new, I'll need to set some time aside to give it a go, and that's always a challenge with everything else going on, but I'm rather keen on this one, and hopefully over the next couple weeks, I'll get some snippets posted and see where things go from there.
A.C. Harrison
Support indie authors! Like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
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