Tag Archives: short story

A New Feature: “Read It & Write” Blog Series

How many times have you read a novel and been inspired to work on your own stories? If so, it could be you’re either a writer or someone who wants to write. (Stop wanting, and go write! But read this post first, you may find it helpful.)  J

Let’s talk about short stories. Reading them, writing them, they make me and a lot of other people happy. The best part is that one story can be started and finished in a sitting. Whether you’re tied up in your own projects or between books, a short story can fill a gap between these things like a palette cleanser, or create an experience that’s intense or vastly different from your novel interests. You can read it without investing too much of yourself but still fall under its spell.

My intention with this blog series is to share stories I’ve read, whether I love or hate them, we’ll deal with later. (Yes, I’ve found inspiration in stories I didn’t like.) You may find new authors you’d like to read from this. And, my favorite part, I can turn them into writing prompts.

In each post, I’m going to review the story, what worked or what didn’t, and what drew me in regardless of how I liked the story. I’m going to create a writing prompt from that story that I’ll share with you. Seriously, how many times have you read a story and been inspired to write one yourself on that topic, but you just need to spin it differently?

I’ve wanted to do this for a while and it’s time to dive in. You’ll see Read It & Write posts monthly for now.  Please let me know if you find either the review or prompt helpful, and if you’ve had any writing success with it.

Happy Reading & Writing,

Dawn

back to it…

I wasted a week revising an article into the trash. I haven’t written that many articles, and I thought this one was neat, until I read it aloud. Good concept, spectacularly awful delivery. Note to self: need more non-fiction practice. And with enough time wasted, I moved forward and back to the fiction.

My current projects are first and foremost a short story I’m writing for the Triangulation anthology. Last Contact being the them makes me instantly think Science Fiction, along the lines of a First Contact gone horribly wrong. So I will most definitely NOT be writing that. It is science fiction, but it doesn’t touch aliens. A beautiful city with sculptures and art of glass, streaming colors across the city by day, and capturing the stars by night. Except one woman’s life is about to go horribly horribly wrong. The working title is “Surrender” but I think it’ll change.

I’m also preparing to get back into the novel. To write 40k this month is going to be tough, but maybe not impossible. I might take my laptop on the trip to NY next week, or I might take a notebook and many pens. 🙂 I’m ok with transcription.

Off to torture my characters now.  Hope you’re having a good writing week.

tiger princess… 1st draft done

Yes it’s a crappy first draft, but I like the story. I can fix it. 🙂 But first, I’m going to start on Orchard…

my black violas… in progress

Started the edit for Watering the Black Violas.  The ending is wrong, way wrong, and I might have the wrong POV (3rd vs 1st) but I have to play with it before I know for sure.  This doesn’t look like an easy edit….