12 Lessons Learned From Writing Short – From the Writers in the Storm Blog

by John Peragine

In the last year, short story competitions have helped focus my writing. I read many short stories in elementary school and always enjoyed them, but I believed they were some condensed form of a larger work. I never thought of short-form writing as something special on its own.

Fast forward to adulthood and the beginning of my own writing journey.

Over the years, I have written short stories, but mostly as a writing exercise. To me it was practice for long-form. I believe I was half right.

When I wrote the stories, I never really thought about word counts, genre, or anything else- I just wrote, and when I was done, I might tinker with it a bit, but then I would set it aside. It was not until the past year that I began to realize how wrong this was and how much I was missing.

I am a big Neil Gaiman fan and began reading his short stories, along with his book, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances. In it he explains his process of writing the stories.

I was intrigued. Each story was the perfect length. They weren’t shortened versions of books at all, they were perfect miniature works of brilliance.

In my hubris, I thought I could try my hand at it.

In my typical (unfortunately too typical) fashion, I decided to try my hand at some serious short story writing. I entered the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition. It was one of the most frustrating and awesome experiences in my life, and I believe it is has helped improve my writing.

The lessons I learned from my experience:

1. You must enter to learn the lessons.

Read the rest of this post HERE.