Putting together files for yearly patreon story collection. Know it's weird to say, but I'm always SURPRISED that a lot of these are very good???? 🤣 The speed and pace at which I write a short story every month makes me think they must of course be terrible, but there's some good shit in here.
And of course I've had two short story collections that compile some of these, so other people think they are pretty good too! 😆
Meet Me in the Future: amzn.to/4cagr5H
Future Artifacts: amzn.to/3VOWn2X
I kept up short story a month through burnout for 1) MONEY, obvs. Mama's got back taxes to pay 2) Shorter work was easier for me to keep in my head all at once; I could still see story structure across 1000 words 3) I genuinely enjoy writing and getting a tangible OBJECT, after. A complete story.
Short fiction is very good practice for learning structure, for me. With novels, I can't write as many beginning/middle/ends all the way through. With short fiction, whether 500 or 10k, I could cultivate the discipline of getting from A to B to C (and final resonance) over and over and over again
The trouble with short fiction is that the going rates for these stories is so abysmally low. I charge $125 an hour for freelance work. Spoilers: I'm not making $125 an hour for fiction writing 🤣. But through Patreon, it's a LOT closer to that rate. Which makes writing short economically viable.
As a bonus, I get the active practice of learning the discipline of structure, of getting in and out of a story quickly, of giving just enough detail for readers to paint in the rest, of ensuring we loop back to our beginning to find the resonance we get at the end.
I've had anthologies come to me with what are considered decent pro rates, and I can't justify giving them a truly "original" story for less than $2k. It makes no economic sense. But I CAN give them a patreon story, which has been seen by less than 1k people. That's the best I can do.
How can you knock out a short story so fast? Do you outline or ar you an extremely efficient pantser?
Seriously asking cause I need to figure out how to be more efficient, it can take me 3 months - year for a short story.
