First Short Story: Lessons Learned

Not posh or profound

Introduction:

I’ve never written a ‘lessons learned’ post before, but after my first experience writing a ‘full-fledged and publicly shared short story’ I thought I’d “put a bow on it”. I’m taking a little break from fiction for the moment, but not from writing!

Summary:

• Weeks to write the story: 15

• Number of words written: 20,842

• Genre: Contemporary drama/mystery

Rant:

• The entire writing process flowed after I rejected our socially constructed definition of “success”. I released the expectation of writing a “good story” and decided to write a story; I feel quality is a nebulous concept and fixating on it is a source of confusion. 

So, here’s what I learned:

1. In my writing, I’d like to further release my hold of ‘success’ and ‘quality’. These characteristics may be byproducts of my works, but I will not seek them. Removing ambition from the process is my key to writing, because my writing thrives in autonomy and ambition distorts my healthy writing ecosystem.

2. Writing is fun! I’m not sure I’ve ever derived more contentment from any other professional endeavor. That doesn’t mean I want to be a professional writer, though I probably will write professionally in the future. It definitely means I need to continue redesigning my idea of ‘how to make money to survive’ philosophy. 

3. Slow pace writing is hard for me. I don’t mean the pace of the story, I mean the thoughtfulness of my writing. I’m not sure if it’s because I start to approach the process intellectually which makes my writing clumsy, cumbersome, and more exhausting. Instinctual writing was more enjoyable and less taxing, this probably points to my low maturity as a writer. 

4. Writing takes discipline, more discipline than I realized before I started this story. There were aspects of the writing process I found easy, like sitting down to write. Other parts of the process I found extremely hard, like editing my work. I’m sure you noticed typos in my story. Initially I thought, ‘oh, there are different buckets and each bucket has its own ‘discipline allotment’’. Then I realized that wasn’t true. If the writing flowed, then I had more will power left over to edit. So for me, there was one big bucket of discipline, but if writing sucked up too much of my will power I was left with error riddled prose. 

5. My approach lacks balance. I wrote this story with no framework and definitely no outline. I would write a chapter and my imagination would write the next chapter over a six day period. There are aspects of this approach I enjoyed, but I can’t help but think there would have been a bit more nuance to my story if I built a framework to fill in, sort of like guardrails for my imagination. A way to add a bit of structure to my flow. 

6. I felt creatively confined writing for an audience (even a small one). So, I forgot the audience and I liked that, a lot. I started a new project completely offline that I’d like to release in 12 - 18 months, and it feels liberating. I have another short story in mind that I’ll be writing on Substack concurrently with my offline project, but now I understand how to approach my story without trying to impress anyone. 

7. I prefer to write outdoors, no internet, no desk, and no faux lighting. I love writing in nature, in the sun, in the grass, swatting flies, eyeing bees, in earshot of the birds, the chipmunks, and the squirrels. It was just so much easier! I find desk writing boring, so I’m going to try and avoid it as often as possible. 

8. My very first short story was a smashing success, as far as I’m concerned.