How To Write 10 Short Stories in 10 Weeks
I started 2020 doing a final edit of my next novel and preparing to start the daunting task of querying literary agents. I’d been working on this particular novel off and on for almost ten years, so I was exhausted creatively.
Always eager to be writing something, I started to ask myself, “What’s next?” I don’t have another novel in me. Not yet. Besides working on query letters and a novel synopsis, I was eager to at least work on something new.
Around this time, I started reading a collection of short stories by one of my favorite Southern authors, Truman Capote, and it got me to thinking about the short story art form. Back in my college days, I loved reading short stories in my literary classes, and I filled black and white Mead journals with short stories in grade school.
It has been years since I’ve written a short story, so I decided to challenge myself to write ten short stories in ten weeks. One of the reasons I’d probably avoided the short story form is because I can’t think of anything to write about, so I knew this was going to be a very interesting challenge to take on. To get started, I needed a topic or something to write about.
Around this time, I read a post on Medium about how to submit short stories to be considered for various Chicken Soup for the Soul books. On their website…