There's way too much in this video to watch the whole thing, unless you're a nerd like me, in which case, you'll probably watch it several times all the way through.
As I have.
I'm following his writing advice, as he talks about starting at 2:33.
He says that, for him, writing novels right away was a danger. I'd already written my first one by the time I saw this, but I agree with him on the importance of the writing of short stories, that it's good training for a writer. By the time you've written 52 short stories, if you don't know how to write well by then, something's definitely wrong.
So far, I'm up to seven finished short stories (that I still have). There were about five others first drafts I wrote, but I lost them - somewhere in my papers, somewhere in my computer. A hard lesson. When you write, make sure you've got your work saved in several different places. A couple of those stories were really beautiful - I miss them.
The first one was an auction piece for a friend at my church - a children's story, with her daughter as the hero of the story. My youngest daughter did the drawings, and I glued the drawings onto the pages where the story was written - a real professional job, let me tell you.
The second was another gift to my sister and her family for Christmas - wrote a fairy tale with all of them in it. Very fun. Those will probably never see daylight again, unless (with any luck) I'm dead by then.
Some others followed, some real stinkers - a bad redo on a Edgar Allen Poe story, a really bad character piece that came out after David Bowie died, an experimental romance in which I used no pronouns at all (just to see if I could do it, and it almost sorta worked).
The one I'm preparing for next week's story is also an experimental piece. I got the idea from my youngest son, who has really great ideas, but not the patience yet to write them down and work them out. Still hoping for him, though. If engineering doesn't work out for him, then maybe writing...what am I saying???
I guess that's what I'm saying.
I fully intend on writing those 52 short stories Ray Bradbury recommends...although there's no way I can do it at the clip he recommends. One per week? Written AND edited? I do enjoy having a life.
So far, it seems to take me about 2-3 weeks to crank out one finished story, and I'm happy with that speed. So if it takes me 2-3 years to finish this particular challenge, I'm good with that.
My larger story is providing most of my motivation at the moment, but I'm not ruling out other inspiration taking me in different directions.
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