Professional Writer & Editor
In 2024, my intention is to write more thought-provoking stories and to get there, I'll be doing a hell of a lot of learning, reading, and writing. Read on to learn about all 10 of my writing goals this year. Last updated January 2025
I love writing. It's my lifeblood or my heart pulse; it's the thing that keeps me going. Noodling over a writing problem or coming up with a new story feels like living to me. But when I'm doing it in a community of other writers, it feels like magic.
I'll be doing an AMA over on the sub r/PubTips this Friday, July 7, 2023, from 4 to 6pm PDT/7 to 9pm EDT! While my other AMA was all about fantasy writing, editing, and reading, this one is going to be all about short story writing, editing, selling, submitting, and all things short stories.
The path I took to become a full-time writer, I don't think, is all that unique. But one of the biggest things that helped me was reading posts like this from authors who were where I wanted to be. I've mentioned it before in tons of my craft articles, but I used other authors' careers as a guide map.
I write and edit ... a lot. It's my all-time everyday oxygen-blood. It is what fuels me. Yes, it's also my work, but writing is the thing I would do even if my career was in some other industry. Creating stories and thinking about them ARE the things I do instead of most other things. But it's also something that doesn't just happen.
August is my short story challenge month, where I attempt to write a short story (+1,500-words) every day. I wanted to share how I'm able to write a new story within an hour a majority of days.
On index cards sometimes just on a dry erase board or poster board, writers build a story just by its scenes. Instead of writing it out word by word, they draw or sketch it with images or words. Sometimes it'll just be something as simple as 'The Bad Man Dies' and some sketch of how the scene should look or take place.
Learn how to analyze and troubleshoot your novels by organizing them into a spreadsheet to create a cohesive narrative.
Are you optimizing your space for success?
Examples of pitches that have landed me up to $28,000
Aigner Loren Wilson 