Professional Writer & Editor
I've got a new way for readers to connect with me and take a peak inside my writing practice. It's an author newsletter called, Writing Skins, and it's a look back at through my writing journals over the past few years, dating back to before I even sold my first story.
I searched the stacks and asked friends what their recommendations were for writers studying mesmerizing settings and descriptive writing around emotions, food, gore, and/or nature. Here's what they said.
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.
'To Carve Home' is one of those stories I needed to tell. I needed to talk about trauma and home and becoming your own person in a way that featured monsters and fantastical creatures and a world without fear.
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.
Aigner Loren Wilson 