Professional Writer & Editor
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.
Ignyte nom, short story writing and editing, reading, and more!
I'm at this really interesting point in my career, where I don't want to miss anything, in a sense. I'm doing what I have always wanted to do: be a professionally published working writer who tells a good story well. Like I look back over the places I've published and worked with over the past few years and am pretty flabbergasted.
Entering year five of the blog (!!!) and with a lot of my history as a writer stored here, I'm always wondering how to change or update the blog to meet my life.
Monthly check-ins are easy to do, but year-end wrap-ups are hard. I write and publish a lot in various markets, so it's not as though I don't have links to share. It's just that when I look back over my year, the amount of stories I've sold and how much I've published is only a small part of my writing career. More happens behind the scenes than I think I will ever fully share.
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.
Stories, stories, stories, and bread! But mostly story news about my novella, novelette, and short stories.
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.
So, I thought I ended July with a bang, but August ended up being my best month for short story sales in 2022 so far. In total, I made 3 story sales to top magazines and anthologies in the month. I'm more daring and wild in these newer stories. And I love it.
Aigner Loren Wilson 