I started writing fiction with the intent of publishing it in 2010, about the same time my first kid was born. I’m a slow learner, and I didn’t have a road map, so I wasn’t exactly super successful right away; it took me until early 2013 to net my first professional sale.
Six and a half years on from that first pro sale, I’ve made over 100 short fiction sales, and have 56 published short stories to my name — more than half of them in magazines that pay pro rates. I’m a full member of SFWA, (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a professional organization) and I’ve earned just over $8,000 from short fiction.
I say this not to brag, but to contextualize: my success as a short fiction author didn’t come out of nowhere. In between my list of published fiction and the day I decided to try writing fiction for publication are over 1,300 submissions and years of work writing, revising, and improving my craft.
Also because I’ve often wondered if I could have done even better, or gotten to something like success a bit quicker than I did. Which wondering has, in turn, led me to what I hope are useful insights that other people might use.
Make 2021 the Year You Start Writing Fiction
Everybody’s thinking it: 2020 was a crap year. Now that we’re here in the halcyon early days of 2021, what’s something you can do to make the next one better?
If you’ve always dreamed about someone reading a short story you wrote and had published in a magazine, but never knew where to start — or if you tried once, but found it stressful or had too many other commitments — or you’re just scared to try because you might fail (spoiler: failing is part of writing fiction successfully), I invite you to join me in 2021 and give it a shot.
Once a week in January, February, and March, I’m going to share insights I’ve gleaned about writing fiction (and submitting it, and selling it), as well as lessons I’ve learned about how to have a sustainable, successful, and overall fun short fiction career.
Note: “career” here does not mean “full time job.” It’s almost impossible to make a living on short fiction alone, although some people do manage it.
However, writing fiction is fun, successfully selling a story feels great, and most importantly of all there’s a large — and largely wonderful — community of short fiction authors out there just waiting to meet you.
Ready to do this?
Let’s do this!
How to Deal with Writing Advice
There are a whole lot of bloggers and authors out there who are convinced they know The Secret to The One True Way to Be an Author ™. Most of these folks mean well, and are just sharing what worked for them (see also: survivorship bias). According to some of them, though, if you don’t follow their advice and do things their way, you’re either doomed to fail or you’re not a “real” author at all.
There is no One True Way to Be an Author, only the way that works for you.
If you’ve followed one of those latter types in the past and had a bad experience, you might be skeptical about the idea that writing fiction can be fun. So I’ll let you in on my own secret: There is no One True Way to Be an Author, only the way that works for you. There are as many paths to being an author as there are authors (in fact, more!), and the only good writing advice is advice that works for you.
That doesn’t mean you should just ignore advice, of course. It just means to try out what other people have done with an open mind. If it works for you? Great! You have one more strategy to add to your planning book. If it doesn’t? No sweat: move on; try something else.
A Free Online Course in Writing Fiction
For the past couple of years, I’ve taken part in SFWA’s web-based mentorship program, which pairs established members with newer writers to share advice and insight into a writing career. Although the process hasn’t always been without flaws, it’s been great to share what I’ve learned with people and help them through roadblocks. Then, after seeing Gail Simone share her short “comic school” course on Twitter last year, I started wondering if I could do something similar based around starting a sustainable short fiction career.
So here we are.
Every Wednesday in January, February, and March of 2021, I’ll cover a topic will get you started writing fiction and sending it out. If you follow along, you’ll have a complete short story written by the end of January, and three finished stories ready to submit to magazines by the end of March. More importantly, you’ll understand some core principles about making writing a fun, sustainable, ongoing activity in your life.
The list of supplies is very small. You’ll need:
- A notebook and a pen or pencil, or some kind of word processing software
- Your willingness to try things out
- That’s it. That’s the
tweetlist.
Ready to get started? Let’s do this!
Table of Contents
I’ll add links to each post below as I make it public. If you sign up for the newsletter above, I’ll also send you a reminder each Wednesday when the post goes live. If you don’t want to do that, though, you can just bookmark this page and return to it each week.
Month 1: Getting Started with Writing Fiction
Lesson 1: Start Strong on Your Fiction Writing Practice
Lesson 2: How to Write a Very Short Story, or Flash Fiction 101
Lesson 3: Eight Ways to Beat Writer’s Block
Month 2: Responding to Feedback and Revising Your Work
Lesson 4: How to find and respond to feedback on your fiction.
Lesson 5: How do you know when your story is “finished?”
Interview [TBA]
Lesson 6: The benefits of critiquing other people’s work
Month 3: Submissions 101
Lesson 7: Introduction to short fiction submissions.
Lesson 8: Rejection, long waits, and other hazards.
Interview: [TBA]
Lesson 9: Balancing writing fiction with submitting