Thought I'd cross-posted this here, but never mind. I had a good start to the new year with a story sale, 'Disruptor', to Ian Whates at Parsec magazine.
The story is the product of a writing workshop I've been taking part in, organised by some members of another group that meets regularly in Taipei.Rather than being purely a critique group, what they've come up with is arguably more interesting: over a period of five weeks, each participant takes a turn presenting a set of story prompts. They, and the other participants, then each come up with stories of a length of no more than 1,500 words, drawing on those prompts. Once the stories are all done, they're shared and mutually critiqued.
At the moment, the stories are posted and critiqued through a shared Google Docs document, which I find works very well indeed and allows you to see other people's comments. This way, the whole thing can be done online, although there's also an in-person meeting at the end of each five-week run: there's a 'beer tax' for tardiness, imposed when the group meets face to face, and there's room to include incentives, as well, such as voting on the best stories.
The prompts are presented on a Friday, stories are due by Wednesday, and critiques are due by the next Friday. I'm into the fifth week of the current round, and so far I've written and completed four stories - one of which, Disruptor, as I mentioned at the start, has already sold. I've written a horror story (Night like the Devil's Wing), a humorous space opera story (Welcome to Luigi's), and even, essentially on a dare, a high fantasy story (The Mouse that Slays the Serpent that Strikes the Beast), since I've always been happy to admit I never read the stuff.
In the past, I've been lucky to write more than one or two short stories a year, yet by taking part in this process, I've already doubled my output - and it's still only January.
Keeping the story, at least within the context of a writing workshop, to just 1500 words, is a terrific exercise in discipline and figuring out how to communicate sometimes complex ideas in just a few pages - something I wish more writers knew how to do. Of course, the story doesn't need to stay that length, which is why the version of Disruptor that sold is 2000, not 1500, words long. The others range from 800 to 3,000 words in their current drafts.
This has been running for a while now, and originally I begged off because I didn't think I'd have the energy to spare while working on two sequels to Echogenesis (the current total word count for the first drafts of both just passed 200,000 words, btw, and I'm anticipating completion of those initial drafts in the next couple of weeks). Then I got hit by FOMO and now I wish I'd taken part much sooner. Instead of being a distraction, it's boosted my writing energy and fed into my novel writing as well.
Why? Because there's great freedom in being able to write a short story of a few thousand words about anything you like. In fact, I'm starting to think all story workshops should incorporate this kind of thing into their methodology. It's also proof that deadlines, even arbitrarily imposed ones, greatly focus your attention.
