Short Stories, Again

The last time I wrote about them was in August 2022!

This is the first time that my Substack has circled back to something so directly. It’s a bit of a thrill to see how things have changed in the last two years. I ended my last post on short stories, writing, “I hope to be able to find my way into stories more often, more reliably. And if I do, I will let you know.” At the time, I’d written about 20,000 words over three years, across seven short stories, and they hadn’t come easily.

The next year, I focused on a novella and poetry and the MG novel that I wrote, and I stopped pushing myself to find my way into short stories. I was frustrated by how they evaded me, and I was hoping the other forms would open up new parts of writing for me. Maybe I’ll fall in love with MG, I thought. Maybe novellas are where I can be more experimental.

And then there was this past year—when things finally changed. In just one year, I’ve written seven new short stories, some quite long, coming to around 30,000 words in total. With what I’ve already written, I think I’ve completed a collection. Nearly 200 pages long. So what’s it about?