This week: Bits and Pieces Edited by: NaNoNette  
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3. Letter from the Editor
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“When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.” – Joyce Meyer
“You can’t finish what you don’t start, and you should never start what you’re not committed to finish.” — Gary Ryan Blair
“I start a picture and I finish it.” – Jean-Michel Basquiat |
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Bits and Pieces
Painters used to reuse their canvases when the first thing they attempted didn't work out. Or maybe because they could not sell it. One such famous painting is The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough. We will not hold that against him. In the 1700s, it must have cost a good bit of money to buy or make a canvas nearly six foot tall and more than three feet wide. One thing Gainsborough did NOT do was to start a painting and then let it languish in the back of his atelier. As writers and fellow creatives, we could take his example and apply it to our writing endeavors.
While I don't suggest that you go and delete old drafts, notebooks, and other ideas you have put down on paper or digitally, you should not let any of those things go forgotten in the back of your writer's den. Instead, take stock of all those first sentences, ideas, dusty journals, and digital notes. Find a way to catalogue them in a way that makes sense to you. Work your way down the pile until you have completed them all.
One fellow author here on Writing.Com has been making daily blog entries for years now. Drawing from a long list of article links, writing prompts here on the site, and sometimes commenting on his own previous entries, Robert Waltz is someone to emulate when it comes to daily creative writing. The blog posts are not short stories, but they are a good example on following through on writing goals. Each entry starts, has some novel or fun knowledge to impart, and it has an ending.
In the Editor's Picks section below, you will find a few contests that encourage you to come up with a short story in one day. The deadline is purposefully set to be fast. Write for those contests. Not to win. Winning is nice, of course, but writing a complete story in less than a day is an accomplishment. Write like you would train for a marathon. You don't start out by running 26 miles on your first training day. Warm up by answering the Question of the day. Work up to Flash Fiction. Graduate to 1,000 words for the Writer's Cramp. Then take that momentum to assemble your own notes and put them together into the short stories you meant to tell all along.
How many short stories did you start and never finish? |
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Replies to my last Short Stories newsletter "Classic Story Character Types" where I asked Is there a stereotypical cliché that you like to use in your stories?
dragonwoman  wrote: Thanks for featuring "Cut" as one of your picks
You are welcome. I wouldn't have anything to feature if it weren't for writers like you who write and publish here for all of us to enjoy.
Quick-Quill  wrote: I try not to use clichés but they pop up some times. I guess my characters are from The Journey. I try to make sure they conform. Not easy when they say NO WAY!
That sounds like a sensible way to use clichés. Like salt. Just enough, but not too much. |
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Short Stories: August 02, 2023 Issue [#12082]
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