20(ish) Random Thoughts About the Short Story and Novel Writing Process(es)
I’ve been pondering short stories and novels a lot recently, as I begin discovery drafting my second novel and recently approved some small edits for what will be my seventh short story publication. I’ve been submitting short stories since 2021, with my first publication at Beneath Ceaseless Skies in 2023. After three years, one finished novel (that didn’t land an agent), starting a whole new novel (that might land an agent, who knows???), countless short story rejections, and co-founding one whole gay magazine (happy Pride by the way), I have a few stray thoughts on the writing process!
Below is a random list of advice I’ve retained from others as well as personal thoughts on the writing process. And as a caveat: no advice is one size fits all. This list is extremely specific to my particular combination of trauma, chronic illness/pain/fatigue, depression, ADHD, and anxiety, all wrapped up in a people pleasing prone brain—but maybe you’ll find some of them useful too.
It’s okay to juggle multiple projects
It’s also okay to hyperfocus only on one thing and oscillate rapidly between these two modes
Let your brain do what it needs to write words in the moment
Yes, this sometimes means writing by hand in a notebook for three paragraphs then getting in the zone and switching back to a digital doc of some kind
Sometimes buying a notebook and/or a highlighter as a treat helps
Buying a treat when you hit a goal in general helps if you’re a reward motivated person
For short stories specifically: don’t try to write to an editor’s tastes if they aren’t your tastes and it would make you miserable to write in that style
Conversely, fuck it, try experimenting—short stories are the best place to try different styles and formats
But don’t put all your self-worth into that editor saying yes
Never put all your self-worth into any one story, novel, or idea, that’s a one-way ticket to (likely even more) depression
But also it’s okay to want external validation or things like win awards or get nice reviews or whatever big achievement so long as you don’t define your very being and quality as a person on it
It’s also okay to not want to define your writing by winning awards and accolades at all or have some other set of goals you want to hit
This can shift over time in either direction, sometimes within hours to minutes (see: the rapid oscillation)
Have other hobbies and don’t monetize them
No, seriously
Don’t fill your every free moment with writing, take a beat to pause or you’ll burn out eventually
Yes, even if you’re used to feeling burnt out and think you can handle it
There’s a secret special awful extra spicy burnout stage after you push past your breaking point for too long, where you stop being able to even think of words yet alone be able to string them together in a sentence
Also worse health things can occur, like heart problems or chronic fatigue and/or chronic pain from the tension; truly not worth fucking with if you can avoid it (ask me how I know!!)
Sometimes you won’t have the luxury of slowing down; I get it, but take like 5 minutes if possible to just be without working
I’m not going to say go touch grass because I’m allergic to grass, but try not to think about all the what-ifs or projects dangling over your head or obligations here and there and avoid doomscrolling from time to time
Fun fact: turns out not overthinking constantly helps the brain rest, who knew? Not me!
This one is the piece of advice my friends will stare at me and go “yeah, Val, this is great advice you should take it” and I will continue to struggle
Find beta readers that get your writing style and know how to help you improve rather than try to change how you write—never trust anyone who is cruel to you or you work or is belittling of what style or vibe or anything you want to write (ex: looks down on genre or literary or romance, etc., run far away from people like that and spare yourself some pain)
But also, you can write a solid short story story without beta readers
Novels not so much. I mean, probably you can? This whole thing has contradictory advice so if "need a beta reader" is true "fuck it, we ball without a beta reader" can also be true. But a big part of the joy of having beta readers/alpha readers/someone to throw snippets at is to survive the long, sometimes agonizingly isolated process that is writing a novel
A small group chat of other writers is a precious resource you luck into, much like any other friend group
Cherish your group chats, just enjoy being creative people together and be in that community; I have no advice on how to get one of those other than to be genuine and good luck navigating people because it’s messy
Writing can be as fun and joyful or bleak and painful as you want it to be, but focus on how it fuels you rather than what you think you’re expected to look like or feel like while writing
This goes with the whole “don’t compare yourself to others” thing but also, more practically, we focus on the negatives and expectations so much and often lose sight of why we write at all and what compels us to keep telling our stories
You really don’t have to write daily, I never will
But if your brain works like that and that’s not super painful to keep up with like it is for me, writing daily is also fine
Do what works for you, not what the writing advice says you should be doing; for another short story specific example: if what works for you is writing a whole 3000 word short story in an afternoon like an unhinged gremlin? So be it
Conversely, if you take months and/or years to write a short story, that is not a sin; often we see a lot of acceptance posts on social media and feel like we have to keep up, but writing is a long-winded thing and you need endurance and persistence, so stick to the pace that works to prevent you from dropping writing completely
Not every story will hit right or come out the way you intended, but the practice is still necessary
This one is for my fellow perfectionists: some stories will never get published, and you can learn from that and write more stories rather than hyperfocus on that one, single story being immaculate
There’s more if I were to dissociate on this longer, but I thought it would be fun to simply write this down without overthinking it. I spent a lot of my twenties feeling I had to write short fiction (and novels overall) a certain way, and constantly set my expectations for myself far too high and pressured myself and told myself I was a failure for not winning awards, much less being nominated for them, and so on.
Personally, I write as a means of joy and destressing and sharing my ideas and worlds with others. I want to write epic space opera stories, often with giant robots and big fight sequences, where the protagonist is queer and femme and biracial or mixed like me. I just want to see myself and the Mexican American disabled and neurodivergent reality I inhabit reflected in sci-fi/fantasy, and that’s where a lot of this comes from. But also what works for me may not work for you; what I value out of writing you may not value at all. There is no one right way to create stories. Anyone who claims otherwise is an asshole.
I hope these are helpful and/or at least interesting! I might add on more thoughts in future posts eventually. These truly are random 11pm thoughts I then sat on and anxiously avoided posting for two weeks and don’t encompass nearly enough of the writing process. That’s kind of the fun of it, though.
If you like this and have some comments, you can do so over on my Patreon—while I can use and would appreciate the support over there, this is also largely to funnel comments and spare my chronically fatigued self some angst while also trying to have a space for conversation! If you like my work, thank you, truly.
