Short Story Writing Project: How to Participate

February 9, 2008 by John Hewitt

This is the first post for the short story writing project . My readers voted for this project, so I hope you stick around and take part. Before we get started , I want to give everyone who is interested in the short story writing project a quick guide to getting the most out of the process.

Suggestion One: Participate!!!

This process works best as a discussion, not a lecture. I want to hear other people’s ideas and responses to my thoughts. I will say right now that I am not an expert on short story writing. I do have some experience in the area, but it has not been the focus of my writing career. In the past I have done the following:

Written short stories
Published short stories
Been a participant in short story workshops and classes
Judged short stories for publication and for prizes
Edited short stories for myself and others

None of these activities makes me an expert on short stories. None of my short stories has reached an audience of more than a few hundred readers. I do feel that I am qualified to lead a discussion on the topic, but my word is not law. My opinions are simply opinions and I need other people’s responses because I am hoping to learn from this process too, so please be an active participant in this discussion. Leave plenty of (relevant) comments. This series will last as long as I continue to sense interest (or until I run out of thoughts) so please leave comments if you want the project to keep moving forward.

Suggestion Two: Write a short story

I am not expecting participants to publish their work on this site the way we did in the poetry project. We will be discussing many aspects of short story writing though, and you will probably get more benefit from the discussion if you are writing a short story or if you are at least editing or analyzing a past short story. I intend to write a story as part of this process, and I will discuss it when it is relevant to the conversation. Other people are welcome to discuss their stories, but they are not expected to publish them here.

Suggestion Three: Be respectful

The creative process can be an emotional process. People are passionate about their work. It is fine to offer constructive criticism or to disagree with someone’s thoughts, but please do not insult each other or otherwise behave badly. I trust the people on this site. We have worked together well before. I know we will again.

Suggestion Four: Ask questions

I am happy to answer the questions that I can answer. In fact, new questions will help me generate additional articles that will help keep the project going. I’m also happy to throw questions to the group and let other people take a crack at them. So if you have a question, don’t hesitate to ask it.