Hi again! We’re back with another anthology post. Like I alluded to in the last post, we’re going to start right at the very first step: writing the stories themselves. This might seem like a no-brainer. Of course you need to start with making the words in order to make a book, but for some (like myself), getting the words down is a hard part.
You need to come up with the story, flesh out the details, have enough confidence to think what you’re writing is good, and then actually write it all down, all while maintaining said confidence. If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to leave half-finished documents of stories you had intense passion for in the moment, only to stop and never think about them again.
For me, I usually end up thinking of a cool idea and then write it out. It usually begins as fragmented thoughts, lots of character emotions, or rapid fire dialogue without cues, but as I spend more time with it and weave the scenes that I found inspiring together, eventually a story forms. It takes awhile for me to get everything together, but that’s not true for everyone.
I know some people who can write entire short stories in one night and others who spend months on a single chapter. It really depends on the person, so don’t think that because you don’t write a certain way or at a certain pace you’re doing it wrong. There’s no one right way to go about it. You’re writing like you write and that is what’s important.
But if you’re having trouble moving past unfinished documents, that can be frustrating, speaking from experience. Having the raw motivation for your work that initially drew you to the idea is nice, but it’s not reliable and rarely will it see you to the end. Try experimenting with word count goals or writing prompts and see what sticks! That’s what it took for me to finish some of the work I’m most proud of. Hope this helps, have an excellent day, and see you all next week where I’ll explore the setting where a lot of these stories first took center stage!