So Dan Wells is taking a page from NaNoWriMo and starting his own writing thing for April, NaShoStoMo, aka National Short Story Month. The rules are as follows:
- You must write 30 all new short stories between April 1st and April 30th.
- Each story must have a distinct beginning, middle, and end.
- Each story must be at least 200 words.
- You may write more than one story per day to make up for lost days.
It seems like an awesome idea, and I’m going to try it. I’m not much of a short story writer, but I wish I were, because there are some really awesome short stories out there that I admire–like Endosymbiont, quite possibly the best singularity story that I have ever read (and available for free from Escape Pod). Novels and short stories are different arts, but they’re both forms of storytelling, so I figure that no matter what happens I’ll learn something from it.
I’m not sure how many of these stories will take place in universes that I’ve already built, but probably a good number of them will. I have a few characters from Bringing Stella Home that I would like to do little sketches on, possibly for a later novel, and some things I’d like to do in the worlds I’ve already created.
At the same time, though, I’ve got some crazy ideas for standalone stuff that I’d like to play with, like a crazy awesome dream I had last night that made me lie awake just thinking about it for almost an hour. It was insane...but I guess you had to be there.
In unrelated news, my writer friend Charlie got me a thing of sparkling grape juice, for me to open when I celebrate my first major publishing deal (though I suspect another motivation was to make me look like a wino while walking around on BYU campus).
Honestly, I was quite surprised–thanks! I’ll use it to christen my first yacht that I buy from my multimillion dollar first deal, hehe.
Oh, and in other totally unrelated news, my other writer friend Laura started a blog. So go check it out!
Way to go!
But wouldn’t such a rythm put a strain even on the writers most undepletable resource…creativity?
Awwe thanks for the shout-out! 😀
And I wish I could do NaShoStoMo…I saw the blog as well and thought it sounded -awesome-, but I don’t think I could generate that many stories in that amount of time. XD In the past I’ve done word prompts, where you’re given a word and then you don’t have the pressure to complete a story or not, though I have several short stories that worked out really well that way…
Good luck! If you’ve got the time and energy, go for it!
Anytime, Laura. And that sounds like an interesting idea with the word prompts.
As for putting a strain on creativity, I actually think it will help to increase it. Then again, I’ve had trouble juggling multiple projects, so it might be a total failure. But if it is, at least I’ll learn something from it. 😉
Oh look at me, I made the blog! XD
So Nashostomo–is it a story -per day-? Because that… is intense.