Some readers of my blog have sent questions about whether any of my short fiction appears online, so I wanted to post a link to a story that appeared in FiveChapters.com recently. The story uses a traditional structure, but plays around with it. As a writer, it’s been really helpful for me to take a lot of time to study conventional story and novel forms. I feel like it teaches me a lot about readers’ expectations for a piece, which I can try to either meet or defy, depending on what I’m hoping to accomplish in that piece.
Here is the story:
http://www.fivechapters.com/2010/the-other-side-of-the-wall/
Have a great day.
Looking forward to reading the story, Justin! In the meantime, a couple of questions that might make good future blog topics:
(1) How do you balance making time to write and taking time to read about the publishing industry? I find that hours of otherwise writing-worthy hours can go into reading twitter entries, blog posts, conference summaries, etc. or writing questions in comment windows
(2) A related question: How much were you thinking about building a network of readers before Finny was accepted for publication? The conventional wisdom nowadays is that you always have to be thinking about marketing so you’ll eventually have something to put in your query letter. I see the wisdom in this from a marketing perspective, of course, but not from a writing perspective. What are your thoughts?
Thanks!
Sierra
Hi Sierra,
Thanks so much for these comments. I’ll be happy to share my ideas and experiences on these topics in a post in the next week or two.
All best,
J