Nerd for Hire

ShortStory

Both of the collections I've put together so far have been linked, which made deciding what stories to include a bit easier. In fact, almost all the pieces in Cryptid Bits were written specifically for the chapbook, and the same was true for about half of the stories in Luck and Other Disasters. There was still some curation work that needed to happen—in both cases I wrote some stories that didn't end up in the final version, and it took a bit of fiddling to get the pieces I did include into the right order. But since each of those books occupies a self-contained world, with shared characters and settings, deciding which things fit into each book was pretty straightforward.

That's not the case for every short story collection. I knew that in an abstract, of course, and now I’m getting a first-hand lesson. A few months ago, I realized I have enough speculative short stories to put together a collection—way more than enough, actually, which is mostly a good problem to have. I have options and can mix-and-match things to find the exact right set of stories. But that’s also caused a bit of a delay in getting the manuscript assembled while I figure out how to even choose which ones belong together.

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Jacob M. Appel 181 pages Black Lawrence Press (2016)

Read this if you like: Robert Olen Butler, Matthew Cheney, Juan Villoro

tl;dr summary: A study in the craft of writing short stories, with 10 stories that each have a different lesson to teach.

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I’m mostly a pantser when it comes to the writing process. Now and then I’ll know where a story’s going ahead of time, and may even do a bit of outlining for longer works, but my preferred approach is just to start writing and let the story tell me where it wants to go.

Because of this, my rough drafts don’t tend to be what I would call “finished stories.” They have a beginning, middle, and end (usually) but they still don’t have an effective arc, are riddled with inconsistencies, and have the kind of rambling pacing that feels like the author’s just making shit up as they go instead of intentionally moving from one scene to the next. Which makes sense, because that’s exactly what happened.

The editing process is when I wrangle these messy rough drafts into something other people can actually read and make sense of (and hopefully enjoy). I do have some help in this process because I have an incredible writing group. But even with a workshop group or beta reader, you can’t expect them to do all the heavy lifting for you. Most stories need to go through multiple editing rounds before they’re fully finished—more versions than you can realistically expect anyone else to read.

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Dorene O’Brien 156 pages Baobab Press (2019)

Read this if you like: Karen Russell, Carmen Maria Machado, quirky short fiction tl;dr summary: Collection of (mostly) literary stories in which characters hope, for better or worse (mostly worse).

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I love my writing group. A lot of us have been in the group for over 10 years, by this point, which means we know each other’s writing well—and that’s usually a good thing. Knowing the perspective each person is coming from helps to interpret their comments and put them in context, which makes it easier to fix the issues they spot without losing my voice. Their comments are also more likely to have that voice in mind since they’re so familiar with it.

That said, though, there are times that feedback from my workshop group might not be the most productive thing for the piece I’m working on. Sometimes it’s helpful to see how a story is reading to people who don’t know my writing, like when I’m playing in one of my established sandboxes and want to verify that it makes sense as a stand-alone, or if I’ve already workshopped the piece with the group and need a fresh perspective on how it reads after incorporating their suggestions.

Whether you don’t have a regular workshop group, or are looking for supplemental sources of creative critique outside your usual circles, here are some places you can get feedback on fiction without leaving the comfort of your house.

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Anthony Veasna So 260 pages Ecco (2021) 

Read this if you like: Karen Russell, Jennifer Egan, Alan Heathcock

Tl;dr summary: Various views of the day-to-day lives of Cambodian refugees in California. 

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Like I imagine is the case for many people right now, the Olympics has become my default “on in the background” content since it started. Not because I’m particularly passionate about any of the sports involved—more the opposite, in fact. There’s something very intriguing and entertaining about watching sports I normally don’t think about, or seeing things I’m only familiar with from family picnics being played at an exceptionally high level.

Something else the Olympics makes very clear: sports are omnipresent in just about every culture of the world. This has likely been true for thousands of years. From the original Olympics held in ancient Greece to the ball game of the Aztec and Maya, just about every culture we know about had some kind of sport.

Despite this, I think it’s safe to say that sports are among the most neglected aspects of society in creative writing. You can definitely find examples of sports in fiction and poetry, but not nearly to the same degree as other cultural touchstones like food, music, religion, or fashion.

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Joanna Acevedo 196 pages Flexible Press (2021)

Read this if you like: Jennifer Wortman, Susan Minot, Alice Munroe

tl;dr summary: Glimpses in the lives of thirteen people who are all very bad at love each in their own unique way.

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Matthew Cheney 270 pages Third Man Books (2023) 

tl;dr summary: Genre-spanning and blurring collection that is a study in crafting voice and balancing realism against absurdity.

Read this if you like: Juan Villoro, David Foster Wallace, literary horror

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Jason DeYoung 44 pages The Cupboard Pamphlet (Volume 42, 2020)

Read this if you like: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Carmen Maria Machado, character-driven apocalyptic horror

tl;dr summary: Three people survive together during a quiet apocalypse

See the book on The Cupboard’s website

 

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