Observant readers will know that I have a category tag especially designated for short stories, yet I rarely mention them. Surely short stories are an important part of becoming a fiction writer? So what’s going wrong?
For a start, I haven’t read a short story for ages. I do go through phases where I rather enjoy one of those “Best Short Stories 2005″ kind of collections, but even then I do only read about half of them – unlike novels, I have no qualms about breaking off reading a short story …

Incredibly, three months has come and gone since I entered my first Writers Weekly 24-Hour Short Story Contest, which makes it time for another one. Today, I wrote a short story for the Spring 2008 contest, and I’m happier with it than the story I produced the last time round.
I love the idea of this forced creativity, having to use a prompt to develop a short story all within a short time – about 12 hours for me, due to time zone differences (unless I could get up in the …

So far, so good, I say: it’s still only January and I’ve kicked off my fiction writing year, starting out on point 3 of my resolutions. That’s a whole lot earlier than last year.
This weekend I’ve been participating in the Writers Weekly 24-Hour Short Story Contest for the first time. The concept is quite neat: the topic and word limit are emailed to participants at midday on Saturday (US time – unfortunately that’s 3am Sunday morning here). You then have 24 hours to write a short story and send it …

Week 1 of the big new plan to become a fiction writer is over. Where have I got? Well, at least the idea of writing fiction has been budged a bit further to the front of my brain. Fingers to keyboard time was about 3 hours on Monday, all with the idea of writing a story for the Wild Blue Yonder contest. Crazy, I know, as the deadline was today, but you know I’m a deadline-driven kinda gal.
Naturally I’m not going to be submitting anything to the contest this time …

When I moved back to Perth recently, I had the joy of unpacking boxes of books I hadn’t seen in six years. I also had the displeasure of deciding which of these I’d have to live without for another year or two, while I stay in a flat that just can’t accommodate the library of my life. But a few of the books that did make it into my new shelves are how-to books on writing.
On the one hand, I think a writer can do too much reading about writing …