I am constantly surprised by how difficult I find short fiction. Longer fiction has its own challenges, no question, but those are challenges that, for whatever reason, I seem better able to handle.
Short fiction is all about conservation and efficiency. That’s not to say you can’t (or shouldn’t) use more descriptive language, of course, but everything has to serve a specific purpose… every word has to be properly accounted for. Longer fiction can be more forgiving here, and I tend to gravitate towards the ability to use extra words for extra precision: saying “a dirty hut” is fine for a short story, but in longer fiction I can really nail down what I mean by both “dirty” and “hut”.
Anyway. This is one of those writer-things that I suspect nobody really cares about aside from other writers. People don’t really want to know how you make the sausage, and all that. That’s fine!
Today I’m going to watch the lectures I was supposed to have last week, but were both cancelled due to external circumstances. I have never liked online learning… I tried to take an editing course through a Toronto college, and I did okay for the first semester but completely crumpled at the second semester. There’s two reasons for that:
1. I’m not a great editor. Great editors require very, very patient attention to extreme detail, and I am the opposite to that statement in almost every respect when it comes to writing, and
2. I don’t learn very well without feedback. I need to ask questions, even stupid ones, so that my brain can sort through the information into a system that makes sense to me. Online learning is about providing alternatives, not about providing instantaneous feedback, but I’m hopeful that Laurier, the university I am attending currently, will have the resources to have actual human feedback to my writing.
Besides, I’m studying Shakespeare for the first time in… gosh… 22 years. I’m going to need all the help I can get.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!