Writing Two Short Stories (or at least trying??) | Writing Vlog
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
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☾Tabula Rasa - The Temz Review: www.thetemzrev...
☾How to Slaughter - The Common: www.thecommono...
☾After Hours - Vagabond City Lit: vagabondcityli...
☾Daughter of a King - Vagabond City Lit: vagabondcityli...
☾I Will Never Tell You This - The Puritan: puritan-magazin...
☾Solarium - Minola Review: www.minolarevie...
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☾Cherry and Jane in the Garden of Eden - The Puritan: puritan-magazin...
☾Hold Me Under Till I See the Light - The New Quarterly: tnq.ca/story/h...
☾Beautiful Animal - Room: roommagazine.c...
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☾Elise Holding a Deer Mouse, 1829 - CAROUSEL: carouselmagazin...
☾How You'll Feel After the War - PRISM international: prismmagazine.c...
FAQS
→How old are you? - 25
→How long have you been writing? - Since I was 8
→Where do you live? - I keep that private for safety reasons, but I grew up in Vancouver.
→Where did you go to university and what did you study? - I keep my university information private, but I majored in writing with a concentration in fiction.
→What are your pronouns? - They/them or she/her
→Where can I read your books? - None of my books are published yet, but you can read my published short fiction in my linktree (linked above!)
→So when will your book be published? - I don’t know! I’m in the revision process right now, but I can’t predict exactly when I’ll have a book published. But I’m working on it!
→Do you plan to traditionally publish or self publish? - Traditionally publish
→Will you read my book/story/chapter/mentor me? - Unfortunately I cannot accommodate these requests because editing/critiquing is a labour intensive task that I can’t afford to do for free alongside my job, my own writing, and running this platform. If you would like to hire me for paid editing work, contact me privately on twitter or instagram.
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I know your videos lean more towards your writing journey/craft than book recommendations, but I would LOVE to see a video on all your favourite short story collections. I’ve been meaning to get into reading more and your taste seems immaculate.
Some of my favs are Self-Help by Lorrie Moore, Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang, Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor, Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff, and Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin. And I could go on!! I have a short story collections shelf on my goodreads with all the collections I've read + what I rated them!
@@ShaelinWrites o o f my disability checks are about to go the way of the dodo because I got some SHIT TO BUY
I’m assuming these are all able to be found on kindle? I can’t really manage too much in the way of paper books, space is limited out here for reasons.
I love your vlogs! You end up saying so much about structure, character development and revision. I learn a lot watching them!
I've learned something interesting about my writing over the past couple of years, it can take me months to finish a short story, the amount of time in can take other people to finish a novel. Once I've accepted it, I can give every story the attention it needs.
It often also takes me months to write a short story as well!!
@@ShaelinWrites The generalization that novels take months to write may be less accurate than people think. From what I've seen of writers online, most of them take 1-2 years per novel and that's people who have already published half a dozen novels or more and that is their speed now. Most non-published authors(even with other WIPS in their shelf) seem to take 2-4 years per novel. Many are on 5+ years per one novel. When it comes to short fiction, "a couple of months" seems the norm as well even if people maybe draft a short stories in days/weeks but to actually get it publication-ready, you stretch that to "months" if not a year plus.
First I just want to say that I love your writing vlogs, even if most of the time you're "just sitting in different parts of your house." Listening to writers talk about their projects is one of my favorite types of content, and setting really doesn't matter to me since I mostly just listen to videos while drawing/doing chores. Secondly, I totally feel the uncomfortable process of writing something personal. Two semesters ago I took a creative nonfiction class - which ended up being one of my favorite writing classes to date - however, the fact that almost all the projects were meant to be based on personal experiences and thoughts/feelings was hard, and feeling ok with reading stuff aloud and doing workshops was definitely a learning curve. Anyways, good luck with your story! Even if you never share it with anyone, I'm sure it will be a great learning experience.
Hope you're in a better place now. 💛💛💛I love your writing vlogs, even if they're in the same place. What you say tends to be engaging. I honestly use your writing vlogs playlist to motivate myself to keep writing--I'm a discovery writer too. And listening to you feels like someone else out there knows both the joys and struggles of writing. No one in my vicinity writes at all. Good luck with Salt Birds!
I absolutely love your writing vlogs and listening to your process. Both of your short stories sound amazing and I hope you do whatever you feel is best for them, whether you submit them or not. I’m glad you’ll be writing more short stories, too. They are definitely a different kind of time commitment than a novel. Also, your roommate’s kitty is precious! 😻 Good luck with SALT BIRDS, too!
I love your vlgos. I only found your channel a month or two ago, so I’m looking forward to viewing past vlogs. I feel you are implicitly teaching writing-so many subtleties come out that I can easily connect to previous vlogs where you have a definitive focus about the art of writing. Also, I don’t yet have a writing community as I have a family and a full time job. I wake up before the sun and get 1 hour in, 2 if I’m lucky. And if I’m really lucky I get a block of time on a Saturday. I’m just trying to say is how valuable it is to here a fellow writer reflect on their stories. Thank you so much.
“hear” and not “here”.
Genuinely, your vlogs are my favorite. They have so much detail about the actual issues you're having and often the solutions. It's so interesting to get to hear your thought process and feelings about what you're writing. Hope you keep doing them and am so looking forward to one maybe featuring Salt Birds?
I really enjoy hearing about the evolution of your projects over the course of the vlog! Wishing you the best with life crap, and I hope you find peace with Change for a Dollar whether or not it gets published!
For me I don't come to your vlogs to watch you sit inside and then outside and then in a coffee shop, I think most people are here to hear what you have to say! It makes me think about writing and want to write more
for the record, i love your writing vlog videos. being able to see you talk through writing process is so inspiring and also i find it very interesting!
I related to the Aug 22 clip, SO MUCH. I’ve been applying to a lot of comic anthologies, and I submitted to a publisher who had previously accepted my work. And I just KNEW my story wouldn’t be accepted. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was so different from my accepted story. My accepted work was giving literary-horror vibes and it was very personal, where as my second story was a light hearted comedy that wasn’t autobiographical. And even though my second story wasn’t accepted I’m still v glad to have worked on it✨
Also I like the writing vlogs! You should keep them up if you find them enjoyable to make🖤
Great video! I always love hearing other writers thought process and hearing about how different writers approach the preparation/mental prep of getting ready to write something. I am slightly worried about when I'm ready to get back into long form content. Right now I write a ton of super short stories(like 2-4 pages tops) with an overarching story, but when I go back to writing books or longer short stories I am a bit worried. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there!
Oof getting back into longer stuff after only writing short pieces can be tough (in my experience) but I've also found that once the initial struggle passes, it re-clicks again!!
@@ShaelinWrites Good to know! For me personally, it's usually about getting into a groove, so I think you're spot on!
This was so eerily what I’ve been going through. Even ordered old Pushcart anthologies. My nano is 50 flash stories! And your blogs help so much! Never boring. Huh-uh.
The audio and look of this video is incredible ❤❤❤❤❤
Also also also also ALSO.
That title made my soul lift up to heaven and so now I’m actually dead BUT I’m actually feeling blissful about it bc that title is the greatest pun I’ve ever heard in all of my life????? I feel like the CBC prize is yours just for that alone.
I know you said you don't really enjoy doing them but I absolutely love your vlogs! Seeing or hearing how other writers approach the process & work through issues with their stories is honestly more exciting & inspiring to me than straight-up writing advice. That said, I also love writing timelapses so if you do decide to keep making vlogs, that might be something to consider sprinkling in? Maybe?
Anyway, hope you're doing better now! Kudos for even attempting to write autofiction too. Idk if I could do it.
2/3
The fan wasn't annoyingly loud until you pointed it out. I think it's because you're very engaging when you talk.
If it makes you feel any better, the future Shaelin Bishop probably won't care whether the rest of the world thinks your vlogs are redundant. The big advantage of what you're doing is that your process is here for posterity. You get to track, with a great deal of self-awareness, the evolution of your way of working.
And in full agreement with you on CBC's word-count ceiling: it's very cramped. Any sense of narrative has a better shot at working when you can do 5000 words (maybe aiming for 7000 on the first draft, then pruning it).
Feel free to steal this title for your lawnmower story: *"Green Manicure"*
1/3
So happy that there will be more short stories from you .... in part because it pushes "Pareidolia" several steps closer to the publishing phase. (At least in theory. Or maybe it's just my OCD. A heavy backlog of finished works that aren't released just feels wrong.)
Due to a variety of factors, I'm not submitting to the CBC Prize. It's also looking like this year was my last chance, and now that it's passing, I might as well steer my boat forward and hunt for bigger fish.
Did I congratulate you on 100K subscribers?? It was recent. 💯👏 Congrats to you.
There will always be more short stories from me! They're my favourite thing to write so I'll never stop writing them!
Well spoken. I write one-act plays by necessity ... living in a smaller city where the one community theatre in operation is full of people who think I'm too weird to be trusted in long-form ... but one-acts are also much more fun to someone like me who thrives on the rewrites. Then there's filmmaking: being newer/inexperienced at it provides a ready-made excuse to focus on lots of short films. I won't run out of things to do anytime soon, and from the sounds of things, neither will you.
Love your vlogs!
Lawn mower innuendo :)
*It re-clicked in my brain what a short story idea looks like.*
Writers must listen for that re-click sound. We can all too easily forget our best way of working just as we can mislay our peace of mind.
Yiyun Li's story Immortality begins with Chinese boys who were castrated. Like Joyce's story The Dead, it is a template for what the form can do.
*None of us is a direct descendant of a Great Papa, but traveling upstream in the river of our blood, we find uncles, brothers, and cousins who gave up their maleness so that our names would not vanish in history.*
Read poems aloud as a brain primer for short story composition - Sumita Chakraborty, Nina Mingya Powles, Khairani Barokka, Raymond Antrobus, Gluck, Ann Carson, David Harsent, Heaney, Eavan Boland, Elizabeth Bishop and Maureen N McLane's book *My Poets* (2013).
Yiyun Li's story Immortality is in her 2006 collection *A Thousand Years of Good Prayers*.
Too me writing a short story is harder than writing a full length novel. Not sure if you feel the same way. I've written a short story but I don't think it can be novel. I like this vlog video. Sometimes doing things different can be good. My first few books where spelled out to the reader. Now I write books with metaphors and symbolism. Do you like book with metaphors and symbolism?
I definitely felt this way when I started writing short stories! Now I'd definitely say novels are harder just because they take so much longer and the revision process is so much more involved, but short stories are for sure very challenging in their own way!
look at me...
stay calm...
everything is fine... Nobody is ever ready to write a book, or a short story. There are going to be times when you question your existence and the meaning of writing.
stay relaxed, seriously take a day off if further progress truly seems to be overwhelming. Simply observe the surroundings, Stay calm, and be at zen with writing instead trying to conquer.
anything has innuendo if you try hard enough lmao - tbh working with an off-beat ending too atm and its agonizing, it needs to hit but its dropping the second shoe too early 👿 grounded realistic stories that are emotionally affecting yet weird and pop in short space is literally good poetry
I want to be your goddamned friend. Your chaotic energy AND your… I wanna say prowess, your prose prowess….. it’s just 😙👌
P FUCKIN S
I’ve l i t e r a l l y carved out a whole damn section of my day, just watching your vlogs.
They’re pure au-some. (Au is the letters on the periodic table for gold. So…. Awesome… gold… I…
I’ll see myself out..)
Glad to hear about your journey writing a story for the CBC prize. I've written half a story I like, but I can't think of a way to end it that isn't contrived. I want to enter the CBC contest, but I am also struggling with the worry that it isn't the "kind" of story that will make the longlist. And you are so right - $25 is a good chunk of change. I wish they didn't charge an entry fee - I don't believe the Toronto Star short story contest does.
The huge entry fee is the one thing I don't like about the CBC prize lmao, especially because it's hosted by such a large outlet. When small mags charge fees, I get it because it's to fundraise the magazine for a year and is what allows them to pay the large prize, but it seems very unnecessary for CBC to have to charge submitters so much
@@ShaelinWrites Exactly, especially when they receive taxpayer dollars!
@@ShaelinWrites isn’t CBC kind of how PBS is for America? (“Supported by viewers like you!” etc.?)
That’s pretty shady if that’s what they do for this prize.
'Come over and trim my bush' 😂
Also. I might submit to CBC. I don't usually do that kind of thing. But, as a career choice, it's probably best to start trying. I just ethically oppose that kind of art competition. Like, cool, these 4 judges think this is the best short story out of thousands. But every single person on the planet would probably say a different one is their favorite, if they read every single one. I dunno, it has always felt icky, and I don't like participating in it. But, I probably should. Though, I kinda wanna save my mental preparation to push back against my rejection sensitive dysphoria for when I query agents. lmao
I haven't seen your work on Amazing? Where is it published? You helped me alot. Six weeks my two books should be published. I did 12 stories in eight weeks. I'm empty of stories for now and wonder if I'll ever have anymore storied. 😔
I don’t have any published books, so none of my work is on Amazon, but my published short stories are all linked in the description.
Can you create a video about how to add depth to short stories? I really struggle with that. Mine feel kind of flat.
Right out of the gate I like miss Shaelin. After all she is friend to a cat.
Yaaaaasssss!!!!
to break up the "monotony" of the vlog, I think a sped up montage of you sitting at your computer writing with some music in the background would be a good little transition!
I'm actually so flattered you think my writing sessions are cute when really I write crouched in the dark like a little gremlin lmaooo but yes I agree sped up writing sessions would be fun! I used to do do them but I always run out of space on my phone when I film these vlogs (really revealing how much of a mess I am here, aren't I)
@@ShaelinWrites I also write crouched in the dark 😅 Gremlins unite!
Hang in there.
Aw, you seemed so sad at the end. I hope you are doing better.
Thank you, I am!
I love staying at home 🏡 doing watching tv
You said you read 10-20 summaries of other story compressed down to one line... We're to find such summaries? Or did you summaries yourself after reading them?
I just read the summaries of short story collections on goodreads! They're made up of one-line summaries of the individual stories
I hope that in the time between the end of this video and now, things have gotten better and you're feeling better, and the universe has stopped throwing punches.
I've been struggling a lot for the better part of a year now, but it's more a me thing than a universe thing. Trying to figure out ADHD meds, and dealing with mental health has just been a Time™. But beyond that, it seems like, not just my partners, but almost everyone I care about - partners, friends, and people like you who inspire me from a distance and help provide me some motivation - all seem to be struggling extra hard, and the universe is beating them down. It's almost harder for me when people I care about are struggling, than when shit is happening to me. I guess, because there is very little I can do to help.
I was about to ask someone out, and they *attempted* and were hospitalized for 2 weeks, and are currently struggling extra hard. My nesting partner had 2 people in their life unexpectedly die in a week, and their work has just gotten excessively stressful, adding a daily stressor. A close friend has had a string of extremely toxic relationships, in which their exes would lie about them and got them excommunicated from important communities in their life, and just treat them like shit while love bombing them. Honestly, I guess this is why I don't keep a lot of people in my life. 😅 *Takes note for therapist*
You deserve better than what's been beating you down. Hell, everyone I keep in my life deserves the best that life has to offer. All I can really do is send good vibes, and positive thoughts.
So, catch my positive vibes knockin' when you're struggling.
I hope you are doing, just, so damn good.
3/3
.... Never mind, you found your title.
The way I see it, the fact that comedic pieces don't get favored by CBC is all the more reason to submit a comedic one. (And louder. And wilder.) It reflects well on you when that mysterious high collective is willing to admit: "yeah, you made us laugh".
*The entry fee* is also why it's not feasible for me this year. I go broke literally every month.
Sorry to hear that you were the universe's punching bag. I'm wishing you better days in the long term. Now that you're at a point of writing what you know, the moment that you *do* have it in you to face those reflections will be interesting. You're right about indulging in autofiction sparingly. Speaking from experience: most people only pretend to appreciate what the author is going through. They don't care about context. They just want you to relate it to what *they* find resonant.
4/3 (as a P.S.)
When you say "Change for a Dollar" is mortifying, it makes sense.
I used to be deathly afraid of the people my characters were modeled or even straight-up named after coming at me with libel suits or something. Then I realized that most of them will stay in the same financial boat as me, which means they'll have shit luck finding a good enough lawyer. LMAO. Seriously though, "writing what you know" is one of many roads that the people in your life have to give you the freedom to walk down, and they have to accept responsibility for the many ways they affected your experience. You have a right to express the mess you've seen. Exercising that right is worth it.
That hat tho!
Your short story content is literally a boon
At least you’re not drowning yourself in fan fiction and ignoring your own original children while you’re at it.
If I can add a second comment ?
Telemarketing's marked a shift in western economies from production to service industries. Consumerism in the age of Amazon.
The telemarketer does not know who she is speaking to until the name and address pops up on her computer screen. It is rather ghostly.
It is a truism that the customer does not so much buy the product as the sales agent's personality. Selling a lawnmower over the phone is surreal.
Call centres are strange places. Employees work shifts. They can be talking to people on the other side of the country as late as 9 p.m.
In Britain telemarketers persuade strangers to upgrade their satellite television package or switch to another mobile phone. This is hyper capitalism.
First?
Hello! Have you heard of the app “Daily Prompt?’ I too have been going through something similar. But I found this app, only for IOS, is slowly pulling me back into my books! I hood thus can helo others too! It’s free ahd pretty fun!
I know you said you don't really enjoy doing them but I absolutely love your vlogs! Seeing or hearing how other writers approach the process & work through issues with their stories is honestly more exciting & inspiring to me than straight-up writing advice. I also love writing timelapses so if you do decide to keep making vlogs, that might be something to consider sprinkling in? Maybe?
Anyway, hope you're doing better now! Kudos for even attempting to write autofiction too. Idk if I could do it.