In this interview, Nicholas shares what inspired his most recent book, what he hopes readers get out of it, and more.

Name: Nicholas Ruddock
Literary agent: Martha Webb (CookeMcDermid)
Book title: Planet Earth
Publisher: House of Anansi
Release date: November 4, 2025
Genre/category: Short Stories
Previous titles: This is a Tiny Fragile Snake; Last Hummingbird West of Chile; Night Ambulance; How Loveta Got Her Baby; The Parabolist.
Elevator pitch for the book: International-award-winning short stories set in the time of planetary decline.

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What prompted you to write this book?

18 stories, 18 reasons, the common thread being love and solace in personal relationships.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Two years for the book, 10 years for the stories. No idea changes once the book was accepted by Anansi.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

No. The editing was smooth, gentle.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

There were a lot of surprises. None of the stories were wholly imagined in advance. They developed on their own, after the first sentence. This method lends itself to total surprise, but does require multiple pass-throughs afterwards.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?  

Entertainment (the stories are far from boring) and a shared perspective on the dilemmas of current times.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Keep reading good writers. Keep writing, edit afterwards. Even one word can develop into a story.

The post Nicholas Ruddock: There Were a Lot of Surprises appeared first on Writer's Digest.

I decided to write a story called “Soda Lake” based on what happened when I made an impromptu visit to Soda Lake, a white salt “lake” inside the Carrizo Plain, a National Land Monument in Central California. I was actually on my way to Painted Rock, a numinous sandstone outcropping with 3,000-year-old pictographs by the Chumash Indians. Some women friends had talked about it, churning out light laughter over the fact that Painted Rock, numinous or not, was in the shape of a large vagina. How prescient, I thought, for the Chumash to make their drawings inside of that… having no idea that 3,000 years later their drawings would still remain. But believing, nevertheless, that the vagina was the center of the universe.

(How I Hacked My Way to Writing a Novella.)

As Soda Lake stretched out in front of me like a white mirage, I saw a right turn to a lookout point… went up the hill and parked. After a short walk, I gazed down upon the expanse of Soda Lake shimmering beneath the afternoon sun. A minute later, a car pulled over next to the lake and a man wearing dark clothes got out. He began running across the lake until he disappeared into the haze and sunlight. The car took off…

The man in dark clothes disappearing into a white salt lake would be the central image of the story “Soda Lake.” But I had no idea it would later be the key mystery of Soda Lake, a novel, or that the book would become an archetypal detective quest complete with stories of the uncanny, including various characters experiencing confusion and threat as their being dissolves at the margin of the self. Or that various tropes would link one character to the others—false identity, hallucinations, intimations of a god, imprisonment, eroticism, philosophic journeying…

After writing a couple more chapters, my NYC agent said, “You told me you were writing a novel. These are stories.” And when the “Helena” chapter was published as a stand-alone story in the Antioch Review, I thought my agent was right—I am writing a collection of stories.

But my unconscious mind knew differently, and hadn’t yet let me in…

The unconscious mind, which may be the greatest muse of all, cannot be summoned. It works for no one.

Instead, we must find ways to be open to its noumenal information coming our conscious way. The challenge that follows is how to intuit the difference between unconscious whim, which may seem fascinating for a while but ultimately leads to a creative dead-end, and an unconscious path to a truth that, hitherto, had been hidden. And even when the unconscious path seems to appear, the way forward isn’t certain. Trusting the unconscious is like trusting a blind person to find beautiful statues in the dark.

And since the unconscious journey can rarely be controlled by the objective powers of the conscious mind, salient creative moments often feel like they are being uncovered, rather than written. As was the case with much of Soda Lake.

Which is why I will attest—I never made up the Garage Wall Man; he just appeared from a pile of wood, clean-shaven, fingernails glistening in the dark. And I never wrote his words, but only heard them. And I never knew of the ancient trickster god—McCuade—until the Garage Wall Man first mentioned his name, and “out of the shocking Empyrean, He appeared.”

And when he told me McCuade had returned to Donegal, “the kidneys of Ireland,” I told the Garage Wall Man I would find McCuade for him. McCuade… who may or may not be real.

II

My search for McCuade unfolded in real time, because I really did go to Donegal to look for him, which became the story of Chapter Five—”McCuade.” And whatever happened to me on the journey through Donegal, all the way to the northern most point of Ireland—Malin Head—would be that which was uncovered. And that which I would write.

And even farther—to Inishtrahull Island, Ireland’s northernmost island, made of a three-billion-year-old rock, perhaps the oldest on the planet.

A dangerous going across at 6am in a fishing boat, and a dangerous return… so dangerous that I didn’t make it back and had to spend the night on Inishtrahull with no food or water or bedding, which was all right because McCuade was also on the uninhabited island. So through the long cold rainy night, it would just be McCuade and I.

III

Five years later, I found myself on Achill Island, the westernmost point of Ireland, living in my white cottage by the sea, but only for a little while, because my solo writer’s residency at the cottage was only for a month.

My conscious mind said this will be the end of it for McCuade and me. Whatever comes to pass will be the final chapter—”Achill Island.”

Moiling through days of solitude and angst, constant rain and near madness… waiting for my unconscious mind to guide me… to feel McCuade’s presence. But I couldn’t get out of the way of myself.

After two weeks, I had written one sentence—Passed right by her, sitting in a wheelchair outside the front door of her stone row-house, staring up into the damp oak leaves, purple shawl around her neck, dogs in her eyes, so weary…

Even after talking aloud to myself, which I had never done before, and cursing McCuade for bringing me to Achill… and recording my rants on a machine the size of my hand, which the handyman, John, a fine Irishman, had loaned to me… Nothing.

Stop trying to manufacture a McCuade story out of the Achill void, I thought.

Let McCuade speak.

Not my voice, but His.

And I, the trickster god, until it is impossible to know the difference.

But what will his voice sound like? What diction, tropes of language… might this suigeneris god use? … McCuade—out of the unchastened and unconscious mind… telling his story about me—

IV

…Took a swim today. Thought it would be my last. Ah, but I always think that. Was saying such to Sean last night. He was smoking a fag on the front steps of the Achill Head. Talking again about proper weather. Only Achill has proper weather, he says. Sean… looking a bit like I used to. But never mind that…

Walked past the old Cyril Gray house in the early evening. Edifice clotted with moss and mold. Thought I could hear his wife’s thin voice from inside the crumbling plaster. But then I passed right by her, sitting in a wheelchair outside the front door of her stone row-house, staring up into the damp oak leaves, purple shawl around her neck. Dogs in her eyes. So weary… I kept on walking. Don’t think she noticed me…

Could barely see the Silver Strand in the consuming twilight. Lovely to bathe there. Be careful about the rips, everyone likes to say. But I’ve never been caught in one. Not a boley Irishman like myself!

Good to be out… not having to bother with his cloying presence inside the cottage. His white cottage by the sea, he likes to say. But only for a little while.

Check out John C Hampsey’s Soda Lake here:

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The post The Unconscious Journey From Story to Novel appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Elaine discusses having the space to experiment in her new short story collection, Where Are You Really From, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Elaine Hsieh Chou
Literary agent: Martha Wydysh & Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group
Book title: Where Are You Really From
Publisher: Penguin Press
Release date: August 19, 2025
Genre/category: Literary Fiction/Short Stories
Previous titles: Disorientation
Elevator pitch: These genre-defying and emotionally precise stories explore how the story of our lives is shaped, and misshaped, by the gap between who we think we are and how others see us. Blending surrealism, experimentation, and sly meta-fiction with intimate high stakes, Where Are You Really From plays with form, tone, and shifting perspective to interrogate authorship, the slipperiness of storytelling, and the strange theater of the self.

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What prompted you to write this book?

When I was studying for my MFA at NYU, I tried workshopping the first chapter of my novel-in-progress, what would eventually become Disorientation. I found that workshopping something still in its nascent stages was not conducive to my creative process; I needed to be alone with the work until it was completed.

But in the meantime, I still had to be workshopped twice per semester, sometimes three times. So, while I continued to write Disorientation, I wrote short stories to submit to workshop. I gave myself permission to experiment as much as I wanted (and an MFA is precisely the place to experiment). I wrote in genres I had never written before, like a noir detective story featuring the TV character in yellowface, Charlie Chan. I played with form, like writing a story in the form of a Japanese sex doll manual. Before, I avoided writing what unsettled me—now I leaned into it.

By the start of my second year, it dawned on me: I think this is a story collection. I didn’t want to feel hemmed in by any particular theme or subject, so I continued writing what disturbed and obsessed me, but I did make a commitment to myself to write complex, flawed AAPI characters that I hadn’t yet encountered in fiction. My thesis, Where Are You Really From?, was the culmination of these stories, and is still housed in the NYU creative writing thesis archives.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The oldest short story in the collection, “Carrot Legs,” was written in 2016; in fact, it was one of the stories I submitted in my MFA application! Since then, it’s expanded in scope—in many ways, it’s become a love letter to my memories of Taipei. As for the other stories and the novella in the collection, I would say all of them underwent degrees of change, though some had more extensive “open-heart surgery” than others.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The main surprise was that I kept on writing new stories. Since the story collection was complete when it was sold in 2020 along with my debut novel, the original plan was for it to be published only a year or so after Disorientation. But within that time frame, I was changing and so the collection was changing. The stories, most of them already on the long side, grew even longer during revision. I wrote two new stories and a novella. I cut five stories and all the flash fiction pieces. By the end of the revision process, the collection as a whole had become darker, more interior, more psychological.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Because I spent such a long time with these stories, written across a span of eight years, I think I was surprised by how much each of these stories and all of these characters expanded into fully fledged worlds and people. I do think, after a certain amount of time, a story takes on a life of its own and characters begin to show you who they are. Even though I am technically pulling the puppet strings so to speak (a creepy metaphor, I know), I always try to leave room for my characters to surprise me. If a writer doesn’t give their characters the grace to surprise them, they will risk imposing on the characters, which results in the artifice of fiction piercing through the very thing we want fiction to achieve: to make us fully believe in a lie.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they feel everything these imperfect characters feel, even when it’s uncomfortable.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

At the end of the day, disregarding everything that is involved in the act of publishing, of being seen and read and interpreted, remember that writing is a private relationship between you and the work. That must come first. And like any relationship, it must be sustained and protected. It’s easy to get caught up in the noise (and is it a loud and incessant noise!), but know that you can always return to that intimate space where it’s just you and the blank page—no one has to know what goes on between the two of you.

The post Elaine Hsieh Chou: Writing Is a Private Relationship Between You and the Work appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Out of many great entries, WD editors selected the following 25 winners:

1. “A Beautiful and Everlasting Moment of Pleasure” by Hanna Bahedry

2. “Scratch” by Gordon B. McFarland

3. “Toward the Thermosphere” by JL Perling

4. “The Piano” by Jenna-Marie Warnecke

5. “The Creation of Art” by Jenna-Marie Warnecke

6. “Initiate” by Coby Kellogg

7. “The Way Back” by Eric Jacobs

8. “At the Lochshore” by Sarah Dollacker

9. “Revival Reatha” by Thomas Oakley

10. “The Western Reaches” by Caitlin A. Quinn

11. “Vivid Warm” by Richard Jespers

12. “Red Bird (or, Eleanor at the End)” by Juliana Delany

13. “Witness Marks” by J.M. Lake

14. “My Father the Telepath” by Sophia Hyland-Wolzak

15. “The Bobby Pin Box” by Carol Elizabeth Larson

16. “Nature’s Decision” by John Arthur Lee

17. “What Wasn’t There” by C. Piper

18. “Something for the Children” by Katie Wills Evans

19. “Side-Step” by Laura Guilbault

20. “Echoes of Silence” by Nicole Disney

21. “An Infinite Capacity” by Mark D. Mrozinski

22. “An Odd Number” by Coby Kellogg

23. “Open Secrets” by Tim Lynch

24. “Dinner Date” by Jenna  Merritt 

25. “Choices” by Minh-Tam Le

The post Announcing the Winners of the 25th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Mariah discusses breaking writing rules in her debut short story collection, Extinction Capital of the World, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Mariah Rigg
Literary agent: Amy Bishop-Wycisk, Trellis Literary Management
Book title: Extinction Capital of the World
Publisher: Ecco
Release date: August 5, 2025
Genre/category: Literary Fiction/Short Stories
Elevator pitch: Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawaiʻi—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Growing up, I didn’t see a lot of positive depictions—or really, a lot of depictions at all—of Hawaiʻi in popular media. The depictions of the Hawaiian Islands I did see often reinforced settler colonial structures of sugar and pineapple plantations, extractive tourism, and the American military industrial complex’s occupation of the islands. As a child, I didn’t understand the extent of the harm perpetuated by these stereotyped depictions of my home. It wasn’t until my teens that I began to recognize my own role as a settler of Hawaiʻi, and to interrogate how the stories of the Islands I saw in popular media were used to occupy both the narrative surrounding Hawaiʻi, and the literal islands themselves.

Some of the stories in Extinction Capital of the World are written from my anger toward the people who have and continue to bastardize and colonize the Hawaiian Islands. But most of the stories are written from a place of deep love. I feel like I’m always repeating this wisdom, but I had a mentor once tell me: You write to the places you’re not. For the past five years, I’ve been writing love letters to Hawaiʻi. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I wrote the earliest story—“After Ivan,” a queer love story between an American and Soviet Olympic kayaker, set just before the 1989 fall of Berlin—in February of 2020. I was halfway through my first year in the MFA program at the University of Oregon and had no idea how to write a short story, let alone a collection. I thought maybe I could sell “After Ivan” by stretching it into a novel, but as I continued to write stories, I found a momentum building.

I never set out to write a linked collection. But as I revised stories for my MFA thesis, I realized that what I’d thought had been separate lives was really a universe. Much like my own childhood on Oʻahu, the characters in my Extinction Capital of the World are hopelessly intertwined—through blood, marriage, work, friendship, the ʻāina, and over and over again, through love and loss. Only a third of the stories I’ve written between 2020 and now are in the final book. I think I queried at least three different times, with different arrangements of stories and different titles, before signing with Amy Bishop-Wycisk in 2023.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

So, so, so many! Writing a book and publishing a book feels like it requires two completely different parts of the brain—one’s creative and world-building, the other is a lot of admin. I’ve been lucky that my agent Amy Bishop-Wycisk, my editor Rachel Sargent, my publicist Nina Leopold, and my teams at Trellis and Ecco have been so patient and kind.

One of the most surprising and affirming things in this publication process is the number of truly amazing people I’ve gotten to meet. It’s so easy to fall into stress and anxiety when you’re working to get your book on shelves—will I get enough blurbs? Is my book in the hands of the “right” people? After the years of work I put into this book, is anyone even going to read or like it?

This past January, I was driving through Kentucky when my partner and I stopped into a record store to browse. If you’re ever in Louisville, you have to stop by Surface Noise. Part record store, part bookstore, part gallery, the place has rotating art exhibits, monthly readings, and shows. My partner is an extrovert, and he and the owner immediately hit it off. We found out that the owner is a poet—Brett Eugene Ralph, whose book Black Sabbatical, published by Sarabande, is an absolute banger—and that he’d studied at UMass Amherst with David Berman. Brett Eugene was thoughtful and funny, selling us Gabby Pahinui’s “Rabbit Island Music Festival” for a fraction of its value, and inviting us to do a reading at the store later in the year. I was pretty frantic about my book at the time, but what he said as I left the store helped me to reality check: “You’ve got to remember that we do all this”—he gestured and the records and books and prints in the store around him—“for the access it gives us to other artists. For the community we form.” And you know what? He’s so right.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

This book was at least three other books before it became this one. The biggest change between the first draft and the book that will be on shelves is the addition of “Target Island,” which opens the collection, and the titular story, “Extinction Capital of the World,” which closes the book out. I wrote these two stories the winter before I queried for the last time and honestly wasn’t thinking about how they’d fit into my larger body of work as I drafted them. I just wanted to play with form and voice. When I returned to each of them in the spring of 2023, I began to see how they were connected and knew that they’d have to be in the collection.

As I’ve gotten more comfortable writing short stories, I’ve been more willing to mess with form and point of view and voice. I’m grateful that the first draft of this book wasn’t published, because even though I love the stories that were cut from the collection, a lot of them felt more “traditional,” which contributed to a sense of repetition and even stagnancy in the collection. I wouldn’t say this book is weird, but my hope as a writer (and person) is to keep getting weirder. Breaking “rules” in my writing gives me the courage to do the same in my life.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope people will stop telling me about their vacations to Hawaiʻi. Ha. But really, I do hope that this book helps people to reconsider their role as consumers and perpetrators of settler colonialism in Hawaiʻi, the North American continent, and beyond. As Haunani-Kay Trask famously said: “The First world nations must still learn what Pacific Islanders have known for millennia: Upon the survival of the Pacific depends the survival of the world.” Now more than ever is the time to educate ourselves on the infinite ways that our struggles are connected.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Don’t count yourself out before you’ve even begun. There are enough people out there who want to knock you down a peg, and you don’t have to be one of them. Apply for every single thing you can afford (and always ask for fee waivers!), even if it feels out of reach, because you might just get it. Write the story everyone tells you won’t work, because if you’re interested in it, odds are there are thousands of other people who will be interested in it, too. Rejection hurts, and I’m not sure it ever gets better, but “no” is a lot better than wishing you’d done more, that you’d had the courage to believe in yourself.

The post Mariah Rigg: I’m Grateful That the First Draft of This Book Wasn’t Published appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Ed discusses the culmination of 25 years of writing short stories into his new collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, his hope for readers, and more.

Name: Ed Park
Literary agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit
Book title: An Oral History of Atlantis
Publisher: Random House
Release date: July 29, 2025
Genre/category: Literary fiction; short stories
Previous titles: Personal Days, Same Bed Different Dreams
Elevator pitch: Gilt-edged stories that slice clean through the mundanity of modern life. Characters bemoan their fleeting youth, focus on their breathing, meet cute, break up, write book reviews, translate ancient glyphs, bid on stuff online, whale watch, and try to find solace in the sublime.

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What prompted you to write this book?

These short stories were written across 25 years—my entire writing career. They came to me before, during, and in between my novels. It was incredibly freeing to play hooky from a longer project. I wanted these to be entertaining, crisp, perfect.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Several of these stories were written in one go—a concept or a title was all I needed. Others took longer. I’d write like the wind for 10 pages, hit a roadblock, then put it in the metaphorical drawer, until I’d happen upon it again and remember what I found enchanting about it in the first place. Then I’d finish. Then, hopefully, I’d publish.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

These aren’t all the stories I wrote in that 25-year span; I left out some worthy stories that didn’t quite the collection’s vibe. I wanted An Oral History of Atlantis to have variety but also an interior logic. As I shuffled and edited my selections, I saw connections between them that I’d not been unconscious of while writing each individual story. Though not exactly a novel-in-stories, the sum feels satisfyingly greater than the parts.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Probably the two best known stories here (“Slide to Unlock” and “The Wife on Ambien”) were each written in an hour or so.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

The pleasure of an unimpeachable sentence. The shock or joy of encountering a single character across multiple stories. Laughter.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write the kind of fiction you like to read.

The post Ed Park: On Unconscious Connections Between Short Stories appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Rose discusses the support she felt from the publishing industry with her debut short story collection, Oddbody, her hope for readers, and more.

Name: Rose Keating
Literary agent: Ed Wilson (Johnson and Alcock)
Book title: Oddbody
Publisher: Simon and Schuster + Canongate
Release date: July 1, 2025 (U.S.) and July 3, 2025 (U.K.)
Genre/category: Literary horror story collection
Elevator pitch: Body horror short stories exploring shame, sex, and womanhood.

Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?

The collection came about quite organically, so there wasn’t a singular, isolated motivation that prompted the writing of it. Over the space of a few years, I found myself returning again and again to thoughts about my body and the bodies of others, the strangeness and horror of them, as well as the silliness and beauty of being in a human form. I felt a need to share this feeling with others, to pin it down and convey it to another person. I often found myself failing while trying to speak to this, in both articulation and in courage. It’s difficult to talk about the discomfort and absurdity of our lives, and practically impossible in the normalcy of our day-to-day routines. But locking that feeling up is also a lonely, frustrating thing. The writing of the collection was my way of trying to communicate those feelings as accurately, specifically, and truthfully as I could, even through fictional, surreal worlds unlike my own and characters different to myself.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The journey from idea to publication was a little convoluted. When friends ask, I tell them writing the book took about two years, and the process of publication took about a year and a half, which is sort of true, and sort of not. Some stories were written years before I knew I wanted to write a collection. I wrote the first draft of Next to Cleanliness when I was an inexperienced undergraduate student, and it looked a lot different than the version that appears in the book. Others were written during a more deliberate and concentrated time period.

I wrote the majority of the book during my creative writing master’s year, which gave me the space and freedom to treat the writing as a joyful, experimental and playful process, and allowed me to figure out exactly what I cared about in my work. I was lucky enough to attend the master’s on a scholarship, which took away financial worries for a while. After graduation, I had to go back to doing terrible, minimum wage jobs that made me sad and tired. I couldn’t figure out (and still haven’t completely figured out) how people work full time for very little money and also manage to write books. I was not able to finish a single story during the year post-graduation. I moved back to my Mam’s home in Waterford after a year of not writing, and then managed to receive an Arts Council grant which gave me both the financial and emotional boost needed to finish the collection. Once it was finished, getting an agent happened very quickly, and getting a publication offer also somehow happened very quickly, too. I am so grateful for both of those things—everything up to that point seemed to take me forever, so it was a relief that they went smoothly!

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Something that I did find surprising, in the most pleasant way possible, is the way in which the publishing industry does care about more than commercial viability.

When I began telling people I was writing a collection and didn’t have interest in writing a novel at that time, I felt I was often being told that it was unlikely to lead to publication. Stories were a good starting point, a cute beginning, not to be taken too seriously. If I did want to be taken seriously, it was essential to have a real book like a novel to back the collection up. Moreover, collections don’t sell—if someone would even take enough pity on short stories to consider buying them, you had better be working on a novel for the future to pay them back for the kind generosity that they have bequeathed upon you.

As someone who loves the short story form, finding it sharp, moving, shocking, elusive, intense and unpredictable in ways that I personally don’t always find novels, the tone of this advice didn’t spark joy.

It also is advice that doesn’t seem accurate. Throughout the process, I have felt very supported by my agent, my editors, and publishing teams, and never once felt like the form I cared so much about was an obstacle. Story collections don’t sell millions of copies, but that’s true of many different genres. Publishing as an industry does also seem to be aware of this—we aren’t all going to be Sarah. J. Mass, and they do seem to both understand and be OK with that! Conversations I have had with my teams have been about my writing, my work, and how to get that writing to the kinds of people who would like to read it, which seems exactly the way conversations about art should be.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Something which shouldn’t be surprising, but that I found and (continue to find) surprising, is the way in the passage of time allows you to write things you previously couldn’t. A part of this is obvious—you practice more at something, you get better. If you write more, edit more, read more, your craft improves. This is common sense. 

What I don’t think I understood when I set out writing these stories is how much my own brain would change. How my understanding of myself, other people, my body, my world, would develop, deepen and become more complex. There are things I was able to speak to toward the end of writing the collection that I did not know or understand when I began writing it. Knowing these things allows you to go deeper and further with what you are making.

When I first wrote “Pineapple,” a story about a woman and her strained relationship, I thought I was writing about sex, passivity, and bodies as a kind of playful experiment. When I was redrafting the final version, I had come to realize I was writing about intimacy. Between these two time periods, I met someone who made me reconsider what it means to know someone. To sit with the magnitude of someone else’s whole personhood, to try to know the fullness of them, to attempt to be known by them. If I hadn’t met that person, the story would be shallower, because my understanding of this was shallower when I first wrote it. I suspect these kinds of things aren’t surprising for a lot of people, and might be common sense for most, but I’m slow on the uptake. I assume and hope I will continue to be surprised by common sense lessons like this for many years to come.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope through these stories readers will allow themselves to sit with discomfort. When I was writing this collection, I often stopped mid-draft and felt like I should delete what I had written, as I had said something too ugly or too pathetic or too shameful. I wanted to write things that were beautiful and good and would make people think I was lovely and strong. When I tried to write in that way, I quickly become bored and annoyed. Writing is a way to communicate; to write something uncomfortable and ugly but true was more important than saying something beautiful but artificial and inaccurate. To feel discomfort or pain is already difficult—I think the least we can do for ourselves is to acknowledge the things that we find shameful or painful, to give voice to them and sit with them, and to look them in the eye.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Focus on the work. At the end of my masters, I started listening to podcasts about publishing, agents, marketability, unique selling points. I went insane and did not do any work while listening to these. Publishers figure out marketing, promotion, sales. You’re a writer. Do the writing.

If you’re not doing the writing, read.

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(How Writers Can Apply Business Tools to Their Writing.)

I discovered long ago that I’m not a novelist. I love short stories too much, with their compression and emphasis on sentence-level artistry. I’d be the last one to say a writer should work their way up to longer lengths, as I firmly believe there is no one-size-fits-all with stories. But it doesn’t hurt to keep your options open.

After all, I wrote a novella by accident. One might say I hacked my way to that longer length (“hacked” in the sense of improvising a solution, not of commoditized writing). Here’s what I learned along the way.

Let Smaller Layers Add Up

To reach a length outside of your comfort zone, you can tackle vaster, more drawn out plots, sure. Or you can rely on accretion, stacking up smaller parts to equate to a bigger whole. I once heard a writer describe a story as bloating like a marshmallow in a microwave. Perhaps some of us prefer to create s’mores, smushing sweet layers together into manageable, delectable bites.

My novella, Thrice Petrified, started off as a novelette (“A Petrified Heart”). Like all my other stories, it was a standalone piece, one and done. Or so I thought. I had put together what I considered a satisfying ending, yet the characters and world lingered in my mind. I hadn’t solved everything for them. Honestly, I felt a bit guilty about that. I realized they needed to conduct a root cause analysis of the string of curses affecting their homelands.

Truly Listen to Your Characters

You never know who will champion your story, even from within. See if your characters have more to reveal to you, new facets of their growth and new corners of their world to explore. Some authors conduct imaginary interviews with the people springing to life in their head. What questions can you ask of your protagonist, antagonist, or other characters to wring more from their experience?

Sometimes you don’t need to be the one initiating the conversation. I have one character to thank for spurring me to tell the full story that became my novella. Early on, he was supposed to be a walk-on character—enter a scene, deliver a message, and leave. But he stuck around, brought secrets with him, and developed his own emotional arc. After I’d completed that initial novelette, he continued to prod. Talk about a character taking on a life of their own!

Be Open to Unconventional Story Structures

Let’s examine those s’mores layers a little more. Some writers eschew the typical story beats and formulas, such as by linking tales in a shared setting, or having a side character from one part take center stage in another. Another approach is a fractal pattern, where individual sections share a familiar shape, and all those pieces together form a larger version of that same shape.

Rather than set out to write a novella off the bat, I wound up approaching the project as a trilogy of novelettes. The first part found a home in Wyngraf, a cozy fantasy magazine. The editor, in his introduction to the issue, described my story as the darkest one he’d included. (I’d debated whether even to submit it there—don’t self-reject!) As elated as I was to see that first novelette in print, I knew the sequels would be too dark for that publication. I’d already toed the line.

I would have to get creative to bring the full trilogy to readers. But who would want a trilogy of novelettes, featuring a cast of fairies (without a human in sight), and one-third of it a reprint?

Be Considerate of Reader Expectations

The flip side of experimenting on the page is the risk of alienating readers. If you subvert their expectations too much, or in ways they dislike, you’ll throw them out of the story. Granted, no writer can please every single reader out there. But it pays to set your writing aside, slip into a reader’s perspective as you might don a pair of glasses, and see what comes newly into focus.

In the case of Thrice Petrified, I had a revelation: My three novelettes added up to novella length. I could package them as one longer story told in three parts. That’s what a trilogy is, after all. I sent my newly christened novella to a beta reader, who noted that she enjoyed the triptych structure. Each section has its own arc, building upon what came before it to contribute to a greater whole. It doesn’t conform to a typical plot formula as you might find in many novellas. I guess I like toeing the line.

When I saw a publisher looking for standalone fantasy novellas, I saw my chance. I was upfront in my cover letter, explaining the reprint situation and emphasizing how I would love to bring the full arc to readers. Later, during the developmental editing phase, I expanded the first part and wove new details into the rest, aiming for the scope and scale that readers of longer lengths might expect. It was the final push in my unanticipated, twisting, years-long journey to bring this novella to readers.

I hadn’t set out to write a novella; it happened organically. It comes down to caring deeply about the characters and adopting a generous, daring view of how to deliver an immersive experience to readers. Let your stories embody the form and length they want to be. If you write short lengths by default, like me, but you feel called to tackle higher word counts, larger casts of characters, and more epic scopes, you have options.

Check out Katherine Quevedo’s Thrice Petrified here:

Amazon

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The post How I Hacked My Way to Writing a Novella appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Clea discusses the difference in inspiration between a novel and short stories with her new collection, Welcome to the Neighbourhood, her hope for readers, and more.

Name: Clea Young
Literary agent: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Agency
Book title: Welcome to the Neighbourhood
Publisher: House of Anansi
Release date: May 6, 2025
Genre/category: Fiction/Stories
Previous titles: Teardown, Freehand Books, stories
Elevator pitch: A collection of 13 short stories set in the Pacific Northwest that grapple with themes of friendship, parenthood, and the anxieties of modern life.

Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?

A collection of stories differs from a novel when it comes to what prompts or inspires the writing. There was no one impetus for the book; rather there were 13 separate ones, the number of stories in the collection. Each story was driven by a different scrap of inspiration or curiosity that I was compelled to explore.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

My first collection of stories, Teardown (Freehand Books), was published in 2016. The stories I wrote and revised in the subsequent years comprise Welcome to the Neighbourhood. I didn’t set out with a central idea that would tie the stories in the book together. I more or less chased each one down as the ideas came to me. It was only when I had a critical mass of work that themes I was drawn to became evident throughout the stories.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The most pleasant surprises were the interest the collection received from publishers and the realization that I would publish a second book.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I was surprised by my tendency to unconsciously return to certain themes despite believing with each story that I was setting out with new intentions. I’m clearly preoccupied with the limits and precariousness of friendship, the endless ways humans can misunderstand one another, the degradation of the environment, and the omnipresent threat of danger as it relates to children.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers who might not have encountered short stories before find something enjoyable about the condensed narrative form. Unlike a novel (for the most part), a story can transport you to an imagined world and return you to reality in one sitting. I also hope that the work lives up to the expectations of those who are already fans of the short story.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Allow yourself fallow periods to recharge, experience new things, and readjust your perspective on the world. Doing so will only enhance your writing when you get back down to it.

The post Clea Young: Allow Yourself Fallow Periods To Recharge appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Happy writing!

28 Flash Fiction Prompts for the 2025 February Flash Fiction Challenge!

Day 1: Write about a garden.

Day 2: Set your story in a retirement home.

Day 3: Write about something captured on camera.

Day 4: Write about something on the news.

Day 5: Write about a purchase gone wrong.

Day 6: Write a eulogy for an idea or inanimate object.

Day 7: Write a story based on a font.

Day 8: Write from an animal’s perspective.

Day 9: Write about a creation.

Day 10: Write about peace.

Day 11: Write about exhaustion.

Day 12: Write about someone googling something.

Day 13: Write about a work in progress.

Day 14: Write from the perspective of a well-known character.

Day 15: Write about a sign.

Day 16: Write about the last of a species.

Day 17: Write about an unlikely team.

Day 18: Write about a daydream.

Day 19: Outline someone’s personal hell.

Day 20: Write about the day the world was supposed to end.

Day 21: Write about where the devil goes on vacation.

Day 22: Write a story that takes place in one spot.

Day 23: Write a story where a character sees a new perspective.

Day 24: Write about relief.

Day 25: Write a story from a villain’s perspective.

Day 26: Write a story based on a reality TV show.

Day 27: Write about a puzzle.

Day 28: Write about passion.

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