My creativity and imagination for starting a novel or short story is stifled now. I can’t write unless I have thought it through and can see the whole story in my mind.
I need to sum up the whole in three paragraphs until I can see the story. Then I can finally turn those paragraphs into an outline or a rough draft.
Long-form writing is becoming a lost art during these days of short attention spans. With all the media content available to us, our time feels limited, so we want to maximize our consumption time. Blogs have been taken over in favor of quick social media posts. Twitter limits a tweet to 140 characters. Tik-Tok and Instagram promote short video clips, etc.
Microfiction is the natural progression of all this. It is considered to be even shorter than the short story genre. Much like a haiku, it forces concise wording to tell a story. There is no set word limit, but the general guideline is 100-101 words to tell your story. The trick is to make it meaningful enough to make an impact, as opposed to having your reader hop on to the next nano story.
How to start: Come up with an idea, create a rough draft, check your work count and revise to fit. Ulysses writing app is brilliant for this.
Where to publish: On your website first, of course. Then, save your work as a PDF and distribute to your interested followers, either for free or fee. Thereafter, use the same social media platforms if you must. There are even publishing houses looking for microfiction authors.
Finally: Microfiction is a tiny sub-genre (see what I did there?) in the writing/reading world. You won’t earn a lot of money from it, but the challenge itself can be very rewarding.
If you’re overthinking, write.
If you’re underthinking, read.
Write, then edit.
Quality comes from quantity.
And it is true to write about what you know.
But the extra bonus comes from doing the research and fun of writing about what solely exists in your mind.
It’s November 1 and it’s time for National Novel Writing Month again. Its also time for me to have lofty goals and actually produce something by the end of the month. NANOWRIMO’s stated goal is 50,000 words in a month. Probably not going to happen, but I am going to have fun in the attempt.
With the upgraded iPad, keyboard and Ulysses writing software, I just need to sit my butt down in a chair and start cranking out some paragraphs.
I’ve been writing and self-hosting images online for fifteen years now.
What I enjoy about blogging is the potential for infinite writing and posting.
With digital photography I can shoot and post an infinite amount of images.
The ability to host one’s own publishing house is nothing short of amazing.
So one of my favorite writing apps, Ulysses, is up for the annual subscription renewal. At $50 a year, it is one of the pricier apps and I am not keen to renew as a result. Yes, it organizes my novel writing workflow better than anything else. But is this enough?
Compare that to IA Writer- similar features and a one-time purchase. It does lack the organization tools but can I find a work around or a new workflow?
I’ll test this for a week, in fact, I am writing in IA Writer and publishing from the app to this website now.
To change my own mind. I try to create a new vocabulary or terrain for myself, so that I open out — I always think of the Dutch claiming land from the sea — or open up something that would have been closed to me before. That’s the point and the pleasure of it. I continuously scrutinize my own thinking. I write something and think, How do I know that that’s true? If I wrote what I thought I knew from the outset, then I wouldn’t be learning anything new.”
Marilynne Robinson
When asked why she writes: “To change my own mind” is an excellent way to analyze and then describe something.
Assembling the proper tools for creative writing has been a tiresome but crucial process And after all these years of experimenting with various programs and platforms I think I am there. I’ve been searching for ways to increase my productivity and also more efficient, organized. I wanted a means to self-publish quickly and from all my devices no matter where in the world I am at the time. With this setup, I can focus on the content and process as opposed to wondering if the tools I had would do the job. And I think I am there. Finally.
When I want to write for myself, I use this website, which is hosted by WordPress servers. The fact that you are reading this and following along with me is appreciated. When I want to expand and share thoughts on other topics, I will publish to Medium, a website that is designed to connect writers and readers alike.
Before 2019 I was using either Windows or Linux operating systems and this meant my word processors were either Microsoft Word or Google Docs. These writing apps were focused on design and both very cumbersome. Sporadically the text was preserved with autosave, mostly not. No thanks. After migrating everything to the Apple ecosystem in 2019 I began to explore alternatives out there and found a few. The one application that kept coming up was Ulysses.
Ulysses has a minimalist interface and stores your text in iCloud, instantly retrievable on all my Apple devices. I am currently writing this using Ulysses on my new M1 MacBook Pro and the experience is an amazingly refreshing breath of fresh air. Another benefit of Ulysses is the capability to push the Publish button and have my words posted immediately to my website and Medium.
Prior to Ulysses, I would be forced to cut/paste my text from the word processor into the file transfer protocol, upload to my web server and hope the text formatting was screwed up once it arrived, ready for me to publish.
Exporting my text through Ulysses is amazingly effective and one of the best this author has experienced. Every word, link, category, tag, and image is right there as intended.
The same efficiency of self-publishing from Ulysses to my website is there again when publishing from Ulysses to Medium. There are some minor tweaks that I’ll go back in and correct, but it is still more efficient than the past experiences.
This is the final step in the self-publishing process and again, Ulysses comes through brilliantly. As brilliant as it is, some people may balk at the cost, others may find the price to be reasonable but at $40 annually it has been worth the chance for me to write on my phone, tablet, or laptop flawlessly.
iA Writer
Scrivener
“If you think you can learn a lot from reading books, try writing one.”
James Clear
Write to connect with the similar people
Write to create opportunities
Write to define your goals
Write to meditate
Write to think better
Write to teach and clarify
Write to deepen your focus
Write to understand yourself
