Over the last few months, I have committed to writing one short story a week – as of today, 11 short stories ranging from 1000 to 4000 words have been created. This initially began as a challenge with my partner, but has since become perhaps my most important weekly commitment.

The surprising thing about fiction writing is how painful it is, for to invent a story requires payment of one’s own soul. At the beginning, you have energy but no character in existence; then as the character is birthed and develops, you begin depleting your own energy. By the time you have created a believable being, you have nearly emptied yourself. To compare it to the pain of giving birth would not be unrealistic.

The story that ruined me the most is called “Pitiful Love”. It is based on an old detective’s reminiscence of his first love, who he discovers was murdered. This grief is juxtaposed with the reality that he is happily married to another woman and this conflict, alongside alternating time periods of the past and present, represents the idea that one’s past never really abandons them. It is crudely written but by the end, I wanted to crawl into a hole and hibernate. The creation of this story had almost emptied my soul.

Journal writing, or blog writing, is child’s play in comparison.

From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s letter to a writer:

“You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell…

The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he’ll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming — the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.

That, anyhow, is the price of admission. Whether you are prepared to pay it or, whether it coincides or conflicts with your attitude on what is ‘nice’ is something for you to decide. But literature, even light literature, will accept nothing less from the neophyte. It is one of those professions that wants the ‘works.’ You wouldn’t be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.”