Pages From My Journal

          I don't tell people I'm a writer.      Being a writer impacts how I look at the world, how I relate to people, how I listen, how I speak, how I interact with my friends. But, I'd rather people get to know Alyson who happens to write stories, than get to know a writer who happens to have the name Alyson.      Certain things happen the first time someone learns that you are an author. A balanced conversation of question and answer for both people instantly becomes "me" heavy. When I'm with close friends, I probably talk about myself far too much, but when I'm with people I hardly know, talking about myself is very uncomfortable. When strangers hear I write, they starting a thread of questions, and for the most part, everyone asks the same ones.      You write?      What do you write?      Do you write stories like the Hunger Gam...

It's raining. I'm sitting in a coffee shop, But, it's still raining. I'm exhausted. I'm editing for the first time in weeks, But I'm still exhausted. I'm busy. School is done for the year, But I'm still busy. I'm discouraged. I want to do so many things with not enough time to do them, So, yes, I'm discouraged.

      (Photo cred. MoviePilot) Could you write a story under 1,000 words?         When I started writing fiction four years ago, I knew that I was too impatient to ever write a full novel. Three books later, I found myself thinking the opposite. To scared to get wrapped up in a long story, I never sat down and wrote a short story just for fun.      But I was a poet.      I knew that short poems could flow out of me with ease, but I never saw the ability to write poetry as a reason why I would be able to write a short piece of fiction well. One day, I was feeling adventurous and sat down and wrote a flash fiction as an experiment. I had no concrete plans to send it anywhere. I just wanted to see if I could write a story under 1,000 words.     The half a dozen readers I sent my story to loved it, so I sent it to Splickety Havok magazine. They really liked it and pub...