Note: This post is older, and, therefore, some of the links may no longer be current.
Welcome to the official start of the Short Story Project. I’m glad you’re here! I’m also glad I’m here. I love writing picture books and I love stretching beyond the sorts of stories I’ve written before.
Here is the schedule for the Short Story Project themes:
September 12: Jobs and Occupations
September 19: Foundational Myths and Everyday Magic
September 26: Fun!
October 3: Voice (and finding your own)
Each week, I’ll give you a list of short stories and their links, along with a brief description. It’s possible you and I have different taste in stories. I included a story if it did one of these things: made me feel something, surprised me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it (even if I wasn’t sure I liked it), or I wanted to immediately adapt it into a picture book.
You can choose whether to read one short story or more than one. Go with your gut. Choose a story you have a reaction to. Maybe a description will make you say, “Yes! That!” or “Ew, what?” Start with those stories.
Here is how this process works for me. You can, of course, adapt it to your own process. But two elements are important: allowing yourself undistracted work time, and noticing what you notice.
I read the story uninterrupted. I either print it out (sometimes this is difficult, if the story is very long or formatted oddly) or read it online with focused-reading elements in place (I pull the tab out into its own browser and close all other tabs, or I turn on Freedom).
If I’m reading a printout, I might make a mark in the margin if a particular part stands out, but for the most part, I don’t take notes while I’m reading the story, but take notes after. I go to the couch with my notebook and free write. What parts did I like? What parts didn’t I like? What part stood out the most? These are all highly subjective. I’m not taking notes to write a detailed analysis. I’m noticing what my feelings are after reading it. Most of the time, I end up writing a picture book riffing on what I liked the most. But if I really didn’t like the story, that’s interesting too. If I hated it, why? What did I hate? Did it fill me with dread in a way that made me uncomfortable? Did I think it was poorly written, and if so, why? Although I like to get inspired by things I like rather than things I don’t, sometimes it does happen, that I don’t like a story, and that’s interesting.
I think about how I could take the elements that stood out to me and translate them to a picture book. If I liked the relationship between the characters, what would that relationship be like if the characters were children? (The elements of what make a relationship work or not work are fairly universal.) If I liked the feeling I got while reading it, what kind of picture book would evoke the same feeling? If the structure is interesting, what would the picture book version of that be? If the story is about someone who befriends a supposedly-killer robot monster during a time of hopelessness, what would that be in a picture book? (That short story is coming up in Week Two.)
I reread the story, now looking specifically at how the elements I liked work in it. In this reading, since I know what’s going to happen, I look more closely at the language. Often I notice things I missed the first time. Now I take notes. I note beautiful passages, and think about why they’re beautiful. I note particularly well-done bits – where there is nuance and layer in the language, or the tension builds in a cool way, or any parts where I can see the weight of a particular sentence. Short stories, like picture books, put a lot of weight and importance on the language and words, because there isn’t much space.
I write the picture book, long hand, in my notebook. I do my best to get all the way through to the end. If I get stuck, I free write, right there in the notebook, about what I think should happen next, what I want to happen, what I want it to feel like. And then I keep going.
Sometimes that first draft is as far as I get. For whatever reason, it’s not working. I might keep thinking about it, might think more about why it is or is not working, and try again. If I do like the direction the story is going in, I do a revision by typing it up, and then I print it out, and revise from the printout (this is the method George Saunders uses, which he talks about in A Swim in the Pond in the Rain).
This week’s stories circle around the theme of Jobs and Occupations. What do characters do with their days? How do they get money? How do they spend their time? Is it a dream job, or not? Picture book versions of these show up as things like A Sick Day for Amos McGee or What Do People Do All Day? In stories for grownups, the question of a job might be an existential one for the characters. For kids, it might be exploratory (what do you want to be when you grow up?) or a current identity – your place in the class line (Caboose) or an extracurricular activity.
The stories:
“Sorry Dan, But It’s No Longer Necessary for a Human to Serve as CEO of This Company” by Erik Cofer
Dan is fired and replaced by an allegedly personable robot in this McSweeney’s piece.“How to Become a Writer” by Lorrie Moore
An all-too-relatable classic about, yes, how to become a writer. Short answer: it’s not easy.“Sleeping Beauty” by Laura Demers
A woman whose job is to dress as Disney princesses for kid parties finds herself wearing the wrong princess costume at an adult’s birthday celebration.“The Wife of the Lion” by Hernan Diaz
Written in the style of an article, this is about a writer whose life and work eclipsed everyone else in his orbit.
“Orientation” by Daniel Oruzco
A first-day-on-the-job orientation. Pay attention. It’s complicated.“Mnemosyne, Missouri” by Sahalie Angell Martin
One day, a woman realizes that she can remember everything.
Your assignment is to write one picture book draft. You might revise and polish it, or you might leave it in its first draft stage, but I strongly encourage you to write a draft through to the end. It might be terrible.1 That’s ok. You can fix it later. For now, at least get to the end.
Can you write more than one? Sure, of course. Can you not write one? I mean, yes. This is your project. There won’t be a grade. But if you’re here because you want to create something, why not do it? You can carve out 45 minutes to write a first draft. Maybe it will be the start of an amazing story. Maybe you’ll have a breakthrough. You’ll definitely learn something about yourself as a writer in the process.
You can comment on Substack, or! You can head over to the forum on my website. Fancy, I know. I was looking into ways we could have more of a conversation about all of this, and when I think about places like Slack or Discord, it seems like you might also get distracted by other forums you are part of. I don’t want to invite distraction. So there’s a private forum on my website now. IMPORTANT: Mercury is still retrograde, and also I’ve never built a forum before. Please let me know if something isn’t working. Let me know if there are features you think I should and could add. Let me know if there are forum topics you want on there. You’ll be glad to know I paid extra to give us the ability to attach gifs and send each other private messages. That seemed important. At the very least, I’m thinking the forum will be a more organized way for us to share our thoughts. But also, be patient with it2 as we all figure it out.
At the end of the four weeks, there will be a Zoom where we can talk about how this process was, and how to use what we learned going forward. I haven’t set a date for it yet because I’m traveling at the beginning of October. We’ll figure out a time in the next few weeks.
Ok! Let’s get to it! Choose a short story, read it, absorb it, then filter it through your own personal picture book blender and see what you come up with.
It’s a first draft! It’s likely to be terrible. It’s supposed to be.
Be patient with me, is what I really mean.
Love this curriculum. Might be just what I need!