A Post About Writing

Apr 25, 2025

I've been moonlighting as an "author" (yes in quotes) for about five years. In that time, I've written five short stories, abandoned one, accidentally wrote a novella (at about 20 000 words and it was shit) and outlined a novel.

The work

Five short stories in five years? My output isn't impressive.

Four of my short stories have been rejected (rightfully so, they were also shit) by a couple of publications. Low quantity and low quality, off to a great start!

But one of my stories was accepted by The NoSleep Podcast, a horror anthology podcast releasing a weekly collection of dramatized horror shorts. They put on quite a production too with professional voice actors, music and sound effects. I've been a fan of theirs for ten years so hearing my story performed by them felt a bit like a dream come true. It's called "Love and Death, in Cantabile" (written under my pen name, KA Manning) and you can listen to it here at around 52:55.

The short I abandoned was more sci-fi-y but it really didn't hit. It was about a serial killer that incepted his personality and his anti-social behavior (you know, the uncontrollable murdering) to unwitting victims by way of a shared dream space that people accessed with tech akin to VR.

That’s a mouthful.

The idea sounded pretty good. But short stories are hard. We have around 5000 words to set up an emotional gut punch. Writing science fiction shorts, I've learned, is much harder because within the limited word count, you also have to do enough world building to give the audience context without losing the audience.

Switching gears, my wife and I decided to try writing a children's book together, where I write and she illustrates. It stars our son and our dog. Our dog is scared of everything, especially loud noises and trucks. But our son wants to go to the park with her. I think it's a sweet story. The draft is done and all that's left is for my wife to illustrate it.

The practice

My output isn't impressive. But, I think the most important thing is the writing practice.

For the past year and a half, I've committed to writing 500 words a day, even if it wasn't writing "work" (fiction). If I'm not writing a story, I'm writing in a journal.

At first, this journal became a dumping ground of random thoughts and ideas. These were side projects I wanted to build or a rough space to jot down notes about my day job. Very quickly though, my daily free-writing exercises turned into a dumping ground of raw emotion.

It was very therapeutic.
It was very terrifying.

Terrifying, because confronting these emotions and giving them a space to form a shape made them more real than real. It allowed me to practice introspection. It gave me the time to think and it also gave me the time to question.

So obviously, I won't be sharing any of these daily journal entries to anybody. Once in a while though, I get an idea for a blog post from them. This is one.

I think I'll end it with this: a daily free-writing exercise could probably benefit most people.

"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard" – David McCullough

Addendum

No clue who David McCullough is or in what context was he attributed that quote. I just kept running into that phrase "writing is thinking" and decided to google it. That was the first result.