Why Do I Write So Many Short Pieces?

A little peek inside my troubled mind

If you have followed my work for any length of time, you will undoubtedly be well aware that I lean more toward drabbles and flash fiction as opposed to longer stories. There are several reasons why I take this approach, which I thought might be interesting to share.

I first started writing long before the days of the internet. When I was about 12 or 13, I would fold over a random number of pieces of paper and then try to fill the spaces with a story. They were nonsense little things about dinosaurs and such, but I loved the challenge. My sister eventually found my work and purchased me a battered old typewriter that served me well for years. Even then, the stories were short and to the point.

It wasn’t until I found out about NaNoWriMo that I toyed with the idea of writing something longer, but even then, what became my first novel was a series of intertwined shorts. After writing a follow-up novel, I began to drift back to shorter pieces, with the rest of my published work falling into novella territory. I found this to be my comfort zone.

After dropping off the face of the publishing earth for a few years, I started tentatively making my way back last year. I was back in antidepressants, and the creativity was returning like a faucet left to run wide open. That was when I found Substack. I wanted to get as much of my work out there as possible in hopes of finding an audience, which seems to be working, for the moment at least.

My drabbles tend to be different variations on a similar idea, and they serve as blurbs of a sort, which might well become something bigger. It is the same with the flash pieces. It’s the easiest way for me to get an idea down and see if I think it will go anywhere if I do expand it.

I am now at the point where longer pieces are starting to call to me again, but even then, I think that majority of those will end up as novellas. I’m not sure how much writing time I have left in me, so I am looking to strike while the iron is hot. Drabbles and flash make it easy for me to write and create every day; while also feeling like I am also working on something new every time.

Even when I return to longer form horror, my page will still be home to those nasty little nuggets, simply because they are what helped me grow my subscriber base here. No matter which way I go, I hope you guys will come along for the ride.