Season of Writing IV: Short Stories

How short can I make these things?

My first season of writing started on May 1, 2022. A year later, last week, I wrapped up my third season. (Finally.) Here are the things I’ve written since starting this experiment, and what's coming next.

Season I: Personal Essays

• 5/4/22 — “Wearing Sunglasses to the Hat Store”

• 5/17/22 — “Tales of a Kid Entrepreneur”

• 6/1/22 — “What Would Happen if the Patriots Played Football Against the Cast of Remember the Titans? and Other Imagined Scenarios”

• 7/27/22 — “Going to the Dump With My Grandfather” (published by Seacoast Online)

• 9/20/22 — “Adventures in Love and Student Journalism” (published by Seacoast Online)

Season II: Humor

• 11/29/22 — “Trade Schools Are a Fantastic Option for Many High School Graduates (But Not My Son)”

• 12/14/22 — “Let's Drop the Whole JFK Assassination Thing, OK? By a 1960s CIA Operative”

• 12/20/22 — “I Bet I'm Not Looking So Bad Right About Now, Am I? By Mark Zuckerberg”

• 1/11/23 — “A Memo From MTV's VP of Programming Regarding 1,004 Episodes of "Ridiculousness” (published on McSweeney’s)

• 1/30/23 — “I’m About to Relate to Your Story by Telling My Own Semi-Related Story” (published on McSweeney’s)

Season III: Internet Writing

• 2/13/23 — “The Journal That Everyone Has Time For”

• 3/20/23 — “The Right to Reset on Social Media”

• 4/6/23 — “Do You Hold Your Opinions Inward or Outward?”

• 5/11/23 — “What Politics Should Borrow From Baseball”

This most recent season — "Internet writing" — was my toughest yet. Why? For the same reason I continue to put "Internet writing" in quotes...I didn't really know what I was doing. The genre was ill-defined from the start. The four individual stories came out fine, I think. I heard some good feedback, and there are ideas I like in there. But they weren't as much fun to create. For that reason, I don't think it's a type of writing that I'll regularly do. And that's OK. Part of this experiment — figuring out what I want to write — requires figuring out what I don't want to write.

Season IV: Short Stories

For my next season of writing, I'm going to try short stories. While I'll continue to (try to) write every day, I think this form will demand plenty of private tinkering, trashed drafts, starting and stopping, etc. For that reason, my public output goal is a modest one: just one short story shared by the end of August.

I reserve the right to post other, non-short-story things between now and then, but that's my simple goal for this season.

If you don't hear from me for a few months, I hope you have a wonderful summer. If you’d like to subscribe and get my writing in your inbox, just hit the button below. Thanks for reading!