Binge Writing

From the Speakers: SONG 3 by The Appleseed Cast

I've been on a short story binge lately, both reading and writing.All kinds of great places to find free, amazing fiction exist online, magazines like Clarkesworld, Ray Gun Revival, Light Speed--basically magazines I like to submit to--not to mention that a while ago I subscribed to Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov's, and midway through the year got hooked on a books series (okay, maybe more than one series), and so I've still got a lot of good short fiction sitting around my room.

Reading these stories makes me want to write short pieces of my own. The thing about writing novels is that the rate of ideas that pop into my head doesn't decrease, so I get this backlog waiting to be written. The hiatus I take from novel-writing, coupled with recent short story reading, results in what I refer to as a "binge-writing" phase.

This is where, in the course of a very short amount of time, I write as many short stories as I can, as fast as I can. What I end up with is between four and six short stories in a week. If your wondering if the quality is questionable, I'll tell you I'm usually surprised at how letting the idea incubate in my head makes it come out more fully formed. However, while binge writing, I never feel like slowing down to edit.

That comes later, after a very long and well-deserved sleep.

Often, the stories spring from a single question: Why would a man be trying to survive in the wild, and what's hunting him? Could a kid build a mechanical dog out of junkyard parts? What would the slave trade look like in science fiction? What would a group of uneducated sailors ask their friend to protect if they knew they sailed to their deaths?

To find out the answers to these questions, stay tuned for future story sales posts!

Anyway, I've been coming out of a binge phase, the result being four short stories that now desperately need my attention for the revision process. Soon, it will be time to get to work on that . . . .

There are worse habits to binge on, don't you agree?