It’s been a goal of mine for about two years, now: to create a curated short story collection from all the prompts that I’ve responded to on /r/WritingPrompts. I’ve been writing on that subreddit for almost ten years, which is wild! Time really flies.
After years of hemming and hawing and trying to pick out my favorite prompt responses, 42 Stories Inspired By Internet Strangers is finally complete!
I’ve learned a lot through the years. My writing has definitely improved - it’s cool to see you how my characters have become more vivid, how my dialogue has gotten snappier. I feel like you can even tell when I started reading the Discworld series - as I started integrating humor more and more into my stories. I really wish I’d known about Terry Pratchett when I was younger, but I didn’t start reading his stories til I in my late twenties! Better late than never, I suppose.
Now that I’m done with this project, I find myself thinking about what to do next. I have so many ideas, and it’s difficult to choose something to work on - half the time, I flit from idea to idea, never making much progress. I probably would get a lot more done if I just picked something and went to town on it!
There are about six different half-finished projects that I’m between right now, evenly split between puzzle design and writing.
- Davis square puzzle adventure
- Library puzzle adventure
- Hollow Knight PuzzledPint
- Strak sequel
- Kpop Demon Hunters fanfic
- Fantasy writing project
I guess none of these really have time pressure, but for #6, I’d like to develop and plan something so I can participate in my writing discord’s November writing challenge (RIP NaNoWriMo, but it lives on in other ways!). I also am staying busy with rock climbing, soccer, some planned travel (for work and for fun), and of course, binge-playing Silksong - so I’m trying not to put too much pressure and put myself through creative burnout.
I went off on a bit of a tangent, oops. Anyways, I’m very proud of my short story collection - ten years’ worth of my favorite stories. If you read it, I hope you like it!