Published in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Near to the Knuckle, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, and Shooter magazine.
I had a great deal of fun at the end of 2019 when I reviewed all of the research I’d had to carry out for my short stories throughout the year. Thorough inquiry is no guarantee of a good narrative (my wife, an excellent editor, has put several exhaustively researched but poorly written stories out of their misery), it is an end in itself.
Continue reading “Things I had to Research in 2020 | Blogging”
I’ve been rather scatter-gun with my blog posts of late. I’ve had to rearrange some ballast on deck, with more attention paid to my doctoral literature review (finally completed) and work. This temporary realignment has reminded me of how much I miss blogging. I’ve certainly engaged with the writing community, but it never feels quite the same when you’re not posting your own content – the only person circling at a party with nothing interesting to say. Continue reading “Writing Idiosyncrasies | Opinion”
Malcolm Gladwell is associated with the ten-thousand hour rule. This holds that ten-thousand hours of deliberate practice is required if a person is to become world-class in any given field. Being world-class in precisely no fields, I can nevertheless safely assume that in many cases such practice must necessarily comprise a high ratio of tedium and repetitiveness. Colonel Sanders’ recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken was rejected over a thousand times before he hit upon the secret which would make him famous, whilst Michael Jordan estimated that his nine-thousand missed shots contributed to his ability to score baskets under pressure.
I’ve been blogging regularly for almost a year now and it’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience. I try to publish Wednesday/Saturday as a (frequently broken) rule. The discipline is healthy and often forces me to write late into the night or to try to jumpstart the creative process in order to get ideas for stories or articles.
I do, however, find that I am asking the following question of myself on a regular basis:
‘Should I be submitting this to a magazine or journal instead of publishing on my own site?’
Continue reading “Blog or Journal? The submitter’s quandary.”
Matthew Richardson 