Publication Updates
How I wrote my recently published stories and where you can find them.
Dear Reader,
As I shared last week, there has been a purposeful drought of short fiction here while I try my hand at publishing in literary magazines and websites.
I’m thrilled to share that I now have two pieces living outside the Substack universe. I would be honored for you to read them on their respective platforms. Below I have links to each and a little insight to the writing process.
Thank you for following along,
Sara
Perfection
Published May 11, 2024 on 101 Words
I’ve been a reader of 101 Words for a while and am always impressed by people’s ability to tell a story within such a strict word count. It felt like a fun challenge, so I gave it a try. This very short story was the result.
It started with a note I jotted down months prior. The heart of that note eventually became what my character found in the story’s existential encyclopedia. There was a core truth in it that I wanted to share, but couldn’t figure out how to with out diluting the message. The brevity of this platform felt like a perfect fit. I hope you agree.
A Case for Good
Published May 16, 2024 on The Lit Nerds
I wrote this story as part of a prompt project with a ridiculously talented friend. It started because each of us had little seeds of stories that never grew into anything of substance. So, in an effort to resurrect ideas from the compost heap, we would alternate sending a story start each week. We’d use the same opening to complete short stories that always ended in wildly different places. (My story, A Less Intelligent Man, was also a result of this project.) Thanks to insightful feedback and diligent line edits from my co-writer, I occasionally ended up with something worth sharing.
A Case for Good was one such story. It begins with a paragraph I wrote more than three years ago. I tried to do something with it a few times before, but could never find the thread of a story. Then one afternoon, I was lying in my favorite field, sleepily soaking up the sun and thinking about how home can be a person, rather than a place. I turned that idea over and over until these characters came to me.
Josh and Clementine meet as children and build a lifelong friendship on the foundation of a fundamental disagreement. They each have wildly different perspectives on the inherent goodness of humankind and spend their lives trying to convince the other to change their stance.
These characters mean a lot to me. I’m so grateful that they are out in the universe, hopefully inspiring other arguments in favor (or even against) the fundamental good in the world.