Melody Writes

Project: Short Story Exploration   Last year, I read 70 books, most of which were novels, so for 2024, I’m going to focus on short fiction. I’ll still be reading and reviewing novels, but I want to take a deep dive into short stories. I’ve been accumulating quite the backlog of anthologies, magazines, and bookmarked stories to read. I will be working my way through them and journaling about each short piece as I go, recording date, story, author, thoughts, what I learned, etc. I’m not setting a specific goal, but I am estimating reading somewhere around 250 stories of varying lengths this year. Then towards the end of each month, I’ll be posting my thoughts so far, recommendations, etc. Why am I doing this? I want to get to know the short form better and, in turn, grow my own short fiction writing. I also want to develop a journaling habit, but have no interest in writing about my day-to-day life*. Years ago, I turned up my nose slightly at short stories. I didn’t hate them, but I pref