I didn’t expect to post fiction or creative writing on every Friday for a year. If I had intended to do that I would have published the first post on January 3, 2014 (the first Friday of the year) instead of on January 10th (the second Friday), but I didn’t expect the fiction posts to become so consistent. I didn’t expect to do them every week.
Although I categorized that first post as “Fiction Friday,” I didn’t announce any big series. The end of the post simply said, “What was that? Oh, just a brief fit of fiction. I usually write other stuff.”
Much like fits of anything I expected my fiction outbursts to be sporadic.
The early Fiction Friday posts were what I expected they would always be: flash fiction, short story snippets written quickly and with little editing. Some later Fiction Friday, though, turned more into “creative writing” Friday. There was some satire, some creative non-fiction, and poetry. It was still mostly fiction though.
Only three of the Fiction Friday posts were written before 2014 (this, this, and this). Those were not last-minute cop-outs due to writer’s block. Each of those was used strategically to give me a break during what I knew would be a busy week. (One was during my vacation.) They kept me from stretching myself too thin, while giving me an excuse to share a few things that I hadn’t shared online before.
Most of the newly written pieces were written during the same weeks they were published, often on Thursday nights, although they usually had been bouncing around in my head for days before. I did work on some of the pieces for longer. I worked on this one for about six weeks.
Admittedly (and not unexpectedly), some posts were better than others, and the quality didn’t necessarily correlate to how long I spent writing them.
So what did I learn from all this?
1. Not many people want to read Fiction Friday
Sadly, with a few exceptions (most notably this one), my Fiction Friday posts were by far my least read blog posts. When I mentioned this to a fellow blogger he asked, “Do you think that’s because they are fiction or because it is Friday?” Although Fridays do tend to have lower blog readership, in this case it was likely a little of both.
However,
2. Some people really liked Fiction Friday
I got some of my most positive feedback about Fiction Friday posts. Multiple people told me that they looked forward to them every week. A few people said my posts inspired them to write.
If you are one of those small but dedicated group of readers who said something nice about Fiction Friday last year, know that it is you inspired me to keep the series going. Thank you.
3. I can still write fiction
I started Fiction Friday because I wanted to exercise my imagination. Sure, regular blogging was keeping me writing, but it lacked the thrill of creating new characters and stories like I did when I was playwriting.
In that first post, I didn’t announce a weekly series that I’d do all year because I didn’t know if I would be able to keep it up, or if I would want to. It turns out I could, and I did.
Which brings me to the last thing I learned.
4. I still love creative writing
Fiction Friday lasted the entire year because the more fiction and creative writing writing I did, the more I wanted to do.
Despite that, don’t expect to see Fiction Friday here anymore.
No fiction was posted here last Friday. The weekly installment is over. Perhaps some fiction will appear occasionally, but in general I’d like to focus my creative writing into larger projects, most notably playwriting. I haven’t written a new play since 2013, and I haven’t had a play produced since 2012. I’d like to change that.
I’ll still be writing blog posts though, so I hope you will stick around.
You can see all the Fiction Friday pieces here.
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Kim Z. Dale 