My Evolution As an Author by HANK QUENSE
Starting way back in the last millennium, I began my career as a writer. Since that time, my writing has gone through a series of evolutions.
Short Stories
I began writing short stories to master the crafts of story design and story-telling. Short stories have an advantage in that they are . . . short. I could create a number of short stories and get them critiqued and submitted in the time needed to write a novel. Eventually, I sold over 40 stories all of them less than 6,000 words long.
While writing another short story, a strange thing happened: it ended up as a novella, over 20,000 words. I wasn’t sure how that happened, but I didn’t worry about it and started another short story. This one ended up as an even longer novella. I realized my characters were becoming more complex and my plots more complicated and those factors accounted for the increased length.
I set out to write a novella and this time it ended up as a novel, over 60,000 words long
Novels
So, I decided I was a novelist and wrote a number of them (not all worthy of publication). Along the way, I realized I would have great difficulty writing another short story because the word count limitations are very restrictive.
As a member of several writing groups, I noticed that newbie writers have a lot of problems understanding how to go about creating a story. I decided to write a book to explain it all.
Non-fiction
The first non-fiction book was about writing fiction. That was followed by a book on self-publishing and after that, one on book marketing followed by more non-fiction titles.
I still get great story ideas for more short stories and novels, but I don’t have time to write them because of all the non-fiction projects
Infographics
While searching for a book on financial planning for my grandkids, I can across one that used infographics. While thumbing through it, I had this idea that it would be great fun to create a new version of my book on fiction writing using an Infographic approach.
So I did it and now my writing regiment consists of all infographics. I have several more infographic projects planned. If you’re not familiar with infographic books, you can grab a free sample of this book on my website.
What’s next?
Who knows where my writing evolution will go next. I can, however, predict I won’t be writing (or composing) an opera. I do have ideas for some really weird stories so perhaps I’ll return to writing fiction.
For vacations, Hank and Pat usually visit distant parts of the galaxy. Occasionally, they also time-travel.
Besides writing novels, Hank lectures on fiction writing, publishing and book marketing. He is most proud of his talk showing grammar school kids how to create a short story. He used these lectures to create an advanced ebook with embedded videos to coach the students on how to create characters, plots and settings. The target audience is 4th to 7th graders. The book’s title is Fiction Writing Workshop for Kids.
Hank’s Amazon Page Creating a Story
How to Self-publish and Market a Book
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