Interview with short story writer Marie Vibbert

In honor of the upcoming “Celebrate Short Fiction” Day, I reached out to short story writer Marie Vibbert to share her thoughts on this literary form. You can learn more about her by visiting her website

The following is an excerpt from our interview on Focus on Fiction. You can read the full interview here: https://www.nancychristie.com/focuson....

How long have you been writing fiction?
I remember being asked to write the new words I’d learned in first grade in sentences, I tried to make the ten sentences into a story. Then in second grade, the teacher let us make “books” for a project. I wrote the longest in the class – ten pages, called “Jimmy’s Planet” about a boy who builds a rocket ship to find a planet with no schools, runs into a monster, and decides to head back home. Honestly, one of my better plots.
I enjoyed the assignment so much I started stapling together scrap paper at home and making more books. I never stopped since. Well, the writing. I figured out the stapling thing wasn’t working.
In junior high I painstakingly typed out a novel on half-sheets of typing paper because that was the size of a paperback. I still have it. Never figured out how to join them into a book. I also didn’t know to put spaces after periods. Not one space, not two, zero.
Oh, child me! At least the project taught me to type!

Why do you like to write fiction, and short fiction in particular—what does writing fiction bring into your life?
Short fiction in particular gives me more chances. I’m a very iterative writer. I write a draft, then I revise, then I revise, then I get feedback from first readers, then I revise, then I let it stew for a bit, then I revise. That takes an awful long time with novels.
But I can write ten to twelve short stories a year while still taking all my anxious revision passes and changing my mind about the point of view twice.

Do you have a theme you return to time and again?
A friend characterized my “brand” as “Bad ass babes.” I guess I do tap the female action hero well often. Related: attractive men who need rescuing. But around that, I like to focus on worker’s rights, class issues, and messy, uncomfortable human relationships – even when all the characters are aliens or robots.

What was the best writing advice you received?
Best: “Don’t think about talent or who is more or less talented. Talent is just the hard work and practice we don’t notice because it was fun. You can’t make yourself the most talented; but you can make yourself the hardest worker.” – my dad, roughly paraphrased.
He was not wrong. That said, for years I hard-worked myself nowhere, because I was forcing myself to, say, write thousands of words every day on novels that were not plotted out. That wasn’t a goal aimed toward creating a finished product. I had to learn what the meaningful work really was, which is, I suppose, the hardest work of all.