Hello everyone! Welcome to Day 2 of my Writer’s Restart.

Today, I will be talking briefly about the different writing styles I try to use.

When I started writing seriously while I was in college, I kind of went against the grain of “serious” literary writing. I often wrote quirky and offbeat stories because I am a quirky, offbeat kind of guy. I even had a professor say that I was the one person in the class that could write in that manner with success. That claim made me a bit uncomfortable, since I knew many people in the class wrote humorous stories.

Later on in college, I had a professor who specialized in writing short stories. He fancied himself a serious literary writer (and he was), but he also said that students lacked the capability to write funny short stories. Then he challenged me to write in the literary genre.

Literary fiction is the slow, sometimes boring fiction that is taught in literature classes. It also happens to be published most often by reputable literary magazines and journals. Basically, in order to get published, I needed to write in this literary style.

Once I was out of college, I decided to give literary fiction a real shot. Getting published was my main goal in life. I wrote and self-published Four Firewoods more than a year after I graduated. But I still haven’t been published by a magazine or journal.

But I have to keep trying. I can write offbeat or serious stories, and I will strive for excellence in both. Right now, however, I’m working on literary fiction because it is a bigger challenge for me. It is how I grow as a writer.

Until next time.