[00:00:01.040] Hello, luminous writers, and welcome to Write, Publish, and Shine. Depends on when you’re listening to this. If you’re listening right as it comes out, then we are heading into summer right now. I don’t need to tell you this, but in the Northern Hemisphere at least, you might feel a familiar double pull. And there’s something I kind of promised myself last summer as I felt like pulled between rest.

[00:00:27.900] And then the parts of me that think, “Oh, here’s my opportunity, my time to make something.” And then at the end, kind of coming up with some disappointment around what I was able to accomplish over what ostensibly are just a couple of short months, especially if you’re locked into a school system in some way, shape, or form, as I am with the children in school. And I think there’s always sort of two parts To me, as I head into summer, I’m fighting that part that wants wide-open days and the part that knows those wide-open days maybe won’t arrive the way that I hope they will. So summer I think can look spacious from far away. And what does this have to do with writing? I think you get there and it’s really possibly still just real life with slightly better weather, maybe extra labor involved, extra vacation time, but that ends up being time-consuming as well too, hopefully restful.

[00:01:26.330] So today I just wanted to offer you something small and genuinely doable, maybe, when it comes to summer and thinking about summer in your writing. A way back to the page that fits a life that maybe is already full and it’s not going to change as much as we hope it will over the summer. So I’m here to talk to you about short forms today. Meaning flash writing, flash memoir, prose poetry, short short work in general, short fiction. These are all forms that I think really help writers who are busy and pulled in many directions get back to the page, but they are not lesser forms.

[00:02:08.550] In fact, they ask a lot as well too in terms of precision, attention, compression, choosing what matters. But because of their length, I think they’re able to be worked on in episodic ways. So you don’t need to hold the whole project in your head or have a very long concentrated period of time. Although I know summer is also time where people go on writing retreats. I really wish that for you if you have that in your plan.

[00:02:37.010] If you’re like me, you might not have that in your plan. And so working in short forms I think is both an incredible craft move, something that you can work on that’s going to make all of your writing better. Maybe you’re working on a longer project, but working in micros will really help improve your focus, that attention, that ability to compress, that ability to choose what matters. And I think during busy seasons, it’s a great option. What I love about short forms And what I’ve watched them do for writers again and again is that short forms are really a lot about time too.

[00:03:17.790] And especially if you’re in a season where time feels very fleeting, they are about capturing a moment. So they don’t require the fantasy of this clean 3-hour block of time to write, perhaps, that might be elusive to you or might be sort of catch-can for you. They don’t require a perfect week for your writing. They don’t require you to become a different person with a different schedule. So I love short forms because they can meet writers where they actually are.

[00:03:48.480] It’s something that I noticed in the writers who’ve taken courses with me, starting with the course I have on Getting Published, Lit Mag Love, and looking to expanding only very recently into actual creative writing courses that are teaching you craft and writing. I realized that moving into short forms was a really great fit for the people that work with me because maybe they sometimes just have 10 minutes or 15 minutes or half an hour if they’re lucky. I think the idea of completion is so satisfying for people who are that busy to be able to go, okay, I can actually complete something. I can complete a first draft very quickly. I can work on a revision quite quickly because these are so tight and compressed, and a lot of the work of it is to pare things down.

[00:04:43.310] But that is not to say again that these are easy to work with as forms or simpler somehow. I think just the ability to be able to again work episodically, piece by piece with them, step by step, and you’re able to at the end of a fairly short session, be able to put it into like a mental done-for-now folder and let your nervous system kind of relax a little because you’re feeling that kind of sense of accomplishment. I know a lot of us like checking things off of our list, so you could check that off your list. Like, I paid attention and I wrote something today that is a complete thing, even if it maybe will take more work to get it ready to be read by others and to be sent out into the world. Can still complete something relatively quickly.

[00:05:31.590] And I think one of the things about short forms, it’s really a great practice as well for making really important narrative choices and image choices. So it’s like, you choose this image, not 10 images, this moment, not a whole life story. And in turn, it gives you that idea of discernment and ability to tell stories in these really clean, compressed ways. They teach you to notice what matters and to stop trying to carry everything at once. Because sometimes I think in longer memoir, which I have experience with drafting, you’re really trying to make choices about what belongs and what doesn’t.

[00:06:15.250] And when it’s longer, then there’s more that you can put in, but when it’s shorter, you really are forced to make those choices. So my take on this is that in summer, when there’s this odd pressure to do all the things that maybe we impose upon ourselves, we think that this is an opportunity for us to have all this rest, but also, oh, now I have time to write. The time to write quote-unquote excuse doesn’t exist as much in summer perhaps, or it feels that way. I’ve already kind of gone over why I think maybe that’s not necessarily true. But short forms here then can be a relief because they’re a way to keep your writing life alive without turning your writing life into another project that maybe gets set aside because of all the other demands.

[00:06:57.150] So if you’ve been telling yourself, “I want to write more this summer,” but you can feel that becoming a vague heaviness, a “should” that feels like a weight rather than a possibility, I just wanna offer a different take on how to approach summer writing and think about the idea of maybe what you’d say to yourself is, “I want to write a little on purpose in a way I can actually sustain.” In many ways, this is the model that a sustainable writing life has. It’s like working little by little with purpose in a way that you can actually sustain. In my most recent solo episode, just me episode, I referred to a soft, steadfast submission practice, which I had trouble saying, and now here I am saying it again, but a soft, steadfast practice. So just a writing practice that’s kind enough that you can keep showing up and steady enough that the work actually changes. You learn and grow as a writer, which is, I think, ultimately one of the most important outcomes of having a creative writing practice.

[00:08:03.150] So summer asks a lot between travel, social plans, childcare, heat. I referred to this as being a time of better weather, and where I live, and I’m sure many of you as well, it’s actually a lot more uncomfortable in the summer. There’s a lot of heat, and it does make things a little bit more challenging even to move around. You get out of routine, the evenings stretch out, and there’s a lot of other activities and plans, and suddenly it’s dark and you’re tired and the day has slipped away, and maybe you haven’t done the writing that you had hoped for. And I don’t know where it comes from.

[00:08:40.350] I’ve spoken with other writers who may be a little bit further along in years, let’s say, and who have talked about how they look back and see the pressure that they put on themselves to make Summers count to have the best summer, to feel better, to get ahead of something, to finally become the person maybe who wakes up early and writes for an hour and then goes for a run and then drinks water and then has this sparkling conversation and then reads four books and then somehow also rests. Certainly I love summer reading, and I think there’s more opportunity maybe to work that in, but sometimes also I think I’ll have ambitious plans about that too, and it doesn’t come together. It’s not really a plan that is achievable. It’s a fantasy. And I’m— I think I’m working in general again with this idea of being soft and steadfast.

[00:09:28.470] So not being so big ambitious— by that I mean pressure— with how I approach all aspects of writing and reading and living like a writer. I’m hoping that this also resonates with you. And if it doesn’t and you’re like, “I’m good for summer,” then I’m very happy for you. But if you felt that maybe you need a little bit of a reality check here with a lot of warmth that I’m going to share with you. You might not do all the writing things you imagined you would get done this summer.

[00:10:00.390] There’s no failure in that. It’s just time being time. But I also think you can do some of them if you choose a small plan you can keep. And the trick is that your plan has to be small enough that you can keep it on the weeks that are really full, or even be able to pause it and come back to it as well, because it just feels like a simple, natural, easy-to-access practice. So I’m thinking that you don’t want to only be writing when you suddenly have energy and inspiration, and be able to write in just the most ordinary, messy weeks too, or feel like a writer, or do practices that make you live like a writer and notice things like a writer.

[00:10:46.720] Here is a plan that I’m going to unfold that might help with your summer writing plans. It’s not super exciting necessarily or shiny, but it’s something that I think could work. It’s a small plan for you to try. You could try this and take it out for a spin before the summer. So I’m recording this, as I mentioned, toward the end of May, and this could be something to practice in June, which can also be a really hectic month especially if you have school activities swirling around and lots of disruption in terms of the school schedule and winding down for the summer as well.

[00:11:25.580] The small plan are four decisions that you can make once and stop renegotiating your writing life every time you sit down, or sit down and not really sure where to start or what you’re supposed to be doing, or having something that’s too big for you to bite off and chew. At one session. So here are the four decisions. Decision 1 is to pick one form, pick a short form. So for the next two weeks, think about a short form focus.

[00:11:55.190] If you’re pulled toward memoir, then choose that. If you’re pulled toward lyricism, image and language that moves by association, think about prose poetry. If you’re pulled towards fiction and uncanny moments, then definitely gravitate toward short fiction, microfiction. I think you can love all forms, you can love so many different forms, but I’m wondering if you could decide now to pick one form to work on for the next couple of weeks. That is not about locking yourself to a genre, but just choosing a lane so that you can move forward.

[00:12:35.100] The next decision is to keep it small in terms of the practice, small enough to keep. So decision 2 is to choose your cadence. Could do ten minutes, three days a week, and that’s it. That’s your container. And if 10 minutes is too small, you might keep that anyway because I think it’s a good start.

[00:12:55.650] And then you’re not gonna feel like you failed if your original goal was one hour and you weren’t able to make it. Once you’ve reached ten minutes, you’ve done it. And if 3 days feels like too much, you can also make it 2. If it feels easy, again, stay with 3. The idea is you’re touching the writing frequently enough that you’re going to continue to think about it in the times when you’re not actively sitting and composing.

[00:13:21.080] The idea here is to build trust between you and the page. And to make this even more concrete, some summers my own plan has been as simple as one scrappy draft while the house was busy, a few notes on my phone, and then back to whatever needed me next, doing some of the mind writing that I think we’ve spoken about in episodes of your— where you’re thinking about the writing but you’re not necessarily having as much time on the page as you’d like. So choosing your cadence, making it really simple, the most doable cadence possible. If you’re blessed with being able to do that five days a week, please do. But the idea is that it needs to feel easy and something that you can definitely do.

[00:14:02.720] And then the third decision is to pick a finish line, which is not as simple as just write more or get better. I think for many of us it would be word count. There’s a lot of great challenges around summer writing as well too. So like writing 100 words every day or something achievable like that. For flash memoir, it could be picking a word count.

[00:14:31.320] And for prose poetry, it could be a shape, a stanza, a page. For all microforms, it could just be like, “I’m gonna capture a scene. I’m gonna capture a moment.” And the idea here is to aim for finishable, something that you can complete. And that could be a weekly goal. So you have your practice goal, which is the cadence and container, and then the finish line for that week.

[00:14:55.260] And then the fourth thing is a revision move. So this is the part that keeps you from circling the same draft on and on and on. It’s thinking about very specific revision passes that you’ll take. So it’s like, I’m going to go through this, and look at explaining sentences. Any lines where I explain anything, I’m going to work on that and edit that.

[00:15:19.050] Or I’m going to go through and think about adding concrete images anywhere that I’ve drifted into abstraction. So those are just single moves again. So that’s your fourth decision. So the plan is one form, picking a form, one cadence, one finish line, and one revision move. That could be again, the practice that you would do every 2 weeks throughout the summer and keep your writing practice alive without turning summer into a too grand of a project that you’re not going to be able to complete.

[00:15:53.020] What I would love to see is for you to come out of the summer feeling like, I have done some beautiful work, I’m ready to keep going, and I’m feeling excited about my writing practice, that it’s something that I could sustain outside of the summer months as well too. When the fall starts to feel busy, I have this routine that’s worked for me. Maybe I have to adjust it a little bit, but I can keep going. Now I wanted to talk about a craft thing that supports this kind of planning, this sort of 4-decision plan, the one form, one cadence, one finish line, one revision move. And something I say to writers all the time, and it’s simple and it just really works across genres.

[00:16:37.060] So when you are sitting down to write your one form, where do you start? Sometimes people sit down, maybe they have the cadences— well, okay, I’ve got 10 minutes, 3 days a week, these are the times that I’m doing this. Oh, sitting down, what do I do right now? And I think the best place to start is with an image, something you can actually see. And the And the best place to start that is actually before sitting down to the page as well too.

[00:17:05.420] So being able to remind yourself that as you walk around in the world, and if you see an image that strikes you in some way, that gives you some kind of writerly spark in that moment, just capturing it and remembering to bring it to your next writing session. There’s so many easy ways to do that these days with the devices that we hold in our hands most of the time. When you start with that image, you can actually see— and see, I mean, through all the senses too— that you can hear, that you can smell, that you can touch, that you can taste something that is very sensory that you have experienced, that you can bring to the page. And if you can feel it, the reader can feel it. And if you can see it, as soon as you’re sitting down, you can write from it without needing to warm up for an hour.

[00:17:53.410] That’s why a 10-minute practice can be really fruitful, because you’re starting with a solid image and you have something to return to when your mind does try to explain or justify or broaden too quickly when you’re writing. So by one image, I’m thinking of a sensory anchor that you have gathered throughout the week, or the days when you’re not sitting at your desk and you’re not writing, but you are writing because you’re walking around and thinking like a writer. These are like really specific things, like a chipped mug, a wet bathing suit in a plastic bag, a mosquito bite that you can’t stop scratching, a particular hallway, the smell of sunscreen because we’re in summer, the sound of a fan, the glitter of heat on a road. For me, it’s a lot of mirages because we do live in such a hot, hot climate. And I don’t mean my childhood, my grief, the state of the world, or even my mother, which if you’ve listened for a while, you know that that’s maybe one of my go-to themes as well too.

[00:18:54.220] Unless you can see your mother doing something particular in a particular moment. So a mother with the chip mug, a mother putting a wet bathing suit in a plastic bag. The idea is the specificity of the imagery. And short forms in particular really love specificity and live by it. And again, I think that’s something that short forms can teach writers in all of the longer forms as well too, to really hone in on that specificity because that specificity is what readers can see and how you can then share that experience with readers.

[00:19:28.830] Starting with one image in flash memoir keeps you in scene. It stops you from writing a miniature essay about life and lets you write a lived moment that carries the meaning and is all about life, but not in a forced way. One of the most reliable revision moves that I teach in flash is that when you feel yourself explaining, pause and ask, what can I show instead? An object, a gesture, a line of dialog, a bodily detail, meaning interiority. So what you feel inside the body and be able to share again that with a reader who can then deeply empathize because they’re understanding what it’s like to be in the body as much as they can of the narrator or the character that’s being written about.

[00:20:17.380] In prose poetry, speaking about these two forms, ’cause these are the two forms that I specifically teach, but imagery in prose poetry is really the charge that the whole poem is built around. So it needs that concrete, very specific language, because otherwise it can become kind of foggy and just beautiful sentences. But what is it connected to? What is the real image, the real tangible, specific thing? Where are we exactly?

[00:20:48.480] What’s happening? How does it feel? That engine of prose poetry, I think, especially if you’re a writer who needs to be careful or need to know where you’re going maybe when you start out, I want you to perhaps let go of that idea a bit and start with an image and not know what it means yet. You can let it be strange, let it be incomplete. You can let it lead you somewhere you didn’t plan.

[00:21:14.860] By now, if you have been writing long enough, you know what that feels like when something just sort of strange happens because you started somewhere and you went somewhere that you didn’t know you were going. And that’s the beautiful discovery that happens in writing. It’s the thing that AI can never take away from us because that discovery is so authentic and felt on the page. And it’s the thing that readers are going to connect to, and they’re going to understand that that writer was discovering as they were writing along too. I think a lot of the strongest short forms have this feeling of pressure, like something is contained and then it shifts, something clicks, something turns, and that is because the writer has had discovery.

[00:21:59.310] The next craft hinge that I wanna talk about, the turn, is the idea that a piece changes temperature as the writer has those epiphanies and understands what the piece is about. So in flash memoir, that might be the moment that a writer realizes what they weren’t saying. They were saying this, but they weren’t saying that. Or the moment the body tells the truth, that they’re shivering and they didn’t know they were shivering, or there was no reason to be shivering. But here there’s this authentic feeling that comes from the body.

[00:22:33.360] Or the moment the scene reveals what the narrator had been protecting themself from. In prose poetry, it could be when the image breaks into something else, the moment two things collide and make meaning, the moment the sentence turns, the line turns in this case in poetry, and the reader feels it. In their gut somehow. I think short forms really teach the idea of turns because they have to. There’s no room for wandering.

[00:23:00.990] And this is why, again, I think they are a beautiful, brilliant, unique, and intriguing, and challenging, and all the things form in themselves. But they’re also really good training for bigger projects as well too. They teach writers to choose, as I said. They teach you to shape as well too. And they teach you to land those turns.

[00:23:21.010] And it has to happen in this really compressed, best economic way. So I think you can hear how passionate I am about short forms. I think because I’ve just seen how well they’ve worked for writers, especially writers who are stuck, which tend to be writers who listen to this podcast or who start to work with me. So now I want to give you a small practice you can try today. So if you do nothing else after listening, do this one thing, although I do hope you will make your 4 decisions and make a plan for the couple weeks that you can practice and bring into the summer.

[00:23:52.990] However, This is the thing that I would love for you to do if you can do one thing. And it’s meant to fit inside a real human’s day, not just an imaginary fantasy day. So it’s like 10 or 15 minutes. The idea is to get material and not a completed masterpiece at this point. Those take time and happen incrementally.

[00:24:14.810] So my belief is that it’s really important to get that raw material down though too. So start by choosing one image from your actual life, something you can see from where you’re standing, or something that’s been following you around lately, like a certain image, like a bird, a certain plant that’s been popping up, a certain word that you’ve heard a few times. And then for a few minutes, just write a plain description. Don’t try to make it impressive in any way or extra lyrical, just true. What it is, where it is, what it looks like, what sound it makes, what it’s near, and let yourself be almost boring and to like put everything in.

[00:24:59.260] Be Voltaire, or work against the quote that Voltaire said about being boring and put everything in. Don’t leave anything out. Be almost boring on purpose. And as you do that, notice what your body does. Are you leaning in?

[00:25:12.180] Is your throat tightening? Are you feeling heavy? Keep behind the eyes. Think about a sensation. That you’re feeling as you’re writing and let that be an undercurrent of the piece that you’re writing.

[00:25:23.970] So write a short form, and also you don’t even need to exactly decide what form it is right now. So write a short piece that stays close to that image and let that undercurrent of emotion breathe, that embodied feeling that you, the writer, are feeling. Put it into the writing as an undercurrent and As you move along and you’re like, “Okay, this is flash memoir in form,” keep it in scene. Let it be small, specific. When you feel yourself explaining, ask, “What can I show instead?” And if you’re thinking, “Okay, this is prose poetry,” let the language move, but keep touching back down to the concrete thing.

[00:26:02.580] Keep returning to the image like it’s a door. You can keep walking through again and again, and there’s sort of new experiences. I guess I’m thinking a little along the lines of Doors of Perceptions here, and maybe something a little mystical. And, and you can let it be. And then when your energy shifts here, you can stop and let it be the ending.

[00:26:23.090] The nice thing about short forms too is that endings are kind of abrupt and open-ended, and they point rather than explain again to you. So think about it that way. That’s a short form skill, but also just a general writing skill, and also maybe a life skill, just letting the turn be enough, letting something be So I’m going to close this solo pre-summer episode just to say, if you’re heading into summer with a long list of writing hopes, you’re not doing it wrong. That desire is real. And yet you do not have to do all the writing things to be a real writer this summer.

[00:26:58.750] You can choose one thing. You can be really purposeful in your choices, and you can make it small enough that it becomes a practice you can keep going. So think about the one form, this tiny cadence, one finish line, one revision move. You can do this practice however you want to. So the practice that I gave you is there for you to use, and it is something that you can achieve and make happen for your writing this summer.

[00:27:25.970] But again, if you would like support, I’m teaching both the Flash Memoir course and the Prose Poetry course, and I’ve bundled them as Short Form Summer for July. So if you want to work with us in July, you’re welcome to. We go at a slightly more pitched cadence, let’s say. I think the community often does help with that. So maybe that’s also the final ingredient for you.

[00:27:47.570] So in those 4 points, the one form, tiny cadence, one finish line, one revision move, maybe there’s a 5th thing too, is one person who’s going to be your check-in person to work with. Or if you’d like to join a course community, that option’s available to you. I will share the links for that in the show notes for this episode, although you can always find everything at rachelthompson.co. So even if you do nothing else this week, if you cannot do another writing thing this week, you can do this. Pick the one image, write some plain simple lines, almost being boring, doing that Voltaire— I think the quote is, I’m not even going to look it up, but it’s something about if you want to be boring, leave nothing out.

[00:28:29.920] And then you’re going to think about the bodily sensation you feel and write a piece that embraces both that image and the bodily sensation, and ending right where it turns. And that’s what writing is. That’s a practice. And that’s you back on the page if you haven’t been there for a while, or you’re looking to kind of freshen up your practice. That’s it.

[00:28:50.560] So whatever you have in store for you this summer, or in the moment when you’re listening to this, because maybe you’re not listening to this in sequence and it’s nowhere near summer, but maybe you’re also thinking about how to get back into your practice in the season that you’re in. I just wish you all the best for your writing.. And just to say that you’ve got this, you’ve got everything you need to Write, Publish, and Shine, and I’m rooting for you. If you want a supported container for your writing this summer, I’m teaching Flash Memoir from July 5th to 15th and Prose Poetry from July 21st to 31st, as of this recording, 2026. And you can find details up at rachelthompson.co/courses and in the show notes.

[00:29:31.750] Thanks for listening to Write, Publish, and Shine. If this episode helped you plan a busy season and think about short forms as the bridge to get you through that season, or perhaps as a form that you want to explore, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast. And if you have a moment, leave a review. It really helps other creative writers find the show, and it’s one of the simplest ways to support my work here. The podcast is hosted by me, Rachel Thompson, with sound editing by Adam Linder.

[00:30:01.320] To learn more about my work supporting writers, visit rachelthompson.co and sign up for my weekly Writerly Love Letters. I want to acknowledge the Al-Muzina Bedouin lands in South Sinai, Egypt, where I recorded this episode. I stand in solidarity with occupied peoples and with those enduring ongoing occupation, with a commitment to justice and care.