The Story of a Story

My ‘process’ for writing fiction

Steve Fendt
5 min readApr 8, 2022
Reflections in the Inky Acheron | author image

I’ve been quiet on Medium of late. Ironically, this is the busiest I’ve been in my 15 months (yeah, I know) as a fiction writer.

Since New Year I’ve written one novelette or novella (15k words) and revised another (19k words). I’ve written several longish short stories and sent out a whole volume for beta reads and manuscript assessment. I’ve started a weekly Substack storyletter (Tall and Tiny Tales) and darn near busted a gut promoting it. I’ve podcasted and illustrated 20 episodes on Substack. I’ve become much more active on social media than this born curmudgeon and hermit ever anticipated. I’ve even found time to keep my publishers happy with coursebook material. You know, the stuff I actually get paid for.

I thought this might be a good point to sit back and reflect on my writing process. I’m hoping that some of my fellow fiction writers here might be inspired to do the same.

I’m going to write about the genesis of a ‘long-short’ story, Acheron, which I intend to publish first here on Medium. It’s high time I showed my Medium followers some love. After all, it’s mostly down to your support that I write fiction at all.

Like most of my stories, Acheron began with a place. Suze and I spent a few days camping with the Banjophobic Outlaws (aka sis and…

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Steve Fendt

https://stevefendt.substack.com Short stories, serial fiction, memoirs of a possibly quasi-true nature. Stories of the Australian beach and bush.