Karin Patton: 2024 Short Short Story Award Winner
What do you like most about writing in the short short form?
Short shorts can be so challenging to write. Sometimes I feel as though I’m creating a word puzzle; like I’m trying to touch all the bases with very few toes. I started writing shorts when my daughter was small and my life so overscheduled that larger writing projects were difficult to manage. I enjoy reading (and dissecting) short shorts, too. Taking a well-written story down to its elements is like figuring out how a magic trick is performed.
Where did the inspiration for “Fountain of Ruth” come from?
When I’m in the car alone, I like to drive in silence. Too much noise makes it hard for ideas to be heard. So, I was enjoying one of my silent drives when the first several sentences simply dropped into my head. It wasn’t just a vague idea for a story, but the actual start of it. I dictated those full sentences into my phone and kept driving. By the time I arrived home a few hours later, all the pieces were there. I just had to put them together—and then edit for months. I had more fun writing Fountain of Ruth than anything else. There was something a bit surreal about the process.
What did your drafting and revision processes look like for “Fountain of Ruth”?
Although writing the story itself didn’t take long, the editing and rewriting took much longer. Once the draft was together, I sent it to my writing group, my daughter, and a few writer friends. Their suggestions greatly strengthened the story. I went through every sentence repeatedly, to the point where I nearly had it memorized. I also read it out loud several times to catch repetitious words and other stumbles.
What interested you in entering WD’s Short Short Competition?
The WD competitions are so well-known and respected that winning or placing enables a writer to feel validated, which I badly needed at the time. Although I’ve been writing for years and even won first place in two previous WD competitions (short genre fiction in 2012 and 2008), I had stepped away from short fiction for several years and feared I had lost my chops.
But I had a lot more at stake with this contest than just the entry fee. I had made a dumb deal with myself.
Even though writing has always been my first love, life got between us over and over again. For many years, I worked a day job, a night job, and freelanced, all while also raising my daughter. Now that she’s grown, my husband and I moved into a 125-year-old warehouse we are trying to rehab ourselves, while still working our day jobs. It had become so hard to make time to write that I began to wonder if perhaps it was time to put writing dreams aside and focus only on our building project.
Over the winter, when it was too cold for much construction, I wrote several new short stories. I submitted those stories to six different contests and told myself even a 10th level honorable mention would keep me in the writing game, but nothing at all would be my sign it was time to close my laptop.
When the rejections began to arrive, one after another, I found myself wishing I had sent out more stories or chosen less significant contests—or believed in myself enough to not need validation to continue doing something I love so much.
By February, I had been rejected by every contest but one. The biggest of all I had entered.
So, thank you, Writer’s Digest, for keeping me in the game.
What advice do you have for other writers out there?
Don’t make stupid deals with yourself.