Elliot Kang
@elliotkang.bsky.social
SFF Writer | Tokyo | Clarion '26 12 Indie Novels, Working on 13-15 elliotkang.com
an imagination, particularly a honed one, produces powerful, thematically complex images which are often undermined by authorial attempts to justify or explain them. if the image is strong enough, and it often is, it stands best on its own.
Really nice bit about a) when to ignore your critique group and b) filter effects when using experimental techniques in fiction Learning takes a long time, if you listen to surface level feedback and delete your experiments, you will not grow leave.substack.com/p/timelike-c...
"Timelike Curves, Spacelike Curves" in Reactor
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leave.substack.com
Sometimes I think I'm getting pretty good at writing. Then I make the mistake of re-reading Le Guin and I have to go hide in a corner.
My very talented friend Micah has a story in the latest Strange Horizons and it's well worth your time, especially if you love-hate the internet
MR_MR_CENTICORE
In the screen glow of the witching hours you see a silhouette flit in and out of the doorway. Your first meme and your first violation.
strangehorizons.com
This is madness, but I kinda want to try for 400 submissions in a year after reading @aijiang.bsky.social post on rejectomancy. She did like 800!!! back in the day. What a psycho.
Stories I Started Writing This Week: 9 Stories I Finished Writing This Week: 0
What Whatever Shrug Meme
ALT: What Whatever Shrug Meme
static.klipy.com
Me in theory: Ok, for my next story, I'm gonna do BREAD & BUTTER horror, focusing on the basics. Me at computer: Ok, he's a torturer, but he doesn't KNOW he's a torturer, he thinks he's counting receipts at his desk, when he's actually stepping on ppls faces buried in a muddy field... 🫠
ITS SO GOOD!! AHHH I'm at a cafe drinking SCALDING HOT COFFEE and all I'm getting is chills over and over because this book... PKD and Gene Wolfe and Brian Evenson had a baby and I am so, so happy...
Thomas Ha@thomasha.bsky.social · last yr.Hey! It's midnight on the east coast, so it's release day. Thanks to @undertow.bsky.social for being such a fantastic publisher. Thanks to family, friends, and fellow writers for their support. The short fic grind has ups and downs, but it's a blast. Fricken love what we do. Thanks for reading.
My first short story is out now in Analog. I am having so many feelings and thoughts so idk it’s about SPACE
So weird coming out of Clarion and coming back to the real world... Airport is full of muscle bros and military backpacks
My newest story, "As the Tide Loves the Diver, as the Diver Loves the Tide," is out now in Clarkesworld! It was also one of my application stories to thee Clarion Writing Workshop! @clarkesworldmagazine.com clarkesworldmagazine.com
Issue 239
Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.
clarkesworldmagazine.com
The workshop winds down this week, and we're looking toward the month ahead! Can you support the Clarion Workshop this summer, and help us continue to usher some of the best and brightest writers into the field? We've got some exciting incentives planned! www.clarionfoundation.com/donate-2026
For every rejection this year I will roll a random number generator and add a new Pokémon to my rejections punch card
- Wait I just had this awesome idea for an SF story, pretty sure nobody has done it before - Checks just to be sure - Oh, like 15 people have done it, except better and won Hugos for it or w/e - Hmm there are movies and tv series on the same idea 🥲
I am revising my romance novel and I got to a certain scene and I am crying because of the actions of these people who are IMAGINARY who I INVENTED and who are only doing the things they're doing because I MADE THEM DO IT what is this witchery
I'm reading my classmates' stories to prep for Clarion and MAN EVERYONE IS SO GOOD. It's humiliating but also exciting and ... I'm gonna have to work a lot harder to give good feedback instead of just saying, "your viewpoint control is off" or "need to work on context provision"
It's funny. Writers are supposed to be "true to themselves" (whatever that means) and have "artistic integrity," but at the same time writing is always an act of translation, which requires empathy and compromise/accomodation
I don't really understand it when people say writers "deserve to get paid," as if there's some inalienable financial right to artistic creation. I certainly don't think bad writers deserve to be paid, any more than a bad plumber does, or a bad doctor
Update: I got in and will be attending the Clarion workshop this year!!! 😁😁😁
Clarion Workshop@clarionucsd.bsky.social · 5mo agoAs another summer approaches here in sunny San Diego, we're thrilled to announce the 2026 Class of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!!! 🚀👽🦄
Ursula K. Le Guin, from "A Man of the People" (1995), in Five Ways to Forgiveness
Japanese sci-fi: two robots in space, yearning American sci-fi: man gets the author's beliefs on polygamy confirmed by the aliens of ramalama IV french sci-fi: two horny bounty hunters visit the Galaxy of Breasts British sci-fi: nuclear war. Everyone dead. America's fault
Sometimes when a day isn't going well, when i feel really suck as a writer, I go back and read the stuff I published last year and I'm like ... Uh, no. There's no way that's me. No way I could've pulled that off. Somebody else wrote that.
Sometimes 3 pages of a short story is enough to tell you an author's entire opus is worth reading. Just discovered @angelaslatter.bsky.social and holllyyy she is SO GOOD. Literal chills...
Wow @reasie.bsky.social might just have the best writing blog ever ... Currently binge-reading all the writing advice