» Ratika Deshpande

Does This Help Me Write?

Ratika Deshpande In the beginning, it makes sense that we look to other writers to guide us. We’re navigating a new skill, which is both an art and a craft, something that is taught but is also thought to be unteachable in some ways. So we read essays and memoirs and interviews, hoping to learn…

Issue Six Hundred Eighty Six Special Feature

Respecting the Reader: Some Things Writers Should Consider

It’s our responsibility as writers to give readers a good experience when they pick up our books and stories. If we don’t respect their time and intelligence, they’re not very likely to listen to what we have to say in its entirety, let alone take a look at our other work. But how do we…

Issue Six Hundred Eighty Five Special Issue

Why Writers Should Experiment with Writing Found Fiction

By Ratika Deshpande I’ve always been drawn to epistolary literature–stories told through letters and diaries. A couple of favorite examples include Mark Dunn’s mind-blowingly clever Ella Minnow Pea, which is told through progressively lipogrammatic letters that the residents of a small island send to each other, and Marie Brennan’s The Memoirs of Lady Trent, which…

Issue Six Hundred Eighty One

How and Why I’m Creating a Physical Archive of My Writing

Recently, I printed out around two dozen manuscripts of my short fiction and non-fiction. I’m also in the process of printing out my blog posts and the diaries I kept on a Google Doc early during the pandemic. I’m not doing this to put together a book and submit it to a publisher. Instead, I’m…

Issue Six Hundred Seventy Seven

Why I’m No Longer Chasing 100 Rejections Every Year

Back when I first decided to actively start sending my work out into the world—instead of making 2 submissions per year—Kim Liao’s viral article, “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year” came to me at just the right time. Although I’d not been as much of a perfectionist back then, my goals were…

Issue Six Hundred Seventy Six Special Feature

Write Less to Write More: In Favor of Flash Narratives

Ratika Deshpande I love flash narratives and this is an appeal from me to you to write more flash fiction and flash nonfiction. The form came into existence long before attention spans and short-form content entered our daily vocabularies and I believe it’ll have value in the future as well. For flash (usually defined as…

Issue Six Hundred Seventy One Special Feature

The Most Important Lesson I Learned After a Decade of Writing

Once you’ve decided you’re going to write, how do you actually start? Well, you start with an idea—but where do you get those? Over a decade of writing, I’ve tried to find countless answers to that question. But there’s only one that actually holds weight, that proves its truth repeatedly, no matter how long you’ve…

Issue Six Hundred Sixty Eight

How to Balance Research and Writing

Ratika Deshpande “Write what you know” is common advice, but sometimes, we need to know more about the things we’re using in our stories, and that requires research. The illusion of research as productive work But research is a double-edged sword: it is as distracting as it is useful. As you click on yet another…

Issue Six Hundred Fifty Eight Special Feature

How to Make Your Creative Nonfiction More Cohesive

Ratika Deshpande In the kind of short fiction I write, there are clear starting and ending points. However, these markers are almost always absent when I’m writing nonfiction. I’m not even clear about what it is I’m talking about until I’m a few paragraphs in, let alone where I’m taking the reader with me. This…

Issue Six Hundred Fifty Five

7 Myths About Writing Creative Nonfiction

By Ratika Deshpande Sometime around the beginning of my twenties, I fell in love with creative nonfiction (CNF). So I set to studying the form, reading work published in magazines like Longreads and Literary Hub. I tried writing some essays and I read articles on how I could make them better. But it wasn’t long…

Issue Six Hundred Forty Eight

Why You Should Write About Other People’s Writing

By Ratika Deshpande Some of the best writing I’ve done has been about the work of other writers. I’ve read their stories and compiled them into themed recommendation lists; I’ve written personal essays and deep dives into books that I couldn’t stop thinking about. It’s work that I’ve both enjoyed and am very proud of,…

Issue Six Hundred Forty Seven Special Feature

Craft Lessons from Reading Hundreds of Short Stories

By Ratika Deshpande It’s an infallible rule that the more you read, the better you’re able to write (provided, of course, that you’re also doing a lot of writing). For about two years now, I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy short stories and flash fiction to curate lists of recommendations for Reactor magazine. After…

Issue Four Hundred Forty Eight Issue Six Hundred Forty Two Special Feature

How and Why to Bring Novelty into Your Writing

By Ratika Deshpande Often, when I need inspiration or a reminders that I’ve dealt with my present insecurities a dozen times before, I turn to my blog to get some wisdom from my past self. Until recently, she always offered what I needed to hear. Lately, however, I started getting bored with her. I couldn’t…

Issue Six Hundred Thirty Three

How to Get Started With Writing Essays

By Ratika Deshpande The essay is a form that can take diverse appearances: travelogues, memoirs, lists, drabbles. As exciting as its variety feels, I’ve also found it frustrating that there are hardly any guides detailing how to work with the form. The following is a sort of beginner’s guide I wish I’d had when I…

Special Issue

Why You Should Question Your Writing Goals

Ratika Deshpande When I first found my calling as a writer, I imagined myself writing novels. A couple of years later, I thought I’d write collections of short stories. Today, I mostly write articles and essays, although I’m again entertaining the idea of publishing books. I’ll probably have a different writing goal in a…

Issue Six Hundred Twenty Nine Special Feature

Articles by Ratika Deshpande