» Ratika Deshpande

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

How to Identify and Fight the Demon of Perfectionism

By Ratika Deshpande I wrote for years with no particular goal in mind. I blogged and wrote stories because it was fun. Occasionally, I’d submit a story or an essay, and get an acceptance here and there. Then, a couple of years ago, I started sharing my work more actively and purposefully—I blogged more regularly,…

Issue Six Hundred Twenty Eight

How to Get Back Into Writing

Ratika Deshpande Last year, while I wrote a lot, I also went through long phases where I couldn’t find the time to write, or didn’t feel like writing, until the state of not-having-written became too much to bear. When I did sit down to write, I couldn’t. The built-up frustration of the time away from my…

Issue Six Hundred Twenty Five Special Feature

Lessons from My Most Prolific Year of Writing and Getting Published

Ratika Deshpande I got 33 acceptances and published 194 blog posts in 2024, making it the most prolific year of my writing life. I took more chances; I experimented with writing different stuff. I applied to writing jobs and grants, submitted flash fiction, participated in contests, and wrote articles and essays I’m very proud of….

Special Issue

Why I Stopped Tracking My Daily Word Count

Ratika Deshpande I previously wrote here about the benefits of maintaining a writing log and setting concrete goals, such as finishing first drafts or writing 500 words every day. Word counts have always been an integral part of my writing process; reaching the daily goal gave me something to work towards. However, for the past…

Issue Five Hundred Ninety Six Special Feature Special Issue

How and Why Authors Should Write for Other Websites and Their Own

By Ratika Deshpande Recently, I was looking up authors who had contributed short stories to an anthology of South Asian SFF. As a fan of the genre and an Indian, it’s always exciting to find stories written by my people. So I Googled their names, hoping to read more of their stuff. Unfortunately, many of…

Issue Five Hundred NInety Two

Articles by Ratika Deshpande