Short Stories

I have been writing since I was in 3rd grade, when a buddy and I did a very cliche and probably copyright-infringing story, in which I wrote and he illustrated. To be completely honest, it sucked. After being pulled from public school in 4th grade to be home-schooled, I found writing to be very enjoyable. I created and created, never got bored with it. Worlds and characters came to life. Some days, I would come late to dinner, I was so wrapped up.

Looking back, I realize every single story I started was a novel-length work. All I read were novels, I didn't even know what a short-story was! I got a subscription to Writer's Digest, I started getting the yearly "Writer's Market" and I would read everything...but I'd skip the magazine/short-story publication part and just go over novel markets.

No matter what idea I began to work with, it turned out to a 30k+ work, to the point where I actually believed that I could not write short, no matter what. I kept this belief for years, even after I read enough that I should get my 'foot in the door' with short fiction before I attempt to sell a novel. Still, I didn't attempt it until I met an online friend who did both novels and shorts. I read up on short stories, read a bunch of shorts in my genre, got several anthologies from my library.

Then I started writing. My first short pieces were erotic snippets with little plot. I slowly added plot as I went. Then I braved my typical novel-genre: fantasy. I thought up a few ideas, started writing them. Of course, first attempts are pretty sad; they had little character growth (my line of thinking was: how the heck do you show character growth in 6k or less?!).

I got a few, what I thought, were exceptional ideas. I tried writing them then, and they just...lacked a spark. So I saved them in my writing folder and ignored them. Continued to practice. Needing something to write the other week, I stumbled upon the plot for one I'd shuffled away. Not only did it come out strangely poetic, it seemed to mark something for me: I could write short fiction!

Now, the thing was: yeah, so I could write it, but was it any good?

A friend of mine had found markets for five or six shorts of hers through a website called Duotrope's Digest and suggested I try browsing it. Long story short, after a few attempts at placing pieces, I ended up sending my most-recent piece to an anthology, if anything else, to get over my fear of pushing the dreaded 'Send' button.

They emailed me back within a day. I expected a rejection, another "this isn't right for our market/collection/whathaveyou". Instead, it was positive, a "we like this, but we'd like to see you apply these edits and alter the ending". Let me tell you, going through that document of red changes was scary. But I did it. I edited, changed the ending a little, and sent it back and they accepted it. The anthology should be out Fall 2010.

So not only can I now write short-stories, I obviously wrote Going Home well enough to get published. I have more confidence now in my short pieces. The weird thing is: now that I've been writing shorts for the past few months, trying to come up with my next novel idea is rather hard! My mind is thinking in short-scenes...and nothing I come up with has enough flesh to sustain a 50-80k novel!

Oh boy! Hopefully I'll get an idea soon.

Until then? Looks like I'm gonna keep writing short stories!