I got on a rant about “Why would anybody write short stories?” today. Perhaps not my finest nineteen minutes.
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I’m not a fan of short stories, because most of the ones I’ve read just don’t seem very good. Of course, that is a matter of taste. I’m not a fast reader, so that isn’t a problem. Right now I’m reading a book of short stories of the literary fiction variety and these I like. Shorts have a different purpose and style and I think there is real talent in making those words count and having a way of packing that punch. Anyway, the shorts I’m written are the author’s early work. They were published in magazines and, as you say, a living is not made from it. But, the author also wrote novels and it was a short story that attracted someone who got her first novel published. She is writing #40 now, 3 of them collections of shorts that were mostly published in magazines in early years. So, maybe one reason to write shorts is to get seen. It also seems that it is a way to just express something you want to say and get it into print.
Yeah. I hear that but …
I’ve written a few. Short stories really are a different form. It’s not just a shrunken novel. It’s as different from novel as poetry is from essay. I know my skill at writing them is directly related to my unwillingness to read them.
My mental road-block comes from recognizing that shorts are a different form and I don’t see the real advantage of cultivating an audience for shorts when I want an audience of novel readers.
It’s one of those cognitive dissonance things where my internal monitor keeps bumping up against so many people who are engaged in an activity that I find confusing, and the complaining because it operates about the way I expected.