I swear, short stories are like crack

Oh man, can I relate to that! I keep tinkering with short stories myself, even though I know getting the novel out there is so much more important. I think I have to really just push to get the book done and stay away from short stories for a while. I've got a few stories I can shift around between markets for a while until they (hopefully) sell, so I think it's time to just buckle down on the book.

Yes. Short stories are instant gratification. Much more satisfying than, for me, wasting at least 2 years on a novel before I can even start submitting it.

I break up my wriitng into two sessions per day, usually one before lunch, and one after. The first session is devoted to novels, and the second to short material. It keeps both my urges satisfied.

While I do find short stories to be a welcome break for my novel, I certainly wouldn't call mine instant gratification, lol! I have some stories that I have worked on for years before starting to send them out. And it's not that I was working constantly on them for years, more like I needed that time to really let the story come to fruition and/or to truly understand what kind of revisions it needs. Maybe that comes from 1) being a perfectionist or 2) getting better, more experienced, and faster with time. I definitely take less time now to feel a story is "finished," but even the minimum time for me to go from draft #1 to completion is measured in months, not weeks or days. Anyone else like this out there?

Calypso said:

While I do find short stories to be a welcome break for my novel, I certainly wouldn't call mine instant gratification, lol! I have some stories that I have worked on for years before starting to send them out. And it's not that I was working constantly on them for years, more like I needed that time to really let the story come to fruition and/or to truly understand what kind of revisions it needs. Maybe that comes from 1) being a perfectionist or 2) getting better, more experienced, and faster with time. I definitely take less time now to feel a story is "finished," but even the minimum time for me to go from draft #1 to completion is measured in months, not weeks or days. Anyone else like this out there?

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I start getting nervous if writing a short story takes more than a few hours from initial idea to final draft. If it goes on for more than two days, I know I'm writing a story that stands less chance of selling.

From my experience, fast from start to finsih is usually much better than slow, in all teh ways that really matter.

I've written like 3 shorts rather than doing any editing in about 2 months...

editing is hard to me. and messy and heavy and... (insert 6 more excuses)

I didn't try writing short stories until a couple of months ago and now I'm hooked. I do a flash fiction contest each month, just for fun and my other short stories are in anthologies that are coming out soon, but I still have a file of ideas for more.

My agent told me if I really wanted a career as an SF author, I had to publish some short stories. Well, I do want said career, at least a brief one as I'm 55, so I have some short stories out now. From a business perspective, though, if the choice were to spend a few hours writing a short story that might net a few hundred dollars, or using those few hours writing on a novel that might bring in who knows what, I'd rather work on the novel.

52greg said:

My agent told me if I really wanted a career as an SF author, I had to publish some short stories.

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I always thought that was rather bogus advice. No agent really cares if you've published short stories. They only care about the novel you've written. The two are so vastly different in structure that just because you've successfully published a few shorts doesn't translate into the making of a good novel.

Well, that's what she told me. I don't think her point was that she cared. Rather, she said it'd be easier to sell my novels if novel editors saw I'd publlished other fiction.

I think it only matters if you've got a big enough following that they think will translate into novel sales.

You can certainly sell short a novel without ever selling a short story, but selling short stories can matter greatly, and can make the process much easier. It's no quick fix, and you still need to write a good novel, but it matters that you can show right up front that your writing skills are good enough to beat out the competition, and to make editors part with money.

Big enough following? How big is that? Even a mid-size SF magazine has thousands of readers, which is far more than enough to determine whether a novel loses money or makes a profit.

52greg said:

My agent told me if I really wanted a career as an SF author, I had to publish some short stories. Well, I do want said career, at least a brief one as I'm 55, so I have some short stories out now.

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Having short stories pubbed isn't always what catches a publisher or agent's eye. It's the query and the novel first and foremost. Having some short stories pubbed in well-known mags like EQMM is like the icing on the cake when it comes to getting a book published, but not the be-all and end-all.

As for your age--you could easily live to be a spry 100. So that's almost a half-century of writing.

Two other things and then I'll shut up. I love writing short stories in between working on my novel. And as JAR said, if it takes too long to get the short story right, it isn't worth it.

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I've discovered that, for me, writing a publishable short story is far more difficult than writing a novel. I used to be intimidated by the sheer length of a novel. But I've discovered that short fiction requires skills I might not have. It was fun working my way up to writing novels by producing short stories but none of them go pubbed anyway.

I find that writing them is like crack, but reading them is like heroin. I mainline F. Scott Fitzgerald whenever I have a chance.

With novels, I basically stay to two genres--literary and young adult. With short stories, I've been across the board-- love stories, horror, experimental, literary, humor, fantasy...and even western. Short stories are harder than novels...but I feel such a freedom of ideas when working on them...that's why they're crack-ish. For me, anyway.

KTC said:

With novels, I basically stay to two genres--literary and young adult. With short stories, I've been across the board-- love stories, horror, experimental, literary, humor, fantasy...and even western. Short stories are harder than novels...but I feel such a freedom of ideas when working on them...that's why they're crack-ish. For me, anyway.

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I'm similar in that my novels are historical romance, but my short stories have been mainstream (I wouldn't go so far as to call the literary), contemporary, and I'm going to try a fantasy soon. But if I tried to write anything like that in novel-length, I'd be sunk after day two.

Calypso said:

While I do find short stories to be a welcome break for my novel, I certainly wouldn't call mine instant gratification, lol! I have some stories that I have worked on for years before starting to send them out. And it's not that I was working constantly on them for years, more like I needed that time to really let the story come to fruition and/or to truly understand what kind of revisions it needs. Maybe that comes from 1) being a perfectionist or 2) getting better, more experienced, and faster with time. I definitely take less time now to feel a story is "finished," but even the minimum time for me to go from draft #1 to completion is measured in months, not weeks or days. Anyone else like this out there?

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Yes. I don't relate to the instant gratification theme of short stories. I let them sit for a few weeks after the initial draft before I go back and revise, and then I let them sit again before the final cut. In the meantime I write another story(ies) if I have any ideas at the time. Shorts are all I do right now; I don't have time for anything else. And I'm not very prolific, but when I have an idea I scribble notes like hell for it when I'm working nights and then plow through composition during the day. Quite a rush.

stormie said:

Having short stories pubbed isn't always what catches a publisher or agent's eye. It's the query and the novel first and foremost. Having some short stories pubbed in well-known mags like EQMM is like the icing on the cake when it comes to getting a book published, but not the be-all and end-all.

As for your age--you could easily live to be a spry 100. So that's almost a half-century of writing.

Two other things and then I'll shut up. I love writing short stories in between working on my novel. And as JAR said, if it takes too long to get the short story right, it isn't worth it.

.

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Well, I have three short stories out to three well known national magazines now, so we'll see what happens.

As for living to 100-- I have absolutely no desire to do that.

stormie said:

Having short stories pubbed isn't always what catches a publisher or agent's eye. It's the query and the novel first and foremost. Having some short stories pubbed in well-known mags like EQMM is like the icing on the cake when it comes to getting a book published, but not the be-all and end-all.

As for your age--you could easily live to be a spry 100. So that's almost a half-century of writing.

Two other things and then I'll shut up. I love writing short stories in between working on my novel. And as JAR said, if it takes too long to get the short story right, it isn't worth it.

.

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Short story sales sometimes are the cake. I've made novels deals twice, one in the western genre, and once in the mystery genre, solely because of the short story sales I had behind me.

Short fiction is not always quicker than novels for some of us. And I don't think the amount of time you spend on something--anything--determines whether or not it is publishable.

52greg said:

My agent told me if I really wanted a career as an SF author, I had to publish some short stories. Well, I do want said career, at least a brief one as I'm 55, so I have some short stories out now. From a business perspective, though, if the choice were to spend a few hours writing a short story that might net a few hundred dollars, or using those few hours writing on a novel that might bring in who knows what, I'd rather work on the novel.

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I think that's sort of the institutional knowledge on the matter. BUT...this quasi-scientific survey by fantasy author Jim C. Hines made me stop and think:
http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/novel-survey-results-part-i/

If you agent gives you that advice, I'd try to follow it. But I don't think it's an "only if you...then will this" piece of advice. Also, never underestimate the power and worth of exposure. That couple hundred bucks for an SS might be in addition to three thousand readers who've never heard of you and an editor who might want to review your first novel...

Carolanne Patton said:

Very interesting article Hillary.

I didn't expect this thread to go on for so long, or to spark controversy.

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Nah, not so much controversy as a differing of opinions. And that's good.
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Lydia Sharp said:

Short fiction is not always quicker than novels for some of us. And I don't think the amount of time you spend on something--anything--determines whether or not it is publishable.

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Well, within reason, I'd argue that just about anyone can write a short story or a novel just about as fast as they really want to write it. No one takes months to write a short story unless it's intentional.

Really slow is definitely not better than fast, but from my experience, reasonably fast is almost always better than really slow. The more time you spend on a short story or a novel, the fewer short stories and novels you'll be able to write, which means the less practice you'll get. And there just are not many selling short story writers out there who take an inordinate amount of time to write a story. Most are very, very fast.

The slower you write, the more natural talent you need to write something publishable. If you spend months on a single short story, it'll take years and years to write enough short stories to matter.

Few writers begin the writing life writing well enough to sell. I'm not sure how many short stories the average writer must write before selling one, but I've seen numbers ranging from fifty to one hundred.

But even if the number is twenty-five, and it takes you six months to write a short story, it's going to be twelve and a half years before you write one that sells. Twelve and a half years to make one little sale.

I know writers write at different rates, and not everyone can write a publishable short story in four hours, or a publishable novel in a month, but let's get real. If you're actually writing, which means planting your butt and pressing keys, you have to press them unbelievably slow to make writing an average length short story take a month.

I'd argue strongly that anyone should be able to write five words per minute. This gives you a 4,000 word short story in just over thirteen hours, which mean less than two weeks at a mere hour per day, or a 100K novel in under a year, at that same hour per day.

E. L. Doctorow probably said it best, Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.