I get out all my crap in the prewriting outline stage, so I've never shelved a story yet. NOTE: I do a LOT of prewriting.
Maybe if you went back to the prewriting stage, as it were. Did some freewriting about the story until it sparked for you again.
I used to think I could never write a short story, as I too thought long. Determined to rack up some publication credits, I told myself, "Self, you are going to write at least ten short stories."
Self whimpered.
I started by thinking about what snips of my bigger stories had their own little arcs that could stand alone. Bits of backstory, bits of future story. My first short story was one incident from the history of a novel character.
Weird, once I wrote that first short, lots of naturally short-length bunnies started flocking to me. It was like I'd put on glasses that picked up wavelengths not formerly visible to my eyes, and wow! Look at all the short stories running around out there! The world's lousy with 'em.
(Also started listening to NPR all day long. NPR gives more attention to each report than most media venues, so the reports are long enough to get my imagination going, but still short enough so they make for compact bunnies.)
Recently bagged the tenth short. And lots more short bunnies in the hutch!
Maybe if you went back to the prewriting stage, as it were. Did some freewriting about the story until it sparked for you again.
I used to think I could never write a short story, as I too thought long. Determined to rack up some publication credits, I told myself, "Self, you are going to write at least ten short stories."
Self whimpered.
I started by thinking about what snips of my bigger stories had their own little arcs that could stand alone. Bits of backstory, bits of future story. My first short story was one incident from the history of a novel character.
Weird, once I wrote that first short, lots of naturally short-length bunnies started flocking to me. It was like I'd put on glasses that picked up wavelengths not formerly visible to my eyes, and wow! Look at all the short stories running around out there! The world's lousy with 'em.
(Also started listening to NPR all day long. NPR gives more attention to each report than most media venues, so the reports are long enough to get my imagination going, but still short enough so they make for compact bunnies.)
Recently bagged the tenth short. And lots more short bunnies in the hutch!
