Write Short, Write Fast, Write Often

Original images by Sebastien D'ARCO, animation by Koba-chan CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1044915

I really think short stories are a neglected form in genre fiction.

There's a real pressure to write long because it seems like the only way to get into print for a lot of people - at least, to get into print in what feels like a meaningful way. But the bar to getting a novel out the door is much higher than for a short.

Make no mistake, writing shorts is hard and requires special skills. But it's also a shorter timeline, for most people. (if you're one of the lucky few whose lives allow them to write a novel in 3 days per Moorcock's formula I worship at your feet). Let's face it, it takes serious effort for a working adult to organize their schedule to accommodate sufficient continuous time to write at times of day when their minds are fresh enough for it. It gets harder when there are children or other unavoidable daily obligations, but really just having a job and having to commute to it is the stumbling block for many.

But a short - you can sit down on a Sunday and hack out a short that you edit for the week. You can carve out an hour a day and produce that same short in a week of commuting.

You can explore your own personal L-Space and play with the ideas that bubble up until you find the one that digs its hooks in you and compels you to write it - and you can get it out while it's fresh.

The worst thing in the world is to start that amazing novel, have it stall because [reasons] and then spend the rest of your "writing career" staring at it and never writing anything at all.

And let’s put more on it:  in his lecture to the Sixth Annual Writers Symposium at UCLA Ray Bradbury tells his audience bluntly – don’t start out by writing that great novel. Instead, start by writing small.

Now, it should be obvious that the process for writing a novel is not quite the same as that for a short story – the skills are related, but the larger strategies are different. But this is what short story writing does for you:

You can finish something. You can get that sense of completion and accomplishment.

And having finished something, you can see: does it work? Granted, you might need to get others to read it to answer that question, but you can see the finished result in front of you, you can assess it, and you can double down or change course as needed. You can learn what works, you can polish your skills, and then you can turn around and do it again…and again!

With a novel it may be months (or years) before you really know if it has worked, and that same time before you really get that sense of accomplishment. And, as Ray Bradbury says to his audience, as often as not when you get to the end of the week you may find your word count a crushing reminder of defeat instead of a symbol of your success – even if in reality you’re making good progress and getting better as you do.

There’s nothing stopping you from starting that novel of course.

But there’s also nothing stopping you from writing that story. And you have everything to gain.

#writeit

#printit