First Short Story

I don’t know what it is about short stories but I really struggle with them. I have loved reading them, although I generally find myself drawn to novels and novellas; some of my favorites are Angela Carter’s collection in The Bloody Chamber, and Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. I also loved Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury shorts as a young reader.

I guess I think in novels, though; I need the room to expand and let my characters find themselves in the story, perhaps. There’s a luxury to novel writing that the more compressed short story form doesn’t allow.

Or maybe that’s my laziness as a writer.

In any case, I have Taken Steps to remediate this and I have just finished my first short story in a decade or so. I will send it to my critique group this weekend and then send it out on submission and see where it goes. And in the meantime, I have two other little story fragments I’m playing with, too, and in the next month my goal is to have three stories out on submission.

We’ll see what happens!