Short stories can be fun!

I recently heard about an upcoming anthology taking entries and decided to give it a try. And since I’m still working (slowly) through a mound of pre-writing for my next novel I figured this might be a fun diversion.

It is! Oh, it is! I haven’t had this much fun writing in months! At first I was afraid that I’d bit off too much of a story for the length limit and was about to toss it and start over, but I decided I may as well write the story the way I’d like to tell it, and then see how much of that I really need. That led to the decision to see just how much exposition I could skip over, and to my delight I think it’s…most of it! I just cut to the chase, giving just enough so that people get the idea, but leaving any real detail for later when or if it becomes necessary.

It’s interesting having to write within the restrictions of the anthology. There’s a particular type of story they’re looking for; specific genre, specific type of main character and/or setting. I thought it might be restrictive, but it’s actually just right–enough to focus the creativity but not restrict the ideas. At least that’s how it seems so far. I’m only about a third of the way in, and I’ve still got a lot of story to squeeze in. But it’s going well, and I’m excited.

I’ve been largely avoiding short stories since my return to writing, a direct reversal of where I was when I wanted to be a writer as a teenager. I’m an adult now, and I guess I associate that with writing novels. I don’t know why; some of the greatest masters are best known for their short stories. But now that I’ve finished three novels in the past four years I guess I don’t feel the need quite so much to prove to myself I can do it, perhaps. And short stories seems like a good place to start shopping myself around. They take less investment, are more easily tailored to the audience, and perhaps even evoke less personal involvement. I guess we’ll see. This is only my second story since I decided to start trying to get published.

Anyway, as I said, I’m having fun. And that counts for a lot right now.

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