Writer's block can be one of the most frustrating experiences in the human condition. There's a pressing need to write something, but you're coming up empty on what to say.

For me, writer's block generally manifests itself in one of two ways: 

1. You can't think of any ideas to write about.
2. You're stuck in a place in your writing. It has spiraled out of your control and you can't seem to rein it in.

There are probably other, more subtle ways to describe it too. Either way, you sit and stare at a screen, writing and erasing. (Or if you're a little more old-fashioned, the cliched wads of crumpled up tablet paper litter your work area.) You feel like you may never get out of the slump.

I've been there, and still end up there relatively often. Creativity is a not a straight line. It dips and ebbs based on a lot of external factors. Sometimes we hear something that spurs us to invent a story. Other times, we're stressed about other things and can't get our minds into creative mode. 

If you have come here looking for a magic cure for the dreaded block, there is none. But there are ways to work around it. One constant I have found is that if you keep writing, anything at all, you'll find your way again. I know that's advice that's often repeated, but for good reason.

For the first type of block that I personally suffer from, lack of ideas, I usually dip into the well of my memories and just write about something I remember, particularly things I find or found amusing. That was the genesis of my "Randos" blog. I needed to get away from a project because I wasn't being creative in it anymore. The ideas seemed terrible. I needed to do something completely different.

It's worked with varying degrees of success, but I find that I at least feel like I have accomplished something in writing something. Doing the deed itself keeps you in practice, the next idea is almost always just around the corner. Plus, Randos gives me a dumping ground for ideas that can't really be full-blown stories. It allows me to file away those things and clear my mind for the great stuff.

The more troubling block for most people is the second kind, where you are writing and all of the sudden the story starts to develop a mind of its own. You're writing, but it isn't what you want, and you're not sure why.

It's actually easier for me to get out of this kind of block, because the cause is almost always the same: I started in the wrong place in the story. 

When you start in the wrong place (either at the beginning or laying out a scene in a larger story), you almost always find yourself in the position of having to set up too much background or you need to jump over large swaths of time to reach the next place.

This is when the writing spirals out of your control. The elements you're trying to add are likely necessary, but probably not in the way that you're trying to do it. Now you have several paragraphs that you hate or you know are flat-out terrible. Walking away doesn't seem to help.

Many people struggle at this point, including myself at times, because it is painful as a writer to scrap something you have already written in favor of something else. But that is almost always what has to happen. You need to attack from a different angle.

It may pain you to wipe out a whole page explaining a scene in favor of a line of dialogue that references the event you're talking about, but it might just be the thing that fixes your story. You know the story in intimate detail, so it's hard for you to let go of parts of it for the sake of your writing. But when you think like a reader would, you might find that your glorious scene is unnecessary exposition that bloats your story without truly advancing it.

To offer an example, you may have a scene where your main character falls out of a tree when he's a kid. You describe branches cracking, bones cracking, the aftermath at the hospital, etc. If the point you're trying to convey is that your character is afraid of heights, you might find yourself blocked when you're done with this flashback.

"I fell out of a tree when I was a kid" explains the same thing, granted without as much detail. But the explanation is enough for most readers to at least understand and rationalize the fear of heights without launching into a flashback from which there is no good transition back.

With either type of writer's block I've described, you're frustrated and need to try something different to fix it. These are ways I have found worked for me in the past, perhaps they will help you too.

There is no doubt that the thing that most separates "good" writers from "bad" ones is consciously thinking about who is reading what they are writing.

Yes, there are rules about grammar, punctuation and spelling that should be followed, but those things have been safely ignored by others who have still found success in writing. Good writers understand how to describe things in such a way as to tap into experiences and feelings we all know, they are aware what people will know or not know and they write accordingly. 

Bad writing tends to go off the rails when someone gives little to no thought about who is reading it. A common example I would cite would be in office email, where there is always at least one person (sometimes more) who is terribly ineffective in communicating via written form. These are people who use complex terms or acronyms without the slightest inkling as to whether the reader knows those things. They skip over large gaps of supposed knowledge that the reader might have, or they talk down to them, explaining things in minute detail when it is not necessary.

Bear in mind that this writing often has all the hallmarks of what a non-writer might consider "good": perfect grammar, excellent punctuation, perfect spelling and deft use of adjectives and adverbs in descriptions. But it's not good writing because it did not successfully convey the writer's intention to the reader.

On the flip side, you might see a text from a friend that says: "Its too cold." You first notice the missing apostrophe on "it's". But the meaning of the message isn't lost on you. You know what it's like to be cold, you have a clear picture in your head of what "too cold" looks and feels like. Even with the mistake, it's better writing than the colleague who asks" "Did you happen to see the detailed RQE from corporate?" when you have no idea what the RQE is.

Even when the second writer provides context, such as adding that the contents of the RQE means no one will be getting bonuses this quarter (and you deduce that it might mean "Reported Quarterly Earnings"), you're left to trip over it first then figure out the answer. The second writer didn't understand who was reading their writing, and made an assumption that you knew as much as they did.

I always found it to be a useful exercise to actually imagine someone you know reading what you wrote. When I worked for the newspaper as a reporter, I envisioned my grandparents reading my stories and wrote them in a way that matched their knowledge, vocabulary and need for details. My stories were generally well-received, and I was considered a "good" writer. Taking a few extra moments to imagine an audience usually does mean the difference between writing that's hailed as good versus writing that elicits no opinion or a negative one.

The genesis of the dreaded rejection letter from a publisher or publication tends to be rooted in audience as well. Too many writers make the mistake of not understanding the audience of the publication. The writing may be excellent, but not suited for the publication. The rest of the puzzle, figuring out the whims of the editor who chooses the pieces for publication, is an exercise in targeting an audience too, albeit one that is far more difficult. 

It might sound silly, but there is no harm in imagining all the details of the editor as you write and prepare your submission. You should think about what he or she had for breakfast. What is the trip to work like each morning for that editor? Traffic jams? Missed trains? Rude fellow commuters?

You get the idea. The point is that you would probably write differently knowing exactly who is going to read what you've written. There are lots of grumpy people with lousy commutes that drink instant coffee. They're going to like your story. They will hate it if your story is about someone who wakes up cheery, goes straight to the counter at the coffee shop and orders some fancy coffee that takes a barista 15 minutes to make; then hops in their car and drives for 10 minutes into their downtown office where there is ample parking.

If your goal is to write for a large audience, you're going to have to think about the characteristics those people share as part of your audience research. Your plot needs to elicit emotions that people can relate to, and the vocabulary you use needs to match what your readers will easily understand. It might sound like stupid advice or common sense, but ignoring audience happens all day, every day for writers around the world.

For any writer that wants to share with the world has to focus on who will be reading what they write, focusing on audience is the biggest step toward becoming an awesome writer.

​At some point during your writing journey, you'll come to realize that you always tend to write the same way. Some people prefer plain language, some like fancy words. Some like short sentences. 

This part of the journey usually happens organically. We learn things as we go. We incorporate constructive criticism. We rely on our preferences.

The beauty of writing is that there is no "correct" style. It's open to interpretation. Conventions of spelling, grammar and punctuation can be outright ignored because they simply aren't binding. 

My style, I've come to understand, is molded from so many different things. I tend to use simpler language, a product of years of journalism. 

I use short paragraphs, something borrowed from the news industry, then kept by me when I realized how much easier it was for me to read a paragraph that had no more than three sentences.

Adjectives are used sparsely in writing, I would rather my sentences just get to the point. In my estimation, you're smart enough to imagine a character's long, curly blonde locks without me describing them in detail. At least part of my aversion to adjectives is rooted in my experiences reading (and largely hating) Charles Dickens.

There's a funny thing about style, though. People come to expect a certain kind of writing from you. No one I know would expect me to write something with flowery language and spot-on grammar. When you read Dickens or Mark Twain, the stories are all different, but there's a thread of commonality to the writing that makes it easy to distinguish.

I think in order to transition from a modest writer into a good one you need to build a style. In today's age of "branding", it's one of the more important elements associated with you, the writer. Good writers can take a tired, beaten story and tell it in a completely new way. It's not unlike a comedian who uses a whiny voice for a specific character they've developed for comedic effect.

Think about your own style. Don't compare it to other, well-known authors. Have you given serious thought to it?

​It seems like such a silly thing to regret now, writing a blistering criticism of a college paper submitted by a classmate. I can't even remember her name. I do remember shelling her story with verbal bombs and not offering any worthy ways to improve, and I'm sorry for that.

One of the largest parts of a writer's life is hearing all about what you did wrong in a piece of writing. It's part of the larger attitude of society that looks down on writing as something that is worthy of being a career. I've written about it before, most people think that writing isn't all that difficult, conveying your thoughts onto paper is something almost anyone can do. Therefore, it's fine to heap scorn on those who want to be taken seriously.

Consider me as guilty as the next person. I took an entirely predictable romance story which wasn't poorly written (though it would never be mistaken for polished writing) and tore it to shreds, based almost solely on the sappy romance plot. The girl who has a best friend that's a boy growing up, constantly rejecting him until one day it dawns on her that he's really the one. 

I railed against the predictability of the plot, which is the among the least useful criticisms I've ever offered to a fellow writer, and I wasn't kind about how I said it. I didn't learn a lesson from this episode right away, but rather karma took down my name and circled back a few years later.

It is the great misfortune of any writer to find themselves working as a reporter for a small town paper. The pay wasn't great, and it was certainly unequal to how I was treated on a daily basis. 

"Nothing but lies in that paper," people would say. "I only buy it for the police blotter and to find out who died." (I did take solace that I wrote both of those things as well.)

If I would ask what things would make the paper better, people were always at a loss. Rarely did that ever even get a response, let alone one that was coherent and reasonable. That's when I finally started understanding the fine art of criticism, both giving and receiving it.

The first thing I would say to any writer who is down on hearing a particular piece of criticism is to consider the source. At least half of the people offering negative feedback are either unqualified or have their own agenda. These are often modeled in the same ambiguous way that people would criticize the newspaper. Just because a reader doesn't personally "like" what is written doesn't immediately make it bad. This was true for sure in my reporting, and still holds true for my other writing. 

I categorize this as "choosing the wrong audience". This is what happened to me back in college. Her story wasn't meant for someone like me. If another writer asks for feedback and the writing falls outside your interest zone, you have to get past your own dislike of the plot to analyze the writing. At worst, you should at least help the writer understand what audiences they should be targeting.

You will also occasionally encounter people who are obsessive-compulsive about grammar and structure. A good writer can separate out legitimate things from personal preferences. As someone offering a critique, you also have to take a step back from your own style and try to understand what the writer is trying to accomplish. A character might be using poor grammar as a personality trait (reflecting on being a poor student in their younger years). Someone might like long sentences, conveying different, related thoughts with large blobs of words between periods. Others like short ones.

Criticisms on style or grammar have to be weighed for what they're worth. You might use lousy grammar on purpose, as part of a writing or narration style. Other times, maybe you just plain made a mistake. In offering criticism, it might help to explain why stylistic things don't work in a particular instance, such as a character who wins a grammar bee then celebrates their win with a dangling participle (unless it is for comedic effect.)

Over all, the goal of criticism should be to offer help whether you are meting it out or grudgingly accepting it. Things that don't meet that litmus test should be thrown out. It's ok to ask someone why they reacted negatively to your writing to help you make that judgment. And when you're offering a critique, you should always give care to think about how you would like to be informed of the flaw you're pointing out.

I feel it's important as a writer to learn how to give and take criticism, since it really is such a large part of the profession.

​When I was younger, I don't think I ever seriously considered writing as something I would like to do. I really didn't think that I was any good at it, and throughout that time school teachers and counselors pushed me toward more "worthy" professions for my intellect.

My grades were always excellent in math and science, and it was a foregone conclusion to most people that I would enter some sort of engineering (computer, mechanical, chemical) as my chosen career. I listened to them, without even the slightest understanding what any of those professions entailed. I was smart enough for any of them, but as it turned out, I wasn't particularly interested in them.

I explain all of this because I think that many writers start out the same way. People tell them that it isn't a "real job", and there is a supposition that anyone can do it, it doesn't require any real skill. As much as it might cause me to bristle, I have come to accept that because a large segment of society views writing this way, it will never be seen as a primary skill worth paying for. 

Most employers do desire people who can communicate well via the written word, but it's viewed as a secondary skill. The qualified candidate does something else really well, writing effectively is just a bonus. This is reality, and it is a powerful deterrent for most people who know that their primary talent is writing, but are forced to take some other job to pay the bills. The end result is that during the course of your life, you are forced to choose between something you like to do and are really good at versus something you can do, but feels a little empty in terms of personal satisfaction.

I reached a breaking point, luckily in some respects, in college, before I had real responsibilities to worry about. Amidst the piles of calculus that I understood but hated, the boring lectures of organic chemistry and the droll prattling of the physics professor, there was a shining beacon. My freshman English class.

It was a requirement no matter what major you had chosen, you couldn't avoid freshman English. To make matters worse, my section ended at 5:30 p.m., including...on Fridays. The teacher, a graduate assistant, vaguely masked her contempt for her own situation and channeled that onto her students. The first classes were borderline terrifying, as she gruffly laid out her expectations for us, and that good grades in her section were nearly impossible. I wanted to drop the class, but couldn't if I hoped to stay on pace for my education. I was stuck.

Our first assignment was to write a paper about someone we admired. My impish side could not resist the temptation to profile Rush Limbaugh, knowing that universities are well-stocked with liberal-minded people. If this teacher was going to make me suffer, I was going to make it rough on her. I chuckled as I churned out page after page of glowing prose about the conservative radio host on my typewriter (by god, yes I am old enough that computers were not ubiquitous enough for everyone to access).

I turned it in expecting to get slaughtered based solely on the subject matter, even though I knew I had done some of the best writing of my life up to that point. The grade didn't matter, I wanted to make a point that I wasn't about to cave to some overbearing grad student whose career path wasn't taking off they way they'd hoped. Then the "A-" came back, with notes about how even though she hated Limbaugh on a person level, the paper was generally very good. I was surprised, but mildly disappointed that I hadn't gotten under her skin the way I wanted to. 

One of the other assignments in the class was to give our own lectures, around 15 minutes in length, about some principle of English writing that the teacher would choose. Mine was on exigency, about why a particular piece of writing should exist. I took the assignment to the extreme. I copied every last single one of the teacher's mannerisms: her bandaged wrist due to carpal tunnel, how she shook her hand when writing on the chalkboard, right down to the can of Diet Coke that she guzzled between sentences. Mouths were agape. My classmates looked mortified, and the teacher had her head down busily scribbling notes.

"Imitation is the greatest form of flattery," she wrote on her review of my performance. "Couldn't have done it better myself, including covering the material." Now I was confused, maybe I was good at this. The conversations with people in my class seemed to bear this out - they were struggling to pass, my grade was high.

Each time I turned in a paper, I was greeted with a better grade than I could have hoped for. I actually started trying to write well for her. For the first time in my life, I actually did revisions and turned in something other than a first draft. The fifth paper, an assignment to write a narrative about something that happened in your life, came back with no grade, only a note with a time for me to come to her office hours. I wasn't sure what to think.

When I got there, she handed me another copy of my paper, with an "A+" at the top and notes about improving a sentence or word here or there. She told me that she knew this was the best writing she was going to see all year (including the next semester) and demanded that I revise it for submission to a writing review that the university published each year. I was floored, I had never given a second thought to being good at writing. I had never even applied myself at it until that class.

I didn't know it then, but that was the point where I started down the path of pursuing a career in writing. It wasn't a cut-and-dry decision, but rather a progression away from "real jobs" and toward something I actually liked. I was published in the review magazine, just as my teacher had predicted. She asked me to seriously consider taking other classes in the English curriculum, even though they didn't align with my Computer Engineering major.

After a few other sour experiences the following semester, I came to the realization that she was right. She had said that she knew that I could do the engineering thing, and be good at it. But she said I was too gifted at writing to take up a profession where I would never get to use it or grow it. I quit the engineering program and dove into Communications. (Journalism to be precise, another story for another day.)

I know that "gifted" is in the eye of the beholder. Even great writers occasionally write stuff that is lousy for whatever reason. But sometimes it takes someone telling you that you're good at writing for you to understand that you actually might be. So what was your turning point?

In previous editions, I've talked about how to write short stories and edit them. Now you've got a fine-tuned story ready to take on the world. Let's explore options for getting your story out to your readers.

Magazines and Journals

The most likely path in terms of "traditional" publishing for you to release your short story is through a magazine or journal. These remain the most consistent places in terms of seeking out and actually publishing a short story. As such, they also remain one of the most consistent places from which to receive a rejection letter. They only have so much space.

Picking a journal or magazine for your story is akin to pairing a wine with a meal. There are ones that will "work", and then there are others that go perfectly with your style and story genre. You need to choose carefully, and do a lot of research into the publication to up your chances of success.

Reading examples of what the magazine does publish is a must. You have to know what they're looking for in the first place. Your experimental, avant garde style that's chock full of curse words and innuendo is not going to sit well with a traditional Christian magazine, for instance. You need a sense as to what the editor is looking for, and what they sit fit to publish. A rejection, in most cases, is about your story not being right for them. (Unless it is a place like the New Yorker, where sheer volume dictates that only the very best see publication.)

You're likely better off finding a smaller publication where your writing might be the best thing on their site than you would be trying to compete against established authors at large publications. Rejection letters from the New Yorker don't really mean anything to an author or anyone else, but having some publishing credits (no matter the publication) is something to hang your hat on.

Traditional book publishers

If getting into the New Yorker or another high-profile publication is tough, convincing a traditional publisher to include your story in their latest anthology is next to impossible. It's quite likely that you'd be up against authors who have sold millions of books. The payout might be huge in terms of having your story in the same book as a short story from Stephen King, but your odds really are almost the same as they would be if you drove to Maine and convinced King himself to co-author an anthology with you.

Every so often these publishers will look for submissions from new authors, but they are few and far between. 

If your goal is to collect lots and lots of rejection letters, seek out only traditional publishers for your short stories. 

Self-publishing

More and more authors are turning toward publishing things themselves. There are no rejection letters in the world of self-publishing, but there is also no ready-made collection of readers, either. 

Your work can appear on Amazon in less than a day, but getting someone to buy it, even download it when it's free, is challenging. You'll live and die by the number of reviews that you get, and you'll likely get buried by people who understand Amazon's search strategy and keywords better than you do. People can search for your name specifically and see 10 books by people who have parts of your name before your books and stories appear. 

The chances of making money or getting noticed by anyone are marginal at best in this market. You have to prepare yourself mentally for a different kind of rejection in the self-publishing world: no one seems interested in your work. It's more soul-crushing than a rejection in many ways, at least you know for sure that an editor read your work. 

Other Places

Luckily, there are other opportunities to showcase your work. These generally don't pay anything, but you need to look at them as investments to build your brand and collect a few fans of your work.

There are many blogs, podcasts and other media outlets that may take your work. These people usually have modest fanbases, but probably more reach than you have. Making friends with bloggers and reviewers, submitting your work to them for consideration or penning guest posts is a good way to start building an audience. 

Then you also have the option of sites such as Wattpad. Nearly everything is free there, so you wouldn't be posting work to make money. Converting those folks into paying customers someday will probably be a challenge, but if you're just starting out, having a few fans is not a bad thing. You're generally relying on word-of-mouth to build an audience, albeit one who doesn't give you a red cent in profit. You have to decide whether having any audience is worth giving away your work.

This concludes my first series on Short Story Writing. I'm sure I will have many other topics moving forward, so please stop again and see what else I've written about. 

In my previous posts about writing short stories, I covered sticking to a single event or theme and choosing which details to include. Now I'm going to dive headfirst into the subtle art of editing your first (and any subsequent) draft of your story.

 Polish, Don't Cut 

Editing a short story can be a little more challenging than editing a novel, because a draft of a novel is almost always going to include subplots and exposition that doesn't necessarily advance the main plot of the story. Short stories are different, there are seldom subplots and the details included are often vital components of the story.

When looking over your draft of a short story, you need to be good at understanding whether there is a more concise way to express what you've written, or whether you've failed to include something that was in your head and didn't fully make it onto the page. Sometimes you'll find yourself adding elements to the story to round it out, other times you'll be reworking awkward phrasing.

I often find in the course of my editing that it's a break-even proposition. I tidy up unsightly language for shorter, more clean phrases, then add a sentence or two to complete parts of the story that need help.

End Your Relationship with Your Story

It's really difficult to resist the urge to jump back into a draft immediately after finishing it to start patching things up. But often times it's like tromping across wet concrete. You'll leave your mark, and it's not often a good one.

Stories need time to cure. You need to step away from your completed draft to give yourself some time to forget about all of the details you know but didn't write down. This is especially true with a short story, because it goes without saying that the writer knew more about the story than was translated onto the page. You have to "break up" with the story in a sense, in order to put on your editing hat. The writer is too close to the story, it is too sacred to them. Only an editor can do what is necessary.

Much like human relationships that end, it is harder to get over the writing phase when you keep steady contact with your story. It needs to go in a drawer, dropped onto a flash drive or simply ignored for at least a week. Write a rebound story to help you forget.

Then, when you do return to the story, you're able to read it. I mean, read it like a reader and not the person who wrote it. Giving your story some space lets you see its flaws and its warts, where it is weak and where it is strong, far removed from the rosy lens of the writer who's just given birth to bouncing baby piece of prose. Now you're not cuddling and cooing at the writing, you're changing diapers and wiping its nose.

Only then can you see whether you hit the mark with the single event or theme you were looking for, or whether you've got some work to get there.

Be sure to stop in next time to read my entry regarding the future of your finished short story.

   In my previous post, I covered sticking to a single theme or event for a short story. In this post, I'm going to cover what details to include and what things to leave out within the limited confines of the short story.

The Devil in the Details
   I remember reading someone on Twitter posting something saying that if you don't describe what your character looks like, they just imagine a blob. That might be something worth heeding for a novel, but you cannot take it to heart in a short story. Sometimes a description of what a character looks like might not be required, or could even detract from your narrative.
    I always follow the rule that I only reveal the details that are necessary to advance the story to the end. It might be nice to talk about a character with blazing red hair that shoots lasers from his elbows, but if it isn't going to be used for some purpose in the story, it can be left out. In other words, if you've given these details, then your character better try to blend in with the natives in the jungle and use his elbow lasers to subdue a stalking jaguar.
   The same goes for painting the scene around the character. If you describe the snowy wilderness in flowery detail, but then you fail to ever have your character marvel at it, comment on it, shiver or interact with it in any way, it's a useless detail. Details in short stories are like a set of stairs, they have to lead to the top. You don't build a table in another room and put up wallpaper when you're building stairs.
   Most writers have a complete picture of the scenes they write in their heads, but short stories often do not demand those details get translated onto the page, which can be difficult for some writers to accept.

The Power of Inference
   One of the great things about communication in general is the ability to say things without actually saying them. You can use words to imply a meaning without actually having to write them. (Which I could have done with the sentence immediately before this one, and you would have understood what I meant.)
   In a short story, there is beauty in the subtle crafting of sentences that can open the reader's imagination and allow them to catch meaning when the words don't appear on the page. These can be simple things, such as carefully choosing a character's name to give away his or her ethnicity, or using language common to a certain area or historical era. 
   At the very least, it is a way to trim word count from your story, and follows the writing maxim of showing rather than telling. It gives your reader a little credit that they already know certain things that you don't have (and frankly, shouldn't) explain. You don't always have to hold the reader's hand the whole way through the story. This really applies to all writing, but it is especially effective in short stories, where words are at a premium.

Summary
   There is a fine line you must walk in determining what details to include in a short story, and there are no hard and fast rules about them, save only that your details should always advance the story. Don't craft a paragraph about the protagonist's fear of spiders, complete with a short anecdote about why he or she is afraid if you don't plan on using that detail later on. Does the detail explain an attitude prevalent in the story? Does it present an obstacle for a character to overcome? These are the litmus questions you can ask yourself when deciding.

Don't miss next week's post about the tricky art of editing a short story.

    ​There is a certain appeal to the idea of writing a short story.
  Unlike a novel, writing a short story promises a relatively quick writing process. In many cases, a writer can write the entire story in a day. Editing is less daunting, because the story is short and there aren't as many pieces of the plot to worry about in terms of consistency.
   So why do many writers avoid them?
   Writing a short story is not easy, it is a completely different exercise than writing a novel. If you're trying to stick to the confines of keeping your story under 5,000 words, you can't waste words, add superfluous details, or develop sub-plots and minor characters. You can put some of those elements in a short story, but they have to be carefully chosen and they have to advance the main story.

A Single Theme or Event 
   If you are anything like I am, an idea is rarely limited to one specific central theme or element. It rarely involves in a very small set of characters, and there are multiple scenes that you envision to take your main character through their journey. Short stories do not lend themselves well to this, and many writers struggle trying to whittle down an idea into one highly-focused piece of writing. There can be a feeling that you're "wasting" a great idea on a short story, the idea is too good to try to cram into 4,000 words, it needs room to breathe.
   The best short stories I've read always seem to focus on a single event, or a single theme. Usually they involve three or four central characters at most. It's really hard for a lot of writers to boil down a story idea to such a small scale.
   Let's say you come up with an idea for a space opera, where people with laser swords battle each other, and there's some mysterious energy that flows throughout the universe that only certain people can access. That's a pretty grand idea (I think it might have already been done before). It's too much for a short story. In the context of that idea, a short story would focus on a single day's action, or even just a part of that day. For instance, the short story would be the protagonist trying to lift a rock using the mysterious energy. It can contain some details about this strange "force", but the narrative is about whether the main character can lift the rock or not. Then it's over.
   At this point, you're probably thinking that there is a lot more narrative to this story, and you'd be right. But it doesn't belong in this single short story about telekinetic landscaping. There is no rule that says short stories cannot be episodic, you can write them into a story arc, where a small collection of stories form a larger narrative. (I would actually suggest that as a practice exercise: taking a larger idea and breaking it into episodes.)
   Distilling a big idea into something smaller can be very difficult. Sometimes less can be more. Short stories allow you to pack a punch. There are no weak spots in the story, or room to write paragraphs or chapters of exposition. The result can be a much stronger piece of fiction than it would have been as a novel. It's hard for writers to let go of a huge idea in favor of a smaller one, but it can be worthwhile.  
   Next time, I'll explore the thorny issue of what details to include or exclude in a short story.

I am not going to lie, I have asked myself that questions a few times since I started writing.

​The arguments against a writer focusing much of their writing energy on short stories are plentiful:

• Big name publishers tend to scoff at you if you haven't already written a novel, you've got almost no chance at getting a short story collection published as your first work.
• You won't make money. At best, you can hope to get paid for an accepted submission. The competition for high-paying slots is ferocious, to put it mildly. You might make a few hundred dollars in a year if you're lucky enough to get published somewhere.
• You'll waste all your best ideas, things that could be novels, on short stories. 

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could fill a blog with all the different things I've read and heard about trying to break in as an author of short stories. It just isn't done anymore. I'll stop, though, before I talk myself out of it.

The reality for me is that both my writing and reading time are at a premium. I have two young children and a busy life (not to mention a full-time job that pays the bills). There are limited opportunities to write, and I have struggled with piecing together longer-form writing when I have to stop frequently. I lose my momentum and the project sits untouched.

But I realized that I am not alone in the issues I face. In today's world, it seems more likely that fewer and fewer people have the time (or can make the time) to sit and read novel after novel. It takes a commitment to get to that point in the hustle and bustle of life in this century. 

I can't tell you how many times, in reading a book in the past few years, that I've reached a point where I either want to stop or should stop, and flip ahead to see where the next chapter starts, then groan in disapproval at trying to make it through another five or six pages. I end up not enjoying the story because I forget important elements of the story due to all of the stopping and starting, and find myself disoriented when I pick up the book and start reading again.

So why do I bother with short stories?

Because I want to fill a niche, helping people like me who used to love to read but find they have almost no time for anymore. I want to provide quick, bite-sized entertainment that you can read from start to stop in 10 to 15 minutes. 

I remember when I was young, we would read short stories in Read Magazine at school. They were quick reads that packed a wallop, usually pretty famous stories such as "Murder in the Rue Morgue" or "The Lottery". I remember more about those stories, nearly 30 years removed from them, than I do about the most recent novel I've read. Now those kind of stories are all but impossible to find.

The writing community I've encountered on Twitter are a very kind and helpful group, but most are focused on Young Adult, particularly in the fantasy genre. Almost all of them are focused on novels, because big publishers are more apt to spend $1 million on a 100,000 writers of YA Fantasy looking for the next Harry Potter than they are in spending $100 on a really good, self-contained short story. It can't be made into a franchise, so it is overlooked.

I feel that readers are the victims here, especially if you're not into the genres being pushed by major publishers. I love historical fiction, non-fiction and sci-fi (the last of which does get a little more love than the first two). Finding any good short story is a bit of a chore, finding good ones in the genres I enjoy are nearly impossible. I usually go and reread my favorites from Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allen Poe, O. Henry and others, because finding short stories is a time investment in and of itself.

So have a look around my site. I'm offering some short stories for free. I'm offering others for sale on Amazon (for now). There's this blog, and I have a fun blog called "Randos" that offers really quick (and often humorous) reads that might only take a couple of minutes. Hopefully I fill the niche, even a little.