I recently wrote an article called Ten Reasons To Write Short Stories for the Authors Publish site. I was pretty pleased with it, distilling, as it did, many years of writing short fiction into a casual little article. The big one for me was #3, which includes the statement that ‘For many writers (I include myself in this), one of the obstacles to building a writing career is overcoming the imposter syndrome. The sense of “I’m not a real writer”. Having some short stories published is a way of proving to the world – but more importantly to yourself – that you are, indeed, a writer and that you can do this.’
Amusingly, as an aside, the article triggered one fellow author (I won’t name her) into incandescent fury because I dared to suggest that short stories can be useful sketches for longer works. I mean, she was furious with me, genuinely vitriolic, going to great lengths to explain to me who Raymond Carver was etc. I now have some insight into what it’s like to be the victim of mansplaining. I politely pointed out that I know who Carver is, and that I’ve read and loved a lot of his work – and indeed that I referred to him in my article. I also pointed out that I literally wrote (#2 on my list) that ‘Some stories just are short. That’s the length they need to be. It’s hard to imagine Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper or Asimov’s Nightfall, say, as being any longer than they are. Short story magazines are full of pieces that are perfectly formed in a couple of thousand words.’
Some people, I guess, are just weird. Haters, unfortunately, hate. Anyway, I stand by my assertion (#5 on my list) that ‘Novels can grow out of short stories’ – because I’ve both read and written novels where that’s the case. I don’t think doing this denigrates the short story at all. Quite the opposite.
A case in point is a novel I’ve just completed. It grew out of a world I first created in a science fiction short story called Remembrance Day a few years back. I loved the milieu and set-up of it, but I didn’t get round to creating a full-length novel until now. It overlaps with the short story to a degree, while significantly expanding the world and adding a new protagonist etc.
The novel is called The Twisted Road. I’m currently deciding what I should do with it, to be honest. Indie-publish or find a publisher? Not sure. It would be lovely if an agent picked it up and a big publisher put it out, of course, but I’ve also quite liked having my Triple Stars trilogy there for me to do what I want with. The Twisted Road was written as a standalone novel, but it did occur to me that it could become one third of a new sci/fi trilogy…
The point is, I wrote 100,000 words (maybe 300,000 words one day) of sci/fi because I loved my original 3000 word short story so much. And I see nothing wrong with that.
Remembrance Day is here if you want to have a read.
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