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I recently heard from a writer who said she felt disrespected by her writing group. They were all working on novels and memoir and didn't take her short fiction work seriously.

I saw another writer on Google Plus asking for help because his work kept coming in at around 40 pages—like that was a bad thing.

They were dealing with a common problem: short stories (up to 30K words) and novellas (30k-50K words) haven't been getting much respect since the demise of the fiction market in mainstream magazines two decades ago.

(Those word counts are from Writer's Digest. Some people use the term "novelette" to mean a story in the 10K to 30K range.)

For the past twenty years or so, most writers have treated short stories as practice pieces for classes and workshops—like the finger exercises piano students do before they graduate to playing real music.

And many of us have been treating novellas as unfinished, failed novels that need "fleshing out."

But that's so last century.

Shorter fiction is having a renaissance in the digital age. In fact, this may be the new golden age of the short story.

The New York Times reports, "Stories are perfect for the digital age...because readers want to connect and want that connection to be intense and to move on. That is, after all, what a short story is all about."

Book marketing guru Penny Sansevieri said in the HuffPo: "short is the new long. Thanks to consumers who want quick bites of information and things like Kindle Singles, consumers love short."

Short stories can also be a marketing tool for longer works.  Digital Book World's Rob Eagar said, "Selling your book means writing effective newsletters, blog posts, short stories, free resources, social media posts, word-of-mouth tools, magazine articles, etc."

So it's definitely time for fiction writers to start re-thinking the shorter forms. I wish I'd never left them. It's hard to get those "writing muscles" working again when I've been focused on novels for so long.

During the early part of my career when I was writing and re-writing my “practice novels” I could have been building an inventory of short pieces that would be a gold mine now.

Traditional publishing still isn't interested in story collections from new writers, but collections of previously published shorts by big names like George Saunders are reaping awards and making money for the Big Five.

And Amazon welcomes short fiction in both their Kindle Singles program and their new literary magazine Day One. Self-publishers are finding success with shorter fiction on all retail sites.

People talk these days about the novel as if it's the most "legitimate" form of fiction, but it's a relatively new art form. It was perfect for the age of Gutenberg, but perhaps it won't dominate the market so completely in the digital age.

Cervantes is generally credited with inventing the novel with the 1605 publication of Don Quixote, but the form didn’t make it into English until a century later—and for a long time it had to masquerade as “history” as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe did in 1719.

Non-factual narratives were considered frivolous and time-wasting even into the Victorian era. In the 20th century, the novel finally surpassed the play as the most revered form of fictional artistic expression in English.

But who knows what will happen in the 21st century? The times they are a-changing, especially in the publishing business. The popularity the novella, short story, and serial is on the upswing. 

Here are some reasons why writers might want to rethink short fiction:

1) Smaller screens and shorter attention spans are changing the way we read.

We're a multi-tasking world. As bestselling short story writer Amber Dermont told the New York Times: “The single-serving quality of a short narrative is the perfect art form for the digital age…Stories are models of concision, can be read in one sitting, and are infinitely downloadable and easily consumed on screens.”

When the Kindle Singles program launched in 2011, they sold 2 million "singles" ebooks in the first year. And you don't have to be accepted into the highly competitive Kindle Singles program to publish stand-alone stories as ebooks. Many indies are doing it too. And agents are assisting their clients in self-publishing shorts.

Cal Morgan of Harper Perennial said in the same NYT article: “It is the culmination of a trend we have seen building for five years…The Internet has made people a lot more open to reading story forms that are different from the novel, and you see a generation of writers very engaged in experimentation.”

As I mentioned above, Amazon is actively promoting short fiction with Kindle Singles and its new Day One magazine. Kindle Singles are mostly for established authors, but Day One is actively seeking debut authors. (Info on submissions in the "opportunity alerts" below.) Amazon knows that the e-reader has ushered in a new kind of reading that favors brevity. More on that in my post last week on the 21st Century Reader.

2) The success of serial fiction like Hugh Howey’s Wool

Hugh Howey made history (and a nice chunk of change) by self-publishing his sci-fi novel Wool as a series of shorts—like the Saturday matinee cliff-hanger short films of the early 20th century. He put his first episode—a stand-alone that’s also a teaser—perma-free on Amazon, and the fans ate up the succeeding chapters, offered at 99c each.

Howey is now a superstar with a top agent, a deal with Random Penguin, and a movie deal with Ridley Scott. And it all started with one little short story.

I know many writers who are now serializing their work for free on  Wattpad, which is a great place to showcase short fiction and get new fans. And Readwave is a story sharing-site that looks like a promising alternative to Wattpad.

Note: not every author can do what Howey did. I know some writers have had negative feedback when they sold each chapter for 99c, since so many full length books can be bought for that price these days.

So make sure each installment gives value—I'd say at least 10K-20K words, maybe divided into chapter-lets—and make the first one perma-free. Some novels lend themselves to serialization and some don't. You want each installment to work as a stand-alone story arc with a cliffhanger to keep the reader coming back.

3) Story anthologies are a great way to get your work in front of fans of more established authors in your genre

Short story and personal-essay anthologies are one of the best ways to increase your visibility. Especially for indies. They're inexpensive to put together as ebooks. They usually don’t pay, and often donate proceeds to a charity.

But if you can get a story into an anthology with some well-known authors in your genre, you’ll be paid in publicity that would be hard to buy at any price. All those authors' fans will be exposed to your work. For more on anthologies check my post on how to tell a good anthology from a scam.

Being in an anthology also gives an unpublished writer some great cred as a writer. Many successful authors I network with were first published by the Literary Lab anthologies, which also gave me a leg up when my career was in freefall.

Another plus for anthologies: some of the biggies, like the Chicken Soup series, also come out in print and are stocked in bookstores. So some anthologies can get you noticed by the old-school reader, too.

4) Published stories identify you as a professional.

Your website or blog has much more cred if you've got some publications to link to. And no matter what your genre, agents will be more likely to look at your pages if you've got publishing credits.

And it’s still pretty much the only way to a publishing contract if you write literary fiction. I don't know of a lot of successful literary writers who didn't also publish short stories in places like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Atlantic or McSweeneys

But they didn't get the first story they wrote published by The New Yorker. First they had to place dozens in small literary journals—those tiny labors of love that used to cost a ton to produce and often had under a hundred subscribers.

In the old days we often had to pay $25 or more to subscribe to find out what kind of writing they wanted and get the info on how to submit to them. But these days, most literary journals are available online. They have larger readerships and you don’t have to pay a fortune to read them or find out what the editors are looking for.

And if you write genre fiction, you don't have to start your career getting endless rejections from the ultra-competitive print magazines that still buy short stories, like Women's World, Ellery Queen and Asimov's.

Now there are are lots of genre story online zines. Here's a link to a great list of genre story markets put together by Romance author Cathleen Ross. Writer's Digest has contests exclusively for genre fiction.

5) Networking with editors at small magazines can get you a leg up.

Editors at literary magazines do their work for the love of their craft. Often they have connections in other parts of the publishing world. If you impress one of them, you can get an "in" with publishers you might never find otherwise.

I found my first publisher because one of their editors also volunteered for an online litzine that accepted my short fiction. The litzine went under before my story went up, but the editor liked my writing so much, he asked me if I had any novel manuscripts he could take to the publishing house where he worked. Two months later I had my first publishing contract.

6) Indie films are often adaptations of short fiction.

Stories are easier to adapt for the screen than full-length novels. Cheaper too. They tend to have fewer crowd scenes and more small interior settings.

Cost matters in the growing indie film world. Just as indies are revolutionizing the publishing industry, they are also the life-blood of the film industry. While the big studios concentrate on huge comic book spectacles and remakes of old TV shows, the more emotionally rich, award-winning films are coming from small-budget indies.

Some of our most enduring films have come from short stories. Classic films like The Birds; Breakfast at Tiffany's; Don't Look Now; Double Indemnity, Flowers for Algernon—and I’d need a whole post to list the stories of Stephen King and Philip K. Dick that have been made into great films. More recent Oscar contenders like Brokeback Mountain, Away from Her, and the Squid and the Whale were originally short stories. And I just heard on NPR this morning that the new Jesse Eisenberg film, the Double, is based on a novella by Dostoevsky.

7) Online retail sites favor authors with more titles

The more titles you have in an online bookstore, the more visible you are. You can write and publish a lot of shorter titles and have a bigger presence in the marketplace than with one long book.

Most writers can’t turn out more than two or three books a year, but they can turn out a lot of short stories and novellas.

8) Contests raise your profile and can win big bucks

Winning a story contest is a great way to promote yourself as a writer and create visibility for your books. Win a well-known contest and you can crow about it in social media and send press releases to the local newspapers to get some ink in your own hometown.

Story and creative short nonfiction contests are easy to discover and enter in the era of the Interwebz. Hope C. Clark's Funds for Writers , Poets and Writers, and the website Winning Writers are good sources for vetted contests.

For a list of fee-free contests and opportunities, Erika Dreifus has a great list on her blog called The Practicing Writer. Writers Digest has a number going on throughout the year.

And, ahem, I always list a few good ones in the "opportunity alerts" in these posts.

Entering short story contests is also an excellent way to get your career started. A big win for one of your pieces looks great in a query or a bio. Plus you might even win a money prize.

A lot of those prizes are bigger than the advances publishers offer on novels these days.

Plus some of the biggest prizes in literature are still for short fiction, like the Pushcart and the O. Henry award. And the venerable "Best of…" anthologies give huge prestige to those included.

9) Shorts keep your fans interested between novel releases

Forward-looking agents are now encouraging their authors to self-publish shorts to fill in the gaps between novels. They especially like shorts that are about characters in your novels. They keep your fans interested while they’re waiting for the next book.

(Note, if your publisher has a non-compete clause, you won't be allowed to do this. Another reason to have a legal professional look over your contract before you sign.)

Consider writing a couple of shorts about your main characters while you're working on the novel. It may get you through a tricky spot in the big work as well as giving you a saleable product for later down the road.

10) Short stories make money and hold their value

In terms of labor, a short story can make more money than a novel. Not only does it take less time to write and often sells for the same price as a novel in an ebook, but it can be re-purposed many times. Also, as I said earlier, contest prizes for short fiction can be substantial

I have stories that have been published and republished up to six times litzines and anthologies. And I can always self-publish them again in a collection sometime down the road.

11) Writing short keeps your writing skills honed.

Writing  poetry and short stories keeps your writing from getting flabby and verbose. You can't spend three pages describing the wallpaper in short fiction. You have to learn to sketch with a few broad strokes.

In these days when readers demand "just the good parts" writing, learning to write short can help no matter what genre you're writing in .

12) May is Short Story Writing Month

Inspired by April’s National Poetry Month a group of writers supported by the StoryADay writing challenge, deemed May to be International Short Story Month.

They say short stories:

1. Make the perfect intro to a new author’s work
2. Are a great way for readers to get a top-up from their favorite authors between novels,
3. Are a perfect impulse purchase on a phone or e-reader.

So isn't this the perfect time to write one?


Like any other skill, your ability to create short fiction will atrophy if you don’t use it. I find it a lot harder to write a short story now than I did when I wrote them regularly.

I admit I've always preferred reading and writing longer fiction. Most writers do gravitate to one form or the other. I know my ideas generally spool out in about 80,000 words. Shorter is harder for me.

The reverse is true for other writers. Some great short story writers have a hard time writing good novels. One of our greatest short story writers, Katherine Anne Porter, only wrote one novel, Ship of Fools, which was more like a tapestry of many short stories woven together without a compelling story arc. Critic Elizabeth Hardwick said it was " too static" in spite of "the flawless execution of the single scenes."

There's nothing wrong with preferring one form over the other. But these days, it will pay off to work on fiction in a variety of lengths. Not just short stories. Novellas, once taboo in traditional publishing, are soaring in popularity in the e-age.

Do note: I don't encourage newbie writers to self-publish your very first efforts at story-writing. To succeed in publishing—whether self- or traditional—you need to put in your 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours. But you can maximize your efforts by spending more of those hours writing short fiction and creative nonfiction shorts.

May 18: Molly Greene: blog coach, romantic suspense author, and author of Blog It, the Author's Guide to Building a Successful Online Brand

June 8th: Nina Badzin: social media expert and freelance writer: regular contributor to Brain, Child, Kveller, and the HuffPo.

June 22: Nathan Bransford: Yes. That Nathan Bransford (squee!) Blog god, former agent, children's author, and author of How to Write a Novel.

July 20th: Janice Hardy: host of Fiction University and bestselling YA author. Repped by uber-agent Kristen Nelson.

August 10th Jami Gold: editor, writing teacher, award-winning paranormal romance author, and awesome blogger.

September 14th Barbara Silkstone: bestselling indie author and owner of the Second Act Cafe.

And of course NYT million-seller Ruth Harris will continue her information-packed posts on the last Sunday of each month. 

From Ernest Hemingway's self-mythologizing to tales of fictional writers like Jessica Fletcher, Richard Castle, and Owen Wilson's character in Midnight in Paris, we've been shown a romanticized—and mostly untrue—picture of what it's like to be a writer.

The indie revolution has brought a whole new twist to the myth-making. New writers now hear all they have to do is write a book, put it on Amazon, send out a few Tweets, and they're off to big-bux land in the footsteps of Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howey.

And for some reason, everybody who's ever watched Oprah (or Richard and Judy in the UK) thinks they know all about what it takes to be a professional writer. Tell somebody you write and you'll immediately get lots of clueless advice from the "civilians" around you—from your family to your hairdresser to that know-it-all guy at work.

But the truth is, writing for a living is hard. If you love it, that won't stop you for a minute, but if you believe there are shortcuts, you're going to be awfully disappointed.

Here are six pieces of bad advice it's best to ignore if you want to launch a successful writing career.

1) Start with genre fiction, because it's easy to write.

People will tell you to start with something “easy” like a romance/mystery/kid’s book.

Yeah, I heard that one a lot when I was starting out. So the first book I tried to write was a romance. I spent nearly eight months on it. Oh, what a disaster!  I learned the hard way that every genre takes years to learn to write well. And if you don’t love a genre and read it voraciously, you’ll never be good enough enough to gain an audience.

This is true whether you self-publish or go the traditional route.

Readers are just as picky as agents when it comes to choosing what they buy. They don't want fill-in-the blanks fiction. They want passion and originality within their genre.

Also, if your book is successful in getting a traditional publisher or a bunch of fans, they're going to want more of the same. Whatever genre you succeed in is the one you'll be expected to write throughout your career. Why would you do that with a genre you don't love?

2) Write about vampires/zombies/dystopian YA/mommy porn: that's what's selling.

Alas, traditional publishing has smoked its last 50 Shades cigarette and sneaked out the back door without leaving a note. Dystopian apocalypses have met their Armageddon. Vampires and zombies have been safely returned to their graves, and werepersons, angel/demons and witch/warlocks have been banished to the shadows from whence they came.

The known authors in these genres are still selling, but traditional publishing is saturated and won't look at new writers in most of these genres. You can self-publish, but you'll be on the tail end of a waning trend, so you'll need to bring something original to it.

The big trends in traditional publishing are usually over by the time the general public hears about them. By the time something's big on TV or film, it's been played out in the publishing industry.

As I said in #1, only write what you love. If you simply adore the undead, your passion may bring a new spark to the genre and you may find a great niche audience in the indie market. But only write in the currently popular genres if they are at the top of your own reading list.

Writing to trends almost always backfires, as I found out myself. Back in the 1980s, I tried to write a "glitz" novel. Glitz was super-hot at the time. Judith Kranz and Jackie Collins were queens of the genre (and the bestseller lists.) The stories involved lots of designer name-dropping and steamy sex. But no matter how hard I worked at glorifying sex and money, the book turned out funny.

I was actually writing chick lit, but I didn't know that because it hadn't been invented yet. I still write chick lit, a genre that had its heyday at the beginning of the millenium. But I didn't write it because I was trying to follow a trend. It's what I like to read.

I'm not telling you to dump your ms. in one of these genres, or even that your books in these genres won't sell as indies. But don't write in a genre just because it's selling right now, because it's probably oversaturated.

3) Querying agents is a good way to get feedback.

I often hear new writers encouraging each other to "send it out: it can't hurt to try." (This often comes from your critique group, who are re-e-e-e-ally tired of reworking chapter one for the sixteenth time.)

But actually, it can hurt. A lot. Rejection is no fun. Why invite it when it means nothing? And a rejection from an agent means just that: zip, zilch, nada.

These days, most agents don't give feedback of any kind. Even the gentlest suggestion can backfire when upset authors retaliate with nasty return emails or worse...much worse.

That's why a good percentage of agents don't respond to queries at all unless they're interested, and most of the others send a one sentence generic note along the lines of "this does not fit our needs at this time."

Every writing group and forum is full of complaints from new authors who are trying to read meaning into those one-liners. But believe me, they only mean your book didn't tick off all the boxes on the list of what the agent's contacts at the Big Five are looking for this week. That's ALL.

For more on what rejections really mean, here's Ruth Harris's post on the subject.

There's also the problem that if your query is especially clueless, the agent may remember your name, and not in a good way.

DO NOTE: Agents don't get paid for reading your queries. They don't owe you feedback. They only get paid when they sell a book, and if your book isn't ready to sell, you're clogging up the pipeline and slowing down the process for other writers (like maybe you, a couple of years from now) who really are ready to publish.

The way to get feedback is to join a critique group or find a beta reader.

There are lots of opportunities for these online. Some can be snarky and useless, so do check with other users before you put your fledgling writing out there. Kristen Lamb's WANATribe.com is a bully-free, friendly community where you can meet beta readers. Two other great resources are are CritiqueCircle.com and SheWrites.  GalleyCat has a great new sign-up system for finding the right critique group.

Also the wonderful Jami Gold has a valuable post this week on how to find beta readers. 

For more on querying agents, we're going to have a guest post in March from agent Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg (yes, the one who was attacked by the crazed rejected author a couple of years ago) She's now a partner at Foreword Literary Agency and she'll be talking about the changing guidelines for queries.

4) You can launch a career with one book.

Blame the movies: the writer-hero struggles to finish that opus, finally types the last page, sends it to an agent and voila!—he has a contract and a book tour and he's an overnight millionaire.

This doesn’t happen anymore. If it ever did.

For self-publishers, it's almost impossible to get a readership with one book. Most successful marketing of self-published books is based on free and cheap deals to entice readers to come in and sample your work so they'll buy more. If there's no "more", all you're doing is giving away the store. Both Howey and Hocking had close to ten books a piece before they started making the big sales.

And even if you're going the traditional route, you need at least two books. I know this from experience, too.

I landed an agent with one of my first chick lit queries, and she had it six months and almost made a deal with Bantam. But did I use that time to work hard on a second book? No. I wasted my leisure hours obsessing about stupid stuff like whether I should quit my day job and what I'd wear on a book tour. (Yeah, I was running one of those movies in my head the whole time.)

When the deal fell through, my agent asked if I had anything else. I didn't. So she dropped me. I thought I could regain the magic with another agent, but by then the book had been out on submission to editors and no agent would touch it. I was back at square one with an unpublishable manuscript.

These days, most authors have to query agents for years, then when they get a deal, it's usually for multiple books. If you don't have those manuscripts waiting in the hopper, you'd better be good at writing very, very fast (while going on blog tours and social networking like mad.) 

And that book tour? These days they don't happen for anybody but superstars. Tours for newer authors simply don't offer a good return on investment except for reality TV stars or politicians with SuperPacs to buy up all the books.

5) Just finish the book, throw it up on Amazon and let the customer reviews tell you what needs editing.

No. No. NO!! This one makes me cringe. I still see lots of writers telling each other this nonsense in forums, and even some of the big self-publishing gurus advocate it.

But they are not doing new writers any favors. 

First of all, this gives ammunition to every self-publishing hater out there. You're creating the very "tsunami of crap" indies are accused of perpetrating.

And using Amazon or Goodreads customer reviewers as your critique group is one of the worst ideas ever.

Anybody who thinks they're going to learn anything from online reviews hasn't read them. 

Could George Orwell have learned from this review of 1984?

"I highly reccomend that you DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. And please for the love of God don't read that "Brave New World" book by Hoxley. It is twice as worse as 1984. To put it bluntly, DON'T READ ANY GEORGE ORWELL. Your just waisting your time.""

Or maybe Tolstoy could have improved Anna Karenina after reading this?

"If you see Anna for $5 at your neighbor's garage sale, go ahead and buy it. Hollow it out, and stash a handgun in there. Leave it next to your toilet if you have unwanted guests. Beat your disobedient child with it. Put it in your fireplace and have a nice glass of vodka. Just don't read it! You have been warned."

Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, which tops pretty much everybody's "Best of 2013" lists has nearly 200 one-star reviews on Amazon with enlightening comments like this:

"This book is too depressing and sad. I have yet to finish it. Just when I think it will get better something else bad happens."

Right. Don't let anything bad happen to your characters, Ms. Tartt. We want books about nice people watching paint dry.

All you can tell from one-star customer reviews is that the reviewer was probably having a bad day. They do not help you write better books.

See #3 for suggestions of places to get useful feedback.

Then hire an editor. 

This is another one I fell for. I spent way too much time working on unpublishable novels instead of honing my craft with short fiction that could build a list of credits and establish my brand.

People will still tell you that short stories are a waste of time because they don’t make any money, but that has all changed with the ebook (see my posts on "Why you Should be Writing Short Fiction" and "Short is the New Long".)

Here are some reasons to write short-form fiction

• Short stories are the best place to hone your skills. 
• Short stories make money these days, both as stand-alone ebooks and in anthologies 
• Publishing credits for short fiction and essays makes you more attractive to agents, publishers and readers. 
• Winning a story contest gives your self-confidence a boost. (And you might even win a little cash.)
• It’s a whole lot easier to publish a short story than a novel: there are thousands of literary magazines and contests in the US, but only five major book publishing houses. 

Short is definitely the new long right now. Novellas are having a renaissance, too. (In February we will host Paul Alan Fahey, author of a series of popular novellas. He'll offer a nuts-and-bolts formula for writing a compelling novella.)

What about you, scriveners? Have you followed any of this bad advice? What other writing misinformation have you heard? I had too much to list in one post, so I'll be writing about this again in February. Anything to add to my list?


BTW although Sherwood has all 5-star reviews on Smashwords, its Amazon buy page has had a visit from a couple of bullies who object to my "behavior" (i.e. writing a 2011 blogpost urging non-techie grandmas to write reviews). If you have read and enjoyed the book, some genuine reviews would be very welcome, especially on Amazon.