Just write: 2013 Short Story Challenge

I’ll just go ahead and say it: the message that short stories are AH – mazing was not properly delivered in my fiction class.

KDW 2013 Request Permission for use

Not pointing fingers, BrockClarke, just saying.  

Last spring, while promoting his new novel, this Pulitzer Prize winner read a short story to a room full of literary fans at the Clemson Literary Festival. 

I went home and wrote the first one I’d written in years. It wasn’t any good, but it was written.

He’s a master. But don’t tell him I said that. We’re still in a fight. 

 

Sort it out

For many new writers, there appear to be two fiction camps: the novel writers and the short story writers. Typically short story writers marvel that the novel writers have that much to say. Then the novel writers can’t believe the short story writers even consider themselves writers.

FYI: Long doesn’t make it good. Long doesn’t even make it a novel.

Just because you can write 800 pages about it, doesn’t mean you should.

Novels are great and some stories need the time to open, stretch, unfold, arc, and resolve. But other stories can be accomplished with significantly less mileage.

Writing short stories is like running three miles, four miles, or five miles, on your half marathon training plan. They’re conditioning. They don’t all have to be literary magazine submission or story collection inclusion worthy. They can just be exercises.

Somebody remind me to do an essay challenge in 2014

KDW 2013 Request Permission for use

Short stories are a chance to practice the dynamics of a novel without committing nine months to a story that just won’t end.

 

I need the practice.

I have three things I need to learn how to do (cuz bloggers love lists): 

1. choose the right moment for the story,

2. embed enough information without killing the story with exposition, and

3. come to a satisfying conclusion.

This last piece is so people don’t say, “I want to read more.” There should be no more. That should be made perfectly clear when the story ends.

 

Here’s the challenge:

13 short stories in 2013

You can call it one-per-month with an extra if you want. I’ll probably pace myself that way. But the rule is a new short story counts toward the 13 but a revision of anything written before 2013 doesn’t.

(This rule is for me since I have four unfinished stories that need work.)

Can’t recycle ‘em. Gotta start fresh.

 

Who’s in?

I’ll post links to your stories on the monthly 2013 Short Story Challenge Check Up entry on my fiction blog. 

Send me a link to your story and I’ll add it. Or put your link in a comment below or on that blog.

If we're serious about getting better at something, we need a plan to study and practice that something. Someday I'll tell you how I learned football and became a better cook. 

What have you undertaken study of? Did you get better at it?

Here are some books I requested from the Richland County Public Library to start my short story study (another list!):

• Homeland and Other Stories, Barbara Kingsolver
• What We Won’t Do, Brock Clarke
• Carrying the Torch, Brock Clarke
• Rock Springs, Richard Ford
• The Granta Book of the American Short Story, Richard Ford
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, edited by Dave Eggers