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.

In which I piss off a Pulitzer Prize winner

Yesterday I wrote a short story. The first one I’ve written in ten years. It’s not very good, but it’s a start. The inspiration was hearing a story read by a novelist at the Clemson Literary Festival Thursday night. What a great night!

I reconnected with a professor I had in 1996, made some new friends, and snapped a photo with the headlining novelist at a bar sometime around 11 p.m. Thrilled and proud, I posted the picture to my timeline on my public Facebook page. And that, apparently, was not okay.

Or maybe telling him I had done so was the problem.