{"id":3161,"date":"2005-09-28T23:06:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-28T23:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3161"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:07","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:07","slug":"joys-of-short-stories-and-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=3161","title":{"rendered":"The Joys of Short Stories and Other Musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Okay, here’s the thing. I wanna be in<\/strong> an anthology. Yeah, I know, cool people like Seren<\/a> are in anthologies, and it should be enough that my friends are so cool, but nope. It’s not doing it. I couldn’t write a story about fruit and New Jersey for Mei’s anthology either, so I’m kind of stuck – I love reading the things, and short stories are pretty fascinating, when done well, and I want to be the kind of writer who leaves readers dying<\/em> for more. So, anthologies. <\/p>\n

And, here, offered to me in a really cool package – the first SmartWriters.com short story contest<\/a> ever! And the winner wins — inclusion in that sought after anthology!!<\/a> And how could I not be jazzed? Oh, wait. There’s that little matter of actually writing a YA short story, huh. Sad, but true – I’m beginning to really resent Raymond Carver.<\/a> Seriously.<\/p>\n

The fact is, there are ten million books of commentary on how to write a really good short story. There’s theory about ‘pyramid structure,’ there’s conjecture about situational writing (i.e., get a man up a tree, throw stones at him, get him down), but the fact is, modern short stories kind of ruined the simple stuff. It’s not good enough to just have a story… that’s…short. Now there’s all this enigma and stuff. I’m not sure I can do that.<\/p>\n

Actually, I’m pretty positive I can’t. I’m not enigmatic. Is young adulthood enigmatic? Was mine? I was reading a comment from A.Fortis the other day where she mentioned hearing publishers asking for stuff that was described as “nasty” (as in brutish or dirty, I couldn’t tell ya) when talking with writers at a recent conference. That word lacks, um, subtlety. So, am I completely pursuing a wrong rant, here? Is subtlety not needed in YA shorts?<\/p>\n

This is all in the service of actually keeping me from attempting to write<\/em> said short story. I’ll admit it — I’m struggling to convey something pertinent in 8000 words. It seems like that should be enough words, but I’m going to have to edit, I see. Sharply.<\/p>\n

As usual, when in doubt, I try and read something. I’ve heard that Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen<\/a> is a really good read, and that she’s one of the best short story writers writing for this age group. I’ve been reading short stories for weeks. Something’s<\/em> got to give, here!<\/p>\n

Wish me luck and I wish the same to you. Enter the contest!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, here’s the thing. I wanna be in an anthology. Yeah, I know, cool people like Seren are in anthologies, and it should be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3375,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161\/revisions\/3375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}