Walk This Way

Image from Wikimedia Commons

My friend/pal/buddy/colleague Dale Sproule has pubbed an interesting piece on his blog, Psychedelia Gothique. "Seven Good Reasons to Write Short Stories" is something I wish I'd had available to me last summer when I served as one of the editors at When Words Collide's Blue Pencil Cafe. Several of the works I was given to review were introductory chapters to novels, written by people who were in well over their heads. I could have used Dale's article to back up my contention that these people should walk (short stories) before they tried to run (novels).

I was fortunate, I think, in discovering SF and fantasy when I was in my late twenties. My one attempt at writing before this was an early-twenties go at a comic novel. I realized very quickly I hadn't a clue about what I was doing, and dropped the project. Then I fell in with a bad crowd* and discovered short stories. Now this was something I could learn to do.


And learn I did. Six of Dale's seven good reasons come down to this: short fiction is bar none the best way to learn to write well. Any success I've had, I've had because I spent a decade writing and selling short stories before I again tried writing a novel.†

Dale's post also includes seven reasons for not writing short stories. Just as the seven good reasons revolve around learning the craft, the seven bad reasons seem mostly to be of a remunerative nature. And while I can't disagree with any of them, really, I have to add that I don't think anyone should be dissuaded by them. No, you're not going to make a living writing short stories. But you're not going to make a living writing novels either, unless you're one of a hundred or so people in North America (or you're willing to live on ramen in a yurt outside Dog Pound, AB).

As I said in an earlier post here: Don't Give Up Your Day Job.

I do agree that not all of the skills you learn writing short stories are immediately applicable to novel-writing. Nor will short-story writing provide you with all of the skills needed to properly plot and structure novels. But I don't see this as an argument against writing short stories. If anything, it's an argument that we should never stop learning, and that shifting formats is one way to keep the learning process happening.

Just don't try to run before you can walk.

*Thanks again, ESFCAS and its Old Guard survivors.
†It also helped considerably that I spent those ten years working with a writers group of very high quality.