Why short stories are great

My next story is close to release. It's a short story, titled The Witch will Die at Summerset Downs. I started with the idea in the lead up to Christmas, and had most of the work completed quickly. The idea was quickly formed to try doing these short stories every season, giving approximately twelve weeks per short story. I know this is reasonable for a short story of about 6000 words. Back when I had a stint with the student magazine in university, we had that long to set ideas for the magazine, call for submissions, then edit them.

On the one hand, those stories were even shorter than mine. But then, they required collaboration between more people, was slowed down by crazy scheduling, and was altogether uninspiring.

What inspires me about short stories is the level of freedom it has. When working with a 120,000 word story, especially if it is supposed to be expanded into a series in the future, you need a lot of awareness of how your decisions will impact the future. I say need but I should make a point of clarification here.

Dragon Ball is notorious for not being planned out far in advance, and it works. The direction of the story has changed wildly without a care for future planning, because Toriyama seems to be more in the moment of his writing. But then there is the other style of writing, where you know your ending. If I know I want things to happen in the future, then I need to ensure what leads to it makes sense so that by the time I get there, I don't realise I've burned bridges I needed.

So with my upcoming book, I need to be very careful when changing things, even sometimes small things. In a story only 6000 words long, it is easy to see the complete level of change being made. It is freeing in a way.

The other two advantages of short stories are easier to explain. I like writing, personally and completely. It's exciting. But after writing a draft, a lot of the work becomes editing. The same thrill isn't there. Write drunk, edit sober, as the old saying goes. So to put it simply, by working on short stories, I get bursts of 'drunkenness' between the long sobriety of editing.

The other reason is that I get to rapidly explore ideas. My next book has ideas in it that are being slowly developed. But I have ideas on more things than can fit into that book, at least without turning it into a mockery of a fantasy to appease a personal essay. So a short story allows me to take and explore different directions.

And of course, a tertiary benefit of this is being able to gain more experience with writing and develop my style and skills better in the meantime.

Yet despite all this, I have failed to be persistent with my current short story. It was basically completed near Christmas, so why has it taken me so long? I was focused on my novel, once the hard work of the story was done, I felt like I was achieving more with the novel. Mix this with a new job with more demanding hours, and weeks slipped by at a time without even opening the file.

On this, I need to do better. There is no excuse for such a lack of discipline, only a recognition of the fact. I have laid out my explanation, and recognising that this blog series has received to date at most 5 views, so I am explaining them primarily to myself. I must do better. Of that there can be no doubt. It cannot be a question of which story I work on that day, but how much time can I dedicate to each. That this must come around the working of my job is of no relivance. Work is a part of life, if I let that excuse rain, then I won't write anything until I retire, and I doubt intend to wait that long.

To put this all in short, my new story releases next week, and I look forward to working on my next, alongside my novel, day job, and other aspects of life.