Are Short Stories Dead

Having a full time job and being someone who enjoys writing, I never find enough time in a day to properly sit down and write to a great extent, I always seem to wind up a story before I lose the flow. There is nothing worse than having a great idea and going on until you kill it because the enthusiasm has been lost, due to a bitty writing schedule.

Managing between three and ten thousand words to finalise a story is where I feel my limited time allows me to safely conclude a story without it turning into spaghetti. But how could I possibly make any kind of money out of that?

Magazine Submissions, the submission process is easy enough taking care to format the submission in the specific way they require, however some magazines want only unpublished works to be submitted, a fair enough comment, but their process takes months and in that time what do you do? Also does this make the story redundant after it has been published once.

Self-publishing, a great resource if you are blessed with the time to add, Self-Marketing and Promotions, finding markets, creating visuals, choosing the edition type for example kindle, eBook PDFs or iBooks etc.

On a blog, again self-promotion required and where does the financial incentive come from, small adverts like Google Adwords that give you a click through rate or a commission on the follow through sale. This only works in two ways, specifically selected advertising for the target audience and if the audience click the adverts.

But what about the physical story, three to ten thousand words in self-publish terms could be a few hours out of someone’s day or split across a couple of days, then it is gone. Will someone pay a small contribution for a short story when, for a small amount more you could get a Novel published by the big companies and written by fully fledged, time served authors?

But the short story will only work in any or all of the above if the target audience will read it. I did some of the above except I placed 5 short stories in kindle formatted collection. I did mention that I enjoy writing and as my twitter bio says, “I enjoy writing, doesn't mean I am any good at it.” I don’t classify myself as an author, I also would never suggest to anyone that I am into marketing or promotions. I probably couldn't even write the sales worthy, descriptive text on my own short collection. The sales of my 5 unUsual Short Stories are negligible. In reality, my commission doesn't buy me a pint of milk. Maybe it is early days, only time will tell me that. But what is a short story, we could look it up but you will find varying definitions of a short story, Wikipedia will tell you them all. But when you think about it, the bible is full of short stories, I am sure the Kings of old where told short stories by wandering minstrels. So from the beginning of time any tale that held the attention of an audience could be classified as a Short Story. In publishing terms the word count will determine the thresholds of flash fiction, short stories, novella and a novel.

Short stories in general are a great way to have short burst of excitement, adventure, romance and be able to carry on with a busy day. Even the big authors have written short stories, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, The Brothers Grimm and Homer have all written short stories. These are historical authors and have the names that we recognise, but even in this modern era the big authors are at it too. From the fifties to the modern day authors like Stephen King, Daphne Du Maurier, JD Sallinger and Roald Dahl are known for writing short stories.

Are short stories dead, the question to answer, my thoughts are no of course not they are the cornerstone of everyone’s imagination. You may think that you do not have enough of an imagination to tell a story, but if you can think you can tell a story. But can short stories be a marketable thing, that is a bigger question.

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Journal Entry No. 2

Well, I have been badgered left, right and centre to keep this journal more up to date.  I am still not understanding why, it has been a ten days since the last worthless entry I made and I have not done anything of interest, well when I say of interest others seem to think that I have.  However tonight is the Pageant of Power and this is a festival that allows all comers who believe they can become an Oracle to show their power and progress into the next stage.  I will know more later as I am just going to get ready for the festivities, maybe I will take this book and write a little when I get utterly bored.

Well I am just back from the Pageant of Power and my entire outlook on what I am doing here and what the pageant was all about.  One, wanna be Oracle literally fights another wanna be Oracle using whatever means they have able to do the most damage and ultimately get the other party to yield, the difference is they can do anything at all because everyone is already dead and therefore can’t die again.  Any holes, loss of body part or complete dis-assembly of mind body and soul will not matter as they will always return to the way they were when they entered this mystical land.  I almost saw a great number of things that I had to look away from because I, being not dead, am still unable to comprehend this fact and my mind still process the removal of a limb or large chunks of flesh as not pleasant.

The Pageant tonight was taken up primarily by one single faerie who managed to win the whole thing without using a single offensive spell. All he did was use defensive and lingering obstructive spells, these put together with his in battle intimidating prowess really made the final battle entertaining. The ultimate objective of the pageant is to win and become and Oracle but this faerie decided not to move on into rebirth and said he would try better next time, how can you win something and promise to try better next time. The pageant is held every five years in here .

Blimey, I almost forgot this bit, his dance. When he had won, he let down his guard for an instance and did a dance that I can only describe as, how do you spell, “Bleurghhh” and I also found out that no one actually knows his name and people really can’t describe him either he is turning very mysterious but at the same time very familiar.

Journal Entry No. 1

I have been in this horribly amazing land for three weeks and five days.  Just yesterday I was given this almost empty journal after two people here said it would be to my benefit.

As I have never written in a journal before how am I supposed to know what to write.  At the best of times I can think a complete load of rubbish.

On the very first page it has written in some beautiful old school script, “Stars always shine brightest at night.” And underneath I have been told is the same thing written in the old language.  Anyway it looks very nice.  The book itself is made from leather and is hand made by my grandmother.  Not sure how she made the paper but it is stitched into the leather from and back with some big leather stitches.

My grandmother is one that told me to keep one and said she always used to keep one and wrote in it everyday.  However the Polyphant told me that I would be unable to take my Journal home. Apparently that doesn’t matter though, seems a bit pointless to me.  But, on the brightside he did also tell me that a journal is a way to put on paper what is already stored safely in your head, so if I need to remember anything all I have to do is think hard.

Everything seems to be hard.

Anyway, this is the Land of the Dead, this is where some of the dead, retire is as good a word as any, retire to.  It took me a couple of weeks to be covinced that I am not dead.  They did eventually convince me, but I am not sure.  They said to me, “So Seren are you dead?” I said, “No” and they said, “Well there you go then” This is the some total of their argument, oh yes and the little bit where they added as if it was an after thought, “You would know if you were dead, trust us on this”

I will reserve judgement.  I think that is enough for entry number one of probably one.