I just wrote a short story and I don't know what to do next. Perhaps you have some ideas?

[CTyankee]

I think it'spretty good, but apart from showing it to my literary friends, I'm clueless as to where to send it.

Any suggestions?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear CTyankee...

There's a book on the market that gets updated every year. It's called "Novel and Short Story Writer's Market."

This can help you find your market...

Good luck!

:hi:

[HopeHoops]

2. What CaliforniaPeggy said - or you can subscribe online at writersmarket.com

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Hey, I didn't know you could do that!

Thanks for the tip...

:hi:

[HopeHoops]

5. I like the books (and have them going back into the 90's), but the website is current and covers ALL

[Mojambo]

4. What's it about? n/t

[CTyankee]

6. Well, it's an old story really, about a married woman's infidelity.

And it's a study of a present day affluent suburban town near Boston (where my daughter lives and I've gotten to know about). It is set immediately after Obama wins the election and looks at the mores and conceits of highly well educated, affluent people, their tastes, customs, belief systems. Everything from their politics to their lifestyle habits. As a woman, I was interested in exploring infidelity from the point of view of one of the women living in the town. I leaveit to the reader to decide whether they think she was a fool, a miscreant or just a pitiful and all too human individual.

[Ivan Sputnik]

7. My suggestion: think local

Yes, Writer's Market is always good, but if there are any local or regional literary publications near you, they may be more open to your work than others. I've had good luck getting short stories and essays published in the local arts paper.

[CTyankee]

8. I think you are right. Especially since the story takes place in New England.

Actually, Mass.

[Chan790]

9. Call your local library...

ask if they have a copy of the 2009 Writer's Market. If they do, go in and read it...it's nothing but a catalog of publishers and magazines that buy writing sorted by what kind of submissions they buy and how to contact them. Otherwise, ask if they know where you can find one to review...it's like $50 so it's not the sort of thing that is worthwhile to buy unless you're a professional writer and intend to send out more than a couple submissions a year.

There is also one for poets called 2009 Poet's Market, one for finding a literary agent called 2009 Guide To Literary Agents, etc.

Edit: be prepared to be rejected a lot...I'm a writer and a writing tutor and my rejection rate still tops 50%. Most good editors of small publications will give constructive feedback. They want you to succeed; most people in the industry are not there for the money.

[CTyankee]

10. Is there actually a book on short story writing that you can recommend?

I have actually been a writer through most of my career, but in a different forum than short story (unless you count some of my grant proposals, which is possible...). I wrote exhortatory fundraising material for causes I cared about and was able to raise money doing so, so I know I can persuade.

This is all different for me. In grad school I did a lot of explicatory writing. It helped me with clarity, which is certainly a virtue in writing fiction and I would guess short stories in particular. What I am lacking is knowing what makes a short story good. I can certainly point to examples of great short stories -- "The Swimmer" by John Cheever or "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson come to mind. But it is certainly not quantifiable.

I think I am too beholden to "The New Yorker" kind of short story. I remember someone remarking that to write a good New Yorker story just take off the last sentence of your story. In a sense, that is what I have aimed for in my piece.

How do you approach a short story when you are a writing tutor? I tutor, myself, but ESOL. I'd like to know how you approach this.

thanks for your input.

[Chan790]

11. Not a single book no, but some guidance, thoughts and advice.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Anna Karinina, Leo Tolstoy. Chapter 1, first line.

I can't recommend a single book. Every aspiring writer is also unhappy in their own way; there is no book entitled How to write a good short story that isn't a lie for that reason. I recommend a number of different books to address different issues. Some people need help finding their voice as a writer. Some have no sense of plot. Some need help finding the time, energy, space and drive to write. These are clearly not your issue so we'll gloss over them.

Your first question is one it seems you know the answer to, but don't know that you know it because you've approached the question from the wrong direction. There is no way to quantify what makes great short stories great because it's not the same. It's uniquely true of each piece. The Lottery is a great short story because it hones in a primal part of ourselves that we're scared of, every line every word of that story forebodes; we'd like to think that because we're civilized enlightened creatures that couldn't happen anymore...then Jackson destroys that and it shakes us. The Swimmer is a great short story because it presents us with a realist plot of a man to do something both meaningful and absurd which ultimately doubles as an allegory for the slow-unraveling of a life and the spiritual-bankruptcy as possessions replace relationships and society glosses over that void with the illusion of false-happiness and a "stiff upper lip", a plague which Cheever sees as prevalent in suburbia. It poses a question which makes us think...If a nice house with a picket fence, a swimming pool, a car in the driveway and the nuclear family is the American dream, why are we so unhappy? Once, through his actions, Neddy finds himself outside of this illusion, he is lost. The end of the story is a parable...you can't go home again...but also a cliffhanger: Who would ever choose to go back to the illusion and if you can't go back to the way things were...where do we go from here? What makes one great is not what makes the other great. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry is a great short story because we all wish we could be that selfless; we feel for the characters at the same time that we suspect that they've learned something in their sacrifice which we'll never know.

So...where do we go from here as writers? I tell all starting-out writers (regardless of their chosen writing format) the same things:

1.) Write what you know and what you enjoy reading. If you enjoy cowboy stories, write about cowboys. (Larry McMurtry) If you enjoy the psychological drama of family life, write about that. (Henrik Ibsen) If you're a unhappy mid-level executive with a rich escapist fantasy life, write about that. (James Thurber)

2.) Show, don't say. Which one really tells you something about Damon?:

• Damon was a bad man.
• When Damon needed smokes, he'd follow an old woman home from the supermarket and into the elevator. Once the elevator started moving, he'd crack her skull with his pipe-wrench and steal her wallet. Easy money every time and no worries; any witness met the same fate.

3.) Adverbs suck badly. Don't use them, they're lazy and suggest poor verb choice. Again, which one reads better?:

• George walked slowly in the gutter.
• George skulked in the gutter.

The exception to this is when the adverb itself tells us something which can't be said in a better way (often in opposition to the verb):

• Nathan Hale marched warily towards the gallows, lingering for one opportunity to escape with his hard-won secrets which he knew would never come. He remained a soldier's spy until his end.

4.) Don't be afraid to have fun with language. Words tell us everything in a piece of writing. Be creative in your word-choice, a great word out of context can describe the unspeakable. As the nails entered, Christ's wounds fulminated. Fulminated means "to explode with rage." or "let loose with profane invective." Find the character's voice...Juliet's monologue from Romeo and Juliet (Act II, scene 2) sounds awkward coming from Dolph Lundgren, adults don't say "poopie" and 4th graders don't say "whereas". Sometimes you want to break the rules of word-choice, it makes a story interesting.

5.) We have 5 senses with which we experience the world. Yet most writers get hung up on two: hearing and sight. I like to give my pupils a challenge to write a short story describing an experience by a blind deaf man. As Henry picked up the new food in front of him, he felt its' flaky crispness even as the gooey chunky insides glommed between his fingers. It smelt of his father's orchard and his mother's hearth. In his mouth, it tasted sweetly of apples imbued with spring rains and the warmth of the sunshine. Apple pie would never taste as joyful to anybody else.

I don't really buy into that New Yorker style of writing or the "take the last sentence off" thing. A great first line and a great ending can make a mediocre middle great. I do think the one way in which that is true is that a lot of starting-out writers just don't know when to stop writing. You don't need to say "Happily ever after." although I did once to finish a really depressing story, it was the right ending for a story about a case of mistaken identity which ends in a public execution...because it was both unexpected and somewhat cynical...it certainly wasn't a happy ending for at least one character.

You're absolutely right in a sense, grant writing is short story telling...the motivation is the same. Tell a story, tell me why I care. Help me see the problem or the world differently. Connect with the reader. Grant writing is about touching the emotional core of the reader, same as short story writing. I'm taking a online course in grant-writing now and one of the things that they keep saying is "don't describe the proposal, tell the story of the proposal and what the grant will do."

As for approach I take when tutoring...most of my pupils come to me with a writing piece in hand that they want to make better rather than an idea they want to write about. It helps me see what they need help on. In those cases that they have an idea but not a piece, I help them flesh it out and then send them home to write it. It doesn't have to be well-written but it's easier to work with a first draft than a premise.

[CTyankee]

14. Wonderful stuff! Thank you.

I think at gut level I know what you are saying. It is very true about grant writing; stories matter rather than a laundry list of accomplishments, needs, statistics (except as accompanying material). In my career I got to know many top donors to a statewide organization where I served as Director of Major Gifts and I knew that the stories of actual people helped by that organization, plus an understanding of the donors' gender and social status, could be nicely expressed in little letters from the President on her own "personal" stationery.

I am certainly not comparing myself to Jackson and Cheever. I'm glad I'm not Jackson herself as she seemed to be so tormented. Cheever, too, and one of the things I loved about "The Swimmer" was his recognition of male delusion, but also how deftly he was able to write about seasonal change and the wheeling of the constellations to give such ominous portent to the story. My question at the end was "Does Neddy really exist?"

It seems to me that a short story must basically deal with a character in crisis that happens later in the story, breaks and then ebbs rapidly to a finish, a resolution at least of some sort that raises emotions, maybe even personal issues, in the reader's mind. It was that, rather than by cutting off the end of the story, that I think is my reference to "New Yorker" stories. I know, I know, ambiguity!

Well, my deepest thanks for listening (reading?). You've been helpful and I appreciate your taking the time to give me your advice, which I realize you give for a living...

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. I think short story writing

is really, really hard. When I read your synopsis (above) of your short story, I thought to myself, "All that in a short story? It sounds like a novel to me." But I write novels, so I see things differently, maybe.

For what it's worth, I'm a published novelist, with a multi-book deal with a major publisher, and there's not a thing I can tell you about how to write or how to learn about writing. I've never taken a course in writing, never read a book on writing, and if I were to write one, it would be filled with blank pages.

That's my way of telling you to look to yourself for how to do it. Your voice is your voice and it is unique. If you listen to people, like that New Yorker story (which, sadly, sounds about right for the New Yorker), you're going to get in the way of your own storytelling and, instead, start to strive to "write like" someone who writes for the New Yorker, or something equally mortal.

Strive for your own clear, unvarnished voice. Don't edit yourself and don't try to ape anyone. You've done enough writing to know how it feels when you're writing honestly, listening only to your own self.

Above all - and this is really the only thing I can tell you - listen to yourself. Not to anyone else. Not even me.

Good luck.

[CTyankee]

13. Thanks for your input! I have come to the conclusion (through my own self criticism of this story)

that my story does not flesh out its male characters but that I wrote it this way for a reason, and that was because it was from a decidedly female perspective. Marital infidelity has been much more a male province, in literature if not in reality, that the lack of a woman's perspective is ultimately unsatisfying for the women reading stories dealing with it. I have been musing on this since Updike's death and some recent reading on the incidence of infidelity in Emily Dickinson's complicated family situation, but the kernel of the story is drawn from my observation of one particular woman in real life, altho there is lot of compositional strands from others.

Thank you so much. You've said good things to me...