Hello, dreamers. Recently, as I often do, I transitioned to short fiction for the remainder of December. However, I find myself going in a very different direction than I have in previous short fic breaks.

I like to joke that thinking about compiling a short fiction collection is one of my “holiday traditions”. In reality, it’s a little more complicated than that. For years now, the end of the year has been a time for big ideas for me. I find myself considering new things I wouldn’t think of normally. And this year, I’m actually putting one of those big ideas into action.

I’ll go into more detail in tomorrow’s “Writer’s Desk”, but for the first time I’m actually working on a series of interrelated short stories. Collectively titled The Drum, the stories will take place aboard a generation ship: an enormous McKendree Cylinder. The crew is revived without any memory of their mission; they don’t know where they are, why they’re there, of what they were meant to do.

Thus far, I’ve written parts of three stories, and am now plugging away on one in particular. The one I’m working on actively, “Seeds of A New Eden”, may not be the first story I’ll shop around or release, but it will be the first one in an overarching timeline that will span hundreds, or possibly thousands of years. I’m very excited about this.

With all that said, however, that’s not what this post is about. It’s about why I began writing short fiction. And why, if you’re thinking of becoming a writer, you should too.

Starting Small

When Joni Labaqui called me in October to inform me I was a finalist in Writers of the Future, she asked me a lot of questions. It was, I’ll admit, a little overwhelming. I figured I should be the one asking questions. But her line of conversation almost felt like an interview. One of the first questions she asked me was “Why did you decide to write short fiction?”

I gave her my honest answer: back in 2013 when I first decided I wanted to write a novel, I sat down one night and literally typed “How to launch a successful writing career” into Google. Most of the articles I found suggested starting with short stories. So that’s what I did.

What I didn’t tell Joni was that, honestly, I didn’t want to do it. As with most writers starting out, I think, what I really wanted to do was write a book. Everyone who sets out to write dreams of writing a novel, a bestseller, a smash hit that will vault them from a boring nine-to-five straight to stardom alongside John Grisham and Stephen King. Very few writers start out thinking, I really want to write a bunch of stories that run like ten pages apiece, then send them off to literary mags who will judge me and tell me “No”.

But here’s the thing: looking back, it was the right decision. I really needed to write short fiction first. Because the truth was, aside from basic grammar and how to format dialogue, I knew basically nothing about writing fiction. I was clueless. I didn’t think I was clueless, of course. But upon reflection with the benefit of experience, I’m amazed by both how little I knew, and how much I thought I knew.

First and foremost, the value of starting off with short fiction lies in learning to craft a stable narrative. One of the hardest parts of writing a novel is maintaining a coherent storyline without veering off into countless subplots that ultimately do nothing for no one. You’re writing a novel, and you get this really neat idea. “Well, what if the characters do this,” you think. And as you allow one or more of your characters to explore this subplot you find fascinating, you gradually lose sight of the original plot.

I’ve seen many beginning writers do this. Enough that I’d say it’s probably the most common reason for a first-time writer not finishing a novel. And it can be hard to resist. Writing a novel takes time and dedication, as well as attention to detail. You have to be able to keep everything moving along from one crucial plot point to the next. You can, and should include subplots. But while the story can bend and weave, it can’t simply break.

When writing a short story, it’s a lot easier to stick to the main plot. You have only a few named characters to work with. It’s almost exclusively single POV. You can sit down and clearly envision the entire story from beginning to end. And by writing short fiction, you learn the crucial skill of maintaining focus on the plot.

I’ve often compared writing short fiction to the process of “stretching out” Major League Baseball pitchers during spring training. In MLB, starting pitchers are typically expected to throw around one hundred pitches per outing, ideally running through six or seven innings. But pitchers usually begin spring training only throwing through one inning. Over the course of training, they gradually increase their pitch count, going longer and longer into games, until they’re finally stretched out to one hundred pitches.

Short fiction is like that for me. In the past, when I’ve taken long periods away from writing, I’ve always started back into things with short fiction. Initially the pieces are very brief, usually only five or six thousand words at most. But as I ease my way back into it, I find the stories grow longer and longer. Once I’m routinely laying down 10k-plus words per story, I’m ready. I’m stretched out, and the next big novel project awaits. – MK