Thank you for being here and special thanks for your response in the chat where I asked what you’d like to see/or hear next! Two main things came up and today we’ll cover how short stories support my novel writing.
THE WAYS IN WHICH SHORT STORY WRITING SUPPORTS MY NOVEL WRITING:
Money
My short stories make me money. So far, my novel writing has made me no money whatsoever. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that my novel writing has cost me money!
If you’re already following me elsewhere, you’ll know that I’ve had some success in the last year writing for women’s magazine The People’s Friend: its circulation reaches the hundreds of thousands all over the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and via digital subscription all over the world. The oldest running women’s weekly magazine in the world, it publishes hundreds of short stories every year - and pays for them.
Payment with People’s Friend is on acceptance. This is great for the writer as sometimes the story may need to wait its time in a queue to appear in print.
There are a variety of issues throughout the year with their own requirements, and I will cover this in Part 2!
There’s no doubt that after a long time writing, having something accepted is an adrenaline rush and you immediately want to repeat it! The thought of having to wait months to see a story in print was not on my agenda in the beginning. Now I don’t mind at all - and I’ll go on to explain why when I write Part 2!
A note about money: being paid for your work is not a bonus! I am extremely proud that my ideas translate into stories and that I’m paid for it. It should not feel like a bonus to be paid!
Currently, there’s a lot of online debate about the monetary reward for novelists (hint: it ought not to be a reward or a bonus to be paid to write 80,000 words and upwards!). No publishing business without the writers after all! No big publishing offices and paid staff without the writer! Remuneration for novelists does not appear to have increased for years, in fact with quarterly advance payments (sometimes spread out over several books delivered), this makes it a real challenge for a writer to “live off” their novel writing, pushing them to write more and more over a shorter period of time. Of course, there are always the outliers who made the large advances but don’t think for a moment that this is the norm!
Short stories aren’t “less than”.
Being paid for them is wonderfully pleasing. Every. Single. Time.
I can’t believe I get paid to imagine all sorts and write it down. Writing and being paid for it is an absolute dream for me. Shout it from the rooftops - being paid to write is good! Maybe it helps that my initial training following school was journalism - reporters expect to be paid for their work!
What does the money pay for?
The money from my short stories enables me to set aside money for the computer programmes I use for my writing (mainly Microsoft Office), attending events, buying books, and subscriptions to membership organisations. I’ll do a total breakdown of this in Part 2! So sign up as a free subscriber if you’d like to receive that info as soon as it comes out.
I also treat myself at the time of acceptance (a bottle of wine or a nice coffee or a nice notebook) and then again at the time of publication (hello friend, would you like to do lunch?)
I think it is important to celebrate every step.
Apart From Money, How Does My Short Story Writing Support My Novel Writing?
THE PRACTICAL BITS: Creative Support
We all know that writing a novel is a long slog! I’ve written three. Not all of them good, but I learned through writing them. Several netted Full Requests from agents. My most recent was short-listed with Simon & Schuster and long-listed with Penguin Michael Joseph in competitions to find debut novelists.
I find it useful to write short stories in the gaps between drafting, writing and editing. Personally, I find if I stop writing completely, it is a real challenge to get going again - and short stories prevent me falling into a chasm of fear. If only I’d learned this sooner.
The caveat here is that I was a short story writer before I ever attempted a novel, so this may not be true for you. Let me know if it works for you!
Skills
Short story writing requires skills that can enhance your novel writing, or at the very least remind you!
Brevity where required: There’s little room within a short story to fall into backstory or world-building. Short stories taught me the “shorthand” of getting into the character’s world - showing it quickly to the reader and describing them, without taking paragraphs to do so.
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash Making a point. A short story has to do something. It’s not just a group of scenes or an anecdote. It needs to “travel” ie the character has to go on some kind of journey (metaphorically or not). There has to be a point (I’d argue this is true even for literary stories, perhaps even more so).
Have you ever finished your novel draft and when asked “What’s your story about?” you stumble and bumble with “It’s about this girl who lives in X, then this happens, then this, and ends up with…” You mumble on, unable to make the point of your story.
Hint: It can help immensely to write your synopsis or at least a blurb first (even if they alter once you’ve completed the work). Having some kind of notion of the novel direction may help to focus you, so you don’t give up at the 20,000-30,000 word mark. I’ve been there. Short story writing helps me see the point of a story a bit more clearly and I hope this will translate into novel writing too. Time will tell.
Characters and Setting: This needs to be established quickly in a short story and if you are writing a novel for the commercial market you need to do this in your opening too. Short story writing is great practice for this!
I wrote a separate Post on Setting. It’s here if you’re interested:
YOU'RE WRITING IN THE WRONG PLACE
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Heartfelt thanks for subscribing and reading as I ramble my way from winter into spring in my little writing corner in Scotland.Thanks for reading Little Writing Corner! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Variety. Are you the same kind of writer as me? I am that writer who’s never short of an idea. If anything, I have far too many ideas. Now, whether that idea can hold a story for any length of time is the trick. I notice things all the time and keep note of them in case they may come in handy.
I love the gift of variety that short story writing gives me. It is such fun!
NOW WE GET TO THE JUICY BITS!!!!
Submitting
The act of submitting. And submitting. And submitting.
Short stories helped me get used to querying my materials. Luckily for me, the People’s Friend editorial team reply within a reasonable timescale. My first refusal (then acceptance) came within only a few months of submitting.
In reality, submitting a short story ought to be less of a worry than submitting a novel. We spend a lot longer with a novel - it becomes quite precious to us. I must admit, I’ve felt that way with a few of my stories - the ones that felt very special. Those tend to be the ones that are accepted very quickly (once, within 24 hours!)
This practice of submitting really can prepare you for the inevitable waiting game of novel submission!
Letting Go
The act of letting go. Isn’t that the same thing as submitting? Indeed it is not!
Submitting means having the courage to try, to believe, even a little, and pressing “send”.
Letting go is all about sending it off and learning not to be too precious. Letting go means moving on to the next thing. Over a 12 month period of successfully selling short stories, this is the skill that I think is the best one I learned for my own mental health.
It can feel so stressful. It is so stressful. To send your work out there. Awaiting judgement.
I hope to be able to transfer this skill to my novel writing/querying in due course.
Letting go and moving on is building crucial resilience a writer needs. Any creative person, actually. If we become crippled into inertia every single time we submit, it may grind us to a halt. Sending stories off (even if they are rejected) is a good lesson. That story may suit a different market, or it may need to be rewritten.
We learn what works, and while we wait, we get on with writing more, writing something else - and remember to go out there to live life and look for further inspiration too!
I send my submission by email and blow a kiss to the screen. Good luck little story!
Then I hope it will make the cut: connect with its first reader, my editor, and hopefully make it to print to be read by a wider audience.
Reward
There’s no doubt based on what I’ve written here that one of the ways short story writing supports me is…reward.
Not just the reward of money (which supports all the things I listed at the beginning) but the reward of acceptance, of getting into print, of reaching a readership I could never have imagined. It’s a kind of validation I suppose.
Short stories for me are not a means to an end. They are their own reward that just so happen to support all of my other writing.
It has taken quite a long time for me to be unapologetic about my short story writing. For a while it felt like dabbling, cheating on my novel, something that wasn’t viewed as serious. My little secret. Then a few people started to notice and asked me about it. Now, I realise just how far I’ve come.
I look back over those 12 months and honour the 14 stories accepted (more were written but 14 were accepted in that period).
I am fortunate indeed to have met a few other PF writers in person after chatting online - they really are a lovely bunch of writers (and a great editorial team too).
At a time in my life when novel writing had me doubting my writing skills, short stories came along to save me, to reassure me, to whisper to me: keep going, keep writing, keep submitting.
Let me know your own experience of short story writing - whether it is self-published, an anthology, competitions, magazines, or another market-place. Is short fiction your main thing? I’d be interested to know!
Part 2 will be along with details about how I make regular income from short story writing. If you’re interested in this, do subscribe for free now! I appreciate you!
Best wishes with your own writing this week, from Jackie in the Little Writing Corner in Scotland x
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