I grew up with a love-hate relationship with short fiction. Having to read short stories in school almost ruined
them for me. Actually, the reading was fine; it was the having to
answer the brain-dead, pointless, intellectually insulting questions
about those stories that made me want to throw the books across the
classroom. I had no idea what criteria the textbook authors were using,
but if this was what short fiction was about, I could not understand why
anyone would voluntarily read it.
And yet, as soon as I got a
library card, I checked out volume after volume of Groff Conklin's
anthologies. I read the few digest magazines in my possession so many
times, I wore them out. I could almost recite some of those stories word
for word. I decided that the field of short fiction was divided into
two parts: the dry, tedious stuff that no one in her right mind would
have anything to do with; and the cool stuff - the stories that grabbed
me right away and swept me into worlds filled with surprises, nifty
ideas, and no-holds-barred excitement. I could indulge myself for an
entire afternoon, or sneak in one of my favorites and still have time to
finish my homework. Although the prose was not of the elevated literary
sort (a good thing, in my opinion) and the characters might be
cardboard supporting actors for the above-mentioned Incredibly Nifty
Ideas And Situations (I didn't care), these stories got the most
important things right. They didn't muck around with showing off the
author's vocabulary; the "point" wasn't dreary and obscure. They were
complete stories, single-minded of purpose, with well-defined
beginnings, middles, and ends, and the characters had actual goals and
perils. These were stories I wanted to read, and hence they were what I
attempted to write.
Two academic degrees and a kid later, I embarked upon a serious writing
career. The conventional wisdom of that time, still held by many, was
that you began by writing short fiction and then "graduated" to novels.
This was supposed to teach you the fundamentals of writing. Short
fiction, you understand, contains all the necessary elements, only in
condensed form, like literary Campbell's Soup. Why anyone thinks it's
easier to make every sentence accomplish three things when in a
novel-length work it has to do only one, I don't know. In this case,
short does not equal simplified. In addition, at that time there were
quite a few markets for short fiction, and new ones popping up all the
time (and disappearing, so it behooved the beginning writer to keep
track of current listings, an art in itself).
It turned out, however, that short stories were no more difficult for me than those of any other length. It was easier
to send off a short story for critique than an entire novel, not to
mention the savings in copying and postage. Having to create a new world
for each story gave me lots of practice. The clincher came when Marion
Zimmer Bradley, with whom I'd been corresponding, told me she was going
to edit an anthology of women's sword and sorcery and would I like to
send her a story, no promises. My fate as a short fiction writer was
sealed.
Print markets for short fiction have come and gone,
editors have come and gone, and yet people persist in reading the darned
things. Clearly, I'm not alone in loving good short fiction. But one of
the enduring challenges has been the ephemeral nature of most magazine
publications. The issue comes out one month and all is rapture and
celebration. A few short weeks later, that issue has been replaced by
the next, and the availability of back issues shrivels rapidly. Unless a
story is reprinted in an anthology, it may be impossible to find (or to
find at a price one can afford for a collector's copy) a decade or two
hence. Those anthologies I loved contained reprints,
"The Best Of...",
but these have largely given way largely to originals. (Not that I'm
complaining. I've had the pleasure of editing a number of original
anthologies.)
I think that electronic publishing may be the best
thing to happen to short fiction in a long while. Most of your favorite
authors have backlists of those ephemeral stories. (I say most because
some writers are natural novelists, and they are no less wonderful, they
just don't have long bibliographies of shorter work.) Epublishing is a
great way to make these available again. Shorts are usually priced so a
reader can pick up one or four to explore an author's work without
having to invest a great deal of money.
And
shorts still offer the advantage that you can read a whole story in one
sitting. In the airport or doctor's office, on your lunch break, at
bedtime. Just load up a couple of dozen on your ereader and you're set.
Sometimes you want the length and complexity of a novel, to spend
hundreds of pages exploring a world and hanging out with characters who
have become your friends. But other times, you want to jump into a story
and jump out again with the full satisfaction and sense of completeness
that a short story can bring.
At Book View Café, I'm
embarking on an experiment in short fiction publication. Today, I offer
you not one but four for your delectation. Three are fantasy, and one is
science fiction. I had a wonderful time writing each of them, and I
hope you'll enjoy reading them, too.
"Take two, they're small." And only $0.99 each.
