ENJOYING THE JOURNEY

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

What writer doesn’t want a Stephen King-like success? I admire him for his talent and his prolific ability, but also for the fact he hasn’t abandoned the short story.

I’ve always been a ravenous short story reader and so my first attempt at writing was naturally with a short story. I’ve been addicted ever since. Most of the writers I first met were in writing classes where short stories were necessary homework. As soon as the class ended, and we began a group meeting weekly to read and critique our work, I think I was the only one who continued to write short stories. The rest embarked on novel length fiction. Each week, I churned out another short mystery. It took a while before I began what I conceived to become “a longer short story.” I felt like I was being weaned from short story writing and it wasn’t altogether as pleasant as everyone else seemed to be feeling. I liked writing 2,000-4,000 word stories where I neatly wrapped up the puzzle and typed THE END sooner than some people finished a chapter.

These days short story collections supposedly are a hard sell to an agent or publisher if you haven’t already made your name as a novelist or at least in numerous short story publications. The point is everyone needs to make money from a project and I’ve heard more than once, “The short story collections don’t sell as well as novels.” That surprises me especially since we all seem to have less and less “free time” to read.

“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”

—John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Writing succinctly is easiest if you just type as fast as your mind thinks. When we spend too much time agonizing over each word, we may tend to turn to a thesaurus. What we need is a better thought, not a bigger word. I’m all for learning new vocabulary, but when we force a reader to keep looking up words, it’s likely he’ll put our story down in favor of another.

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

—Stephen King, “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes”, 1988.

I’m writing a short story and making no excuses about why. I like to write them. I like to read them and maybe if I keep practicing, one day Stephen King will be reading my stories and quoting me. If not, I will have at least enjoyed the journey.