 Short Stories: January 21, 2026 Issue [#13555] |
This week: Why Write Short Stories Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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Quotes
“I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary, calendar, and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir |
Why Write Short Stories
1. It keeps you in a regular writing habit
It can be so much easier to sit down at your desk knowing you only have to write a little bit of a short piece than it might be if you were faced with the daunting task of continuing a 300-page novel. No matter how much—or how little—progress you make, progress is progress. As long as you’re getting your butt in the chair and typing away, you’re strengthening those creative muscles.
2. You finish more projects
The curse of most writers is having all of those half-finished, abandoned projects taunting you from the edges of your mind. Sometimes you might return to a project to finish it, often times only to abandon it again. This is especially common in longer works, like novels.
With short stories, though, it’s an easy practice in learning how to finish a draft, and then later on in how to revise it. Plus, finished projects are great for contest submissions! You can’t exactly win a contest or be in a publication with an uncompleted draft.
3. The stakes are low
If you do decide to trash a piece you’ve been working on, with a short story, you haven’t thrown out all that much. It can be disheartening to leave a story behind and feel like all of that work was for nothing, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Anything you’ve written can only help you make your next pieces better.
4. It lets you practice storytelling
Of course, any form of story is good practice for storytelling, but short stories are an excellent crash course in every single element of fiction. In just a few thousand words, you have to include a strong plot and character development, a setting, dialogue, polish your prose, and so much more.
Once you’ve finished your short story, it’s also an easy piece to reread to figure out which elements of storytelling you might need to brush up on. By glancing at a few pages, you can pinpoint which parts are the weakest and why.
5. It eases you back into writing
If you’ve gone through an especially bad bout of writer’s block, you may not feel like going back to your creative work at all. Getting back in the saddle after an extended break is one of the hardest things you can do as an artist. But short story writing is a good way to do that.
Listen to some advice from Anne Lamott and take things “bird by bird.” Short stories are a gentle way to ease yourself back into writing. By the time you start one, it’ll be over before you know it. And once you’ve tackled one story, the rest will come so much more easily.
And who knows? You might love your stories so much that you want to get them published in literary magazines!
W.D.Wilcox
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