Writers who are new to the short story form often begin by making it their goal to write a collection, which makes sense. As an adult, next to your friend penning their first novel, writing a single short story seems insignificant, like you’re just practicing to be a writer. But sitting down to write a collection probably isn’t the answer, and here’s why.
It’s not a collection
A short story is an attempt at expressing a story in as few words as necessary. Aiming to write a collection of short stories, rather than publish enough for a collection, tells your brain that the limits of the limits of the form aren’t that urgent and undermines the individual story’s impulse—What I can’t say here, I’ll just say in the next story. And on top of that, it encourages you to write enough stories, rather than selecting the right stories for the collection.
It becomes easy, at this point, to forget that a short story collection is another layer of the short fiction form. It is named for what it does: collects. Specifically, it collects previously published short stories by a single author into a book. It has a purpose. It gives readers access to the stories without having to source the original magazine or anthology. And helps the one or two beloved stories that didn’t make it to print stand on their own by giving them a spine (ba-dum tsss).
In short, a collection written all at once might not be short fiction, and it isn’t really a collection. But what if you want to break out of the box and do a new thing?
Your craft is in flux
My first question is, is it readable? Have you ever read a collection of your favourite author’s early or unpublished stories? I’m thinking Madeleine L’Engle’s The Moment of Tenderness, which collects eighteen of her first stories in a single book. It’s an endearing collection because I grew up on The Wrinkle In Time series, but it’s a very uneven read.
It also demonstrates what I’ve observed editing short stories: authors grow a lot with each story they write. They usually spend the first ten or so stories writing lightly veiled reflections of themselves, written in various styles. Then they might spend another dozen stories branching out into new characters and even genres to explore different ways to say what they want to say. Out of these stories, two or three really hit the mark, and that’s how they learn what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Once a writer has the basic skills required to execute a story, they begin to take risks and explore new ways of approaching their story. They start to dig into the unique way they see the world and find the perspective that only they can provide. Those two or three stories in twenty that hit the mark early on become two or three in ten and maybe five the longer the writer writes.
When a writer sits down to write a collection from start to finish, especially without the trial and error of submission, rejection, and acceptance, there might be a few stories that hit the mark, but read together, the collection is often as uneven as the peaks and valleys of their progress.
It’s not what publishers are looking for
But maybe it is fabulously readable. My next question is: Is it what publishers are looking for? We know that short story collections aren’t typically as saleable or easy to market as novels, but we also know that publishers (and readers) still want them.
As a tool for query, the collection is a ready-to-publish manuscript that has been vetted by other editors and read by real readers, ideally via upper-tier magazines with large readerships. The work that has gone into writing, revising, submitting, and getting accepted in these journals shows that the writer is committed and worthy of investment. These publications are valuable connections for promoting the book once published. The published book serves as a litmus test for the publisher’s readership or a desirable follow-up for a debut novel.
A collection written from beginning to end and queried directly does not do any of these things for the publisher (or for you as a self-publishing author). Is it worth it?
There are exceptions to every one of these examples, but unless your priority is to get a book out as fast as possible, I don’t think it is. Instead, I recommend thinking like a short story writer: focus on mastering expressing your ideas in as few words as necessary, rather than producing as much as possible in the shortest time. Then, eventually, just like the careful selection of words in a short story, you’ll whittle down your stories to a collection that truly showcases your unique approach to the craft.
Lisa, As always, thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Frank (P.)