Who reads short stories?

Once in a while, a beginning writer will ask me: "Is there a point to my writing short stories? Will it get me a literary career?"

There used to be a quarterly literary magazine called STORY that published new writers, and if you got a story in there, it helped you get an agent. But it stopped publishing almost 10 years ago. Fewer and fewer consumer magazines publish short stories these days. There’s the New Yorker, Harper’s, maybe a few women’s mags. But it’s not as if the form ever had a heyday. Even the most prominent writers have very few high-circulation outlets for their short stories.

Of course, you are not supposed to write just to be published. And there are actually hundreds of U.S. literary magazines that publish short stories – it’s just that they are not widely read, and they pay very little, if at all. Most come out of universities and publish during the school year. When’s the last time your cousin said to you, “Hey, did you see the Georgia Review last month”?

There is a benefit to being in there, though. It’s prestigious to get into a review (among fellow writers, anyway), and there’s also the chance to qualify for the annual volume “Best American Short Stories.” Still, those magazines don’t publish any old schlub.

And only a few writers become well known for short stories. You can think of classic novels, but do you know any classic short stories?

Many of us read “All Summer in a Day” in our elementary school anthologies – it’s the 1959 Ray Bradbury story about a bunch of kids on Venus who’ve never “seen it” and they are all excited because they are about to see “it” for the first time. Turns out that the “it” they are waiting for is the sun. It comes around every seven years.

Ray Bradbury, Raymond Carver, and a few others have become famous for their short stories. But if you are a beginning writer, having two or three good short stories rarely gets you anywhere. Agents want books they can sell to publishers and make money on. If you get a story into the New Yorker it’s different – that in itself can land you a book deal (it’s launched careers) and even a movie deal. But for the most part, you’ve got to first have a novel to get anywhere.

So why write a short story? Well, obviously for the pleasure of it. But let’s face it, beginning writers want to get somewhere. The pleasure of writing is fine, but everyone wants to be read!

Still, if you meet enough writers, you may be asked to contribute to an anthology like This Is Chick Lit. You can enter contests. You can, if you become a published novelist someday, hopefully try to sell a collection of connected short stories, if that’s what you want and you’ve written a lot of good ones. Generally they have to have a common theme so that readers will want to stick with them. Recent collections like that have included Melissa Bank’s “The Wonder Spot” and “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing,” and David Schickler’s “Kissing in Manhattan,” the latter of which is highly recommended by me. Just good, clean writing.

I’m rambling, but I guess my point is: No, writing one or two really great short stories probably won’t immediately land you a career. But there’s no harm in writing. It’s a form that has a lot of merit. It just won’t make you rich in itself, except in very very rare cases (David Schickler’s one short story in The New Yorker got him a book and movie deal). Then again, what in writing DOES make you instantly rich?!?

A response from Andie:

I'm not a writer and this is only partially relevant to today's post. I don't particularly like to read short stories because they are short. If I read something good I want it to last.... However, my favorite show on NPR (I listen in the car) is "Selected Shorts." I have heard some wonderful stories. Most recently I listened to "The Appropriation of Cultures" by Percival Everett. It was replayed at a different time when I happened to be in the car with my husband. He doesn't generally listen to NPR, but he did on this occasion. He enjoyed the story too. I enjoyed sharing it with him.

Interesting!