I’m falling in love with short stories.

I’ve been playing with stories relating to the characters in Prodigies, because that’s what’s been close to my mind right now. I posted one of them, Hands, in this blog previously. 

I don’t know how “marketable” they are, because they’re my writing, and I’m having trouble getting the novels accepted. They tend to tie in with my novels, which will be a great thing once I’m published (anthologies are nice bonuses to give people as an incentive to buy your work at conferences), and before then they’re stories I can try to publish.

Publishing short stories does not pay, for the most part. There’s a lot of competition, of course, and I’ve gotten more rejections than acceptances so far. I don’t know if anyone reads them besides the other people who are published in the journal or website. But getting published does give a little buzz of happiness. 

Meanwhile, as a writer, I find that writing short stories gives me small doses of accomplishment — not as much as when I finish a novel, but enough to make me feel like writing again.