What Will You Read in 2009? Try Short Fiction

Posted by Claire Cowling Jan 24, 2009

Firstly, as I've not actually said it yet - Happy New Year. I don't know what kind of New Year's resolutions you've made - if any - but one of mine is to ensure I take enough time off from my own writing of short stories to read plenty of other people's.

Fabulous literature does not have to come in the shape of doorstop-sized novels. I'm not, of course, knocking novels (I read plenty of them), but I have a special fondness for short stories. In them a reader can be surprised, made to laugh aloud, terrified, or find hidden depth of emotion that they never throught possible, all wrapped up in just a few pages. No words can be wasted in a short story. There just isn't room, so if an emotion is created in you when you read, you can guarantee it will hit you hard and fast.

Short stories great for reading on short trips - on the underground, for instance - or in a lunch hour when time is short and you actually want to complete a piece of fiction rather than finding that you have to stop because you're going to be in trouble with the boss if you don't get back to work! But where can you find stories that are high quality and suited to your tastes in fiction?

Well, it depends on what kind of story you're into. The women's magazines still publish short stories, although not as many as they used to. But don't be fooled into thinking they are twee and only about happily married couples, little old ladies and family parties. The subjects which are dealt with are often much more intense than this. For instance, a recent story I had published in a women's magazine involved a woman who had begun to resent her husband and couldn't bring herself to love her little boy because he he had a heart defect and ahe was scared that she would love him, only to lose him. See- not quite your happy family story, is it?!

I would personally advocate literary magazines, such as Mslexia, and the small preses, such as Legend Press, for high quality short stories. Ones which are included in the magazines and in small press anthologies are diverse in subject, length and mood. You are sure to find stories which you both like and might never have read otherwise. And the literary magazines and small presses could certainly do with reader support and the revenue brought in from subscriptions to the magazines and readers buying the books.

Unfortunately, many publishers in the mainstream don't publish short fiction. The reason is that not enough profit is made from the sales of short story collections and they are therefore not worth the trouble because not enough of the general public buy them. Maybe someone should be brave enough to take the bull by the horns and force the short story out into the limelight and test the general public's interest. There are many, many people who love reading. Why should it only be four hundred page complex plotlines? Try reading some short fiction in 2009. If you don't, then you'll never know how wonderful it is to be captivated by every word of a moment in time.