You completed the first draft of your novel, got it edited and re-edited and thought it’s the next best thing under the sun. Unfortunately, the publishers decided to differ in their opinion.
Isn’t it such a common trend in the literary world? Even someone as famous as Amish Tripathi got rejected by the publishers until he chose self publishing. Wait! This could be a great idea for you as well… self publishing. Why not give it a shot?
Not too confident now, are you? Hang on… let us look at something else… why not consider writing a short story?
Not your cup of tea you think? But didn’t you think the same way before you started the first draft of your novel? Writing a short story is not a bad idea at all. The market for short stories may not be as big as it was before, but you are not looking to earn money from it. Your short story is for making people notice you.
Will Writing a Short Story Help Your Career?
Yes, it will. How? Just read on below…
First of all, it’s fun writing a short story. Your novel is like a series of jabs at your reader – you keep taking them up and down over a long course of time. In a short story, you get to hook them from page one and this is great fun. Moreover, you may get to deal with a single scenario with a few characters. Spinning your short story could be greatly amusing to you.
Secondly, you get many new readers that don’t read novels. Get your short story published in a magazine and there could be many new readers, women and children especially. Magazines sell more than books. Thus, a magazine could be your gateway to success. You could even get your short story on a literary website and use your social presence to direct your contacts to your story page.
Third – with your short story in a magazine, you could also attract the editors and agents. You could suddenly have a few emails or phone calls coming your way!
Stephen King had once stated that the average time gap between an author starting the first chapter of their novel to the date of publication is… 10 years. Can you afford to wait that long for your first novel to be published? I cannot.
A short story could give you that much needed platform to launch a full-scale attack on literary fame. From a nobody you could easily become a somebody in no time. And who knows? You may ultimately ditch novel writing for short story writing.
Image credit: Enokson on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Profile_Pic_Moumita.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Moumita Goswami is a full-time homemaker and a passionate writer. She stays in Pune with her husband and daughter. After giving up working, she started writing about five years ago and can now be seen using her computer keyboard almost all the time. An MA in Psychology from Calcutta University, Moumita has spent time in Kolkata, Delhi and now Pune. For Moumita, writing started as a sudden chance but she soon discovered her likeness for it. And now she has developed a passion for writing and hardly any day passes without her scribbling a few lines. She dreams of publishing her own book one day and is working towards it.
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