Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
As I’ve set my mind to writing short stories and attempting to get them published, I do what I always do when I get a project bee in my bonnet: I look for a book that will help me. In this instance, I’ve started reading Ashley Lister’s book, How to Write Short Stories and Get Them Published.
Of course, the end goal has to be on the “Get Them Published,” part, right? I had had about three story ideas knocking about in my head and immediately sent them off to a few outlets. Two of the outlets still haven’t gotten back to me. One of the stories I sent off got a pretty quick rejection. Sigh. I knew that rejections would come, and come frequently, but that first rejection still stung. I revised it and changed the title and then sent it to another publication. This rejection came even faster than the first. Ouch. After sending it to a third publication, which has been silent so far, I decided to investigate how to actually write a short story.
I’ve read a million short stories, and one of my all-time favorite short story authors is the fabulous Kelly Link. My favorite compilation of hers is Magic For Beginners. She writes surreal stories that don’t fit neatly into any genre; they contain worlds within worlds and characters lost in the strange and infinite. They are beautifully bizarre, and I can’t wait for her most recent collection, White Cat, Black Dog.
So, I know a good short story when I see one, surely, I thought, I could write one. But the fast and furious rejections had me rethinking that assumption.
And now, I begin the process of teaching myself how to write a short story. I’m just at the beginning of the How To Write Short Stories book, and the writing exercises have already jump-started the idea factory in my brain. The following is the result of one of the exercises where you must randomly select six words from a dictionary and then spend 10 minutes writing a story that uses all the words. Here’s what I came up with, unedited, of course, since that wouldn’t have fit in the 10 minutes. (Beware of curse words below!):
She doesn’t know how she got stuck in the clearance aisle of frozen foods in the middle of the night, but somehow, the employees had locked up and gone home. But here she was stuck with expired frozen peas and discontinued Hot Pocket flavors. She was sure that someone looking for the best value possible would love this aisle, but, yeah, that wasn’t her. What the hell was she going to do now? She’d only ducked into the convenience store to escape her lying ex boyfriend. She had no idea what he was trying to achieve by chasing after her in the rain. In his underwear. But getting back together with him was the absolute furthest thing from her mind. She did her best to channel her best friend, Evie. She’d know what to do. She may have been small in size, but she was the smartest person Dana knew, and she would never let herself get stuck in a god damned convenience store hiding from her boyfriend. Evie was this tiny powerhouse who always got her way. They’d been having dinner when Dana felt a sudden wave of fatigue hit her. Was she getting sick? She didn’t know, but she went home a bit early and that’s when she walked in on that asshole screwing that tramp from the gas station. She knew it; she had known all along that Jim wasn’t being faithful, but this was the absolute last straw. She hadn’t even known what she was doing when she grabbed her phone and her purse and stormed out. It was Jim’s place anyway, so she just knew she had to leave. Mascara had been streaming into her eyes with the heavy rain, stinging them and driving away any tears she may have been shedding for that deadbeat. She could barely see when she pushed into the all-night shop-o-mart. She wandered without thinking into the frozen food aisle. She had slumped to the ground and just sat with her head in her hands and waited until her heart stopped racing. The store had already seemed empty, so it was perfect. Just sitting with the blue glow of the refrigerators bathing her in cold light. She zoned out and hadn’t noticed when all the other lights had flipped off. But now, she knew the cashier was gone, and when she went to open the front door, it was locked. Damn it. And then she heard it. A squishing dragging sound. The hairs on the back of her neck pricked up. She was locked in, but she wasn’t alone.
Can you guess what the six words were? Here they are:
Channel
Value
Achieve
Frozen
Size
Clearance
When I first saw those words, I thought, "How the heck am I going to write a story based off of those boring words." But, once I started writing, the ideas started flowing. It was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend checking out Ashley Lister’s book, and let me know what six words you pick for your short story exercise.
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