{"id":8771,"date":"2021-01-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8771"},"modified":"2021-01-24T18:46:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T23:46:43","slug":"the-short-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8771","title":{"rendered":"The Short of It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On the Writer Unboxed blog last week, publishing guru Porter Anderson<\/a> speculated about reasons the changeover from the old year to the year always seems to generate news about short-form fiction. Perhaps, he suggests, the end\/beginning of a year is a time writers have short fiction on the mind, intending to try out ideas they might spend the rest of the year working up into a larger project\u2014that is, a book. Maybe so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went the other direction. To reduce the word-count of a novel, I cut way back on secondary characters\u2019 stories. I liked these guys, but . . . These cutting-room floor episodes became three short stories, all of them now published. While possibly a commendable exercise in prose recycling, there were unanticipated pitfalls. First, they had to be real stories, not \u201cexcerpts.\u201d That was relatively easy. Second, once those stories were out there, I had to take them into account when I made further changes to the novel itself. Probably not one reader in a million (should I have that many) would go back, find those stories and object to any discrepancies. Of course, that one would have an active online presence and a snarky temperament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anderson cites four international developments bearing on the status of short fiction:
1. A new independent publisher in France (L\u2019Ourse brune<\/a>) focusing on short stories written in French. Formidable!<\/em>
2. Later this week, London\u2019s Costa Short Story Awards<\/a> will reveal the voting public\u2019s favorite among three unpublished short stories.
3. The 16th<\/sup> BBC National Short Story Award<\/a> program opened for submissions last week; cash prizes to be announced in early October
4. Spain\u2019s Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize<\/a> consists of cash, an artist\u2019s residency in Umbria or the Writers\u2019 House of Georgia, plus publication opportunities and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s (fairly recent) U.S. news in the world of short fiction, as well. You\u2019ll remember that the long-running annual Best American Mystery Story <\/em>anthology has moved from the purview of its founding editor, Otto Penzler, to the guiding hand of author and editor Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay<\/em>), starting with next fall\u2019s edition. It will have new title, too: The Best American Mystery and Suspense<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Penzler\u2019s Mysterious Press reportedly will launch a competing anthology this fall: The Mysterious Bookshop Presents: The Best Mystery Stories of the Year<\/em>. The attendant kerfuffle<\/a> was covered by J. Kingston Pierce in The Rap Sheet<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the annual Best New England Crime Stories<\/em> anthology, previously published by Level Best Books, will henceforth be published by Crime Spell Books<\/a>, with Susan Oleksiw, Ang Pompano, and Leslie Wheeler as editors. Write on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Pexel for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Writer Unboxed blog last week, publishing guru Porter Anderson speculated about reasons the changeover from the old year to the year always seems to generate news about short-form fiction. Perhaps, he suggests, the end\/beginning of a year is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Short of It - news from the up and down world of short story publishing.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,174,68,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-publishing","category-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ht","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8773,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8771\/revisions\/8773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}