On short stories

I came back from Iowa with a huge stack of manuscripts and many of them are short stories. Some of these short stories are very beautiful. They are like little pearls, polished and gleaming, every sentence perfect. Several of the students, who had met with other agents, told me they knew short stories were really hard to sell, the agents had told them so. And of course I had to agree. But I started thinking about how much I love short stories; and I felt a twinge of regret that as a genre they have become so marginalized in mainstream literature. As Stephen King writes, “a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger. That is not, of course, the same thing as an affair or a marriage, but kisses can be sweet, and their very brevity forms their own attraction.” Short stories can attain perfection in the way that the novel, with its unwieldy length and many plot strands and extensive cast of characters, never can. What is more perfect after all than a story by Grace Paley or Alice Munro? Never was I more entranced than when reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth. There is a completeness to the experience of reading a short story: you are pulled into the world created therein and for the time it takes you to ride the bus to work or school you are elsewhere; by the time the bus delivers you to your destination you are ready to shake yourself off and re-enter your own life, but your perspective has shifted slightly, the air feels a little different.

As an agent I thank those editors at publishing houses who are willing to take a chance on short story collections and all those who toil at literary journals and are doing so much to keep this form alive.

Tip #1 for Aspiring Writers

I gave a talk to some students at an MFA program and they appreciated it so I thought I’d share it here on my blog. It was called Ten Tips For Aspiring Writers and I’ll post the tips one at a time.

Inform yourself: Understand the publishing process, what goes on and what you can expect from the moment you send out that query letter. Know what publishing houses publish what kinds of books. Understand the trends. Read the trade blogs, including Publisher’s Lunch, PW Daily and Galleycat. Understand that publishing is in essence a trend-driven industry; even if your book may not be a part of whatever the current trend is – vampire romances, for example – that’s ok. Of all the genres, I would say that literary fiction is still the most deeply affected by the recession and the change to the digital landscape. Publishers seem to be at a loss how to publish books for which sales used to be ‘review-driven’. Newspapers are dying, review space is shrinking. And yet more people than ever are writing about books. It’s a new paradigm, one in which publishers are trying to figure out their place. Staying informed gives you more control over the process.