Quotes

What Do You Want?

author-quote-3Everyone has their own set of ideas about what makes good writing and marketing. But the key to it all, I think, is individuality. No one does a better job at being you than you, and no one knows the intricate details of your story like you. For this reason, it is important to stick to those methods that best fit your vision, values, and taste.

I think the most important question then for a writer is, “What do you want?” Everything else is extra.

The Short Story

short-story“The short story….. wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.”

–V. S. Pritchett

“I have always enjoyed short stories and have now found them to be an added joy. They are easy to read and digest, quick to review and……….. a great introduction to an author’s work. They act as an appetizer if you like, tempting you to tackle the meatier course of someone’s novel where you need to commit serious time.”

– Georgia Rose Books

“The particular problem of the short story writer is how to make the action he describes reveal as much of the mystery of existence as possible…The type of mind that can understand [the short story] is the kind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.”

–Flannery O’Connor

“…the short story is a natural form for the presentation of a moment whose intensity makes it seem outside the ordinary stream of time, or the significance is outside the ordinary range of experience.”

—Wendell Harris