We novel writers feel the temptation to put all our publishing eggs in one basket. Because novels are so time-consuming to produce, we spend most of our writing time on that and little (if any) on short stories or articles. Trouble is, short stories and articles have a greater chance of getting published, thus creating that valuable list of publishing credits that agents and editors like to see for first-time novelists.
This phenomenon has been praying on my mind recently. Yesterday, I decided to seriously pursue publication of my novella GRACE. (A working title. I’ve also considered SILENCE AND GRACE or DISTURBING THE SILENCE). I’ve checked out a contest which looks promising on Glimmer Train and checked to see that Grace’s word count fits the requirements. GRACE is 18,000 words, which is 70 pages, but the Glimmer Train max word count is up to 20,000 and they still count that as a short story. I’ll hopefully submit GRACE in September or December.
I’ve toyed around with some sci-fi short story ideas, but they’re all complex enough to turn into novels. That’s the problem with being a novelist. You have trouble scaling back.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens with Glimmer Train. This is yet another item to add to my ever-growing To Do list.
RHDavis
Good luck with the submission. I believe you’re right when you say that short stories and articles have a better chance of getting published. I know it worked well for me.
Thanks for the good luck wishes! I’m getting pretty excited about it myself!