As most of you will know, I spent the bulk of the last year obsessing about my novel’s word count. Even now, I sometimes open the file just to look at those six digits at the bottom of the page, and know that if nothing else happens, I did it.

And at the moment, nothing else is happening. The novel is out there, and I have to move on while it does its ‘thing’.

So while I know I really should start a new novel, I’m taking a sabbatical to concentrate on another writing form – the short story. Its with a view to ‘Creating my author profile’ – as directed by Vanessa O’Loughlin of Inkwell Writers at a recent (excellent) publishing workshop at Big Smoke Writing Factory.

I’ve never given much thought to short stories before. I never really saw the point of them to be honest. Never wrote them, never read them.

I honestly didn’t know where to start.

So I did what I do best. I procrastinated. I hummed and hawed and tossed my vague idea around in my head until I was forwarded a link to New Tricks with Matches short story competition.

And even then I procrastinated some more.

Until, after some pressure from a rather bossy and demanding writer friend, I finally put pen to paper.

And wrote, and wrote.

Then, remembered it wasn’t a novel, so went back to the computer

And edited, and edited.

And now it’s nearly done.

Well as done as anything ever is. It still needs work, but after a very intensive weekend I’m taking the aforementioned bossy (but very revered and knowlegable) friend’s advice and putting it away for a week.

So how about you? Have you a short story in you?

If you haven’t got an idea, start anyway. Maybe by the time you get to the third page you’ll get an idea, and then, like me, you’ll end up editing the first two pages out… You might even end up like Truman Capote, and come to believe more in the scissors than the pencil!

I am a convert now. The whole process was such an invaluable lesson in making every word count. Every phrase, every sentence. I may never write a piece of work amounting to 100,000 words again.

Unless of course it consists of fifty short stories…
Now there’s an idea!