The Value of Writing Short Stories

by Glynn Young

In the seven months since my last novel Brookhaven was published, I’ve been focused on talking about it, writing about it, publicizing it, sending out copies, and all the usual things you do to promote your book. I haven’t done much writing of anything else or anything new. An idea for a new novel has been percolating in my mind, but nothing has seen the light of day.

Yet the desire to write is there; it seems like it’s always there. I’ve had to stifle it a bit to keep focused on marketing Brookhaven.

I was able to scratch the writing itch by what resulted from a coincidence.

I had just finished reading A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. I like reading classics, and this novel is considered the great love story of World War I. A writing blog I follow announced a contest – short stories in honor of Hemingway (the guy who writes the blog is a major fan of Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, and Ray Bradbury). No entry fee was required; first-, second-, and third-place winners would be chosen, and those plus any deemed well done would be included in an e-book.

I don’t write like Hemingway. I don’t even “sorta” write like Hemingway. But I was familiar enough with his work to decide to give the contest a go. Word count was 1,500 to 7,000 words, and I decided to aim for the lower aim. I figured a terse writer like Hemingway would approve.

I started with a question: what happened to Frederic Henry, after he walked away from the hospital in the rain? I meshed that question with the likely source of where Hemingway found the title – a poem written in 1590 by a poet named George Peele, a contemporary of Shakespeare who may have worked with him on the play Titus Andronicus.

Writing a short story is work. Writing a short story to sound like Hemingway or honor the writer is intense work, more than I expected it to be. And I was working against a deadline.

I finished it on time, made sure it was formatted correctly, and submitted it.

It didn’t win one of the top three spots.

But it was deemed good enough to be included in the anthology. Some 20 stories were collected and published under the title Echoes of Hemingway. Mine’s there, too – “Sonnets to Psalms.”

Participating in that contest and writing that story was a positive thing for me to do, for several reasons.

It got me back to writing.

It got me back to writing on deadline.

I became interested in the short story form generally.

I started looking at sections I’d cut from various novels and thinking about them as stand-alone short stories.

I realized that I didn’t only have to write novels.

It also started me thinking about other ways to publicize Brookhaven.

In short, it was a shot in the arm – my writing arm.

I’m now working on submissions to two other short story contests, one tied to a theme and one open-ended. Winning, of course, would be nice, but that’s beside the point.

Glynn Young is a national award-winning speechwriter, communications practitioner, and novelist. He’s the author of five published novels, Dancing Priest, A Light Shining, Dancing King, Dancing Prophet;  and Dancing Prince; the non-fiction book Poetry at Work; and the recently published historical novel Brookhaven. Visit Glynn on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, his blog, the Dancing Priest book page.