Short Stories

I have made a new rule for myself: until I'm done with my 2000 words, I'm not allowed to do anything online but check my email and look at writing-related sites. No Facebook. No Stewart. No Colbert. I thought it would improve my productivity dramatically, but I'm lagging a bit today.


One of the writing-related websites I've been looking at is sfwa.org. (Joining SFWA is one of my most concrete career goals.) They just put up a post about the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop, which is held in New Hampshire in early summer. It looks thrilling, and I wish I could go. Maybe some year. 


While I was poking around the Odyssey website, I read the following on the Syllabus page: 


"You are strongly encouraged to work on short stories while at Odyssey, because most writers improve their skills more quickly when writing short stories."


I'd never thought about that before, but it certainly sounds as if it might be true. I've never really thought seriously about short stories as anything but side projects, but of course they'd be good writing exercises-- you can see the results of new techniques immediately, and rewrites aren't too traumatic if something doesn't work out. It's a great medium for experimentation. As it happens, I just started notes for a new short story today. I think I might try to keep one going on the side-- something to do after the word count is done for the day.