Hi, my name’s Beth and I’m a serial novel starter. Not always a novel finisher.

Over the years I’ve written the beginnings or first drafts of five different novels. One is 100,000+ words long. One was briefly self-published. One was submitted to literary agents. One is an unsatisfying first draft that got a bit lost. One I started last year. Oh, and did I mention that they’re all completely different genres?

Meanwhile, for many years now I’ve been writing short stories alongside these novels. Treating them as palate cleansers, as little treats. I fell in love with the art of short fiction during my Creative Writing Master’s when I produced a short story collection as my final writing project. Having only written long form fiction until that point, I decided I’d use the opportunity of my Master’s to have a go at something new that would test my creative muscles in a different way, and I totally fell in love with the form.

Short stories are inherently satisfying and unsatisfying. They give you a glimpse into a life, a world, a moment. It’s like dipping your toes into the shores of a wider body of water, not letting yourself be fully submerged but knowing that the rest of the water is out there.

Speaking of water, my creative writing tutor said that writing a good short story is like throwing a stone into a pond. You set the stone on its course and watch the ripples from a distance. I think that says a lot about how much can be spoken in the unwritten of a short story. There’s an art to brevity, to paring back your prose so that the reader is left wanting more.

Short stories can be remarkable and page turning and life changing. They take more time to write than you think, but their length naturally sets some time constraints. In my current stage of life, trying to juggle mothering a one year old, working, sustaining myself and my family, my own time constraints are very real – and therefore approaching a short story (instead of a mess of a novel) feels a lot more appealing right now.

I feel like many writers feel like they should be ‘working on a novel’ even when they don’t necessarily want to. For the past couple of years I’ve struggled on my novels – especially after having the baby and feeling like this should be my time to ‘write the most amazing postpartum book while I’m in the madness of postpartum myself’. But, in reality, I wasn’t enjoying myself when writing and honestly just felt like I was forcing myself to do something I didn’t want to do. For so long I’ve been dithering about which novel to work on, feeling unable to start anything or go back to something I’d already started, because I just didn’t have the enthusiasm for it.

At a writing retreat a few weeks ago I was asked what I was working on. My response, something along the lines of: “A novel, but I’m not really enjoying it and want to be writing my short stories” was met with : “Well, why aren’t you writing short stories then?”. As if it could be that simple. And then, a week later when doing a long, quiet drive while the baby slept in the back – an epiphany. Why the hell am I forcing myself to work on novels when I don’t want to? Why don’t I do what I really want to do?

All of this is to say that I am FINALLY giving myself permission to truly focus on my short story collection in a way I haven’t since my Master’s. That means I’m going to review my stories, remove some, edit some, write some new ones. My aim is to have produced a coherent and polished updated collection by the end of the summer. To do what with? Watch this space…

I’m so excited by this new (/old!) project and can’t wait to treat my short fiction with the care and attention it deserves. I hope to write some more blog posts over the summer about this process and anything interesting it reveals. In the meantime, I’m going to treat myself to some new short story collections from writers who excel at the practice – so let me know if in the comments if you have any recommendations!