Last month I gave a presentation in Portland at Rose City Romance Writers (RCRW) on the benefits of writing short stories. One might ask why it would benefit you to shift your focus away from novel writing to short story writing. The number one reason is marketing. This is one more way to promote your novels and brand, while honing your craft and learning to write succinctly. Sure, you can continue to write non-fiction blog posts and articles in magazines and sources read by other writers, but stories are another way to reach your fans. Not only that, but you can make money and win contests doing so.

Benefits of Writing Short Stories:

Money

Prestige

Gaining readers

Self-promotion

Directing traffic to other works

Winning contests

Learning to write more succinctly

Writing more content more quickly

Building up your writing resume

Another way to reach fans

The rejection rate is not as severe

You are rejected and accepted more quickly than with a novel

If the story sucks, there is less guilt about abandoning it

Sarina Dorie brings to her writing background experience working as an English teacher in South Korea and Japan, working as a copyeditor and copywriter, and reading countless badly written stories. Sarina’s published novel, Silent Moon, won second place in the Duel on the Delta Contest, second place in the Golden Rose, third place in the Winter Rose Contest and third in the Ignite the Flame Contest. Her unpublished novel, Wrath of the Tooth Fairy won first place in the Golden Claddagh and in the Golden Rose contests. She has sold short stories to over thirty magazines and anthologies including Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Cosmos, Penumbra, Sword and Laser, Perihelion, Bards and Sages, Neo-Opsis, Flagship, Allasso, New Myths, Untied Shoelaces of the Mind, and Crossed Genres to name a few.

Silent Moon is currently available as an ebook through Amazon and will be released in print next month. For more information or questions, please visit:

www.sarinadorie.com