The tale in FS is, honestly, not anywhere close to my best stuff. I challenged myself to write heroic fantasy… and I’m just not that good at it (or at least I wasn’t two years ago when I wrote it. I have no idea if I could pen a decent tale now—but I intend to try at Clarion).

If you want to read my best stuff (or at least the best I could do a year ago), read my WotF winning tale. Available in November.

I read Wizard’s Six in Jonathan Strahan’s “The Best SF and Fantasy of the Year II”. The anthology itself was extremely uneven but Irvine’s tale was wicked awesome.

And thanks for the compliments — it’s reminded me that I haven’t actually read anything of yours, but I notice you’re in the last FS, which I haven’t read yet. I will check it out.

And how do you define micropress? I would have thought FS fit that description.Or are you specifically thinking of freezines?

Do you know where I can find “Wizard’s Six” ?

Don’t kid yourself though, I’ve been jealous of some of your prose. You’re as good a writer as I am (if not better), and I won, so I don’t doubt you could do the same.

Writers have to realize that short fiction CAN be a different medium. Often you need to “say something” with your work–it can’t be mindless fluff. And just because it’s okay to write mindless fluff in novel format, should you?

I have nothing against semi-pros. I do have something against micro-presses. I mean, no pay and no exposure makes Jordan a dull boy. It’s pointless to sub to a magazine that won’t get read.

And I think you’re really discounting the pro-mags too much. Have you tried reading the annual Best-Of magazines? I’ve often found some mind blowing fiction in those books. Sure, not EVERY story appeals to me, but then you just skip the ones that don’t. That’s the beauty (and the point) of short fiction magazines. Do you like everything in the fantasy shelf at the bookstore? Of course not. So then why should you like every story in a magazine??

As for networking, you and I know each other through SFReader, but really, how many times have you shared a ToC with someone you’ve never heard of and then tracked them down? Sure it happens, but not frequently.

Micro presses don’t serve any purpose. They’re for beginning writers and the fiction is usually terrible, so no one reads them. There fore, you don’t get people “reviewing” you. Once again, I’m talking strictly about micro-presses and not semi-pros.

As for the 50 stories you have on your hard drive, well, part of being a great writer is learning to write to markets. You’ll get that even as a novelist (ever heard of “tie-ins”?) It’s gonna happen, why not make it happen in short fiction?

Finally, editors’ tastes are notoriously elastic. Write a mix of what they want and what you like, and it’ll probably stand a good chance of getting in. Alex Irvine’s “Wizard’s Six” was straight up S&S, wizards, dragons, knights, everything. And yet it was published in the majors. If more people wrote pieces like that, more of it would get published.

My point was that, all things being equal, print better serves my needs — and I’d much rather have Asimov’s 27k readers than three times the amount from an ezine, because I really don’t think ezine hits translate into the kind of reading that wins fans and influences buyers. I’m not against ezines, I just prefer print for the most part, and I like to have both as an option.

You mention Hugos and WoTF, etc. but none of that stuff really factors into my thinking. Yes, it is all related to shorts, but to me the primary value of shorts is in the writing of them, not in their promotional value which is greatly diminished in this day and age. I agree that those other things can be a boost, and agents do care, etc. — I just don’t think that *for me* any of that is realistic, or even something I should have in the back of my head as I write.

And the point to subbing to smaller and newer magazines is to publish. I’ve got fifty stories in my arsenal and I didn’t write them to fill up space on my hard drive, I wrote them to be read– and if I sat around waiting for pro mags to suddenly decide they liked my brand of fiction I’d have no publication credits whatsoever.

I disagree that micropress doesn’t help your career — I would just say that it should not be a goal but a stepping stone –yes, it doesn’t impress agents or gain a large audience, but neither does short fiction in general in the absence of what really matters, novels. It does however have networking value — for example the reason you and I know each other has everything to do with the both of us trying to sell fiction, or me having sold you fiction — so the editors and other writers one meets can have an impact. Micropress publication means getting out in the world in a way that matters more than just a forum or blog post. And writing to completion, which you mention in your fifth point — also means publishing — that’s real completion — so having that story in black and white where people can review it is the final step in the process, and micropresses grant that opportunity to a lot of stories that otherwise would collect dust. I don’t really buy this writing for the trunk stuff — work needs to get out there or the writer is wasting their time.

In my opinion, the real comparison to make is not the value of having something in the pros vs in the semi-pros or micros, it’s having something in the semi-pros vs. not having something published at all. If the semis and micros only published bad or weaker stories it would be a different argument — but I don’t see a strict corollary between money paid and quality in all instances.

I’m not putting down the value of the short, I’m just frustrated that there are so few print venues publishing and accepting the sort of thing I like. The big three, as a rule, don’t — and many of the other pubs that pattern themselves after them don’t either. The ones that did are the print semipros and micros like Black Gate, Paradox, Apex, Murky Depths, and Talebones.

And I agree whole-heartedly with your point number five, but if ‘successful short story’ writers means only those who have sold to the pros, then I have to strongly disagree. I truly think the style and conventions you see in the majority of pro markets is one antithetical to commercial novels, and getting into them — like with any publication — isn’t strictly about good and bad, it’s about editorial taste.

You’re echoing a lot of the zeitgeist in short fiction, but I don’t believe it.

1) There is overlap. 27K people subscribe to Asimov’s (which, you argued earlier) means 27K read them. If even a quarter of them buy your book, it would be considered a successful first novel (these days).

2) Winning WotF means you get a promotional “boost” every time you sell a novel because they promote you (ie, look, this person won WotF and now they’ve written a novel). There are a few other contests that do the same thing.

3) Agents do care about these credits.

4) Getting into the majors mean you can get a Hugo or Nebula. These DO add to your sales numbers (for new authors), or at the very least influences how well your publisher will push your novel.

5) One of the most important skills beginning writers need is to write fiction with a beginning, middle, and end. They just don’t learn this skill writing novels. They say the average number of novels written before publication is 5. I’m betting the number among successful short story writers is far lower.

I think a higher percentage of people actually read the magazines they purchase, then those who check out an ezine with the best intentions. Add in other factors to the comparison between those two markets — the higher prestige value of print for one — and things start to look closer.

But what it really comes down to is, since I don’t really think one is really going to ‘help’ me all that much more than the other, which one publishes what I write? So far, Staffs & Starships is the only one of the two that shows any interest in publishing my style of story — therefore, it is of more value to my career.

I also agree every beginning writer should start short — unfortunately, if they want to segue into a successful career as a novelist, it seems like they shouldn’t linger in the world of shorts for too long because the big target markets don’t tend to publish the kind of fiction that makes for a bestseller. The audiences just don’t overlap — which I think is the main value of the little magazines, more of their editors are free from the elitist aesthetic of the big print mags.

And, furthermore, when we are talking about shorts for beginners, I think print outweighs online for one tremendous reason — sell your first awkward story to a print fanzine and it won’t come back to haunt you with a single google search. With the profusion of online venues and the shrinking of print, beginning writers’ ‘field of play’ is curtailed, as is their freedom to experiment and make mistakes.

Anyway, the whole thing is making me rethink my approach (again). Shorts are hard work to sustain and the reward is miniscule — better to write a novel and burn it, you’ll get the same effect and at least you’d be practicing a form of fiction that is remunerative.

Besides, if you really want to sell short fiction to the pros, it seems to me the way to do it to sell a novel first.