Great Panel for this discussion: Susan MacGregor, Rhonda Parrish, James Van. Pelt, Ronald Hore

All of the panellists were, once again an engaging talented group of professionals.

The premise is that writing short stories will help bridge the gap to a full length novel easier of the new writer, or the beginner novelist.  Many excellent reason’s why:

More feedback on your writing faster.

You make many mistakes quickly, and hopefully learn from them ;).

Many novelists write in the three act process, which is short story based style.

You can submit more short stories in a year than you can novels.

Below is my stream of random notes – the first one is apparently the single reason first time novelists get rejected.

Most rejections of Novels are a result of the WRITING, not the idea

Practice with feedback –

Use the short story as the feedback

Level of the craft level, do you know your trade?

Need a critique group, that deal with the writing –

Very encouraging – panel people.

Look at attending other conference – maybe world? Its in Portland 2015

Pitch sessions are a necessary part of the process

Its important to do the whole process –

“Little Streams” – analogy – as a new author you can’t fish the big rivers

You need to see the big river as a small river

Read a chapter of the Game Thrones and see how it is a “short story”

You never run out of markets to sell short stories to – 49 times – up for an award, not changed over 10 years

Once again – its about passion, in the author

NOTE: Learn the short story form

Raylin.com – story market info

It is interesting to note that one of the authors at the conference, Brandon Sanderson believes that you should write the novel length, if that is what your passion is, otherwise you will not learn all the skills of the novelist, which are much different than the short story writer.

Be Well – dcd