You could toss in everything but the kitchen sink. You could sprinkle in a little paprika or cardamom, for flavoring. Then you’d have yourself a nice, big mess. If you’re Pig-Pen, no sweat. For everybody else, no dice. Don’t get me wrong, I like thick books and I cannot lie. But how many doorstoppers and footstools do you need?
Today I’m going to share 6 Easy Steps to help you Put Together Your Amazing Story Collection.
1 – Bring The Curator’s Sharp Eye to The Body of Work
Wait a second! Am I putting together a collection of Short Stories or am I setting up a display case full of Cave Men chasing after Woolly mammoths? The truth is that you have a challenging task ahead. You need to get out of the author’s head and put on the critic’s hat. This is not easy. You gave birth to this collection. You feel that each of your pieces are absolute gems. Each one ritzier than the Hope Diamond. You love them all like your own children (the best ones anyway). The trickier part actually is dealing with the fact that, for the most part, these stories have already been published. They already have the stamp of approval, but you need to fit them into your collection.
What does Francine Prose say about editing? She says something like “putting every word on the trial of its life.” You need to put each of the stories you’re considering on the trial of their lives.
2 – Don’t Be Humble, Grab the Stories that Have Received Awards and Citations
This seems apparent. Nonetheless, it cannot be overlooked. Writers are acutely sensitive beings. They also have lots of doubts. Maybe this has something to do with all the rejection we put up with. Even when we have been awarded something we sometimes wonder if we are deserving. I might have been guilty of this putting together my forthcoming collection. Although, in reality, it was probably just an oversight since I was working with many moving parts. When I was putting together “Something Like Bliss,” I was deliberating over which of my published pieces belonged in my collection. I had what I thought was my full collection, and yet I had left out the story “Shipbreakers” that had both earned my admission into Grad School and placed in the Writer’s Digest Short Story Competition. I had already picked out 17 stories when it occurred to me I was missing “Shipbreakers.” What a goof! A blunder as they say in chess. To leave out a story selected in a competition by a nationally recognized magazine is an egregious oversight.
3 – Look for Themes and Other Connective Tissue
Do you have a bunch of Postal Workers going postal in your stories? Does it seem like that fireflies are not just a one-off, but a reoccurring theme, the beacon of hope, the beacon understanding flickering throughout many of your pieces? Haruki Murakami used earthquakes as his connective tissue in his collection, “After the Quake.” George Saunder’s “Civilwarland in Bad Decline” could be a metaphor for where our culture and country have gone (even way back in 1996), but it is also the title of his collection.
4 – Consider Different Lengths for Your Reader (Really. This is muy importante.)
Master storyteller, Lydia Davis, is especially good at this. She can put out tremendous 6-word-stories and astonish you just the same with near-novela-length works. She’s leans toward the pithier side. This adds shape to your collection, but it also gives a reader, a breather. What? This isn’t AMC or Nick at Night or a Pandora station. Oh no? But, you are competing with them.
5 – Toss In the Monkey Wrench— Shake Up Your Audience with a Shift in Genre
Now I’m not telling you to write some romance, if that’s not your bag. You don’t need to do zombie either. But it sure won’t hurt. Today’s writers need to be nimble. Tomorrow’s writers even more so. There’s a lot of talent out there. A boatload. Show how you stand out. Too many collections have the same style, the same drippy dialogue, settings, and so on. Wait, didn’t you say we need connective tissue? Yeah, you did in #3. Well, my friends, Rules are meant to be broken.
6 – Enlist An Outsider, An Amigo, A Frenemy, The Kook in the Coffee Shop
The 1st suggestion is a really tough one. Not all of us might have that curator’s to make objective choices. We might need to enlist an outsider. This is an old standby. Writers have editors. They even have writing/reading buddies to flip through their stuff. Tolkien had Lewis. Carver had Lish. Ernie had Gertie (or was it Trudy). Who do you have? Get somebody. Quick. Let’m read, let’m gripe, let’m discover the genius, unleashed.
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