WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM MY READING OF HUNDREDS OF SHORT STORIES EVERY MONTH, by Frank Reilly • Cleaver Magazine

A Prose Craft Essay by Frank Reilly
WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM MY READING OF HUNDREDS OF SHORT STORIES EVERY MONTH

In February of this year, I kicked off an experiment. The idea was to read newly published short stories like they were going out of style (which some say they are), then choose one each week and write and publish an appreciation of it.

Why?

For three big reasons:

First, to lift up and shout out vital new works as well as the writers producing them.

Second, to shed more light on the literary publications who continue to publish short fiction, providing a description of their guiding editorial principles and a breakout of their general story consideration guidelines—submission windows, word count limits, fees charged, payments promised—with each appreciation.

And, for the bigger, defining reason: to give newer, less-published writers a way to approach the short-story-submission-for-publication process in bite-sized pieces. It can be overwhelming after all, with hundreds upon hundreds of literary journal and magazine options and no clear path to clarity on how your specific stories might find their way to the venues most likely to accept them. Maybe by introducing other writers to a single story each week, my thinking went, they’d read some and have a realization: “Hey, that’s similar to my work,” or even, “Maybe I should submit to that magazine.” Or “I learned a lot from that story, I’ll be adding that awesome character-flaw idea / plot device / dialogue tag to my quiver of writing arrows.” Or “That magazine speaks to me; I’m subscribing for sure.” All good outcomes.

And if I can extrapolate from the feedback to Short Story Shoutout, many outcomes have truly been good. Some of the magazine editors that my Substack has featured have hung around to read more from week to week, and I’m proud to now call many of the profiled writers friends.

Which brings me to the purpose of writing about this project: What can my reading hundreds of short stories every month do for you?

Let me offer a few insights.

This exercise has proven that recent reports of the death of the short story (like here, here, and here) are greatly exaggerated. And yet, I get that this good news might be burying the lede.

Even if the short story is alive and well, a casual survey of the enormous number of lit mags that publish them can leave one reeling. Personal tastes vary greatly, so the odds of randomly landing on a story that speaks to you as you bounce from magazine to magazine are slim. With just a little digging, though — and keeping an open mind — it doesn’t take long to hit paydirt. That goes for both works that are in your creative wheelhouse as well as those you might not immediately take a shine to but soon pull you in and transfix.

I don’t get past a handful of individual story reads each week before I land on something that is genuinely intriguing. And I make every effort to remain open to different styles, lengths, subject matter, voice, setting, insert-story-variable-here. My experience is that contemporary short story writers are playing with form and redefining what a short story can be in too many exciting ways to count — or discount.

Check out Kate Lister Campbell’s “Ape Opus” in Salamander for a wildly entertaining take on the battle between an agnostic’s personal religious epiphany and a true-believer’s reliance on faith. Or Bethany Bruno’s “Manatees Don’t Dream of Electric Boats” in The Journal for a take-no-prisoners screed on everything stopping environmentalism from redeeming Florida’s waterways. Or Kate Tooley’s “The Golden Apples of Little River, Alabama” in The Kenyon Review for a barnburner of a love triangle in a small town chop house that invokes the ageless giants of mythology.

I believe that, like me, you’ll be continually humbled by what’s out there, waiting to be consumed, usually for free. Yes, that’s a daunting sun to stare into (“that’s my competition?!”), but reading them is also a reliable invitation to up your game.

Patterns emerge that make the sea of publishing alternatives easier to navigate. For example, a reliable percentage of lit pubs are university-based, which means that, broadly, their editorial sensibilities trend young, in both style and substance. Their younger, often undergraduate, volunteer readers and editorial staffers gravitate towards stories that mirror their own: those with younger characters who are wrestling with nascent relationships and who are working to find their place in the world.

Another slice of publications are independent ventures, some of them of long standing, many helmed by visionary founding-editors who, when moved by a particular work, can play king/queen maker. That often translates to stories that might be voted out by committee in one publication, getting a quick(er) green light at another.

Then there are newer upstart magazines, some very upfront about their upstarty-ness — in form, feel, function, and editorial choice.

When I started interviewing profiled writers in a Friday Shoutout Q&A feature, I learned that one of the unifying characteristics of successfully published short story writers is collecting enough rejections to choke a fireplace flue.

Vaidhy Mahaligam, author of the impressive story “The Vandal” in Solstice Journal, weathered forty-three rejections for that story prior to its publication. Andrew Plimpton, author of the compelling story “Breadcrumbs” in Hayden’s Ferry Review received sixty-two rejections. Lizzie Challen Hubbard, author of the simultaneously horrific and funny story “Fear Theory” in X-R-A-Y Literary magazine, describes having “extremely embarrassing submission success rates” for her poetry.

The message that keeps repeating is submit, submit, submit because that is what leads to published, published, published. And after you’ve experienced a downpour of short story rejections, think of how well you’ll be able to navigate the eventual veil of tears that are novel query rejections.

What else do I hope others take away from my short story reading/appreciation/outreach project?

Not to deride the work of the masters, but you can spend a lifetime basking in the glow of short story collections from the luminaries of days past, but getting a fix on current trends by keeping up to date with the bracing new works coming from up-and-coming writers is the only way to stay on top of today’s editorial predilections.

Styles are constantly changing, cultural trends are always shifting, even words shift in meaning over time as much as your teeth shift their positions in your mouth (which they do… I know, yikes, right?). Consider that there are more ways than Hemingway’s. That one woman’s O. Henry is another’s Zagnut bar.

Here’s one last thing that reading so many short stories has taught me this year — PRO TIP ALERT: If you’re over forty (welcome, my fellow-hardening-cornea peeps!) and reading stories online, do yourself the favor of copy-and-pasting them into a WORD doc, double spacing them like a human being, and blowing that font the hell up, for the love of all things holy. The WORD comments feature is a great way to highlight random appreciations and structural standouts (set-up? pay-off! red herring? Why italics?). This habit is already part of my Short Story Mini-MFA.

I hope you’ll visit Short Story Shoutout, and bring along a writer friend, and/or your whole monthly critique group. Who knows, maybe one day I can shout out your masterwork!

Frank Reilly writes Short Story Shoutout on Substack and his work can also be found in The Baltimore Review, Zone 3, and Cleaver Magazine, among others. He’s been nominated for the O. Henry Prize, recieved a distinguished story nod in the 2024 Best American Short Stories anthology, and earned a Best Screenplay award at the Austin Film Festival. Visit his website here.