100 Short Stories

[grayestofghosts]

I'm thinking of goals for next year. Writing-wise it's going to be slow year if all goes well. I have about 250,000 words of unedited novel drafts that I plan to chip away at next year, and editing is really hard to quantify in a satisfying way, unlike adding to word counts. So I've got to do something else.

I, like pretty much everyone else on this planet, probably need to read more. I don't however want to make the mistake of setting up some kind of goal I can't reach or overcommitting myself to one type of reading while neglecting another. So 100 short stories sounds very... doable, in this way. I haven't read many short stories since I was trying to submit some a few years ago and they're low pressure to read and finish.

I have a few books of short stories that I haven't finished (Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti, Necronomicon by H. P. Lovecraft, and Fresh Ink by various). I am also on EveryDayFiction's email list, so I get those stories nearly every day. If anyone has any other recommendations, either books or magazines or websites or individual stories, I'm open to them. I was familiar with a number of SFF/Horror magazines but I know that the short story market can change very quickly as magazines fold -- I was very sad to see Shimmer go -- so I don't know what's out there anymore. I'll also definitely take recommendations that aren't SFF/Horror, too.

I might write a tweet-size review for each of them as I go. We'll see.

Comments

[hadassahintheshell]

I 1000% relate to not setting deadlines or goals I know I can’t meet. Part of the reason I can’t look nano in the face is that as I fall further behind in some goal I set, my emotional state dips dramatically.

Reading a terminal # of short stories and committing to no more than a 256 byte sized review makes perfect sense.

[grayestofghosts]

I guess the main thing is that... short stories have not been my favorite form, haha, so that might make this hard. But I think I prefer reading anthologies by a single author better than magazines, maybe. Though after a while, going through one anthology can get tiring, but then if I pause for a while, it's not like I'm giving up. I'm just saving the rest for later!

[mars_writes]

Karin fucking Tidbeck, for one. "Jagannath" is the collection.

Also I started reading Ligotti a few months ago, trying to get into horror. Here's a short list of some other short stuff. I have't read these yet, but its all weird/modern fantasy+horror

Objects of Worship - Claude Lalumiere
Saffron and Brimstone - Elizabeth Hand
Crackpot Palace - Jeffrey Ford
The White Hand and Other Weird Tales - mark Samuels
At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories - Kij Johnson
North American Lake Monsters - Nathan Ballingrud
The Ammonite Violin - Caitlin R. Kiernan

and all of Aimee Bender and Karen Russell

[grayestofghosts]

Okay, okay, I finally ordered Jagganath. It should get here before Christmas. I'll have to look into the rest, thanks.