Our edits are due next week, which is one reason why I haven’t been updating here. (The other reason is, of course, that I needed another blog like a hole in the head.) I am hoping to do more writing about writing and the publishing process here soon, but that’s hard to do when I’m actually, you know, engaging in it.

In the meantime, check out this article on short stories. I haven’t written one in a long time, but I used to, and I still love to read them.

In American publishing, there is a persistent idea that people don’t like to read short stories anymore. The consensus at the major houses seems to be that story collections don’t sell, and editors are discouraged from taking them on unless a literary agent selling a very desirable novel refuses to sign a contract unless they do. There is a shortage of explanations for why this is: All anyone seems to know is that it has always been this way, and always will be for as long as any of us are on this earth.

In other news, Americans have stopped reading books because blogs and text messaging have made them incapable of paying attention to anything longer than a few pages. Consequently, “short is in,” as Time magazine put it recently in an article about the fad of mini-lit: six-word memoirs, four-word film reviews, 12-word novels, and so forth. 

Has conventional wisdom ever been more plain in its incoherence? 

Excellent question.