Short Stories

[interferringma]

I'm not expecting to make money from mine, but have written a few which I feel could be worthy of the light of day. I've written for The People's Friend before - specifically making the style Friend-friendly. But am capable of, lets say, more depth and complexity (not to mention grit!). So what is the market for short stories beyond the very well-read People's Friend?

For example I think I have a very good supernatural story. And a small selection of more general tales. Where do I send them? Do writers who have a decent catalogue of work try for an agent? Or do agents only deal with novelists?
Any tips and experience would be gratefully received x

Bumping for you as I’m also interested. Have you sent any off for competitions?

No I haven't. I'm a bit overwhelmed by what to send where!

I just type in short story competitions, see what fits and give myself a goal to send something in. Only done a few so far and haven’t heard anything but I feel good for starting.

As in type into Google, there are loads

I’ve been focusing mainly on short stories over the last year or so, and submitting them to both literary journals and competitions - I’ve had a win, a runner-up place and several shortlistings in various competitions, and had other stories published in three or four journals through their normal submissions process. What I did was draw up two big spreadsheets, one for literary journals and one for competitions, with the closing dates, word count and any other specific info. Every time I came across a new competition or heard of a new journal (Twitter is great for this) I’d add it in. Then every month I look for competitions that are closing soon and see if I have something that would be suitable to enter.

A list like this is a good place to start: creativewritingink.co.uk/writing-competitions/

In terms of getting an agent to take an interest in publishing a collection of your short stories, I think you really have to show some success with getting individual ones published before they’ll take notice.

Do you have any suggestions on what to read?