I am a sucker for short stories, love reading and writing them. Most of my stories come from writing prompts. Two of which have been published in an anthology of short stories. That made me puff my chest out a little. But after that I did not think much of what else I had written.

It was not until I reviewed quite a number of ebooks that were collections of short stories that I thought hmm why not? I knew over the years I’ve written a number of them. There was bound to be enough to make a collection that I could self publish.

Gathering my stories together I made a chart. The sheet showed me if the stories were finished, typed, edited and the word count. Then my notebooks came out and the stories found inside were placed on the sheet. The list started to grow until I had to go to page two and make my way down. Whether they were completed made no different. I needed to know what I had written and what state they were currently in. After completely exhausting all my journals I counted and saw I had well over 50 in number. I was floored. Completely.

I sent 17 to my editor to do her magic while I thought of a plan. From the books I had reviewed most of them did not have a major theme that flowed between the stories. The length varied some had just a page while others had up to four in length. I decided to place them with a theme related. This is just me.  But the questions have begun to pile up. How many do I put per book? How long should each one be? What kind of cover should I get for each one? How much can I charge for these?

I am afraid if I think on it much longer more questions will pop up. This is all new territory for me. Each anthology is different and has no specific check off list to follow from what I have seen. It is probably author’s preference how it is done.

Even with the work that is involved in going forward I am rather excited to try this new aspect of getting my writings out there. I have scold myself already for adding more work to my plate. The projects that are already there are tugging at my brain yelling, “We were here first darn it work on us.”  Their right. But yet here I am looking at the other short stories I have to finish, type and get edited. This just gets me going mentally. It would be nice to have them all done and ready to go out into the world. Whether that be for self publication or for a contest it does not matter at least to me.

My written words keep interrupting my thoughts they must not be denied.