© Oliver Suckling | Dreamstime 

This is my last post is my 365 Short Stories series. I fell  short of my goal of 365 stories, but not of my vow to post a weekly progress report. (At a word count  of 24,100, that’s a novella!) I intended to read another seven stories this week, but the family came in for Christmas and I made a choice to to spend time with them instead of my anthologies.

In my excitement near the beginning of the year I said, “next year I’ll do poems! The year after that, I’ll do essays!” Not happening.

Lessons learned

1. Discipline is good. Piling too many expectations on yourself year after year is not good.

2. Reading really does make you a better writer. By focusing on one aspect of the craft in each week’s reading (telling details, character, titles…) I learned what works and practiced it in my own writing.

3. Breaking out of familiar genres challenges and satisfies. You have to think differently to get magical realism, but it’s worth the effort. (Start with Ursula K. Le Guin.)

4. There is a huge world of wonderful publications, in print and online, that are worth digging to find. My favorite online sources are Narrative and One Story. Almost every university curates a magazine and numerous anthologies publish short works of established and emerging novelists.

5. Many of your favorite authors publish short stories or novel excerpts to test the waters or try something new. I read a chapter of Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s new book The Signature of All Things before it was released.

6. Many classic novelists wrote short stories. I’d never read some of the French writers, like Anatole France, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola. A week with the Frenchmen refreshed my knowledge of French history and culture.

7. Women writers are woefully under published, even today.

My reading plan for 2014 is to continue to enjoy my newly acquired taste for short stories but not as daily fare. I have a backlist of novels I want to enjoy.

Do you have a reading plan for 2014? Please share!