The talented catrambo posted this question on her blog:  Are short stories really a good career strategy? What do you do after you've had a few published? Are there things new writers should be doing at this point -- for example, researching how Year's Best anthologies are put together and how to make sure their work gets considered for it?

Here's my .02 cents worth:

I think if you can write short stories (and not everyone can--some are just novelists from the start), that writing and selling them is great groundwork for placing a novel later. So, I'd say in answer to your first question that short stories are a good career strategy. I think they have been for me, anyway. I've sold some stories, and now that I'm working on a novel, I'm pretty sure that the story-sales background will at least get me a considered read on the project. Of course, I've also attended conventions and made some connections with the people who I would want to read my manuscript.

I say that with a lot of caveats though. If a writer has a novel idea that's crying to be written, but puts it on the shelf because someone said that short stories should come first, that's a mistake. You have to write what is crying out to be written. When I was doing the Campbell Award for Best New Writer web site, almost half of the 30 or so authors who made their professional debuts a year did it with novels, not stories.

I've been in a few year's best collections, but I never did anything to make sure my works were considered for them. I think the only thing a writer can do to show up in one is to write really well, and then sell the story to a venue that is read by the year's best anthologists. Gardner and Ellen both have a long list of honorable mentions at the backs of their anthologies, and they provide of a good list of the markets they're aware of (they read A LOT!).

I'm not sure how to answer the "career strategy" question, though. Other than Jay Lake, who revealed to me a couple of years before he won the Campbell for Best New Writer, his secret plan to dominate the publishing universe *g*, I've never met a newbie with a strategy. You write what you love, you grow in your writing, you make some sales, and then a "career" is born somewhere along the way. Later, when you know a lot about yourself and your marketability, more conscious choices can be made, like "do I want to write a series," or "am I going to move into the YA market," or "I think I'll focus on short stories for a year."

Even the choice to do a short story collection seems fraught with peril, at least from a lot of newish writers I know who want to rush into one before I think they are really ready. I always thought that a collection of short stories was pretty much an end-of-a-career sort of thing, like a retrospective, because single author story collections have a tendency to tank. Later, I learned that the small press had opened the doors to short story writers and given them the opportunity to showcase their work below the major market radar. I think a collection makes sense when a writer has a body of published work and there is a demand. The body of published work is pretty easy to see; the demand is a little tougher. For me, I knew there was a demand when Fairwood Press asked if I'd be interested in doing one. The other way you know there is a demand is if you ask a publisher if they'd be interested, and they are. There isn't a demand if you have to go out and do it on your own, which I've seen too often from those newish authors I mentioned earlier.

Long answer. Interesting question.