Life is a hotbed of failure. You miss your goals. Your relationships implode. You lose your job. You disappoint your friends, or your children. You have an experience of illness, or loss. This happens. To everybody, it happens.

I don’t know why I have to keep learning the same lesson again, but here’s one I can't seem to remember: Your writing doesn’t care about your plans for it.

I’m not a fast writer; I tend to let my stories marinate for a while. Sometimes I even put them away for a year or so, if I can’t see my way forward.

I would argue that given the increasingly diminished attention spans we all have these days, short stories should be more popular than ever.