How To Write Short Stories

The idea dictates the size of the story.

“I can’t write a short story. I try and it turns into a novel.”

Okay. On the one hand, I understand. The first thing I wrote in English was forty thousand words, and it was basically an outline. When unpacked it became 120k words.

But you see, I had no idea how I broke in. And in the mid 80s, what I could find available on library shelves told me the way to break in was to submit to magazines and get a following and the eye of editors that way, a...