I had always read short stories, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to pursue them seriously. I had written a few, but none were any good, and I just assumed novels were where it was at. I began to review stories I had read and loved. Stories by Poe, Doyle, Bradbury, Bloch, others, and I began to read them more carefully, and I expanded my reading. I had read stories by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of that ilk that I had enjoyed, but now I began to study them seriously. And then, I began to write.

I once spent about three months writing a story a day — no kidding. I sent each one out to several markets, and all of them came back. Over a period of time — more than three months — I probably got a thousand rejects. I kept the stories and the rejects for years, and then, when we moved from Starrville, Texas to Nacogdoches, Texas, I had a ritualistic burning of stories and rejects. A few of the rejected stories survived, and were revised later and published, and some were published in a book I did of early writings, designed for the fan of this sort of thing; a book designed primarily to show that everyone has to begin somewhere.

But, I got hooked on the short story, and pretty soon, they were all I wanted to write. They were much harder than I ever expected. In fact, harder than novels. But, still, there was less of an investment in time, and therefore I could get something to market relatively soon; I could see an end in sight when I was working on them, and I could change moods and genres rapidly. That was appealing to me, since, essentially, I have a short attention span.