“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.”
– Tim O’Reilly

One of my goals for 2010 is to get more of my writing out there.

I’m not as interested in getting my short fiction into literary journals as I am in publishing more non-fiction online, in newspapers, and in magazines this year.

I’ve been paid much more for non-fiction than I have for fiction.

I write fiction because I love telling stories.

I write non-fiction because I like sharing information and it pays much better than short fiction.

With few exceptions, short fiction doesn’t pay well, and even if published in literary or genre magazines, the readership tends to be other writers, and the circulation of the publications tends to be small.

If I’m looking at a small audience and little to no pay, I may as well do it myself and hope that my Web site and blog can get more traffic than some of the smaller literary magazines. I’ve received more attention from editors an agents with my non-fiction credits than I have my fiction credits, so I don’t feel I need a list of published credits in literary magazines.

I’ve decided to start putting short fiction on my Web site in 2010.

In today’s The Juggling Writer entry, I discuss a writing prompt that always worked well for me and two friends. In the entry, I linked to a short story I wrote about 5 years ago called “Fly Me to the Moon.”

“Fly Me to the Moon,” a story about a homeless man who is convinced he can communicate with the ghosts he believes to live on the moon, came close to being published by two magazines publishing fiction…two magazines that went under at the time the story was being considered (and, in one case, rewritten)
.

If you’re interested in reading “Fly Me to the Moon,” it’s right here in several formats.