Short Stories

Most writers, when they finish their first book, are encouraged to quickly churn out a second, usually a novel, while their name is "out there." When I finish my book, I'm taking a break to write short pieces - short stories, features, anything that can be written in less than four years. I miss the days when my name was in print every day, when, by 4:30 p.m. when Judge Judy came on, I transferred my city council or school board story to the editor's files, then sat and waited until he read it for changes. I felt like a writer back then because I was published every day (Hey, it's 4:30 right now! I could be getting published!). Is a writer a writer if she never gets published? If a tree falls in a forest ...