Lavender's Blue.

Bobby Shaftoe, the old woman who lived in a shoe, Humpty Dumpty. They are all nursery rhyme characters that are so much part of many childhoods that they cease to have meaning. In the spirit of recycling, modernise these or other nursery characters. Put them in your town or city, in modern times, give them the modern equivalent of the roles they had in fairy tales. Bring their concerns up to date and set them off in a story and see where they go.

Popular and Literary Fiction - what's the difference?

I'm running a workshop next month on writing popular stories for women's magazines. There are distinct expectations from magazine editors for their stories. There are distinct expectations from all kinds of editors - for the various publications that exist on line and on paper.

Identify some of those differences. Look at anthologies of short stories and consider what the people who compiled them were aiming for.

Write a short story for a publication that is outside your comfort zone. You might be surprised by how liberating it is.

If you were designing a poster for a workshop for a particular style of short story, how would it look?