Q&A with Farah Ghuznavi: The Writer's Wilderness Survival Kit

Qtn: I love to write poetry but my friends think I should challenge myself and write prose now. How do I make the transition to short stories?

At the outset, I think you really need to ask yourself if you want to write short stories. As a writer, what you write can't (or least, in my opinion, shouldn't) be dictated by what others think - regardless of whether they are your friends, your peers or even, someday, your publishers! Your best work will come out of writing what you want to write, in the form in which you want to write it.
Having said that, please note that I'm not in any way trying to discourage you from trying new things. If you feel ready to experiment with other forms of writing - whether short stories, non-fiction, personal essays or flash fiction - you should certainly do that. You never know what you can do until you try. But that decision has to come from within you. And there is certainly nothing wrong with choosing to focus on one literary form, such as poetry or fiction.
Keeping that caveat in mind, if you still want to go ahead with writing short stories, the first thing I would suggest is that you read as many short stories as you can. Analyse what you like about the stories that you read, and keep that in mind when you attempt to write a story yourself.
Secondly, take some time to think about the story that you want to tell. You can set yourself a word count - say a maximum of 5000 words to start with. It's often useful to do a brief outline of the key story elements before you start writing, because you can use that as a guideline.
Above all, be prepared to work on polishing your story before you decide to share it with others. And once you have done that, consider how you can use your readers' feedback to improve your work.

Qtn: I have been writing short stories for a long time but I don't know how good I am. How can I tell? Is there a website or competition that you can recommend I try?

You can start by sharing your work with a small group of people whose opinions you trust, who are likely to be honest with you about how well you write. Those people can be friends or family members, but they must be capable of providing an honest critique.
Consider the feedback you get from these people - your “beta readers” - and see if you can use it to improve your work. Once you have put in some effort to finalising your work and making it as good as possible, you can try sending it in to the festival issues of some of the English newspapers in Bangladesh, or websites like Monsoon Letters when they are looking for submissions.
If you search on the Internet, you will undoubtedly find opportunities. But remember, you will be competing against many others. So your best chance of making an editor choose your story is to make it shine as much as possible. Good luck!

Farah Ghuznavi is a writer and newspaper columnist, with a background in development work. Her anthology “Fragments of Riversong” was launched at Dhaka Hay Festival 2013. Send her your writing queries to DSLitEditor@gmail.com