In truth, short stories demand intense concentration, sometimes even a suspension of the normal rules of language, for a short period of time. Outside of creative writing programs, very few literature professors teach classes on the short story, or write books about them. If you think about great short story writers from the genre’s short history, this begins to make sense. You could publish the nation’s nuclear codes in a short story and it might take months for anyone to notice. “To write as if no one will ever see what you’ve written.”