Short romantic fiction scares a lot of writers. Even the ones who've written ten novels. There's something about that word count that makes you second-guess everything. Can I really tell a love story in 5,000 words? What if I can't fit it all in? But you don't need to fit it all in. And that's actually what makes this so freeing. Short fiction isn't about squeezing a novel into a smaller box. It's about finding the one moment that matters most and letting everything else fall