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Bad advice. At the very best, grosssly incomplete and misleading. After rejecting what other people like, the best pg can come up with is ... to follow what you like. That's an equally fraught heuristic, though it may be more avaialble for observation and examination. Realise that what works does so regardless of appeal. But that there's a great deal which has (near-term) appeal which doesn't work (long-term). Sometimes it's a false start, sometimes it's a fad, sometimes it's cargo-culting, sometimes it's an establishment of common ground which facilitates communication or understanding but not effectiveness. I'd suggest instead: Look at what is being practiced, and ask why? In the case of the short story: the history of literacy, amusement, entertainment, postal delivery, publishing and printing technology, advertising, bundling concepts, and the lack of subsequent alternatives (radio, television), increased literacy, and free time, made the short story a popular format. Different dynamics brought forth the radio serial, soap operas (first on radio, then television, now the White House), sit-coms, movie serials, blockbuster movies, space operas, and comic-book franchise preboot requels. Funding environments can create entire classes of research or application -- surveillance capitalism, AI, national security, moon shots, abstract art COINTELPRO. I'm the last space alien cat to ask what you should do that leads to success, though my own heuristic has been to look for fundamental questions, ask a lot of why, and question premises. Going back to roots and history can make a lot of foundations look far less firm. There may or may not be opportunity there. I'd also focus very hard on being lucky. |