How to keep stories short?

[Earniel]

I've been wondering about that.

Each time I get a good idea for a story and I'm fleshing it out in my mind, I tend to expand it a lot. Given my little time to actually write things, and my habit of waiting with writing until I got most scenes figured out, the poor things are often so spun out that they tend to collapse on their own.

So how do you keep stories short and yet keep in the things you want to? And what do you do with the great ideas who look nice but only make the tale longer and longer?

The anthology was a great practise to keep within the wordlimit and yet pull the story together but I doubt a wordlimit is always effective for every kind of story. Any advice?