Short story writer has an attempt to produce verse (6)
I believe the answer is:
poetry
'verse' is the definition.
(I know that verse can be written as poetry)
'short story writer has an attempt' is the wordplay.
'short story writer' becomes 'poe' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should believe this answer much more).
'has' says to put letters next to each other.
'an attempt' becomes 'try' ('try' can be a synonym of 'attempt').
'poe'+'try'='POETRY'
'to produce' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for poetry that I've seen before include "Work by Keats or Shelley, say" , "Verses" , "Literature in metrical form" , "Literary genre" , "Metrical writing" .)