Make It Mean Something

I was speaking with one of my students the other day, and she asked, "What is it about short stories that make them stand out?" I asked her if she meant stand out from other stories or stand out as a medium for fiction. She wanted both answers.

So . . . what makes certain short stories stand out from other short stories?

For me, it's stories that mean something. Not in the truly metaphorical way but more in the metaphysical one. They have to speak to me in some way - make me connect with the story, the characters, the concept, something. I want to walk away from a short story with having gained some sense of the author's truth about the world.

Perhaps it's the literary mind in me. Perhaps it's the theorist as well. For a long time, I thought that there was a slight sense of arrogance to my preference (and I'll admit that might be part of it) - a hold-over from my academic days where criticism meant the world. Honestly, though, I think that it comes from a continually-growing love of short fiction. I try and read as much as I can when I can afford it and go to the library when I can't. So I've digested a lot of fiction in the last three years. To me, the stories that resonate the most are the ones that I respond to in some way. Whether it's "Wow, that was great" or "What the hell did I just read?"

And . . . what makes short stories stand out from other fiction media?

I will give you my thoughts, and then I will give you the thoughts of two individuals that I highly agree with.

First, I think that it takes a distinct desire to create something concise when one is writing a short story. And with that in mind the author gives himself a challenge to put together one grand thought into a short amount of space. I think it's a challenge because we have want to say what others have said before, but we want to say it our way, and we want it to resonate with someone in a way that it hasn't done before.

Second, I think that short stories are wonderful and diverse and offer a way to be creative, artistic, experimental, and out of the ordinary. Novels are hard to sell and harder still to make "out of the box." Poetry is, by its nature, out of the ordinary. It speaks to the soul in a way that the short story speaks to the mind. And fiction on stage and screen is dramatic and visual; it's hard to compare that to fiction most times.

I think it's best summed up by these two quotes:

Martha Foley, one of the first editors of the Best American series said, "A good short story is a story which is not too long and which gives the reader the feeling she has undergone a memorable experience." I think that Barbara Kingslover - the author - expands upon that nicely: "A good short story cannot simply be Lit Lite; it is the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces."

Thoughts: 5/12/09

It's a quiet night in Milwaukee, and I'm up later than I ought to be after a long day and very little sleep last night. I'm listening to the new Better Than Ezra album and feeling hopeful. WriteCamp is coming up in little less than a month, and I'm very excited about it.

I wrote a steampunk flash fiction piece the other day that I'm fairly happy with. I had my wife read over it, and she said that there's little to draw you in to it, so I'm looking to retool it with a different point-of-view, perhaps, or something a bit more compelling. Perhaps it's a longer story than I'm making it: the character of Doctor Luscowicz is a good one; maybe I need to give him more attention than I have already.

I've also been jotting notes for a few essay ideas regarding creative education, literary theory, and something related to mentorship. I seem to have been doing a lot of "here's my thoughts on writing" rants/discussions/speeches lately, and I might as well see if I can capitalize on them. I might not be original (read, I'm probably reiterating much of what Ken Robinson has said - it's a video, fyi), but I feel that there are a lot of people locally who might not have the same venues that I have and so have not heard what he's got to say about those topics.

I think it's too late to really continue. Just some thoughts for the day.

Sad Songs Say So Much

I'm sitting in the library of the local university, and I'm listening to sad music. Why? It just strikes me sometimes that I need to listen to other peoples' sad stories; it helps me recognize the pain in the world and put it into my own writing. Some songs are so brilliantly written and poignant that they make me truly sad inside. It is my sincere hope that my own fiction will one day elicit that response from at least one reader. I believe that all writers should have a similar hope: to elicit an appropriate response from their readers in such a way that it completes their work - and not because their work was incomplete before - but because a reader, in my opinion, makes a work what it is for them.

I've been working on two pieces lately.

One is about a society forced into quiet acceptance and obedience made possible by forceful removal of dissenting voices. It is about a young man whose father is taken away, and he begins a revolution that is eventually - and sadly - quelled and forgotten, as is often the case in such societies.

The other is about a woman who feels that her life has come unraveled to a point that she feels her only course of action is to leave her husband - a man whose only true joy in life is his job. It takes place over the course of an evening as she waits for him to return home, so she can tell him why she is leaving, giving him some semblance of dignity, only to wake up in the morning to find that he's not come home. So she leaves regardless.

I don't know why it is that sad stories move me - they always have.

WriteCamp Ahoy!

June 6th seemed so far away not too long ago. Now, here it is only a month away. The inaugural WriteCamp here in Milwaukee is about to be unleashed upon the world. I'm very excited about the progress the planning board has made over the course of the last three months. As it stands now, we have about 40-50 people signed up officially, at least a dozen or so more than that unofficially, and we have folks coming all the way from Chicago to join us. I think it's going to be a great event.

So that's what I've been working on. I've had a lot of opportunity to speak a lot about WriteCamp and what it is and what it's meant to function as, and I've come to realize that people don't understand it. The literary community is so engrained with academia that the thought of a free exchange of knowledge is baffling to most of them. So often I've heard the phrase "Well, people don't like to do things for free," and it disappoints me. Offering things for free shows to the community that we're here to support the community - without having that feeling of "obligatory compensation."

I hope the community here in Milwaukee shortly sees that we're here to help. Not only is the Milwaukee Writers Workshop here as a support group, but groups like Robinson Writers and individuals like Liam Callahan are here to be a part of the community.

If you haven't heard of it - btw - please visit www.writecampmilwaukee.com for more information.

Free Knowledge

Since I began the Milwaukee Writers' Workshop in 2006, there have been four major groups in the city for writers. One is a group that has dues; one is a non-profit that charges for its classes. The other two were the Milwaukee Writers Group & MWW. Now there will only be three. Since Trevor and I first talked about combining our efforts and making the two groups one, one question has continued to plague me: why are we doing this?

Over the weekend, I think I finally came to a solid answer.

I began MWW with a slightly selfish goal in mind: I wanted my writing to be looked at, so I could get it published. I think any writer who joins a group can admit to that. Now, though, my goal is more altruistic. I enjoy providing this community. I thrive on it. I think that Milwaukee deserves a community like we have because education like we provide ought to be free.

I look at events like BarCampMilwaukee and MilwakeeDevHouse, and even Bucketworks, and I'm envious that the tech community has such a broad network to host so many free events. Even our eager art community has MARN. Writers in Milwaukee, though, don't have that same option outside of our group, and I think part of it is because we're archaic. Our art form is one of the oldest, and we like to stick to tradition. Every writing conference or convention costs something; most of the famous workshops are expensive. MWW costs nothing, and I hope to keep it that way because I think what our small community provides is value enough, and writers ought to come together for free.

Come the beginning of the year, MWW will be a much larger group with bigger goals. Perhaps a free conference in the city is in our near future; perhaps more local events will be offered. Whatever we do, it will remain free, because that is how I foresee the way of the future in the realm of disseminating knowledge.

Building A Community

It's December 5th. Five days ago I failed to complete NaNo. I'm not terribly disappointed, but I had hoped to fare better this year than I did last, and I only did by a little bit. I did, however, succeed in producing two new short stories, which I didn't even manage to do last year. So there's some good to come of it.

I've been talking a lot lately with various colleagues about "community". For writers, community seems like a vague notion of being a part of something within the realm of "writership". Many writers think of it as merely being a part of this movement or that; to me, though (and to a lot of my colleagues), being a part of a writer community means interacting personally with other writers through workshops, critiques, and group sessions that enhance our own writing while benefitting our colleagues with our knowledgeable critique. There are writers I know who write in isolation, hoarde their writing, and chastise the writer who exposes himself to unnecessary criticism. To me, those writers have a disadvantage, because the very writers they believe will be giving this criticism are, in fact, their readers. To be able to reach even one of them, means reaching an audience, and that is an indication that the story is worthy of a larger audience, which is the point of writing, right?

Yes, I've said before that you write for yourself, but most of us hope to at least make a little but of money. In order to do that, we have to find an audience that will accept our work. It is much easier to figure that out in a small group setting than to wait years to try and find it the hard way: that is to send it out over and over again to publishers who continue to reject our work. Find the one or two people in your group who enjoy your work; figure out what they read; find magazines that publish work similar to that; then stick to trying to reach the audience at that publication.

Communities are meant to help others. We build communities because we want support: everyone wants to feel like they're part of something. To be a part of a writing community is a big deal to me, because I feel like my career relies on it. Creativity breeds in communities because creative types tend to enjoy fostering creativity in others. Writers can be very selfish at times - not wanting to share their vision with the world - but most ofthe time we're very good about sharing opinions and aiding our fellow writers.

Trevor, the leader of The Milwaukee Writer's Group, and I have been discussing the merger of our two groups, hoping to provide a wider array of options to the writing community here in Milwaukee. I think it's a good venture, and I look forward to the fruits of our labor.

So Many Projects

So I've been toying with the idea of an episodic blog. There are a number of blogs out there that are written in character by some creation of the author. I'm looking to do something entirely different (and it's been done to some degree before - at least as far as I'm aware, though I can't seem to find any examples). I have the notion to write a story in episodes and post it on a blog: easy enough, right? Let's hope.

I also have a few short stories to finish. Those shouldn't be too tough. I also have the rest of the steampunk piece I've been working on. After that, it gets a little hazy, but there are some other things, too. My wife says it shouldn't matter that I have so many projects going "as long as I'm writing". I suppose in a way that it's ok; however, I tend to get distracted and lose site of what the story is doing at the moment if I don't stay on it. Then it wanders - as I mentioned last time - and it comes out at the other end with no plot and little resolution. I'm hoping that by plotting things out it'll help that.

On a completely different note, it snowed here last night (and still is a bit). It's the first real snow of the year, and it makes me want to bundle up and just stay inside. Only, most of the time I don't really want to write because that makes my fingers cold. But the fan in our heater was just replaced, so we won't have to worry about it getting cold in the apartment, which means I should be ok. :-)

My challenges this winter, I think, will be to keep on task and to keep to as few projects as possible to get at least some of them done. I did get my contract for "Affections Between Space", though, and that will be up on www.bigpulp.com on January 12. I'm excited for that.