Today a short story I started working on in 2006 is published! Yes, the story may "only" be 800 words, but it took me three years to get those 800 words the way I wanted them. The story, Under the Tree, was accepted by Electric Velocipede at the end of 2009 - and today it's published in Issue 24. (The story is also included in my new collection, with Electric Velocipede's permission.)
I wanted to share a few words about the story, but SPOILER ALERT stop reading now if you'd prefer to just read the story.
Okay. It started with an image in my head: a mother watching her son sitting under a tree in his own garden. And I couldn't figure out - nor could she - what he was doing there. I got very bogged down in trying to find an explanation. Then I took the story-in-progress, which was written quite traditionally at that point, to a workshop run by the wondrous and inspiring Aimee Bender in June 2007. She encouraged us not to look for direct causes for our characters' behaviour, pointing out, quite rightly I think, that we humans very rarely have one cause for our actions and we often have no idea what has spured us to do something. Let go of cause and effect. Great. This began to release something in me ...
The next step which helped me progress with the story was reading two short story collections: Roy Kesey's All Over and Paddy O'Reilly's The End of the World. Roy's was the first example I'd seen of minimalism and experimentalism and that inspired me to move away from the traditional, take some risks, make the reader work. And Paddy's collection had a story in it (completely different from mine) which was divided into sections which each had section headings - and suddenly, using this structure, my story began to fall into place. Someone said once that sometimes structure can ride in like a knight on a white horse and save a story - and that certainly was the case here. It all started to come together.
Anyway, if you'd like to, you can read the finished story, all 800 words, here. I hope you enjoy it!
Showing posts with label structure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label structure. Show all posts
Monday, August 20, 2012
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Bigger Picture & Guardian Weekend Short Story Competition
I had hoped to be able to announce some lovely news here but it isn't public yet so will have to rein myself in! The good news is that my week here at the Anam Cara writing retreat, which draws to a close tomorrow, has helped enormously, as I hoped it would. Not in terms of writing reams of words, but in turning what I had seen as a strange mess of vaguely connected bits and pieces about my character, into a much more coherent whole. I have around 10,000 words and can see some kind of sense developing across them, an arc, which, not a novel, I think I will call a "story", which may be book-length, slim or slightly wider. Clear? Yes, I thought so. Anyhow, structure has fallen into place, interestingly non-linear, and some themes are emerging which are signposting me onwards. So: direction. What more can a writer want?
I did write several thousand words this week, bits of them for this story, some poems and a few flash stories, which is great, of course. But to now know what I am working on, the Bigger Picture, is what I have been waiting for for two years. I have another meeting with an agent in a few weeks to talk more about this project, will keep you updated.
In the meantime, here's a short story opportunity I came across - for UK residents only (sorry!):
I did write several thousand words this week, bits of them for this story, some poems and a few flash stories, which is great, of course. But to now know what I am working on, the Bigger Picture, is what I have been waiting for for two years. I have another meeting with an agent in a few weeks to talk more about this project, will keep you updated.
In the meantime, here's a short story opportunity I came across - for UK residents only (sorry!):
Are you a budding writer? This year we're inviting readers to submit stories to Guardian Weekend's annual summer fiction issue, published in August.
When choosing the winner, the judges will be looking for the most original, gripping and well-crafted piece of writing.
Submissions can be on any theme, must be previously unpublished and no longer than 2,000 words.
The stories will be judged by authors William Boyd and Julie Myerson, and the winning story will be printed in Weekend magazine alongside others by established authors. Five runners up will have their stories published on the Guardian books website, at guardian.co.uk/books.
Send your story by 10 July to Short Stories, Guardian Weekend, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or short.story@guardian.co.uk. Please include a phone number.
Visit the site for the terms and conditions. Good luck!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Making it longer
I've become pretty good at "short". Not just short stories, very very short stories. When I begin writing, because I have trained myself in flash, which means the process as well as the end product, I already have in mind that I will finish, will wrap up in this session. After 20 minutes, I will have a complete story in under 500 words.
This kind of writing trains you not to send out tendrils of plot in directions that you don't want to go in. It trains you to start closing in almost as you begin to open. There are few characters, there are no digressessions. This doesn't mean - as I wrote in my essay on flash writing for the Salt Guide to Writing the Short Story, which Vanessa Gebbie is editing and which is due for publication in August and should be fabulous - that a flash story has no depth, no plot, no description. Great flash somehow does manage to do all that in a tiny space. Just read Vestal Review, Elimae, Wigleaf, Pank magazine for excellent examples of how it's done.
But... something longer? I need to re-train myself. It's been two years or so since I've written a "full-length" short story, whatever that really means. I guess, over 2000 words. I'm out of the habit of creating those tendrils, of opening out instead of closing in. And I'd like to get that back. I'd like to be able to do that, because I miss the process of writing something longer - writing a section at a time, stopping, knowing not to push it, knowing that the next section will come when it is ready, in hours, days or weeks. Trusting that your character will tell you what happens next. Revising. Reworking. Thinking about structure.
After all the agent talk, I was inspired by a writing friend's comment (thank you, Joel!) to think about whether I might be able to go for 50,000 words instead of 500. I don't want to use the word "novel", because to me that implies something about one main arc of narrative, one large plot, and I don't right now have that kind of thing bubbling up in me. But a book-length work that is not separate stories? Some kind of set of pieces that connect, that overlap? Not stories that are forced to link, but something written as a non-traditional kind of longer work. Why not? I can still champion the short story even if I write long, right?
There is something I've been working on, a character I am intrigued by that I have been "following around", for the purposes, so I thought til a few days ago, of writing a screenplay. I can't write a screenplay from scratch, I don't plot. So I thought I'd get to know my character in a way I do know how to do, and find out what happens. But turns out that I rather like what is happening, the tone of the narrator that has turned up, the meanderings, and we are 2500 words in.... Now, the idea of a novel about my character is very very daunting. But somehow Joel's comment made me see how I can send out tendrils, expanding it story-wise without losing what I love about the short story: nothing unnecessary, no padding.
I started some of that wandering off the path this morning, and wrote 307 words. For me - that's a lot! To write 307 new words without finishing something. So, a while to go from 2800 to 50,000. But the door has been opened, the possibilities are there.
This kind of writing trains you not to send out tendrils of plot in directions that you don't want to go in. It trains you to start closing in almost as you begin to open. There are few characters, there are no digressessions. This doesn't mean - as I wrote in my essay on flash writing for the Salt Guide to Writing the Short Story, which Vanessa Gebbie is editing and which is due for publication in August and should be fabulous - that a flash story has no depth, no plot, no description. Great flash somehow does manage to do all that in a tiny space. Just read Vestal Review, Elimae, Wigleaf, Pank magazine for excellent examples of how it's done.
But... something longer? I need to re-train myself. It's been two years or so since I've written a "full-length" short story, whatever that really means. I guess, over 2000 words. I'm out of the habit of creating those tendrils, of opening out instead of closing in. And I'd like to get that back. I'd like to be able to do that, because I miss the process of writing something longer - writing a section at a time, stopping, knowing not to push it, knowing that the next section will come when it is ready, in hours, days or weeks. Trusting that your character will tell you what happens next. Revising. Reworking. Thinking about structure.
After all the agent talk, I was inspired by a writing friend's comment (thank you, Joel!) to think about whether I might be able to go for 50,000 words instead of 500. I don't want to use the word "novel", because to me that implies something about one main arc of narrative, one large plot, and I don't right now have that kind of thing bubbling up in me. But a book-length work that is not separate stories? Some kind of set of pieces that connect, that overlap? Not stories that are forced to link, but something written as a non-traditional kind of longer work. Why not? I can still champion the short story even if I write long, right?
There is something I've been working on, a character I am intrigued by that I have been "following around", for the purposes, so I thought til a few days ago, of writing a screenplay. I can't write a screenplay from scratch, I don't plot. So I thought I'd get to know my character in a way I do know how to do, and find out what happens. But turns out that I rather like what is happening, the tone of the narrator that has turned up, the meanderings, and we are 2500 words in.... Now, the idea of a novel about my character is very very daunting. But somehow Joel's comment made me see how I can send out tendrils, expanding it story-wise without losing what I love about the short story: nothing unnecessary, no padding.
I started some of that wandering off the path this morning, and wrote 307 words. For me - that's a lot! To write 307 new words without finishing something. So, a while to go from 2800 to 50,000. But the door has been opened, the possibilities are there.
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