imaginarycircus

Article in the Hartford Courant. Fascinating. Although I found it weird that the journalist has never used any dirty words. But of course she did say her ideal man would be described as "breathing" so perhaps she hasn't...


I'm still plotting (meaning scheming, not developing an actual plot, though I guess I am doing that too, now that I think about it. So this aside got away from me and we'll just go back to the main paragraph. *cough*) a serious of connected shorts about sexual encounters. I think I want it all to revolve around personal ads, like the ones in the Village Voice--but there are all those phone sex ads in there too...

You know in "Desperately Seeking Susan," when they drop off messages with the paper guy? Imagine a modern version of that...

I wonder if I should be locking these posts? But I really don't think I care if someone "steals" my ideas because there really aren't any original ideas. And if someone else "took" my idea and wrote a book, it would not be the same as the book I would write. But I guess I'll put it under a cut. Because if I found out someone I knew had taken my idea and used it and was sucessful I would be pretty peeved. Still I trust people in my own cynical way. Besides who the hell is reading my journal? A handful of cool people over here in this little corner with me. Anyone for a game of Uno?

I submitted my assisted suicide story to be work shopped in Adam Haslett's master class next week. The story is also out being neglected by various important editors. But I was disappointed when I learned that SLC is putting our names in a hat and selecting manuscripts for the master class that way. No merit involved. If I had known that I would not have speed revised the ms yesterday before dropping it off. But of course those last few changes needed to get done and now they are. This little 18 page story took me three years to write, stew, rewrite, revise, start from scratch and write again. I probably wrote twenty versions of it. It is the best thing I have ever written. I'm really proud of it. And I hope to hell someone publishes it this year. Go little story. Get published. Find readers. Amen.


Two new tips for writers and really writers in work shops:

1. Short stories should be restricted in one or more ways -- time, tone, plot, physically, etc. For instance Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" can physically go into all those men's packs and pockets and lives because it is restricted in its structure. The narrator only tells us what the men carried and from that we are able to fill in the whole world of soldier's trudging through mud during the Vietnam war. Short stories work best when they do a lot with a little.

Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," for example is my favorite short story right now. The entire story happens while a bullet is ripping through a man's brain. We see him in line at the bank and in a few lines we know him. A jaded critic who can't open his mouth except to critique. He is so bitter he critiques the bank robbers who pop up, somehow not realizing they are not part of a play or a book or a film. One of the robbers shoots him and as the bullet is killing him the critic's last thoughts are unexpected and beautiful. Short stories need to be compact, and fast, like greyhounds.

Yes, there are exceptions. But I largely think there are more failures than exceptions for short short pieces. Obviously Alice Munro can come in and write a 15,000 word short that dazzles me. But that is not the sort of short work I am talking about. Chekhov's "Oysters" is what I am talking about. Sublime. I consider that one of the most perfect short pieces ever written.


2. Specifically for critiquing fiction. An early draft of a story is like a baby in utero. You wouldn't take a fetus out of its mother's womb and dress it up, name it, or dandle it on your knee. You would let it stay inside, feed it, and let it continue to grow. You have to do the same thing with fiction that is still gestating. Half grown babies look sort of grotesque to me, like aliens. And sonogram images look like pen and ink, with way too much ink. I can't see anything in them. But I can imagine the baby that will eventually be born. I can imagine it in cute green overalls. I can imagine it as sweet smelling and cuddly. I can also imagine it as colicky, squalling, and heartbreaking. But in order to get that baby we have to let is pass through enormous head, creepy see through eye lid, alien fetus stage.

It really isn't fair to hold up someone's fetus and say, ew, this isn't a baby. I don't want to cuddle it, or soothe it when it cries, or help it when it rages with pain. I just want to turn away disgusted and kind of insulted thinking, "What do you want me to do with that thing?!" Two years of grad school and I finally get it now. The baby has to develop to term, and be born. I'm so slow. I wish I had understood this years ago.