I WANT MEANINGFUL QUESTIONS, NOT JUST ANSWERS

By Raegan Teller

If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you know I’ve refocused my attention on writing and studying short fiction for the next year or so. Making the transition from writing five novels to penning short fiction has been nearly as challenging as it was to move from business writing to murder mysteries nearly eight years ago.

Part of my developmental plan is to read a short story a day. I’ll admit, I sometimes miss my goal. I’m also trying to read as much variety as possible: Hemingway, Stephen King, Alice Munro, the New Yorker’s contemporary stories—and everything in between. Some of the stories have been enjoyable but not memorable. Conversely, some stories some I didn’t particularly like have stayed on my mind. What makes a story memorable for me isn’t whether I like it but whether I engage with it. For example, I’ve read hundreds of well-written novels I enjoyed but then soon forgot. In a novel, loose ends are generally tied up at the end and because it’s typically spread over 300 or so pages, the impact is diluted. My conclusion: short fiction’s magic lies in what’s not said and its concentration of meaning.

When I read a story, I want to use my imagination. Since every word counts in short fiction, the writer must ration each word and sentence, which leaves a lot for readers to create for themselves. I believe this co-creation between writer and reader is critical. What is this story really about? How does it make me look at the world differently? And I love stories with ambiguous endings that engage my imagination. Of course, I’ve read some stories where too much is left unsaid, causing confusion. But when this delicate balance is achieved, I engage with the story at a deeper level—and it stays with me a long time.

Two examples of engaging stories different in length, structure, and tone are “The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository” by John Connolly and “Sticks” by George Saunders. Both are award-winning stories I encourage you to read if you haven’t already. Connolly’s delightful short tale created so many enticing questions for me. I wanted to know more about these odd characters who came to the bookstore, so my imagination worked full tilt and continued long after I finished. On the other hand, Saunders’ flash fiction is a paradox because it tells us so much, and yet so little, about this father and his family.

At this point, I would be remiss if I didn’t state the obvious: not everyone reacts to short fiction in the same way. A friend of mind read “Sticks” and felt it lacked a tidy ending. Yes, of course it did. That’s why it was memorable. If it had been tied up neatly with a bow, I would have forgotten it long ago instead of reading it several times a year. You see, as a reader, I want meaningful questions, not just answers.

CUE THE CONFETTI

By Kasie Whitener

I don’t get nervous for Zoom events even when I’m hosting them. I pour a glass of wine and tuck my pajama’d legs underneath me and tune in like the meeting is a television program.

But last Monday night I was nervous. The Southeastern Writers Association was holding their awards event on Zoom and my novel, Being Blue, was a finalist. The entry was an unpublished manuscript and this one, up until now, had only been read by my critique group and a developmental editor.

In contrast, my first novel, After December, has been out since 2019 and has over 50 ratings on Amazon. My second novel, Before Pittsburgh, released last month and earned a dozen 5-star reviews from the vast world of #bookstagram. My short story “For the Win” was in the summer issue of The Showbear Family Circus and my story “The Shower” is set to be printed in Fall Lines. I blog weekly across multiple platforms. I have authored two textbooks at use in my classrooms.

I’m being read on the regular and not just by people who know me.

Entering the Hal Bernard Memorial Award for Novel with the Southeastern Writers Association also meant I’d joined the organization. Logging into the Zoom, I saw strangers’ faces, not my usual SCWA crowd. The nerves had begun much earlier in the day, though, when I thought about what it meant to be a finalist and what it would feel like to have to show one of those fake-Oscar smiles when they didn’t name me the winner.

Any other acceptance or win has come as an email or phone call notification. Congratulations, your book is a finalist in the Indie Excellence Awards. Congratulations, you’ve won the Broad River Prize for Prose.

I’ve applied and submitted and been refused and rejected. We’re sorry but your work does not fit our needs at this time.

I’ve queried and entered and been ignored and ghosted. My novel After December was in a first-novel contest for female authors and lost to a book about the experience of a young Latina immigrant. So, yeah, my white-privileged male protagonist never stood a chance.

Never have I minded the rejection. Putting my work out there means accepting defeat. And Monday night I wasn’t rehearsing my, “Good for you!” expression because I’ve been spoiled by the wins.

Buzz Bernard, who sponsored the award selected five entries to honor. Two received honorable mention and three took prizes.

The screen said, “Third Place – Being Blue by Kasie Whitener,” and I smiled and unmuted and said, “Thank you.” I thought of our bronze-medal winning athletes and the looks on their faces knowing they’ve come so close and come up just short. Then I finished my wine.

Bronze is hard because it’s not a win exactly, but it’s not a loss, either. It’s somewhere in between. Congratulations, your work is above average.

So, thank you. I might just stick with this writing thing. I have some work to do.

MAKING MAGIC BELIEVABLE

By Bonnie Stanard

Magical realism (MR) incorporates the unbelievable into the world as we know it. In other words, we writers convince readers that magic is as ordinary as life. After recently reading The Erasers by AlainRobbe-Grillet, known for his ability to mix fact and fantasy, I took notes on how he did it.

TheErasers is a mystery novel about a murder. Descriptions wander with the perambulations of the protagonist—a police inspector named Wallas who has been called in to solve a murder. As he walks from the post office to the police station to what may or may-not be a murder scene, his gets lost, goes in circles, or in one case, ends where he began, which I admit, tests your patience. These geographic twists and turns are accompanied by a vague time line, though the entire story takes place in 24 hours.

Signals crop up suggesting there never was a murder. Witnesses provide vague answers to questions. The description of the murder suspect fits that of Wallas, the investigator. A clock stops at the beginning and starts up at the moment of a murder, which may or may not be the one being investigated. Ambiguity requires us readers to supply our own facts along with what is given. We think we know what's going on, but do we?

WRITING TECHNIQUES TO NORMALIZE THE FANTASTIC

Ideas I've taken from The Eraser that blur the lines of reality.

—Suppositions. As the inspector summarizes the situation to a police officer, we realize that his facts are actually presumptions. Nonetheless, the inspector takes action based on presumptions, though the question persists about what is real.
— Conditional verbs, e.g., could, may, might. In most fiction, these words are dead-weights that slow down the action, but in this instance, they add an element of unreliability.
—Recurring adjectives. To describe different people and/or places using similar adjectives allows a range of uncertainty. Doppelgangers are good.
— Unemotional narrative voice. In other words, when the tone is cool, calm, and collected, the reader tends to believe... even magic.
— Point of View. Without bending the rules too far, a careless approach to free indirect discourse POV allows different characters to provide biased views, deconstructing reality. The POV may blink, but not so much as to dislocate the narrative point of reference.
— Unclear antecedents. This is annoying, but I can see the point of it. There are times when I underlined the word “he” because it could reference either of two different persons. Lack of clarity sidetracks authority.
— Character ID. A close relative to the previous point is to delay referring to characters by their names in describing a given situation. Grillet uses terms like the man, character, customer, pedestrian. This adds fog to the scene, which launches doubt about the identity and/or nature of the character.

My favorite magical realism book is Life of Pi. Yann Martel's masterful writing will have you believing a boy on a raft after a shipwreck can survive with a tiger on board. (The book is better than the movie, which is also good.) Other MR books I've enjoyed are Love in the Time of Cholera; The House of Spirits; and Like Water for Chocolate.

An informative definition of magical realism can be found on Neil Gaiman's Master Class notes.

REVISION: A NECESSARY EVIL

By Sharon May

“I’ve just finished my novel. Do I need to revise it?” asks one more person on an online writing forum. I know where the inquiry is coming from. You’ve written for weeks, months, or years to produce a first draft, sweating over each carefully chosen word, which could be confused with revising. You’re dead dog tired, and a little bored with the project. You think you’ve given everything you have in your mind and soul. What more can be done?

Actually, more than we can imagine after we first complete a draft. Revising is as necessary as drafting in its requirement to step back from the manuscript and out of ourselves so we can re-visit our work objectively. Revision is decorating the room we just built because without paint and furniture, it won’t be a finished nor enjoyable space.

It is not editing, which should be a final pass for grammar, mechanics, and punctuation at the sentence level. Revising entails some work with sentences, but good writers reconsider plot and sub-plots, character development, organization, structure, themes, voice, coherence, cohesiveness, continuity, etc. The list is endless, meaning that revising is a lot of work and could take as long, if not longer, than drafting took. Who wouldn’t prefer to skip this step?

Proud of our brilliant moments, we really don’t want to take a hard look at our less than brilliant writing. We carry around enough doubt and want to avoid more. Instead of doubting ourselves, we should be proud that we recognized our weaker words and ideas, and yes, even mistakes. Not everyone can objectify their own writing and grasp it from the reader’s perspective.

I don’t consider myself good at revision. A few years ago, I finished my first draft of a novel in progress, and was at a loss. I knew I wasn’t done writing but I just didn’t know what to do. So, I found a professional editor who had worked for a company I’d be proud to have publish my work and hired her to do a developmental edit. It was not cheap, but the help has been priceless like the MasterCard ad says.

The editor asked questions and made comments that piqued my creativity. My reactions to her reading made it possible for me to see what the work in progress could become, which is the point of revision.

With that experience as well as joining Cola II Writers Workshop, I am learning how to see my writing from outside myself, without all the emotional attachment to the words. They really are just words. They may create a wonderful and beautiful mosaic, but they can be tinkered with and improved.

Don’t sell your work short. Revise to discover the best of what you have to offer the reader.