Tag Archives: Short story

January 2023: in praise of editors

Posted on January 23, 2023 | 1 comment

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

Frederick Buechner, b. 1926

I had the pleasure of finalizing proofs for my story with Chelsea Lemon Fetzer, of Little Patuxent Review, in early January. Because of what she paid attention to, I discovered that my timeline was inconsistent, as was my use of bulleted lists. The first is a Big Deal for the flow of the story; the second is a Smaller Deal that would distract only the copyeditor-inclined among us. But both made me think harder about the story, the questions it raises, and how choices large and small impact its effectiveness.

And that thinking in turn led me to ponder all my other life editors. My friend who reminds me that my tendency to go from “not-too-hungry” to “gotta-eat-now” was present when we met each other, thirty+ years ago, so maybe that trait isn’t an indicator of oncoming type two diabetes. My ex-husband who reminds me that once upon a time, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about accurately measuring coffee and just drank whatever–so maybe I can rethink my current practice of ditching an espresso shot that is a few grams above what it should be. My young-adult children, whose continuing participation in family traditions show that I did some parenting well and perhaps I could stop beating myself up about my mistakes. My current partner, who points out that I drive myself literally nuts when I try to do more than one thing at once–so maybe I can consider not-baking a (literal or metaphorical) cake from scratch. My own journal entries, which reveal that I’ve struggled with consistently submitting stories for my entire wiring life, and so maybe it’s time to stop spending time resisting my resistance, acknowledge it’s a thing for me, and move on. Because the odds of getting to learn from editors of all types and stripes increases when I accept that I don’t know what I don’t know, open up, and engage anyway.

May it be so for you, too.

Giovanni Mannozi, “Death Seated on Political and Religious Trophies,” study for the ephemeral decoration for the funeral of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Which I interpret as: pay attention and give it a go, we’re all gonna die anyway.

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Distraction in action

Posted on January 7, 2015 | 1 comment

So it’s Happy New Year! And time for a Fresh Start! And Evaluation of the Year Gone By! And Setting of Resolutions! And playing with distractions, like, do I need a coffee grinder that will grind beans fine enough for espresso! Because I cannot figure out the ending of my short story! And I am in despair!

I’ve been worrying that my brain is falling, albeit gradually and gracefully, off the rails, because the ending of this particular story is slippery; I cannot storyboard it, outline it, image-board it. It glimmers in the corner of my eye and then swims away into dark waters, flicking its tail saucily. When this happens, I imagine my brain plummeting, down, down, down, from one of those dramatic high trestle bridges over a roiling river, icy and filled with mysterious silver-green fish.

Embed from Getty Images

Even as part of me feels terror at this fall, another part of me is wondering where such bridges exist, and do the rivers they span have silver-green fish and what would that color be called, anyway, and what would those fish be named and who named them?

And then the timer dings and again I have not gotten anywhere on the story ending. I have generated a list of questions that goes with my other lists of questions and ideas and concepts and free-writes and interesting imagery, stacks of lists tall enough to serve as trestle-bridge supports. Wobbly and unorganized and occasionally coffee-stained supports, but enough to get a steam-engine of a story across the gorge if I could focus on my writing.

Lack of writing focus has been balanced out by my focus on reading in December, however. I spent several hours at the end of 2014 immersed in Gordon Peerman’s book, Blessed Relief: What Christians can learn from Buddhists about Suffering. I don’t identify with either faith, but I relate to suffering.

I’m suffering, I say, as the story-ending vanishes again. I’m suffering, I say, as the timer dings and I have failed, AGAIN, to focus on my writing. I’m not really suffering, I say, as I read the newspaper. I’m suffering with privilege, I say, but it’s not real suffering. I should do some real suffering.

Peerman’s book provided me with a useful perspective on this hilarious-viewed-from-a-distance mindset, particularly with the Five Remembrances practice Thich Nhat Hanh shared in The Blooming of a Lotus. Peerman writes

The intention of this practice is to help you wake up to the significance of this moment, the impermanence of possessions and plans, and the significance of the actions you choose.

The five remembrances themselves are about aging, illness, death, loss, and the results of our actions; for me, they are a mindful articulation about “accepting that which we cannot change,” an adage so overused that it feels watered-down.

Watered-down, downstream, fluid, shape-shifting water, water that roils and dances, water that retains the power to erode granite, to reshape the earth’s contours, to shelter fish, to catch anything that falls from the heavens. Water that runs to the sea. Water that will bear my weight, float me forward.

If I allow myself to float on that water, then my precarious trestle of ideas, my angst-filled train engine of a brain, my inability to catch the glimmering fishtail of my story’s end — all these bits, all I say to myself about how these bits are making me suffer  — they settle, they quiet, they slow. The train puffs to a halt on the bridge and I peer out the window at the river below and crack the window and breathe that crisp river air and the fish jump and sparkle and perhaps my traveling companion knows their name, and then I pick up my pen and return to my notebook, and I am immersed in the writing and when the train moves again its movement is gentle enough to be unnoticeable. Gentle enough, but powerful enough, too. It is enough, what I have. Whether or not I find The Ending to This Story: it is enough. There will be another bridge of ideas over another river, or there won’t. But right here, right now: this is enough. I have enough.

May it be so for your stories, too.

Ice, Water, Steam

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To write, perchance to produce?

Posted on July 28, 2014 | 1 comment

World Cup Cafe

World Cup Cafe

I returned to Taos for the third consecutive year last week, for the Taos Summer Writer’s Conference. It’s a highlight of my year. It’s a highlight because it’s in the desert southwest; because its attendees are, to a one, interesting, informed, and intriguing; because it’s an excellent “reset” button for my writerly self; because it’s near Taos’s World Cup Cafe; because the World Cup Cafe serves a mocha borgia; because I feel like a brilliant writer after a mocha borgia; because when I fell like a brilliant writer I am a more productive writer.

Productive writer. An abstract concept that toddled into my thinking three years ago when I first read Prisicilla Long’s must-have-if-you’re-a-writer book, The Writer’s Portable Mentor — an abstract concept that steadied itself and began walking, sure-footed, during the time I worked with her (for the second time) at the Taos conference this year.

Prisicilla Long's book ...

Prisicilla Long’s book …

Long, like Macklemore, notes that the greats aren’t born great. They’re great because they paint/write/practice a LOT. Long suggests writers make a “list of works,” an inventory to track their pieces’ completion dates, where they’ve been sent, and when they’ve been accepted. In The Writer’s Portable Mentor, she says,

The list allows you to see the work you’ve done and it signifies respect for work done. It allows you to track your yearly production. It allows you to find any given piece to take up again. The list gives you a practice that you now share with those high-achieving creators who do quantify their works. (Georgia O’Keefe, 2.045 objects; Edouard Manet, 450 oil paintings among other works; the American painter Alice Neel, about 3,000 works; dare we mention Picasso? — 26,000 works; the remarkable short-story writer Edith Pearlman has published, according to her website, more than 250 works of short fiction and short nonfiction. That of course, does not tell us how many works Pearlman has composed.

I have a modest list of works that has grown incrementally for the past three years. And I do mean incrementally, because I haven’t been able to focus on more than one writing activity each day: if I’m generating a new short story, that generative free writing takes all my writing time. Ditto editing and conceptualizing.

But this year, for the first time, I managed two, sometimes three, types of daily writing during the conference: generative, editorial, and conceptual. And I did this because I told myself, per Long’s advice, that I only had to do it for 15 minutes. Those 15 minutes, for five days, yielded a found poem, an improved short story, and several roughed out story concepts.

I’m sure this capacity was enhanced by the total absence of my Domestic Goddess responsibilities, Engineer Hubby, our two sons, the dogs, the cat and that pesky groundhog in the backyard — a lot of my writing is done while it appears I’m daydreaming, and there’s no daydreaming time in my Real Life. Nonetheless: I’ve managed the 15 minute practice every single day, for a week, so I know I can make progress on several fronts simultaneously.

Here’s to slow, steady and productive. May it be so.

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