Its been said time and again that no one reads short stories. I won’t dispute that. Though I personally enjoy them, I know the streets aren’t checking for Vladhimir Nabokov (Signs and Symbols is my current, all-time favorite). And the streets certainly kept the heat on the likes of Junot Diaz and Jhumpa Lahiri to drop their first novels.
Perhaps because of this waffling love affair with the short story…that is, its liked as a friend until the thick, shapely novel arrives…I seem to treat the form as less worthy endeavor and more like proving grounds. It makes sense and its a logical approach. Similar to math. You don’t attempt quantum physics until you master algebra…or some sh*t like that.
I’ve been told that I’m better at shorter stories than longer ones (i.e. novels), but to be clear, its because I’ve practiced short stories for three years in a row (cumulative time: maybe five years). I don’t know about you, but no one writes a novel to practice. If you finish…IF you finish…it either works or it doesn’t once its done. And that says nothing about shopping it to agents/publishers. But I’m getting off track.
I practiced stories because I needed to improve my craft. Now, having said that, is it time to start a novel? Completely unsure. I need to build up my publications, so writing short stories is certainly a means to an end. I find hopping one story to the next to be difficult. That’s probably because I hop from literary to speculative and back. Equally difficult is beginning a story, going to bed, going to work for ten hours, live some semblance of a life, then be able to pick up where I left off (which is why I’m blogging instead of working on my new story).
In the last three months, I’ve written about nine stories, beginning to end, each with a different plot, voice, theme, etc. And none of them have grabbed me, so to speak. Two months ago, I read “Zen In The Art of Writing” by Ray Bradbury (two thumbs up) and I could relate, in some small way, to one of his essays where he takes the reader through the early stages of his writing career. He cried after finishing a story one afternoon. Because he knew, for the first time, after so many failures and false starts, he finally wrote something Good. Now…Good is in the eye of the beholder and such moist, epiphanous moments seem a bit hyperbolic, or at least melodramatic, but still, I can understand the emotion. With each story, I feel as though I’m getting closer and closer to writing Good, earnest work…earnest in the sense that, if nothing else, its authenticity, the truthful way I perceive and process the world, is fully prevalent in every word.
But I’m getting there with short stories (and, by extension I suppose, journaling/blogging)…
