The Hay Festival is going on in Wales right now and for those of you who have never heard of it, it’s basically a “Woodstock of the mind” (That’s a quote from Bill Clinton). Those Europeans always have the best festivals.
Lorrie Moore talked to Julian Barnes about short stories and someone in the audience posed the question:
”…we have this idea that in America the environment is much more receptive to short fiction. Is that really the case?”
John Freeman answers the question in his blog for The Guardian. He says:
America has three things that Britain doesn’t have which keeps our audience for short stories alive. For starters, we have a magazine and literary journal culture. Besides the New Yorker, Harper’s and The Atlantic, all of which still publish fiction, there are hundreds of literary journals in the US in which a writer can (try to) publish a story.
There are glorious old publications - like the Virginia Quarterly Review - which put out early work by Nadine Gordimer; experimental journals, like Fence, where a story can look more like a lyric essay; new journals, like McSweeney’s, where new voices and old maestros mix, and hundreds of journals associated with the universities which teach creative writing: the Louisville Review, the Harvard Review, the Kenyon Review.
You can read the rest of the post here.
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What do you do with ten short stories that you can’t seem to get into magazines or journals? When a story comes back with that rejection letter, many of us stick it in a drawer or filing cabinet and move on.
On his website, Ray Abernathy wrote:
“Several of the stories then visited me in the middle of the night to tell me they were tired of sitting on a virtual bookshelf and gathering dust unread. One of them was carrying a picket sign that shouted, “Free the Short Story 10.” They said they were humiliated and frustrated and were calling on all the stories in the book to sit down in my bedroom until people started reading them.”
Therefore, he decided to spend the next ten days, May 20 through May 29, giving away one short story a day so that his stories will find their way out into the world.
That’s what I call guerrilla publishing.
You can download his stories for the next ten days here and Free the Short Story 10.
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My father’s hometown’s original name was “Knocked-Out Dog.” One of the early settlers took down a large animal, most likely a tiger, and a town with an interesting history was created. Towns with off-beat names usually produce a lot of off-beat stories.
Knockemstiff is a short story collection about a town in Ohio written by Donald Ray Pollock, a former paper mill worker. Apparently, Pollock had wanted to write all his life, and at the age of 45, decided that if he “didn’t give it a shot, it would be too late.”
The characters in his short story collection live on the fringes of Appalachian society. According to the editor of his collection, Gerald Howard:
“American fiction by and large is written by people who have gone through, and come out of, our elite educational institutions, which is not to say that those people don’t try to take a hard look at the conditions of American life, because they do.”
“But there’s no substitute for experience, and Don is a witness to things that don’t come across the radar of many American fiction writers.”
You can read more about Knockemstiff and Donald Ray Pollock on the Detroit Free Press website here.
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What a great idea - Sniplets.com is the short story’s answer to itunes. They’re basically audio short stories you can purchase and download. I like to listen to audiobooks in my car, but sometimes it will be a week before I take another drive long enough to get back into the novel, and by that time, I’ll have lost the momentum of the story.
With Sniplets, you can listen to a 10-minute story for that quick ride down to your friend’s house or a short subway ride.
The service categorizes stories in time increments, like 2 minute or 20 minute stories, by author, title, and genre.
As a member of Sniplets, you’ll get a free audio short story each week.
Also, for those short story writers out there, they accept submissions! Unfortunately, they’re 6 months behind on their reading.
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The Million Writers Award is a $300 prize sponsored by the Edit Red Writing Community given to a short story published online. They recently published the list of 2007 notable stories, and a top ten list will be published at the end of May.
When that list is published, the public - that means you, people! - will be able to vote for the story that you think deserves the big prize.
According to Jason Sanford, the founder of storySouth and the Million Writers award, he found it frustrating that the stories from his publication were not getting any attention from the “best short stories” anthologies. Even though storySouth has an editorial process just as the print journals do, many anthology editors don’t consider short stories published online at all. Usher in the creation of the Million Writers Award.
This award goes strictly to short stories that have been nominated by a reader or editor. I think it’s great that a reader can nominate a story she likes for an award.
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Someone commented yesterday that a verbose explanation for writing that doesn’t work seems unnecessary.
I admit that my one criticism of the MFA classes I took was that there were professors who pored over and discussed stories to death. Stories that were pretty much unsalvagable. I don’t think that it does a writer any good to hash over work that was probably what I like to call an apprentice-piece. Sometimes you need to leave that behind you and work on new stories.
However, feedback is always important. It’s good to hear what someone thinks about your writing. This someone should not be your spouse or close friend (unless that person is searingly honest, in which case, you may not want to be that close).
There’s a large part of the writing process that includes sharing, which includes constructive feedback. So if people ask to read your work, take them up on it. And then take notes.
Magazines can’t be completely honest and tell terrible writers not to send any more stories because they run a business that is built on those same people who are subscribers. So my inside scoop to you is just to keep reading the magazines you would love to see your story in, because you’ll learn what those editors like.
A few months ago I watched an interview with Steve Martin and he talked about learning how to play the banjo. At first, he was terrible, but then he figured that if he kept playing the banjo every day, one day, he will have played the banjo for twenty years. And in twenty years, he was bound to get better.
So when I see that someone has sent her twentieth story to us, I do give it a fresh look, because she might have learned a lot writing those other nineteen stories.
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