Someone once said, “I wrote a novel because I didn’t have time to write a short story.” For those of us who write novels and short stories, we know how wise these words are because a short story will either work or it won’t. What you don’t want to publish is a story that works as a story but is so sterile it’s both forgettable and without soul. This is what I call “a safe short story” or a “workshop story”, a story that satisfies everyone but the spirit of the story itself.
As we (the fine team at Enfield & Wizenty and I) find ourselves on the home stretch with my new collection of short stories, The Moon of Letting Go, it hit me tonight that I should say something about my approach to short stories. I remember sitting in high school, college and university listening to instructors and authors speak about the form of the short story. I remember thinking to myself, “There has to be more to the short story than the classic set up, build tension, climax, denouement and pay off. I don’t want to keep writing a predictable form to convey my stories.”
In Angel Wing Splash Pattern we had 9 stories that explored 9 different ways to tell 9 different stories; the most obvious one that pushed ‘form’ was “The Night Charles Bukowski Died” because it has no punctuation except for capitalization for new sentences (I had to do this more for myself for when I narrated the story. I had to know when to take a breath pause.). The reason there is no punctuation is it seemed that the velocity of the panicked narration was suffocated by punctuation. It was completely liberating to let a convention go once I knew I had the story that just escalated with fear and the realization that things were just made horribly worse by a plan of revenge.
As I reread all 12 stories in The Moon of Letting Go, I see myself pushing–once again–against the a + b = c aspect of constructing a typical short story. Maybe this is why I love writing novellas: they take their sweet time. What’s the rush? What interests me most in the writing and reading of short stories is new approaches to the tradition of the form. If I’m horrified, surprised, aroused, haunted, wounded or delighted by a short story now, it’s because I’ve been so enchanted with the writing and the form with which it was told that I was “tricked” into suspending my disbelief in the craft utilized to deliver the story like a punch through the heart or a surprise kiss with tongue.
What I love most about writing short stories is having no idea how to construct the story. What I do have, though, is the surrender of will and the trusting myself to find my way through the story in the most powerful way it wants to be told. Yes, there is form; yes, there technique, yes, there is craft. But there is also spirit. I really do believe every great story has a spirit and it’s the weaving, the braiding, the layering, the subconscious and conscious all build the spirit of the story. And it’s also about intent. Often, I’ll imagine the impact of each story on the reader and ask, “What do I think each reader will feel after they read the last word: hope, bewilderment, a split in the heart?”
There is power here for me when I do this.
What I want to evoke in “The Moon of Letting Go” is the everlasting impact of awe, bewilderment, intrigue, wonder, worry, hope and inspiration as readers years from now reflect on my work.
My intent with my writing is to cast the same spell in the readers that I felt when I discovered the true power in great literature—the literature that spoke to me and my heart—when I first started writing. I want to blow people away with what I’ve imagined or conveyed so that the reader is inspired to read and (for all the writers out there) ignite more great writing.
With 25 short stories published now in various magazines, anthologies, literary journals and two collections, I am still in awe of how the idea of a story is brought from the mind, heart and soul through trust and instinct to the page. I will always be in total awe to the craft of writing. It is a riddle, a parable, a passage, the most beautiful surrender to hunt a story as it hunts you. It’s a game.
And thank God for great editors who take the time to really sit back and see what you are trying to do with your stories. I’ve had the very best here in Canada: Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm with Kegedonce Press for Angel Wing Splash Pattern, Barbara Pulling for The Lesser Blessed, Maurice Mierau and Catharina de Bakker of Enfield & Wizenty with The Moon of Letting Go, my dad, Roger Brunt who reads just about everything I write, Andris Taskins and Heidi Harms at Prairie Fire. If you ever have the opportunity to work with any of these editors, get ready to be humbled by those who know how to push you harder than you have ever been pushed before in order to take your writing to the status of literature.
On that note, please let me locate my kind of reading by saying which of the short stories in my life have moved me forever: just about anything by Steven Jessie Bernstein (especially “Letting the Horses Go”), Raymond Carver (the master of the form, in my opinion. I always feel like it’s night time when I read his work.), Miranda July’s no one belongs here more than you, Sherman Alexie (especially his horrific visions of the future), Thomas King’ s A Short History of Indians in Canada, Lee Maracle’s “ The Canoe”, W.P. Kinsella’s “K Mart,” “Quite an Incredible Dance” and “Waiting for the Call” (No, these stories don’t have anything to do with Indians, though I have chuckled through many of his stories of the Ermineskin Reserve), Drew Hayden Taylor’s “A Blurry Image on the 6’o clock News”—these are the stories I think about a lot, even years after I’ve read them. They have astonished me to my core.
I am grateful that all of the 12 stories in The Moon of Letting Go have been published or will be published shortly because most of these stories were edited, reworked and published before this master collection comes out. But just because a story is published in a literary journal or magazine does not mean that it is finished. Oh no! Publication is another chance to read your work in print and see what works and where it fails when it is read or presented. To see all 12 of my short stories once they have been edited individually and as a collection revealed a few things. I tend to use the same names in a few of my characters: Celestine and Shari for some reason. Also, I’m guilty of using a few of the same lines. I won’t get into it but thank goodness my editors called my attention to this. Also, it’s amazing what’s made it into print (we’re talking a few misplaced modifiers, some passive language and a few other grammatical hiccups I won’t go into out of embarrassment), but the key is just because a story is published, please think of this as your chance to make it even better.
Bottom line (and I’m saying this more for myself than anyone): write the magic you would like to read.
I could go on and on about this but I wanted to write this down while it was fresh in my mind.
Mahsi cho for reading.
Richard Van Camp Uncategorized
Recent Comments