Sushi is
flipping delicious regardless of whether or not it's fashionable. It is tasty,
tasty, tasty goodness, just the same as Toad in the Hole or a bowl of tomato
soup with white plastic bread and butter. That is, when it’s not shit, but I
guess it depends what we mean by shit. I've always found the real enemy of
literature to be "good writing" - stuff that's OK and technically
competent but utterly lacking any spark. Of course that covers a massive ability
spectrum, but I think it accounts for the great majority of what finds its way
to a lot of slush. Absolutely agree about the paucity of really good writing
Bell writes about. I used to read short fiction slush back in the day (Analog,
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction, Amazing Stories (the revamped version)), and a few others). I
read several hundred thousand stories and only found a few authors who really
had the goods.
I love writing a
bit of short fiction now and then, it makes a change from the churn of posts.
It sometimes feels like revving the engine on a car to blow the soot away,
clearing my "writing pipes" and enjoying the racing feeling. The
beauty of a short fiction piece for me is also that I don't have to plan an
ending, I can just see where it goes, let it lead me in the same way it'll lead
a reader (hopefully) and often the ending is a twist I didn't imagine until it
fell out of my fingers onto the keyboard.
As for there not
being much of a market for it? Well, granted I've not made much money (any)
from it, but the genre is suited perfectly to the masses of e-readers and smart
phones being used on night time commutes and waiting room sentences, what
better way to spend twenty minutes on the tube in Lisbon than imagining you are
on a bus in Barbados?
One thing short
fiction does for me is teach me how to zero in on the one kernel at the heart
of what they are doing that can be reduced no further, and that is surely a
skill invaluable to any writer. It also makes you fight to have your voice
heard - any restriction will do that, hence their value. If you can make your
voice your own between 1K and 7K words that's an incredible skill, and one that
should you choose to lift the restrictions will make that voice sing out
gloriously.
Short fiction
isn't particularly satisfying for a reader looking for a piece of fiction, I
agree, just as being given a cardamom pod to chew is pretty unsatisfying when
you're looking for a meal; but if you're coming to short fiction with the same
kind of expectations you'd have for a poem, it can be a lot of fun.
As a shitty writer,
short fiction is a useful and enjoyable exercise for tightening up prose and
condensing narrative effectively. Working within a rigid structure, whether
it's writing a sonnet or a villanelle or tweet, can be an effective and
inspirational discipline in its own right.
With all respect
for the individuals writing short fiction for the Kindle, this book
demonstrates perfectly why arbitrary rules like those of short fiction aren't a
good idea. I've read a lot of short stories published for the Kindle, and with
a few largely generic exceptions - stories told in dialogue or in the personae
of children or animals, plus a few by people who just can't write - they might
all have been written by the same person. Short sentences, simple words, the
occasional “verbless” sentence (like this one) for variety: identical rhythms
running through all of them. Everything the summer-schools teach you. I bet none
of you would dream of using an adverb with a verb of speech, would you? Or
creating a character whose complete backstory you didn't know, even if you
weren't going to use any of it? Or - heaven forbid - economically telling the
reader an unimportant detail if it could possibly be 'shown' (whatever that
means in written narrative) at twice the length instead, though without
becoming any more informative in the process? All the rules that real writers
broke through the centuries, and still break now, today's writers keep as they
were told to, until they have nothing new to say because no way of saying
anything that hasn't already been said - isn't being said in the same moment by
thousands like them throughout the Anglophone world. I'm doing it myself, listen.
Are you listening? Except, I suppose, for cutting that paragraph into equal
short lengths, regardless of the unit of meaning it represents, the way they
taught me at the British Council.
And because I
can. Here goes my own attempt at sounding smart and cultivated by writing a
very short, short piece of fiction:
Pen: Uniball eye micro by Mitsubishi.
Paper: A4 spiral pad.
Microsoft Word 2007: turned on and ready to go.
Brain: willing.
Aim: To write that novel I always had in me.
I knew what I wanted it to be about. It would be a
perpetuating tragedy, with an underlying social commentary. The pathological of
the individual against a backdrop of rising tension between groups of different
backgrounds. There would be sex, death, hope, hate, love, anger and revenge. I
had done my research. I knew how I wanted to start. I knew the chronology of
events that would create my story. And I knew how it would end. The concept was
complete, ready to be executed. And there I sat, at the computer screen, pen in
mouth, nibbling away at it. I was thirsty, hungry, twitchy. A glance at the
clock: five to nine. That show on RTP2 will be starting any minute…Maybe I
should write this masterpiece some other time.
