I Can Haz Published Now?

Worried Note | GwI

Yup, yours truly gets published every now and then.

This is a non-fiction piece about my early days in Chicago when I lived in the notorious Uptown neighborhood amongst crackheads, crack dealers, prostitutes, and murderers. My block (Malden between Montrose and Wilson) was home to 10 murders one summer. That was the highest concentration I could find in all of Chicago in my analysis of a Chicago Tribune map.

Anyhow, I hope you read and enjoy the story.

Flash Review - Alan Michael Parker Takes a Meeting

THE COLLAGIST: Report from the Committee on Town Happiness by Alan Michael Parker

The pond. Still water, fed from beneath. Possibly fed from an underground source, if we could ever find someone to go check. Perhaps then the pond might be reopened to the town.

It remains a 3, better than two, as deigned by the Committee on Town Happiness, a collective of 7 individuals. Yet it remains closed, though they open their hearts, though they never truly share with one another.

I really like Alan Michael Parker's writing here. I've appreciated his poetry since i heard him read a few years back and now I'm pleased to find him in prose.

I must say that this flash remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Still water running deep, beneath a veneer of sheer, clear prose. Focused, engaged, prose, which I find necessary for the best flash. Even for good flash.

Anyhow, it's always a pleasure to find a great flash. It's rather like finding a pure diamond.

I give this one a tall glass of fresh spring water.

Comments are open. What do you think of, Report from the Committee on Town Happiness?

Scott Wilkerson's Graduating Thesis Reading

Redneck Zen - Poetry Corner

Piano by Patrick Phillips

I re-read this poem again the other night and was blown away all over again.

The first time I read it, I was taken by the image of the piano itself, the brokenness. I really didn't get much past that.

But, the poet is an old friend and the poem was made famous by Garrison Keillor, so it stayed in my brain.

The leaves and trash built up, blew away, returned. Then I read it again.

The cracked harp began to sing at the end. I always knew it held music, but I never quite heard it. Yet, like any good piece of music, my appreciation for it had grown in the interim between first reading(s) and this most recent encounter. I'd gotten the wax outta my ears. A high wind, howling, had come past to take the mess away.

I'm glad that Mr. Keillor posted the text of, Piano, on his website so that it could be shared easily with you. I recommend listening to him read, as well. I recommend the whole collection, Boy, a fine collection of verse and a great addition to any library.

Smooth Landing

Sampsell: 'The Parachute'

What do we say to someone who knows not what we are saying? Why do we even try? Is our message that urgent, that dire, that we must tell even someone totally illiterate in our language?

I think so. I talked some poor bastard's ear off in Prague. I can't remember what I told him, or why, but only a few seconds of intelligible communication passed between us there in the lobby of that hostel. It was late. I was drunk.

Sampsell presents us with a scene, a simple scene, which is often the best place for a flash to occur. Single setting. Two characters. Simple, compressed.

We feel the narrator's bafflement in the face of a non-English speaker. He searches for "handles" in the language, words or phrases to hang onto. "Parachute" is what he finds. The man lands in his brain. A story is told, contact made.

A story within a story. Metafiction? Perhaps. But, the story-within is told in one word, "Parachute." That's compression!

Lots of fun. I recommend reading this Flash for yourself. Report back, tell me what you think. Really.

Thoughts on an Approach to Flash

As I formulate my ideas on the craft of flash fiction, I've come up with an annoying acronym which will serve some sort of purpose. I'm not much for prompts, though I'm coming around, what I do tend to gravitate towards is more of a general focus - a trajectory to guide the work. So, here are the four main trajectories I tend to use when writing flash:

1. Narrative - try to focus solely on a narrative. Eliminate as much excess description and exposition as possible. Tell just the story. If you compress it tightly enough, the rest will come bubbling to the surface.
2. Image - find an image and use your laser beam intensity to give it context and meaning.
3. Character - that guy who used to live next door to you when you were ten? The chimerical character you just imagined? Lets' see her and only her. More than a sketch, this sort of flash does require some action to illuminate the character.
4. Emotion - What exemplifies a particular emotion? What sort of scenario brings it to the surface. Perhaps it's a confluence of complimentary and conflicting emotions which bubble up. This is a tricky one which will borrow from the other three, but try to keep the emotion at the forefront - everything else is in its service.

So, there it is: N.I.C.E. How quaint and perfect, eh?

I also considered discussing idea, but that wrecks the the acronym and is so similar to the approach one would use for emotion that I bagged it. Fill it in yourself.

Anyhow, comments are open and I'd love to hear a reaction.

Bukowski - Roll the Dice

Disaffected Prose

So, I spent some time on Friday night reading some lit zines down at my local independent bookstore. I was taken by the popularity of what I'm calling disaffected prose. I use the term ironically, which is getting me into meta-levels I don't even want to consider. That is, the authorial tone seems to be "ironic," in the snarky sense of the word.

I came of age in the 90's, so I know from ironic snark, the affect of the disaffected. I had hoped we'd moved on, and I wonder why we haven't.

Is it because these authors are folks around my age, fellow products of 90's popular culture who are still stuck in that mindset? Can they not get past the ironic distance and get to know characters? Or, as in the book, Prague, do they just hate their characters?

Perhaps we're burned out from the brutish, reptilian illogic of the Bush years, where honesty and truth were sold out, ignored, and tossed on the burning pile of rubbish in downtown Baghdad. Most of us believed the bullshit, were manipulated into enabling the world's most dangerous alcoholic/addict. Integrity means nothing any more, so that is being reflected in our literature.

Now, we don't know what to trust. Sincerity turned around and bit us on the ass. Rather, what we thought was sincerity bit us. Bullshit is what bit us and now we're feeling burned, bruised, used. Yet, that's what life does, that's the nature of society - societies have always been brutal, injust, awful places (to paraphrase Joseph Campbell in, Myths to Live By.) Yet, to continue with Campbell's thought, it is incumbent on us, the writers and artists, to rise above this and to show that the likes of Shrub and Cheney cannot take our spirit nor can they sell our sincerity or our hearts.

I'm not advocating pollyanna prose. I'm advocating authentic fiction which takes risks, which gets inside of characters. Write from the heart, not a mind full of post-Bush resentment. Blow out that resentment, write real characters - don't just write about real characters. Get close, get real.

Perpetual Folly: 2010 Pushcart Prize Rankings

Perpetual Folly: 2010 Pushcart Prize Rankings

I always look for resources to help me decide which markets to submit to. Now that I'm building a significant collection of standard short stories, I'm glad to have Cliff's list here to help me decide where to submit my stuff.

I think I'm more picky with my flash submissions, as I feel that there are so many definitions of what constitutes good flash, that I really try to be picky to see who is most in line with my thinking. I have a sense that it's the same in the poetry markets.

Any poets have ideas on that?

Cain, Caleb, Cameron by Matt Bell

w i g l e a f : (very) short fiction

I really liked this piece by Matt Bell. In retrospect, I'm a bit baffled that I did. I'll try to explain after some play-by-play of my reading.

He jumps right out with a strong first sentence. Two babies were expected but only one was born - this is compelling, as are the phrases "pummeled womb" and "troubled cavity." So, I'm hooked. This is visceral, this is fascinating in that train-wreck sort of way - "mistaked-toothed"? WTF?? I'm hooked.

Then comes the horrific lyricism of the second paragraph. Wow, now I'm really hooked. Damn fine writing here. "What delta of destruction flowing!" Holy crap! That's some fancy writing!

Ultimately, it's the writing and the inventive language use which gets me into and keeps me going through these few (<500) words. It's a demonically creative idea which is really given real life by a writer who likes to write - and who is not afraid to turn a phrase. I appreciate this.

After the dust had settled, the blood dried, I took another look. This thing is written from the viewpoint of a detached 1st person narrator. He's sorta there, but not really. He reports on what his wife is going through and what the kid is like, but not much more.

I'm usually livid when I see stuff like this published. Why? Because I find it to be a hollow device where the writer can distance himself from everything and just tell us a story. Like when someone tells you all about a movie. They're not involved in the movie at all, but they're telling you anyway.

Often, these narrators are just telling a story - you know, not showing...

Bell's narrator is such a wordsmith that he does show me the story. It's brought to life, and it's creepy as hell.

Compare to, Yellowfin Tuna, posted at JMWW. In Christian Bell's story, the narrator seems to be desensitized and keeps a distance from the character and the action of the story. The words are flat, the emotion is sucked out. Yet, I guess we always want objectivity when being delivered the news.

Personally, I'll take Matt Bell's approach to delivering a story - alive, rich with language, and totally visceral.

I give Matt Bell's story five jack 'o lanterns and a sack of candy corn. Yes, I know that Halloween was yesterday.

It's Next Door

Apparatus Magazine - Volume 1 Issue 4 - Hobie Anthony

Here is one of my Heat Wave stories. Flash, really.

I've since revised it a bit, but I do like this version. Take a gander. Let me know what you think - review here or on your own blog (but please let me know if you review on your blog.)

What's For Dinner?

Food Carts Portland

Ok, this isn't about flash. It's about food in a flash. Portland's real contribution to world cuisine - the food cart! They're all over. You can get Ethiopian, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Hoagies, Subs, Grinders, and even Heroes at these carts. They're incredible - just hope you don't get rained on trying to find a bench to snack on.

Bumble Bee - by Me

Published by Shape of a Box - the YouTube Literary Journal

On Fat Cats and Flash Fiction

I spend too much time thinking about Flash Fiction. I have plenty of other things to occupy my mind: employment, school work, and facebook. Yet, as I ride my bicycle at dusk and see other bikers without their lights on, I can only think of Stuart Dybek's Lights, a magnificent flash if there ever was one. I think of it as a modern archetype of the more poetic side of flash fiction.

I've been thinking about what Dybek said in the current Vestal Review about compression in prose. He's talked about this before, in Sudden Fiction, for instance. But, his Vestal Review interview got me thinking (this time.)
My Webster's says of the word -

Compression: 1. the act of process of compressing 2. the process of compressing the fuel mixture in an internal compustion engine 3. conversion (as of data) in order to reduce the space occupied or the bandwith required

I think the third definition really suits our purposes. The data is compressed. It's diamond-hard and pure. Pure. It's all of a sort. No explication. No extraneous scenes, characters, or emotions. All the extra stuff is gone, if it ever was there in the first place.

Short stories have "extra" stuff. In a sense. They are muli-layered like a wedding cake. They are wonderful. They have explication and flashbacks (sometimes.) But they are not flash, and flash are not they.

Too many writers and editors get confused on this point. They set a word-count and look for a short story to fit that word count. This cheapens the form of flash. Dybek says:

"I think the current urge to see flash fiction as a new form and genre onto (sic) itself, which then demands that it is defined by superficial notions such as word count, is far less interesting to me than seeing flash fiction as a symptom, a manifestation of an ongoing tradition that has to do with the compression in prose, the counterpoint between the lyrical and narrative, fragmentation, and the redefinitions of both story and poetry." (MaryAnne McCollister, "Interview with Stuart Dybek", Vestal Review, #34 (2009))

Dybek argues for yet another term for our short little darlings. I don't think that's necessary. That would only further confuse the matter as we all are struggling to figure out what these things are. The crux of his frustration is, to paraphrase, with the superficial notion of word count.

Indeed, when word count is the only consideration, we often are served flabby pieces which have perhaps been squeezed into a word count - much like how my fat cat squeezes his rotund self through the cat door. It's inelegant to watch, but he gets through, much like a short story forced into a word-count restriction of, say, 500 words. We all marvel, wondering how he manages to do this day in and day out, and that's the novelty. Flash should not be treated as such a novelty.

Though, I'd love to read a flash about novelties - of any sort. That's an interesting idea... maybe. ( note: pic left is not my cat - my cat only drinks PacNW microbrews.)

Anyhow,when approaching a flash fiction, I urge all you writers to keep yourselves focused. If you want a narrative flash, stick strictly to that narrative. All Story - keep it moving. If it's an emotion you want to show, show that emotion - or that complex of emotions. When showing a complex of emotions - show it as such, as a complex, not a series of emotions - compress them to show the complexity.

You're flashing, you're a strobe capturing a milisecond of something. You are compressing a thing to such a degree that it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Strip a narrative to its core and you have a wonderful thing. Like a diamond formed from common coal, compress the object of your creative vision. Don't mess around trying to obey the tropes of standard fiction - they don't apply.

If you want to write a short story, then by god write one. Just don't squeeze it through a word-count requirement just to say that you can.

RAW

Girls and Paper and Tassels by Mary Miller

I honestly haven't read much of Mary Miller's work. I did hear her read from her collection, Big World, a month or so back. I was impressed by the hard-hitting risks Miller took in her prose. My friend Amy bought the book and loves it.

I have to say I reacted poorly to these at first. I thought there was going to be some male-bashing stuff going on. That was the baggage I brought to the text. However, I returned and found something far more complicated.

What comes through here and in the short story she read that night in Powell's is a near-confessional rawness. In this age of memoir, Miller makes a fiction which cuts to the quick with an unblinking honesty most memoirists can only dream of .

In these pieces, Miller writes in the 2nd person. Like many people, I hate 2nd person. But, she pulls it off. Consider the first two sentences of Girls:

He shows you his drawings, sketchbooks full of naked women. Women who were live at some point, who let him draw them before they became a story he would recount to you.

She starts with immediate action and attention-grabbing elements. At least my attention was grabbed by a sketchbook full of naked women and not so much by the 2nd person aspect. Then, the second sentence is largely descriptive and brings us back to "you" at the end. So, she's not banging us over the head with YOU straight away.

Considered together, we are left with a very emotionally complex picture. We have a woman who in the first instance seems skeptical and cynical. In the second flash, we have a woman who is passive. Yet, both are captive to a sense of fate. They will be with this guy no matter what, it seems. The author winks at us, telling us that the narrator is a fool, that she is deluding herself, drugging herself to take the pain that fate has brewing.

As reader, we sit and watch the wheel turn. We know this girl, we've seen her go through one bad relationship after another. We wonder why. Perhaps it's just her fate and she's just along for the ride.

So, go take a gander. I could probably write a full essay about these two shorties.

Great Flashes. I give 'em a weeks worth of crisp, sunny, fall days.