The Stinging Fly are doing a series of posts on rejections.
This essay is not just about rejections and hence I am sharing it here. It’s by one of my favorite short story writers, Danielle McLaughlin, who is a very astute teacher and a brilliant and kind human being. Highly recommend her work if not familiar. :)
“‘All of writing is a huge lake,’ Jean Rhys said. ‘There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.’ This quote is something I find myself coming back to on days when I’m wondering: why bother? There already exists an abundance of books in the world, multitudes of them better than anything I will ever produce. Why keep going? I would never categorise Jean Rhys as a ‘mere trickle’, but I like her lake analogy. When we send our stories out into the world, when we feed that lake, they become, if I may be permitted a cliché, part of something bigger. I see writing as a way of going—or getting—through life, what a Buddhist might call a practice. It’s a practice that’s focused on creating, as opposed to destroying. Our stories might be mere dots, but they’re engaged in a sort of literary pointillism. And since we’re on the subject of rejection, it’s worth remembering that while the word ‘pointillism’ would in time come to denote an art movement, it was initially a pejorative term coined by critics to ridicule its practitioners.”
Also, Zadie Smith’s lock down essay collection, Intimations, has an essay titled “Something To Do” which is a sobering read on this act of creating and she concludes it’s no different than baking bread or whatever else we “do”. And all that matters is that we bring Love to the act of this “something to do.”
George gave you a perfect answer. I’ll only add that I’ve been there, so i think i understand you. I wrote and wrote and wrote for years and then….stopped. I don’t know why, really. I think I just didn’t have anything else I wanted to say—in that way (through writing fiction). It felt done, though I continued to love words and sentences, and of course, books. But the need was gone. It kind of blew my mind, since writing was basically my everything for so long (besides my kids). Many people encouraged me to write again, as though all it would take was for me to sit down at my desk and another book would come to me. But that’s not the way it works. I did write a story recently and loved doing the writing. This club helped me find my way back—but I’m not all the way there yet. I don’t know when I’ll complete another story. My main point here is that if you are okay with it—and it sounds like you are—then that’s the best of all scenarios. It IS a weird feeling, I’ll grant you that. And I’ve found myself making visual art over the last few years. It’s like my mind just transferred that need to express myself to another venue. Anyway, you don’t need my comments or any help. Sounds like you are exactly where you should be. But, yes. It does feel strange. Thank you for your question to George which made me feel less alone.
That is fascinating about the homeless camp and the bardo. I see it, and it’s such a great insight into that work. That’s one of my favorite books. And I love the - was it Flannery oO’Connor? - quote about not discouraging enough writers! I found it was a great hindrance to my imagination and my time to worry about what a reader might think of my writing or about whether someone might want to publish it. Just keep reading and you’ll be fine. It’ll come or it won’t. My hero is Emily Dickinson. That’s some advice from an old woman with a bad case of Covid here who’s reading The Overstory and thinking I’m about to have the first real conversation of my life with the tree outside my window ; ) I so enjoy reading all of the comments. Thank you, people
The questions and answers are blowing my mind. So good! Thank you again for making time for this. I hope you still like it. Also, Fresno is a tough place. I know the area well. It gets so hot there in the summer, my heart goes out to the unsheltered.
The not readily accessible Twain quote may be Hemingway:
“ A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.
Ernest Hemingway”
and
“ I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
This may be slightly off-point, but not by much, I don't think. I subscribe to a daily newsletter from my hometown of Pittsburgh & I wanted to share with all of you something that arrived in my inbox this morning & which might be of help. It's from August Wilson, a Pittsburgh native & one of its prides. Here it is: "Confront the dark parts of yourself and work to banish them with illumination & forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing." I note two things: forgiveness and willingness.
A few months ago, something similar happened to me when the writing simply stopped. There were other things going on in my life, but usually writing was how I found my way through life's mess. This time, I sat with the idea, "what if I never write again?" and in that, I found peace. Three months later, the writing called, and I answered, but this time with expansiveness and openness. Will this last? Who knows. But for now, I'm having so much fun!
Thanks to the questioner and your response, George. Hope your beloved pup is healing.
The question about taking a break reminds me of a time soon after moving to New York where I intended to become an author. I had spent the previous two years working as a journalist in Europe, and although it was splendid for learning that craft, I ached to write in longer form: books. Specifically, fiction. My father flew out from St. Louis to visit my little garret on the upper-Upper West Side (this was early 90's when things were still rough around edges). He asked how I intended to make money to support myself. He understood I had a passion for writing, but he had a tried-and-true Midwestern sensibility. I assured him it was fine, and i had it worked out, and the break would come. Then he said something that has stuck with me ever since. "Listen, Neal, my suggestion is if there's anything else in this world that you are interested in doing, do that. Try it at least. Being an author, there's no stability in it. If you find you can't/won't pursue something else, then writing it is." Lacking some courage in my convictions, I tried other things: economic consulting (don't ask!) as well as being a book editor and literary agent). Time and again, I found myself back at the coffee shop, scribbling stories into my long yellow legal pad. If you're a writer, if that is what you're meant to do, you will always lead yourself back to it in one form of another.
I have an old, blind, deaf dog. He once told me, “You’re lazy, but don’t feel too bad about it because it’s not stopping you from anything you’re good at.” What a card.
I hope your pet makes a good recovery, and your trips are fun and fruitful.
I’m embarking on the creative writing course I suspect I should have taken decades ago. Why? Because despite half a century of mostly fallow periods, the writing table never ceases to draw me back. But it’s not the well running dry that worries me. It’s the fear that the fallow periods are all I’m truly capable of. Perhaps you can lead a writer to water, but you can’t make them think. Sounds like Flannery believed that.
Aside from the "news" imbedded in George's extraordinary post (see below), I was affected by the tone of kindness imbedded in George's extraordinary post.
We writers can be far too tough on ourselves, being ourselves up (quietly, hopefully!) for not getting pages done today, not getting enough words down--whatever the gauge is of your writing productivity. "Guilty" was a term George used. I can feel the sense that I'm letting myself down, or that I'm burning through another day of my limited number of days on Earth, one more day not improving myself as a writer.
But I think this is mental jiu-jitsu (or is it self-torture?). I'm in a down cycle in my actual writing-on-the-page writing right now, mainly because my current daily work involves a ton of other kinds of writing (journalism), and also because--to be honest--I haven't figured out the structure of my week to free up days, long patches of hours, for fiction writing. But I'm trying to be kind to myself. Not kicking myself for not doing it.
But something more. I know that my creative tank is getting re-filled, that strange phenomenon George cited from Twain. My head is exploding with little ideas (good for stories, not for novels), or images, or moments, or details, things that are sticking in my head. (The sticking is a good sign.) I'm not forcing it. I'm just letting it happen. I know that I'll be walking back into my writing room, closing the door, and letting it flow and see where it takes me. My gut tells me that it'll be soon, but I'm not sure. I think the difference is that--before--I was worried that I wouldn't close the door. (was it that thing called Resistance? don't know.) Now--I'm really not worried. Because I sense the well is being refilled. George's thoughtful answer to a great question clarifies this. Thanks.
"Enlightenment or excuse?" That's a question I've asked over the years, too. I can usually trust the quiet signal that comes (eventually, even if I don't like it). I'm just coming out of a seven-month non-writing period and suddenly all these ideas are exploding in my mind. I just needed to be ready to receive them. I had to trust I would someday be ready, and that they would appear. If something else appeared instead, so be it. Thank you for the wise and kind asking and answering.
Thanks so much to the person who asked the question, and to George for the answer, especially with all you've got going on. Speaking of taking a break, I've just come off my own "pause" of about 20 years. My work for much of that time involved writing, but after publishing one novel I found I couldn't get myself back to the writing table to write fiction, or anything for myself. Story Club has definitely been a part of finding my way back, and posts like this one help me worry just a little bit less about that extended hiatus, and look forward with curiosity about what might come out of that well I've been filling for the last two decades. So, thanks again, George. If you're ever wondering if this thing you've started is making an impact, let me just add my voice to those saying, "Yes." 🙏🏼❤️
I've been wondering: Can I say that I'm a writer if I'm not writing? My fallow period began once I finished a memoir that, when published, I was pushing to get it known. Then knee surgery. Then a broken ankle. All that time, I assumed when I next sat down at my desk, the stories would come. They always did before. But it didn't work that way, and after at least a year of sitting down, I decided to relax and trust the process. Except it's been more than two years, and while I've written several first paragraphs, the pieces get stuck in the mire and go no further.
Zilch. I have nothing. It's as though I've never been a writer. There's a distant memory and certainly lots of past stories to attest, but it's like that part of my brain has gone dormant. I don't know if I'll ever write again. I hope so because if I'm not a writer, who am I?
Questioner. Love “oceanic state of drift” that tells me you’re a writer. Only a writer could have put it so well as regards a fallow writing period.
In a fallow period here, too. I’ve written one long s/s in a year, but I’ve busied with revisions of other stories (medium length flash) I revised and sent out. This year the output has been poems and, frankly, just a few micro exercises.
I’ve been writing in a journal since 1974 & I’m “writing” this in my “new” journal. In composing a response to GS’s cutting exercise I accidently deleted a journal began in January – 34K of blather. And…I didn’t mourn. I looked at it as a good thing. Kind of frightening I’d have so much to say to myself. I don’t think I’ll ever abandon the journal – it’s soothing but creative writing is so different, so hard, and then often heartbreaking when something you've worked on for years isn’t published.
To replace the “fix” (writing is a fix for me the way other addictive things are/were. Just healthier) I’ve upped my improv game. I’ve just started a one-on-one class with a new teacher, who’s upending everything I’ve learned & been doing. This new approach (You can say no, ask questions, no who/what/where & no history) is emotionally based. It reminds me of work I did decades ago with a teacher who taught his version of The Method. And funny enough this work is language based. It’s hard but stimulating and fun. The best part is I’m not alone. Writing is a lot of alone time, which it must be. Will it be enough to replace writing? I don’t know, but “Doing something other than writing is actually going to help me write better when I get back to it” is what this fallow period feels like right now.
Thank you for asking the question and GS for giving me what I needed today.
Oh my goodness - I love this post, George. It's just what I needed today. I sat down this morning to start Mary Karr's "The Art of Memoir," which led to me writing 3 paragraphs on my notepad app on my phone to start my next book, three paragraphs that have been tickling the inside of my skull for a while. That's what reading does for me, tingles the inside of my writer's brain.
I can see you during family squabbles at home: "What do you mean you don't want to do X. I went to FRESNO for you!" Ha! I'm a Californian, so that means a lot. I think there was a Carol Burnett mini series parody called Fresno, when she called it "the armpit of California." And there's a great X-files episode on the Chupacabra set in Fresno.
And as you relate in this post, I have been thinking recently about how to get those non-fiction writing assignments (I'm still trying to get an agent for my memoir). I have recently completed "The Braindead Megaphone," so I've read about many of those "adventures" of yours.
On my bookshelf, there are two authors of whom I have all their works. I've trotted a complete collection of all his novels and collected stories for years, even when I got rid of all my books to move onto a sailboat. That's Faulkner. Have I read all of them? No. Most of them, but not all.
You, George, occupy that other shelf. I have recently located all of your published works. I read them all in the last few months chronologically (except for A Swim ... and Bardo - Swim first, Bardo, after). Those got me on the kick of "hey, this guy might be worth reading." And I've been digging up stories from magazines as well. And of course, with Story Club being kind of a live version of "A Swim . . ." I'm waiting for the Broadway musical.
I'm completely fascinated by how you have laid out an understanding of writing and how you write and then seeing that "theory" put into practice in reading your stories. Theory and practice are usually not that clearly mirrored.
I read somewhere that you are greatly imitated - I could see how one might try to write like you, especially in that you've given a path in "A Swim..." to write stories as you do, and I can envision something akin to the fun competitions back in the 80s for Hemingway parodies....(my favorite line, was in a story about a solider named Adams who was shaving and he gets all depressed from the rain and the trees and the gray sky and his companion wipes his chin, and say, "It's only a nick, Adams"). Now you know my kind of humor.
Anyway, I say with great sincerity and admiration, thanks for Story Club and being a real person and sharing with us. It helps, it really does. Good luck with the continuing adventures and nursing the dog.
The Stinging Fly are doing a series of posts on rejections.
This essay is not just about rejections and hence I am sharing it here. It’s by one of my favorite short story writers, Danielle McLaughlin, who is a very astute teacher and a brilliant and kind human being. Highly recommend her work if not familiar. :)
“‘All of writing is a huge lake,’ Jean Rhys said. ‘There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.’ This quote is something I find myself coming back to on days when I’m wondering: why bother? There already exists an abundance of books in the world, multitudes of them better than anything I will ever produce. Why keep going? I would never categorise Jean Rhys as a ‘mere trickle’, but I like her lake analogy. When we send our stories out into the world, when we feed that lake, they become, if I may be permitted a cliché, part of something bigger. I see writing as a way of going—or getting—through life, what a Buddhist might call a practice. It’s a practice that’s focused on creating, as opposed to destroying. Our stories might be mere dots, but they’re engaged in a sort of literary pointillism. And since we’re on the subject of rejection, it’s worth remembering that while the word ‘pointillism’ would in time come to denote an art movement, it was initially a pejorative term coined by critics to ridicule its practitioners.”
https://stingingfly.org/2022/07/28/chop-wood-carry-water/
Link to the introduction:
https://stingingfly.org/2022/07/28/notes-on-rejection/
Also, Zadie Smith’s lock down essay collection, Intimations, has an essay titled “Something To Do” which is a sobering read on this act of creating and she concludes it’s no different than baking bread or whatever else we “do”. And all that matters is that we bring Love to the act of this “something to do.”
George gave you a perfect answer. I’ll only add that I’ve been there, so i think i understand you. I wrote and wrote and wrote for years and then….stopped. I don’t know why, really. I think I just didn’t have anything else I wanted to say—in that way (through writing fiction). It felt done, though I continued to love words and sentences, and of course, books. But the need was gone. It kind of blew my mind, since writing was basically my everything for so long (besides my kids). Many people encouraged me to write again, as though all it would take was for me to sit down at my desk and another book would come to me. But that’s not the way it works. I did write a story recently and loved doing the writing. This club helped me find my way back—but I’m not all the way there yet. I don’t know when I’ll complete another story. My main point here is that if you are okay with it—and it sounds like you are—then that’s the best of all scenarios. It IS a weird feeling, I’ll grant you that. And I’ve found myself making visual art over the last few years. It’s like my mind just transferred that need to express myself to another venue. Anyway, you don’t need my comments or any help. Sounds like you are exactly where you should be. But, yes. It does feel strange. Thank you for your question to George which made me feel less alone.
That is fascinating about the homeless camp and the bardo. I see it, and it’s such a great insight into that work. That’s one of my favorite books. And I love the - was it Flannery oO’Connor? - quote about not discouraging enough writers! I found it was a great hindrance to my imagination and my time to worry about what a reader might think of my writing or about whether someone might want to publish it. Just keep reading and you’ll be fine. It’ll come or it won’t. My hero is Emily Dickinson. That’s some advice from an old woman with a bad case of Covid here who’s reading The Overstory and thinking I’m about to have the first real conversation of my life with the tree outside my window ; ) I so enjoy reading all of the comments. Thank you, people
The questions and answers are blowing my mind. So good! Thank you again for making time for this. I hope you still like it. Also, Fresno is a tough place. I know the area well. It gets so hot there in the summer, my heart goes out to the unsheltered.
The not readily accessible Twain quote may be Hemingway:
“ A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.
Ernest Hemingway”
and
“ I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
Also Hemingway
This may be slightly off-point, but not by much, I don't think. I subscribe to a daily newsletter from my hometown of Pittsburgh & I wanted to share with all of you something that arrived in my inbox this morning & which might be of help. It's from August Wilson, a Pittsburgh native & one of its prides. Here it is: "Confront the dark parts of yourself and work to banish them with illumination & forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing." I note two things: forgiveness and willingness.
A few months ago, something similar happened to me when the writing simply stopped. There were other things going on in my life, but usually writing was how I found my way through life's mess. This time, I sat with the idea, "what if I never write again?" and in that, I found peace. Three months later, the writing called, and I answered, but this time with expansiveness and openness. Will this last? Who knows. But for now, I'm having so much fun!
Thanks to the questioner and your response, George. Hope your beloved pup is healing.
The question about taking a break reminds me of a time soon after moving to New York where I intended to become an author. I had spent the previous two years working as a journalist in Europe, and although it was splendid for learning that craft, I ached to write in longer form: books. Specifically, fiction. My father flew out from St. Louis to visit my little garret on the upper-Upper West Side (this was early 90's when things were still rough around edges). He asked how I intended to make money to support myself. He understood I had a passion for writing, but he had a tried-and-true Midwestern sensibility. I assured him it was fine, and i had it worked out, and the break would come. Then he said something that has stuck with me ever since. "Listen, Neal, my suggestion is if there's anything else in this world that you are interested in doing, do that. Try it at least. Being an author, there's no stability in it. If you find you can't/won't pursue something else, then writing it is." Lacking some courage in my convictions, I tried other things: economic consulting (don't ask!) as well as being a book editor and literary agent). Time and again, I found myself back at the coffee shop, scribbling stories into my long yellow legal pad. If you're a writer, if that is what you're meant to do, you will always lead yourself back to it in one form of another.
I have an old, blind, deaf dog. He once told me, “You’re lazy, but don’t feel too bad about it because it’s not stopping you from anything you’re good at.” What a card.
I hope your pet makes a good recovery, and your trips are fun and fruitful.
I’m embarking on the creative writing course I suspect I should have taken decades ago. Why? Because despite half a century of mostly fallow periods, the writing table never ceases to draw me back. But it’s not the well running dry that worries me. It’s the fear that the fallow periods are all I’m truly capable of. Perhaps you can lead a writer to water, but you can’t make them think. Sounds like Flannery believed that.
Aside from the "news" imbedded in George's extraordinary post (see below), I was affected by the tone of kindness imbedded in George's extraordinary post.
We writers can be far too tough on ourselves, being ourselves up (quietly, hopefully!) for not getting pages done today, not getting enough words down--whatever the gauge is of your writing productivity. "Guilty" was a term George used. I can feel the sense that I'm letting myself down, or that I'm burning through another day of my limited number of days on Earth, one more day not improving myself as a writer.
But I think this is mental jiu-jitsu (or is it self-torture?). I'm in a down cycle in my actual writing-on-the-page writing right now, mainly because my current daily work involves a ton of other kinds of writing (journalism), and also because--to be honest--I haven't figured out the structure of my week to free up days, long patches of hours, for fiction writing. But I'm trying to be kind to myself. Not kicking myself for not doing it.
But something more. I know that my creative tank is getting re-filled, that strange phenomenon George cited from Twain. My head is exploding with little ideas (good for stories, not for novels), or images, or moments, or details, things that are sticking in my head. (The sticking is a good sign.) I'm not forcing it. I'm just letting it happen. I know that I'll be walking back into my writing room, closing the door, and letting it flow and see where it takes me. My gut tells me that it'll be soon, but I'm not sure. I think the difference is that--before--I was worried that I wouldn't close the door. (was it that thing called Resistance? don't know.) Now--I'm really not worried. Because I sense the well is being refilled. George's thoughtful answer to a great question clarifies this. Thanks.
"Enlightenment or excuse?" That's a question I've asked over the years, too. I can usually trust the quiet signal that comes (eventually, even if I don't like it). I'm just coming out of a seven-month non-writing period and suddenly all these ideas are exploding in my mind. I just needed to be ready to receive them. I had to trust I would someday be ready, and that they would appear. If something else appeared instead, so be it. Thank you for the wise and kind asking and answering.
Thanks so much to the person who asked the question, and to George for the answer, especially with all you've got going on. Speaking of taking a break, I've just come off my own "pause" of about 20 years. My work for much of that time involved writing, but after publishing one novel I found I couldn't get myself back to the writing table to write fiction, or anything for myself. Story Club has definitely been a part of finding my way back, and posts like this one help me worry just a little bit less about that extended hiatus, and look forward with curiosity about what might come out of that well I've been filling for the last two decades. So, thanks again, George. If you're ever wondering if this thing you've started is making an impact, let me just add my voice to those saying, "Yes." 🙏🏼❤️
I've been wondering: Can I say that I'm a writer if I'm not writing? My fallow period began once I finished a memoir that, when published, I was pushing to get it known. Then knee surgery. Then a broken ankle. All that time, I assumed when I next sat down at my desk, the stories would come. They always did before. But it didn't work that way, and after at least a year of sitting down, I decided to relax and trust the process. Except it's been more than two years, and while I've written several first paragraphs, the pieces get stuck in the mire and go no further.
Zilch. I have nothing. It's as though I've never been a writer. There's a distant memory and certainly lots of past stories to attest, but it's like that part of my brain has gone dormant. I don't know if I'll ever write again. I hope so because if I'm not a writer, who am I?
July 28
Questioner. Love “oceanic state of drift” that tells me you’re a writer. Only a writer could have put it so well as regards a fallow writing period.
In a fallow period here, too. I’ve written one long s/s in a year, but I’ve busied with revisions of other stories (medium length flash) I revised and sent out. This year the output has been poems and, frankly, just a few micro exercises.
I’ve been writing in a journal since 1974 & I’m “writing” this in my “new” journal. In composing a response to GS’s cutting exercise I accidently deleted a journal began in January – 34K of blather. And…I didn’t mourn. I looked at it as a good thing. Kind of frightening I’d have so much to say to myself. I don’t think I’ll ever abandon the journal – it’s soothing but creative writing is so different, so hard, and then often heartbreaking when something you've worked on for years isn’t published.
To replace the “fix” (writing is a fix for me the way other addictive things are/were. Just healthier) I’ve upped my improv game. I’ve just started a one-on-one class with a new teacher, who’s upending everything I’ve learned & been doing. This new approach (You can say no, ask questions, no who/what/where & no history) is emotionally based. It reminds me of work I did decades ago with a teacher who taught his version of The Method. And funny enough this work is language based. It’s hard but stimulating and fun. The best part is I’m not alone. Writing is a lot of alone time, which it must be. Will it be enough to replace writing? I don’t know, but “Doing something other than writing is actually going to help me write better when I get back to it” is what this fallow period feels like right now.
Thank you for asking the question and GS for giving me what I needed today.
Oh my goodness - I love this post, George. It's just what I needed today. I sat down this morning to start Mary Karr's "The Art of Memoir," which led to me writing 3 paragraphs on my notepad app on my phone to start my next book, three paragraphs that have been tickling the inside of my skull for a while. That's what reading does for me, tingles the inside of my writer's brain.
I can see you during family squabbles at home: "What do you mean you don't want to do X. I went to FRESNO for you!" Ha! I'm a Californian, so that means a lot. I think there was a Carol Burnett mini series parody called Fresno, when she called it "the armpit of California." And there's a great X-files episode on the Chupacabra set in Fresno.
And as you relate in this post, I have been thinking recently about how to get those non-fiction writing assignments (I'm still trying to get an agent for my memoir). I have recently completed "The Braindead Megaphone," so I've read about many of those "adventures" of yours.
On my bookshelf, there are two authors of whom I have all their works. I've trotted a complete collection of all his novels and collected stories for years, even when I got rid of all my books to move onto a sailboat. That's Faulkner. Have I read all of them? No. Most of them, but not all.
You, George, occupy that other shelf. I have recently located all of your published works. I read them all in the last few months chronologically (except for A Swim ... and Bardo - Swim first, Bardo, after). Those got me on the kick of "hey, this guy might be worth reading." And I've been digging up stories from magazines as well. And of course, with Story Club being kind of a live version of "A Swim . . ." I'm waiting for the Broadway musical.
I'm completely fascinated by how you have laid out an understanding of writing and how you write and then seeing that "theory" put into practice in reading your stories. Theory and practice are usually not that clearly mirrored.
I read somewhere that you are greatly imitated - I could see how one might try to write like you, especially in that you've given a path in "A Swim..." to write stories as you do, and I can envision something akin to the fun competitions back in the 80s for Hemingway parodies....(my favorite line, was in a story about a solider named Adams who was shaving and he gets all depressed from the rain and the trees and the gray sky and his companion wipes his chin, and say, "It's only a nick, Adams"). Now you know my kind of humor.
Anyway, I say with great sincerity and admiration, thanks for Story Club and being a real person and sharing with us. It helps, it really does. Good luck with the continuing adventures and nursing the dog.