I wrote an essay for a journal years ago. Might have been about 2,000 words. It was well received and I thought it was pretty good. Then it got more attention and another journal called, wanting to publish it in their special back page feature position. It was an honor. It was also limited to 1,000 words. I had to cut my piece in half. I bled. It got tighter. My wife read it and thought it was much better. She couldn't even remember the parts I cut. Then I heard from the Utne Reader, who wanted to promote it with a brief version. They needed it to be 500 words max. I cut it in half again. I bled more. The story started to bleed. I think I passed the point of coherence and it turned into a synopsis. But they published that and I enjoyed the continued publicity. Then I heard from the Pearson Testing Service. They wanted to license it for an essay question on their standardized tests. I thought it was joke. I asked my daughter in law who is an educator. She said, on the contrary, it was an honor, go for it. So I asked how much they wanted. They said 300 words....and...I cut it again. So the synopsis became an excerpt. I learned a tremendous amount about how much fat can be cut and I learned how much of my own absolutely fabulous words were simply expendable, without losing the point. I also learned how it can go too far, lose the overall grace but still communicate the main points, enough for a student, somewhere, to react to it and bring forth their own ideas, and start the cycle over for themselves. Quite the set of lessons about writing and life.
Oh, Pastoralia. The first George Saunders story I can remember reading. (Is that right? I think so.) And I remember a couple of things. One, that whoever wrote that story was out of his mind--i mean, the world he conjured! And, two, I remember how that story stuck with me for a long time. George, i hate to say this, but it stayed with me because the story made me feel so bad. I just wanted to go to that crazy place and pull those poor souls out of those cages. And i've more or less hung onto that feeling all of these years which, I see now, is nearly 23 years.
But what I want to really say is how much I love this: "...nothing about us – none of our tendencies – is “wrong.” Everything about us is a potential source of energy." And also this: "We aren’t trying to excise a tendency, but to honor it and talk nice to it so that it will come to the table and be its best, purest, most expressive self for us." I try to honor my tendencies, but god damn if a lot of the time they either sit under that table, or they stand on top of it, shrieking. Well, I'm working on it. It's a long road to come to that place where we love ourselves, i guess.
I loved this. I've recently been working through the second draft of my first novel (woot!) and I over the last few months I've noticed a new sort of ebb and flow between playfulness and an almost anal-retentive focus on detail. There are scenes I write in which I feel the need to stop and try and get the pacing and the tension and the dialogue just right. But there are also scenes or parts of scenes which seem to burst forth from who-knows-where. And sure those scenes need hella editing but, there is also something so rich and alive about those moments and those playful paragraphs are among some of my favorite I've written.
I'm trying to trust that both of these states are necessary for the project as a whole to succeed. Which I admit is a hard thing to do. When I I'm feeling playful, I worry I won't ever be able to polish the paragraphs I've written without some loss of luster. When I am granularly focused, I worry my writing lacks loft. It's comforting to know that on some level you experience a version of this too. And that you feel it's healthy.
Congratulations to Boris Drayluk! From the NY Times:
The Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov won a National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel “Grey Bees,” about a beekeeper living in the “gray zone” in the Donbas, a region torn by ongoing conflict between Russian proxies and the Ukrainian military.
In awarding the N.B.C.C.’s inaugural translation prize to Kurkov and his translator, Boris Dralyuk, the committee praised the novel for illuminating “the tragedies suffered on Ukrainian lands while maintaining a broad, humanistic focus on the crisis’s aftermath.”
When I read "goiteresque" I recoiled in my chair as if I'd been tazed. One Word Stories? There's my nominee.
I've been thinking, talking, writing about, as I see it currently, the metaphysical property of the writing process, where it is of supreme importance for me to get my ass out of the way. Usually the first thing I forget is that I've never seen anything in my life get better because I judged it. Never. Ever. In my life. Not a single thing. I've believed this for years, but every day I start judging before I get out of bed. "Ah, this sucks! Bloody Hell, this is bullshit! What in the Good Christ is that?"
Conversely, when I get over myself enough to accept things as they are, and that I just might not be privy to all the information, I have seen utter miracles take place. Answers that I didn't even have the questions for, and possibilities that would never have occured to me come forth, and then I've got something where I had nothing.
In your analysis, explanation, blow-by blow, or "I think it was like this", shared so thoughtfully, eloquently, and generously, here and elsewhere, I see the word 'fun", and I see the word "buzz", and I see the word "light". And I see the word "work". If I can work welI and be open and take a few chances to serve the story, then I can generate work that is adaptable to create stories that have more than one life, and therefore, more than one purpose. And shoot, more than one paycheck. Why the hell not? Or my ego can bulldog it to the ground and I'm left with "Look at me! Look at me! Dig me!" Now that's deathless art.
I travel so slowly through this platform, basking at the postings, the readings, the breakdowns, and the comments. Goddam, the comments. A army of sharp people, one after the other, each with a different take. So very bright! Terrifying! I've not seen that in so long. It harkens me back to when I first sought I didn't know what, but I wanted to know everything about the magic that was in those books. It worked, I knew that. I'd known that since I was a kid. But how? Where does it come from? I loved it so much that I had to love it more. And I got what I sought, and I wanted what I found for the first time in my life. And I wanted more.
This course has restored that sense of abundant revelation I had the first time I read Flannery O'Connor. And Chekhov. I thought he was the guy from Star Trek, but no. And just to have a home in the world where I could ask folks about all this sorcery. Falling asleep nights thinking about "The Red And The Black", and waking up "In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs." I didn't know I'd get to do this again. "Sure you can."
YOU WROTE: We are, really, bringing to bear on our stories the personal tendencies we were born with; trying to apply these in the right proportions and purify them with our editorial attention and thus “take advantage of” them, or “bring them to their highest pitch.” In this way, we’re celebrating these tendencies, even the ones which are, in real life, a pain-in-the-ass to have.
This was, for me, the "ah ha" takeaway from your essay. Recently, I've tried to decide who I'm writing for (the audience), why I'm writing a particular story, and what part of me is in the story. Honestly, I don't have all the answers. But it's clear that I have some (limited) talent, a good ear, a decent wit, and an intellectual curiosity that I want to exhibit in my writing. At the heart of each one there's usually an "idea" that drives everything. Clearly, these come from whatever "personal tendencies" have emerged in me over 60 years. Fascinating mystery for me--myself--unlikely to be solved. Thanks.
Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn appeared as a way, way shorter piece in the New Yorker. I read that as well as the 10 times longer book. The magazine piece was far better. 90% of everything we do in the arts is too long. Books, jazz solos, opera. Brevity is the soul of wit. I could say more—but I won't.
I appreciate so much the freeing approach to writing in these posts -- I'm a perfectionist and get very attached to certain versions of stories, like "ah yes this draft it's *finished*. Thanks to reading the posts here I've been experimenting with moving passages around not to "improve" the story but just for the hell of it, to see how this breaks up structure, or perhaps creates new ruptures to write into. Before I would have winced doing this after working "so hard" on stories but now it feels fun, non-threatening, and an approach to learning about how my writing is functioning. I think next I'll try to make micro-versions of long stories that feel stuck. Like a thumbnail version, just to see what I leave out.
I still struggle with the idea that there is no right version of a story. The figure inside the stone, etc. But that could be just a desire for a process to "end" at some point, which is a me-problem not a story-problem.
A really neat experiment (if a tad masochistic) would be for all of us to take one of our short stories (over 2,000 words) and turn it into a 200 word micro-fiction piece, and then post them here as comments in this forum. I am NOT advocating doing that in this thread. But I think it would be cool to do one day. For the hell of it.
This made me think of a story I'd written in my last fiction course in college. The first few drafts were 20+ pages, and I was feeling quite good about it. I generally liked what I'd done. My professor validated those feelings during an office hours visit. But then she, the wonderful and wise fiction wizard she was and is, challenged me to cut it by, if my memory serves me right, 25%.
So within hours I was diving back into the draft, and on a mission. I remember getting on a roll with all the lopping off. You know, being sad about some of the darlings, but all in all really enjoying it. Feeling the draft get leaner. Punchier.
By the end of the process the story was 10 pages, which was about the length of it when I turned it in as part of my semester's end portfolio. And, 10+ years removed from those first drafts, I'm still proud of that story, and more importantly, of that process. As someone who generally overwrites their first drafts, I think it really helped shape how I approach revisions for any project.
Yet, I really wish I'd have kept all those trimmings in a document somewhere, just so I could peek back. It's entirely possible I cut things that really should've stayed.
I am currently in a workshop and each week we write in response to a series of prompts. Rather than generating new work, I've been using the prompts to take a fresh look at pieces in my "drafts" folder. This is not working. I find myself simply line editing them, or altering them to respond to the prompts. The resulting pieces feel less alive, for sure. I know there is something between starting endless new pieces and merely polishing the turds. My writing life is stuck in this "bardo."
I've been working on a story without regard to length. I tend to let the story come out and just follow it along, thinking I can cut back on it later. The problem is that I don't cut, but generally add more to it. I don't know how long a story for THE NEW YORKER has to be, only that they never take mine. They're always long, because that's what I love to read. That's why I love and adore Alice Munro. Reading one of her stories is like reading a full novel. Even though I know 18,700 words is too long--even for THE NEW YORKER--I find myself going back and looking at it, wondering where to cut it. I guess that's why I like Substack. I can put my stories on here and not have to worry about it being too long. I can cut it into sections and put them up one at a time, which gives me time to work on my next one. It would be nice if only once, some editor at some big magazine said they liked it, but it's too long. I could live with that.
Speaking of cutting it down, I base way too much on my visual impression of a cover image (at the start, anyway) and man-oh-man do I love the last cover you posted which, of course, I've seen already but still love. ALL of the covers you posted are great, I have to say, but that one always stops me for longer. It has just the very very slightest hint of trouble brewing wrapped in the most beautiful hues of the most gorgeous scenery, or so we (maybe just I) have been made to think, and believe, is a tantalizing glimpse of paradise with an animal reminding us of the flaw in that thinking. Way way back when I took a college course called "Outdoor Recreation"...yes it really existed, as part of studying the development and creation of park spaces for the public...I participated in a study in which we, the subjects, were shown slide after slide (remember those?) of scenes from scenic-view pullovers, and we had to rate them. I never found out what won the day...perhaps some close-up foliage, a meandering river or creek that led away at ideal angles to draw the eye, and layers upon layers of blue-green misty mountain peaks...can't recall, but those scenes still and will always resonate with something mysterious. Even a still image can tell a story, so choose your covers carefully if given the opportunity :-)
I recently read a piece in my writers group and as I did I had a deja vu of this story having another version...
Looking back over my work I found the edited version of the piece... the edited version was the one I tended to share ...
However each had a completely different story to tell...
Same intro... some of the same paragraphs...completely different outcome...
The cleverest sections were in the original piece(my opinion)... while the edits highlighted the “point” ...
Editing is almost a cruel sister to the work sometimes...
As one who becomes attached to their words... editing as much as I hate it.., often opens the door to more and better understanding of what the point was ..,
We are talking here about 500 to 1200 word pieces...at most...
A bit different than short story or novel writing... and yet as difficult to navigate.
I wrote an essay for a journal years ago. Might have been about 2,000 words. It was well received and I thought it was pretty good. Then it got more attention and another journal called, wanting to publish it in their special back page feature position. It was an honor. It was also limited to 1,000 words. I had to cut my piece in half. I bled. It got tighter. My wife read it and thought it was much better. She couldn't even remember the parts I cut. Then I heard from the Utne Reader, who wanted to promote it with a brief version. They needed it to be 500 words max. I cut it in half again. I bled more. The story started to bleed. I think I passed the point of coherence and it turned into a synopsis. But they published that and I enjoyed the continued publicity. Then I heard from the Pearson Testing Service. They wanted to license it for an essay question on their standardized tests. I thought it was joke. I asked my daughter in law who is an educator. She said, on the contrary, it was an honor, go for it. So I asked how much they wanted. They said 300 words....and...I cut it again. So the synopsis became an excerpt. I learned a tremendous amount about how much fat can be cut and I learned how much of my own absolutely fabulous words were simply expendable, without losing the point. I also learned how it can go too far, lose the overall grace but still communicate the main points, enough for a student, somewhere, to react to it and bring forth their own ideas, and start the cycle over for themselves. Quite the set of lessons about writing and life.
Oh, Pastoralia. The first George Saunders story I can remember reading. (Is that right? I think so.) And I remember a couple of things. One, that whoever wrote that story was out of his mind--i mean, the world he conjured! And, two, I remember how that story stuck with me for a long time. George, i hate to say this, but it stayed with me because the story made me feel so bad. I just wanted to go to that crazy place and pull those poor souls out of those cages. And i've more or less hung onto that feeling all of these years which, I see now, is nearly 23 years.
But what I want to really say is how much I love this: "...nothing about us – none of our tendencies – is “wrong.” Everything about us is a potential source of energy." And also this: "We aren’t trying to excise a tendency, but to honor it and talk nice to it so that it will come to the table and be its best, purest, most expressive self for us." I try to honor my tendencies, but god damn if a lot of the time they either sit under that table, or they stand on top of it, shrieking. Well, I'm working on it. It's a long road to come to that place where we love ourselves, i guess.
I loved this. I've recently been working through the second draft of my first novel (woot!) and I over the last few months I've noticed a new sort of ebb and flow between playfulness and an almost anal-retentive focus on detail. There are scenes I write in which I feel the need to stop and try and get the pacing and the tension and the dialogue just right. But there are also scenes or parts of scenes which seem to burst forth from who-knows-where. And sure those scenes need hella editing but, there is also something so rich and alive about those moments and those playful paragraphs are among some of my favorite I've written.
I'm trying to trust that both of these states are necessary for the project as a whole to succeed. Which I admit is a hard thing to do. When I I'm feeling playful, I worry I won't ever be able to polish the paragraphs I've written without some loss of luster. When I am granularly focused, I worry my writing lacks loft. It's comforting to know that on some level you experience a version of this too. And that you feel it's healthy.
My takeaway from this week’s is to try to work in the word goiteresque into my everyday chitchat.
Congratulations to Boris Drayluk! From the NY Times:
The Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov won a National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel “Grey Bees,” about a beekeeper living in the “gray zone” in the Donbas, a region torn by ongoing conflict between Russian proxies and the Ukrainian military.
In awarding the N.B.C.C.’s inaugural translation prize to Kurkov and his translator, Boris Dralyuk, the committee praised the novel for illuminating “the tragedies suffered on Ukrainian lands while maintaining a broad, humanistic focus on the crisis’s aftermath.”
When I read "goiteresque" I recoiled in my chair as if I'd been tazed. One Word Stories? There's my nominee.
I've been thinking, talking, writing about, as I see it currently, the metaphysical property of the writing process, where it is of supreme importance for me to get my ass out of the way. Usually the first thing I forget is that I've never seen anything in my life get better because I judged it. Never. Ever. In my life. Not a single thing. I've believed this for years, but every day I start judging before I get out of bed. "Ah, this sucks! Bloody Hell, this is bullshit! What in the Good Christ is that?"
Conversely, when I get over myself enough to accept things as they are, and that I just might not be privy to all the information, I have seen utter miracles take place. Answers that I didn't even have the questions for, and possibilities that would never have occured to me come forth, and then I've got something where I had nothing.
In your analysis, explanation, blow-by blow, or "I think it was like this", shared so thoughtfully, eloquently, and generously, here and elsewhere, I see the word 'fun", and I see the word "buzz", and I see the word "light". And I see the word "work". If I can work welI and be open and take a few chances to serve the story, then I can generate work that is adaptable to create stories that have more than one life, and therefore, more than one purpose. And shoot, more than one paycheck. Why the hell not? Or my ego can bulldog it to the ground and I'm left with "Look at me! Look at me! Dig me!" Now that's deathless art.
I travel so slowly through this platform, basking at the postings, the readings, the breakdowns, and the comments. Goddam, the comments. A army of sharp people, one after the other, each with a different take. So very bright! Terrifying! I've not seen that in so long. It harkens me back to when I first sought I didn't know what, but I wanted to know everything about the magic that was in those books. It worked, I knew that. I'd known that since I was a kid. But how? Where does it come from? I loved it so much that I had to love it more. And I got what I sought, and I wanted what I found for the first time in my life. And I wanted more.
This course has restored that sense of abundant revelation I had the first time I read Flannery O'Connor. And Chekhov. I thought he was the guy from Star Trek, but no. And just to have a home in the world where I could ask folks about all this sorcery. Falling asleep nights thinking about "The Red And The Black", and waking up "In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs." I didn't know I'd get to do this again. "Sure you can."
YOU WROTE: We are, really, bringing to bear on our stories the personal tendencies we were born with; trying to apply these in the right proportions and purify them with our editorial attention and thus “take advantage of” them, or “bring them to their highest pitch.” In this way, we’re celebrating these tendencies, even the ones which are, in real life, a pain-in-the-ass to have.
This was, for me, the "ah ha" takeaway from your essay. Recently, I've tried to decide who I'm writing for (the audience), why I'm writing a particular story, and what part of me is in the story. Honestly, I don't have all the answers. But it's clear that I have some (limited) talent, a good ear, a decent wit, and an intellectual curiosity that I want to exhibit in my writing. At the heart of each one there's usually an "idea" that drives everything. Clearly, these come from whatever "personal tendencies" have emerged in me over 60 years. Fascinating mystery for me--myself--unlikely to be solved. Thanks.
Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn appeared as a way, way shorter piece in the New Yorker. I read that as well as the 10 times longer book. The magazine piece was far better. 90% of everything we do in the arts is too long. Books, jazz solos, opera. Brevity is the soul of wit. I could say more—but I won't.
I appreciate so much the freeing approach to writing in these posts -- I'm a perfectionist and get very attached to certain versions of stories, like "ah yes this draft it's *finished*. Thanks to reading the posts here I've been experimenting with moving passages around not to "improve" the story but just for the hell of it, to see how this breaks up structure, or perhaps creates new ruptures to write into. Before I would have winced doing this after working "so hard" on stories but now it feels fun, non-threatening, and an approach to learning about how my writing is functioning. I think next I'll try to make micro-versions of long stories that feel stuck. Like a thumbnail version, just to see what I leave out.
I still struggle with the idea that there is no right version of a story. The figure inside the stone, etc. But that could be just a desire for a process to "end" at some point, which is a me-problem not a story-problem.
A really neat experiment (if a tad masochistic) would be for all of us to take one of our short stories (over 2,000 words) and turn it into a 200 word micro-fiction piece, and then post them here as comments in this forum. I am NOT advocating doing that in this thread. But I think it would be cool to do one day. For the hell of it.
This made me think of a story I'd written in my last fiction course in college. The first few drafts were 20+ pages, and I was feeling quite good about it. I generally liked what I'd done. My professor validated those feelings during an office hours visit. But then she, the wonderful and wise fiction wizard she was and is, challenged me to cut it by, if my memory serves me right, 25%.
So within hours I was diving back into the draft, and on a mission. I remember getting on a roll with all the lopping off. You know, being sad about some of the darlings, but all in all really enjoying it. Feeling the draft get leaner. Punchier.
By the end of the process the story was 10 pages, which was about the length of it when I turned it in as part of my semester's end portfolio. And, 10+ years removed from those first drafts, I'm still proud of that story, and more importantly, of that process. As someone who generally overwrites their first drafts, I think it really helped shape how I approach revisions for any project.
Yet, I really wish I'd have kept all those trimmings in a document somewhere, just so I could peek back. It's entirely possible I cut things that really should've stayed.
"If it occurs in us, it likely occurs in other people as well" – this realization has helped me so much. And not just in writing.
I am currently in a workshop and each week we write in response to a series of prompts. Rather than generating new work, I've been using the prompts to take a fresh look at pieces in my "drafts" folder. This is not working. I find myself simply line editing them, or altering them to respond to the prompts. The resulting pieces feel less alive, for sure. I know there is something between starting endless new pieces and merely polishing the turds. My writing life is stuck in this "bardo."
I've been working on a story without regard to length. I tend to let the story come out and just follow it along, thinking I can cut back on it later. The problem is that I don't cut, but generally add more to it. I don't know how long a story for THE NEW YORKER has to be, only that they never take mine. They're always long, because that's what I love to read. That's why I love and adore Alice Munro. Reading one of her stories is like reading a full novel. Even though I know 18,700 words is too long--even for THE NEW YORKER--I find myself going back and looking at it, wondering where to cut it. I guess that's why I like Substack. I can put my stories on here and not have to worry about it being too long. I can cut it into sections and put them up one at a time, which gives me time to work on my next one. It would be nice if only once, some editor at some big magazine said they liked it, but it's too long. I could live with that.
Speaking of cutting it down, I base way too much on my visual impression of a cover image (at the start, anyway) and man-oh-man do I love the last cover you posted which, of course, I've seen already but still love. ALL of the covers you posted are great, I have to say, but that one always stops me for longer. It has just the very very slightest hint of trouble brewing wrapped in the most beautiful hues of the most gorgeous scenery, or so we (maybe just I) have been made to think, and believe, is a tantalizing glimpse of paradise with an animal reminding us of the flaw in that thinking. Way way back when I took a college course called "Outdoor Recreation"...yes it really existed, as part of studying the development and creation of park spaces for the public...I participated in a study in which we, the subjects, were shown slide after slide (remember those?) of scenes from scenic-view pullovers, and we had to rate them. I never found out what won the day...perhaps some close-up foliage, a meandering river or creek that led away at ideal angles to draw the eye, and layers upon layers of blue-green misty mountain peaks...can't recall, but those scenes still and will always resonate with something mysterious. Even a still image can tell a story, so choose your covers carefully if given the opportunity :-)
I recently read a piece in my writers group and as I did I had a deja vu of this story having another version...
Looking back over my work I found the edited version of the piece... the edited version was the one I tended to share ...
However each had a completely different story to tell...
Same intro... some of the same paragraphs...completely different outcome...
The cleverest sections were in the original piece(my opinion)... while the edits highlighted the “point” ...
Editing is almost a cruel sister to the work sometimes...
As one who becomes attached to their words... editing as much as I hate it.., often opens the door to more and better understanding of what the point was ..,
We are talking here about 500 to 1200 word pieces...at most...
A bit different than short story or novel writing... and yet as difficult to navigate.