Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Jules Fitz Gerald's avatar

Love the balm of empathetic encouragement coupled with a firm kick in the pants.

I am just starting to cobble together a small string of acceptances and happened to get one yesterday for the lone nonfiction piece I had in circulation. I had to read the email a couple of times to be sure it was an acceptance, because I've gotten so used to rejections that start with some version of "Thank you for sending us X. We enjoyed it, but..." This one was strangely missing the "but". My husband and I went out to dinner to celebrate, and he, a sailor, made this observation: "It's nice to pass a buoy now and then. You were moving before you passed it, and you're still moving now, but it's nice to go by something that's attached to the ground now and then so that you can tell you're moving."

I'll be filing this post away to reread once I'm back in the long trough between buoys again.

Expand full comment
Annie Bee's avatar

I would like to share a moment of personal excitement in my own writing. The recent discussion on the shifting origins of "CommComm" made me look at one of my own half-finished stories in a new way. I often start a short story with a premise that is a little bit absurd, a little bit fantastic, but treated with a completely straight face. That's a storytelling tone that has always appealed to me.

As I looked at one of the stories I'm working on right now -- a story bogged down in tedium -- I saw how I could apply George's advice: turn towards the unexpected, and trim the dialogue. It seemed to me that where I had gone wrong was that having started the story with a fantastical premise, I doubled down on the logical explanations to sell the story to the reader. My characters kept explaining their thoughts and circumstances out loud for the reader who might wonder why, for example, a giant lobster was working in a fish market in Maine.

Yesterday and today I printed out the pages of the story, got out the trusty pencil and began trimming out the ho-hum. What a difference! The story flashes like lightning now. It's surprising, but everything is illuminated with a jolt.

The earlier version of the story resembled an outfit with a pink skirt and a pink blouse, a pink hat, a matching pink belt, and pink shoes, . Yes, it all goes together, but... nothing interesting is happening. Now I've added some slightly off kilter dance moves, trusted that my reader will figure it out, and found a more vigorous pace.

This is why I read "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain," this is why I've been faithfully following Story Club. Thanks, G.S. Thanks, everybody.

Expand full comment
208 more comments...

No posts