fwriction

Ryan Call, writing for HTMLGIANT, brings a strong early addition to Short Story Month. 

I found that I could read again, and suddenly I could write again too. And so now I’m back to work, writing on a story collection that’s been an ongoing thing since late 2007 as well as something that could be a longer thing, which I just started. This is a step that has been incredibly difficult for me to take since having finished my last project.

In order to get over this difficulty, I thought I might take some time this month to reflect on some of the stories that have gotten me to this point. This, then, is my humble addition to Short Story month.

Flash Fiction Week comes to a close. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and that you come back and read these wonderful stories again and again. Special thanks to Guernica and SmokeLong Quarterly, for being endless wells of gorgeous writing.

There’s only one writer, to me, who can end this week in a manner worthy of flash fiction: Lydia Davis. If you want to learn how to write brilliant stories in few words, pick up her Collected Stories, right now. Any of the stories from this NPR excerpt could be today’s story of the day, but I’ve chosen just one: “How Difficult.” It’s linked here, and the full text is below. Happy Flash Fiction Week!

* * *

How Difficult

For years my mother said I was selfish, careless, irresponsible, etc. She was often annoyed. If I argued, she held her hands over her ears. She did what she could to change me but for years I did not change, or if I changed, I could not be sure I had, because a moment never came when my mother said, “You are no longer selfish, careless, irresponsible, etc.” Now I’m the one who says to myself, “Why can’t you think of others first, why don’t you pay attention to what you’re doing, why don’t you remember what has to be done?” I am annoyed. I sympathize with my mother. How difficult I am! But I can’t say this to her, because at the same time that I want to say it, I am also here on the phone coming between us, listening and prepared to defend myself.

I’ve been immersed in translation lately, and Lydia Davis, so this is a wonderful combination. This will be a continuing series over the next two weeks, leading to Davis speaking at the 92nd Street Y on October 4.

“It happened several time while I was doing the translation that I would open a newly discovered previous translation of Madame Bovary and my heart would sink. I would say to myself: Well, this is quite good! The work I’m doing may be pointless, after all! Then I would look more closely, and compare it to the original, and it would begin to seem less good. I would get to know it really well, and then it would seem completely inadequate.”

I heart Lydia Davis, and so does The Rumpus. Enjoy some insights from one of the greatest writers working today:

“I’d say of course love exists—we have only to consider our child, or our dog, to know that.  It’s changeable just because everything is changeable, because we’re alive.  In fact, I think it is a very deep instinct in us to welcome change.  That’s why sometimes good things are ruined…”

Lydia Davis is one of my favorite short story writers, and her ability to write “flash fiction” is something that every student of writing should take note of:

“Lydia Davis is an American short story writer whose work redefines the meaning of brevity. While a few of her stories are of a conventional length, most range from one to three pages, and many are shorter still, occupying as little as a paragraph or a sentence.”

Today’s Story of the Day is actually an “excerpt,” courtesy of NPR, from Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories. “The Old Dictionary” is one of my favorite all-time short stories, and it showcases why Davis is a master of “flash fiction” (as does “Losing Memory,” another story featured in this excerpt: it comes in at a cool twelve words). Enjoy this, and do yourself a favor: read as much Lydia Davis as possible.

“I have an old dictionary, about one hundred and twenty years old, that I need to use for a particular piece of work I’m doing this year. Its pages are brownish in the margins and brittle, and very large. I risk tearing them when I turn them. When I open the dictionary I also risk tearing the spine, which is already split more than halfway up. I have to decide, each time I think of consulting it, whether it is worth damaging the book further in order to look up a particular word.”