Author: chiselch

A car covered in stickers is a person wanting to be known

May 12, 2022 / chiselch

We were driving north from Portland toward Tacoma today, when we passed a small import. Maybe a Toyota Yaris. Not sure, because the car was blanketed in stickers.

At 75 mph, and hands on the wheel, I didn’t have time to write down an inventory of what this person had put on their car. I made a crack, that if it wasn’t for the stickers, the car might fall apart. It was fairly new. To most people, that’s when you want to avoid the stickers and put your shiny new-car face out to the world. But this person (no idea if male or female) had covered the side rear windows and rear window and some of the trunk and rear bumper with stickers.

I commented about the absurdity of it all, but my wife saw something more.

“Everybody wants to be known,” she said. “They want their friends and even people who aren’t part of their life to know who they are, what they care about, what matters to them.”

To her, stickers are way to put it all out there. To make sure they don’t die without having had a chance to assert their likes and dislikes, their loves and loathings.

To assert one’s individual salad of preferred flavors. To deny anonymity. To pre-empt the disinclination of most people to peel back the layers of those they meet.

My wife and I talk often about the types of people we meet. Some show genuine curiosity. They ask questions about you, sincerely want to learn who you are and what you love.

Others couldn’t give a shit. They are more than happy when you inquire of them and their lives, their loves and loathings, their kith and kithin’ kin. Interrogate them until the cows come home, but once you stop, they go mute. They don’t know what to do next, when the spotlight fades. They never show any interest in others. They are all sticker, no car.

In Tacoma later that week, a good longtime friend of ours would be attending a memorial for her brother. He died at age 67. She wrote his obituary, celebrating his engaging personality and a successful career in business, much of it focused on boats built in and around Tacoma for use in the Puget Sound and the fertile fishing waters of Alaska. He was a genial, engaging guy. And gone.

I never knew him or had the chance to engage before he passed. But I wish now that I could see his car. What sort of stickers did he put on his Tesla? Or Subaru? Or did he forswear such gauchery? And if he did, how did he pass to the next level with any confidence that he was known?

His sister knew him. Her obituary described a person well worth knowing. Nothing about his choice of car.

One’s choice of car says much to the world in which it rolls. Grandfather types of a bygone generation buy Buick aind Oldsmobile. Hipsters or a more recent vintage buy Hummers and sprinter vans, to present a gallery of toys to a discerning public.

Stickers take it to another level. I want to meet a guy with a Freaks for Bernie and an AC/DC and a Doobie Doobie Do sticker. Tarkio Road, dude. Right on. Tight fence. Give my regards to the Big Guy. See you when we meet the Spirit in the Sky.

When Is a Short Story Short Enough?

January 18, 2022 / chiselch

Trigger warning: This post has a lot of words about writing of few words.

I had no desire to write mega maxi micro fiction. Lately, I find myself doing just that.

Thank you, editors, for incentive, by creating spaces online that specialize in dishing up reallllly pared-down fictions.

Some want nothing longer than 500 words. Some want everything under 200 words. When I wrote journalism columns, I had to stop at … 700 words!

OMG!

Comparing an editor who wants nothing longer than 200 words to one who wants nothing longer than 100 is like comparing competitors in a midget boxing match. When is (oh, sorry, appropriate language police just left) twice as much of almost nothing an appealing thing?

Well, actually, it’s pretty sexy. For one reason, we live in a time of shortened attention spans. When Twitter expanded the length of allowed Tweets, it seemed to push in the opposite direction. Generally, we have become a people of conversation, texts and tweets and photos instead of text.

This is not good news for a writer, but when you find yourself in the land of micro mensch, it may be a good idea to step it down. Are we at the dawn of the 1,000-word novel?

I can write long, but my wife (when she was my boss) told me to give her nothing more than 700 words. I learned. It worked. It was a great lesson, mid-career, in how to say something succinctly.

In the world of fiction, 700 words is a very modest “flash.” It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in that space.

Not long ago, I was reminded that a group of writers and editors like it even smaller. Really small. I started sticking my toes into the waters of micro fiction. What a revelation.

I still let the story dictate length, but every so often, I have an idea that begs for extreme reduction.

The process is a marvelous exercise. It works not just to reduce a story to a 100-word nugget, but to hone skills for self-editing everything. A year ago, I wrote a mid-length story of just over 4,000 words. It has languished. Every time I return to it, I find ways to trim flab (ironic, given that the tale involves a woman with a yo-yo weight problem).

Not long ago, I took it from 4,300 words down to 3,200 words.

It’s much more powerful, because it’s much less self-indulgent. Less writing, less florid prose leads to more of what you, the reader, deserve. You deserve a story, well told, succinctly written. If I can do it in 3,200 words, you can finish it in the time it takes to eat a Reese’s cup. That’s great.

If you have any 3,200-word stories lying around, think about how you couild trim them down to 100 words. It’s worth a try. You never know how instructive the exercise could be. And how good the story could become.

“Hobo Heart” publication is a little bit like pregnancy and birth

January 9, 2022 / chiselch

Not that I would know a bit what it’s like to be pregnant, or give birth. The analogy may make a little more sense if you understand that submitting a story for an editor’s consideration, and then hearing that they want to publish your story is only the start of a process.

It takes time, just like a baby, for a story to reach the oxygen outside. Lots of work on the publication’s side, to tweak your text into the format the publication features. And time to wait until it can fill a hole in the calendar. Other stories and other writers must land their planes first.

Now I’ve gone and done it. Switched metaphors in mid blog post. From babies birthing to airplanes landing.

All that is prelude to the news that a long-loved and labored-over story of mine, “Hobo Heart,” has launched at the highly regarded Mystery Tribune. This story emerged from a variety of influences. I routinely read the police reports in our local paper. Sometimes bad behavior suggests fiction.

I also am a student of our nation’s sad history around race relations. I didn’t know much about it until I went away to college. When I started studying abuses heaped on black Americans, the history of chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, terror lynching, economic disadvantage, I found myself trying to imagine what it was like, growing up black in America, when the weight of social oppression awaited every day.

Then I read an item in the paper about a report of books and a bicycle being found along our local tracks. And missing cattle. All that started mooshing around in my head until I had created a black sociology professor interested in seeing for himself what his father and grandfather had seen. And Bub, the white hobo embodiment of all that history and hatred. I set the major part of the story in my own backyard, the cities and towns of the Columbia River Gorge.

Anyway, if you get a chance, please read it. The folks at Mystery Tribune told me about a year ago they wanted to run it. Like babies, these things take their time to see the light.

New publications all over the map …

October 14, 2021 / chiselch

… but when it’s a digital map, it’s right in your lap.

So fun to have a new short story (remember, this is fiction, not auto-biography, ahem) in Horror Sleaze Trash. Yes, that’s the name of the publication. They like to push the limits, and saw my work as a perfect fit. The story is titled “Bedtime Story.” It’s absurd. It’s winky kinky. It’s just another night at home with the family, dad telling his same old stories about him and his wife and when they went where … well, you’ll just have to read it.

Also happy to have another piece accepted by J. Archer Avary and the crew at Sledgehammer Lit. I’ve had several placements at their site during the last year. The newest acceptance won’t appear until January 2022, but I wanted to tip you off so you can stop doing anything else, mix a stout cocktail, and settle down to wait. Just wait. It’s a piece titled “Orgasm Donor.” Like a blood donor or a kidney donor — only different.

Coming out soon at The Opiate, a slightly longer piece about numb-nuts family feuding over the scraps left by dear old dead. Dad, I mean, dear old dead Dad.

Also on approach, the same piece in the print version of Blood & Bourbon. When I have a fresher link to share, I’ll post it here.

What else? OMG, I don’t think I told you about my piece in the Potato Soup Journal (hey, how many of you can say you’ve had work in the PSJ, let alone the PB&J?). It’s called “Downhill from Here,” and it’s absurd. Dive in. You might enjoy the ride.

All of this is free to you, BTW, so thanks again to all the lit-loving editors out there who have seen something worth sharing in my efforts. It’s a dance driven by loads of love.

In the land of mashed, fried and dipped, too many spuds is just an opportunity

July 28, 2021 / chiselch

New stories up on the webisphere.

Check out “A Thing of Beauty” at the Barzakh magazine, a story that I’m quite proud of.

Also, a new absurdity at the Potato Soup Journal (yes, that’s its name; got a problem with that?). It’s a fun little tale with an skewed tilt (what else, right?) and made for prime time. Read on.

Check the Writing tab to see links to more stories, if you’re tired of watching “Letterkenny” on Hulu. Was that a plug? Sorry, but nobody paid me, soooo …

It’s not that hard to just do nothing — and enjoy it

April 13, 2021 / chiselch

Even though I am what is called “retired,” my life often reflects a frenetic quality.

Not yesterday. On Monday, April 12, 2021 — a day that shall go down in … well, not infamy, but perhaps novelty? — I did pretty much nothing. I sat on my ass and worked on writing projects with my laptop computer.

From the minute I got up, made coffee, fed myself a warmed-over blue corn donut from Whoo’s here in Santa Fe (where my wife and I are taking a break from doing nothing at home, to not doing it here), I sat in my corner chair and did my “work.”

That is, revising short story drafts, and combing the webs for potential places to publish my work, and actually sending a few stories to a few such places.

Anyone looking at me would say, that dumbass is doing nothing.

I realized, as the hours ticked past noon and drained toward dusk, that I hadn’t moved except to pee and fetch tissue for my running nose.

My wife, rousing herself after nearly two weeks of acclimating to the 7,200-foot altitude, took the dog and want for an hour-long run.

I didn’t move. I was in my chair when she left. I was in it when she returned.

It felt great. Even after she returned, I kept at it. She asked what I had in mind for the day. I told her she was looking at it. She decided to leave and find repairs for an aging piece of turquoise jewelry. I wished her luck.

Guilt eventually took me by the collar, around 3 o’clock, and dragged me out the door for a run of my own. The altitude applied restraint, but I got my laps in. Had a nice chat with a couple of psychology profs from St. Louis, while their two dogs played with mine. Came home. Brewed a cup of tea and opened Joy Williams’ “The Visiting Privilege” to the title story.

I parked my ass on the deck. Diffuse sunlight warmed me, a drifting scrim of clouds changing shape and pulling my eyes from the text to see what was going on.

It was a great story, as readers of Williams would expect. My wife came home, I made us drinks, we chatted on the deck, went to a marvelous dinner at the venerable Coyote Cafe, came home, went to bed.

Perfect.