Category: Uncategorized

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.

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.

Responding to a response to a response to a letter sent to the world

November 22, 2020 / chiselch

I’m not much of a social media person. I like direct contact, which is why I will fire off an e-mail note to someone whose work or other actions has been particularly impressive. I believe in saying “thanks.”

When I recently read a letter to the editor in The New Yorker, I enjoyed the sentiments and felt a parallel with my own experience. So I looked up the writer, and found a web page (so old-school, right?), and (egads!) contact information.

I wrote a note.

And he wrote back.

And so it went.

I’ve pasted our exchange sequentially below. It left me feeling a sense of elation, that people like Ken Bates and his wife are out there in the world, working hard, doing what it takes to make a life — far beyond the inanity of our political yammering classes and their lumpish militants.

(from New Yorker, Nov. 23, 2020)

Obamacare and Me

Barack Obama’s memoir of how the Affordable Care Act was passed illuminated the origins of a policy that has affected me profoundly (“The Health of a Nation,” November 2nd). I am a career commercial fisherman. In the nineteen-seventies, when I started working, fishermen and merchant mariners like me had federally supported health coverage through a scheme that had existed for decades. That scheme was terminated, in 1981, by Ronald Reagan. For a time, I bought private insurance, but eventually it became too expensive for my seasonally fluctuating income.

When A.C.A. insurance became available, I quickly signed up. A year later, I had a heart attack, and needed a cardiac stent. The plan I obtained through the health-insurance exchange covered my extensive medical bills and, as a result, my wife and I were able to keep our home, our truck, and our fishing boat.

I am now seventy. This summer, I spent a hundred and ten days on the ocean. No one gets where they are without the help of others. It was a pleasure to read this piece, which illustrated in such detail how I was helped by folks I will never get to meet.

Ken Bates
Eureka, Calif.

(My note to Ken, and our back-and-forth)

Ken

It was so great to see your letter in the current issue of the New Yorker. It mirrored my experience. I had insurance from my business in newspapers for many years, but after I went freelance in 1997, I had to pay my own. Rates kept going up, even though I never claimed a dime. Luckily, I stayed healthy (I work out, run, windsurf).

I watched progress of ACA. Why they waited until 2014, beyond me. But when it arrived, I benefited from supplements and coverage. One benefit was coverage for a colonoscopy after age 50. I got one, it found a large mass in my colon, which surgery removed. It was benign, but could have become cancer.

I’m now 70. I figure I’ve had a glorious additional six years because of the ACA, and even though my surgery under the pre-Medicare insurance cost my wife and me about $11,000 out of pocket, the insurance covered the other $41,000 of the bill. In each of those facts, so much to unpack.

We have been getting screwed by the insurance companies for years. Read “The Bitter Pill” in Time magazine to learn how they have worked the con. The ACA was not perfect (it kept insurance companies in the game), but it got us a step closer to Medicare for All. I’ve got it. Why doesn’t everybody?

Best of health and success to you,

Stu

Good evening Stuart,

Thank you so much for your comments concerning my letter to the editor in the New Yorker and taking the time to track me down. Your story concerning your experience with the ACA is exactly the reason that health care for the American public is so important. I have had the “opportunity” to experience health care costs both ways.

Before the ACA, my wife and I were uninsured, but we have led a very fiscally conservative lifestyle. Through the years we have tried to save as much money as we could. 9 years ago, after spending the summer trolling for salmon on the ocean, the two of us came home, switched fishing gears and proceeded to fish anchovies for 22 days straight, nose to the grindstone and no breaks.

3 days later, I got my hand smashed between two filthy fish bins in the back of a guy’s truck. That led to a MERSA infection, 8 days isolated in the hospital and surgery. Even with a 30% discount with a cash payment, the hospital bill erased most of the income from our summer and fall work.

Again, I really do appreciate the time you have taken to contact me. I am curious about your newspaper and writing work and where you wind surf. I have board surfed since fifth grade. Linda and I usually take a month in February to surf and hike in the desert in Baja California. The two of us live on a small island in Humboldt Bay. It has been frosty the last couple of nights and we expect it will be a cold one tonight. It is probably chilly where you are too.

Stay warm and stay healthy,

Ken and Linda

Ken,

So good to get your note, and so sad to read of your encounter with the medical-insurance complex. What a tragedy, that someone who can work so hard to make a buck finds it stolen because of an accident for which he needs care. I say stolen, because I believe that is what it is. The people who fixed your hand did a good job, and probably got a decent check for it. But the real theft was the skim that the hospital took, and all the other expenses they loaded into that bill.

The chief exec at a small hospital in The Dalles makes over $700,000 a year. Does he deserve it? Ha! Guess I know the answer.

Yours sounds like a lovely life, nonetheless. I would love to meet you and Linda some day. I almost went to school at Humboldt, shifted to Southern Oregon, finished my journalism studies at Oregon. Ended up back in Ashland for 14 years, working at the Medford paper, hiking all over southern Oregon and northern California. Love it down there.

When I was a kid, I wave-surfed in SoCal, but too many people for me back in the late ’60s, so I ran away to Oregon and never looked back.

My wife and I are taking a winter break to spend some time in Summerland, south of Santa Barbara. No plans for our return route. If we detour along the coast, I’ll give a call. Maybe we can grab a beer (if the Covid situation permits).

Best to you both,

Stu

Good morning,

If Linda and I had to pick a place to hang out in Southern California, it would be Summerland. I grew up surfing on that stretch of coast, and I fished lobsters out of Santa Barbara for about ten seasons. We have a ton of friends there including five or six commercial fishermen that are in our code ( radio) group when we fish salmon every summer.

If you find yourselves driving through Eureka, let us know. We have a guest cabin here on the island, and would be happy to put you up for a night. Otherwise we would love to bring you over to the island for a visit; the only way to get here is by boat.

Happy thanksgiving,

Ken and Linda

The finest line

June 23, 2020 / chiselch

When is it abuse, and when is it guided introduction to the mysteries of life? When is it “criminal,” and when is it a rite of passage?

There’s a fine line between the two. A sense of gratitude on the part of the student probably tilts the answer. Follow this link to read a recent examination of such an experience, published in The Maine Review.