Doing Something New

One of the stories I reviewed today is about two women who are trying to write.  They met in a grad school English program; one went on to teach at the university level, and is discouraged about her dissertation thesis, thinking it's not worthy of publication; the other ended up working in a preschool and writing stories that attempt to use language in new ways.  "I don't think it's worth it to write anything unless you're trying to do something new," the short-story writer says to the woman who is a university professor.  The professor thinks:  yeah, but what if you're just trying to pay the bills?

I see both points of view; one of the reasons I wrote the story, obviously.  But I side mostly with the short-story writer.  It's too depressing to write unless something about what you're doing is completely new.

Are my short-short stories new?  Just in the sense that I'm trying to write stories that talk about people's lives in a deep way, in a thousand words or less.  But in terms of language, the stories aren't all that innovative.  Also, their structure isn't all that exciting.

One thing that appears necessary, however, when you're writing a very short story, is to have extremely good beginnings and endings.  The opening has to set the scene very quickly and pull you into that character's life in one or two sentences.  The closing has to resonate, like a bell that's struck and makes your whole body hum.  It has to open up the characters--expose secret passageways into their souls, and by extension, into yours.  Maybe, as the writer, I'm not going to guide the reader through every secret passageway (in fact it's impossible to do so), but, I must show the reader where they are, and let them imagine what the path looks like.  Some of the characters are depressed or shut down in some way; in that case, I lead the reader to that secret path, only to have it disappear under brambles and thorns; no way through.

I'm a bit depressed myself, about several different things; but at the same time, I have a stronger sense, as I work my way through the stories one more time, that most of them--maybe eighty percent?--deserve to be published.  In some ways, I feel like my stories are more myself than I am, right now...they're my better self.

In the next batch of short-shorts (if I ever get to the next batch) I will experiment more with new styles and forms.  It just feels like the direction in which I'm headed.