Short Stories and Magic Tricks by Savita Kalhan

I’ve been reading short stories for years. I fell in love with them when I discovered Italo Calvino when I was a student, but I think my love for short stories started much earlier, from when I was a child reading fairy tales, folk tales, and myths and legends from around the world.

I’ve been writing short stories for several years too. Aladdin’s Lamp is published in Stories from The Edge, a collection of short stories for teens.

Recently I decided to embark on a short story writing course. It’s something I’ve never done, but I’m hoping it will be fun as well as developing my writing, opening my mind to new ways of thinking and approaching short story writing.

Not every writer is interested in short story writing. Cormac McCarthy once said: “I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.” Not surprisingly, he only ever wrote two short stories, whilst at college, before turning to writing novels.

For Neil Gaiman, a “short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.” That’s how I feel about short stories too. They can be as poignant and resonate with a reader as much as a novel, and in a far more accessible form. The impact of a short story does not differ from that of a novel; its brevity is only in its length, not in the emotional response it might elicit from the reader. “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” – Kurt Vonnegut. It’s good advice when every word counts.

But a short story should be as long or as short as it needs to be. F Scott Fitzgerald refused to cut The Women in the House down to fit the remit of magazines and newspapers, and only very reluctantly revised it a little after it had been rejected many times. Most submissions for short story anthologies will specify a maximum word count, and keeping within it can be tough. When a story I’ve written just won’t fit the specs, I’ve often had to sit down and write another story instead. Easier said than done. 

Unlike a novel, where there is time and space to explore themes, short stories necessarily have a different arc. "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail," in the words of Alice Munro.

Two of the short story anthologies I’m really looking forward to reading are – A Change is Gonna Come, written by a collection of BAME, teen, and YA authors, and published by Stripes on 10th August.

The second is A Spot of Folly by Ruth Rendell, which is a collection of nine short stories published in magazines dating back to the 1970s. (There may be a Barbara Vine story in there too). There is a page still missing from one of her short stories – Digby Lives – I really hope the editor manages to find it!

“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row,” Ray Bradbury once said. I have never been brave enough to attempt to write one short story a week, but it does pose a real challenge! It may not have been possible for Rad Bradbury to write 52 bad short stories in a row, so it’s easy for him to say that it’s not possible for other people to achieve it! Still, it is a challenge...

Over the next month I hope to be working some magic with short stories and if I manage to write four, I'll be happy!

Savita's Website

On Not Feeling Guilty About Not Writing – by Rowena House

Confession: when my forehead is bleeding over a particularly stubborn scene, I find some of the motivational quotes which punctuate my Twitter feed deeply irritating. One that bugs me more than most is attributed to Ray Bradbury: ‘You only fail if you stop writing.’

Now I’ll bet £20 and a curry that, in context, this quote makes a good point.

[A few years ago I watched a great hour-long speech by Ray Bradbury to US creative writing students – via a link in one of Candy Gourlay’s ever-informative blogs – in which he had many brilliant things to say, including a recommendation to write one short story a week on the grounds that no one can write 52 rotten stories per year.]

But the mantra ‘You only fail if you stop writing’ is often taken to mean that we must keep plugging away regardless; we shouldn’t get up from our computers until we’ve reached a minimum daily word count; the muse must strike between nine-to-five or whatever time of day we’re chained to our desks, etc. etc.

All of which advice may well help many people keep going.

So why do I instinctively rebel?

In that time-honoured tradition of seeking evidence to support one’s intuitions, rather than challenging them with uncomfortable data, I’ve been on the hunt for reasons to justify my gut reaction.

The search bore fruit.

Ironically, the first clue came from an article entitled Inspiration for Slackers in the latest edition of Bath Spa University’s magazine. In it, Lucy Jolin quotes Nick Sorensen, Associate Dean at the Institute for Education, talking about the ‘reflective practitioner’ in education.

I recognised this theory of education from my days at Bath Spa on their fab MA in writing for young people. Reflective commentaries on different elements of our writing processes were an important part of that course, and this reminder made me realise that part of my hostility to “plugging away regardless” probably stemmed from this training.

As far as I understand it, reflective practice presupposes that being good at something requires practice. [Back to that famous 10K hours of practice to become an expert in your chosen field.] But it also says that even when we do something well, we won’t necessarily be able to repeat that success unless we know what’s so great about it, and how we achieved it. Ditto for things that don’t work.

Thus, unless we give ourselves the time and space to analyse our writing, we will remain at the mercy of inspiration, which (imo) is actually the route to becoming a slave to perspiration.

This small epiphany led to more general thoughts about the evolution of a book I’ve been working on (off and on) for more than four years, into which I’ve poured much that I love as well as things that I fear, moments that have shocked me, things that have bought great joy and others deep sadness.

In other words, it’s about life with all its ups and downs.

So I reckon another reason for my instinctive mistrust of the idea of obsessing over words for too long in the lonely garrets of our minds is an underlying belief that we need to live life whole-heartedly in order to write well.

Other people have, of course, made this point many times before, including Stephen King, who put it succinctly: ‘Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way round.’   

Rowena House

Twitter: @HouseRowena

 

 

Saving books by Savita Kalhan

There is a scene in  The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam, which has always stayed with me. One of the characters, Qatrina, nails all her books to the ceiling in an attempt to save them from being discovered by the Taliban, who would have inevitably burnt them had found them. Qatrina reasons that no one would think to look up at the ceiling, and so the books would be saved.

In Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451, books are outlawed, forcing a group of rebels to memorise them and make themselves walking libraries so that the books were not lost forever.

In the Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, there is  "The Cemetery for Forgotten Books", from which visitors were required to leave with one book and protect it forever. For the main character, Daniel, the Cemetery is not only a refuge from the world outside, but also provides him with a book that will change his life.

I read another story recently, this time a true story, of a librarian in Timbuktu - Mr. Haidara. He and his fellow librarians and archivists worked under the cover of darkness to smuggle out thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, ancient texts, parchments and books, all concealed inside metal chests and oil barrels and hitched onto donkeys. It was an extremely dangerous and brave feat, which took eight long months and which resulted in the saving of around 400,000 ancient texts. Mr. Haidara's story is now a book, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu, written by Joshua Hammer and published by Simon and Schuster.

Books are revered the world over, libraries are places where everyone can learn and understand the world as it once was, the world as it is at present, and the world to come.

Unfortunately the number of 'bad-ass' librarians in our libraries is going down every week. In the last six years 8000 jobs have gone. That's a quarter of the permanent workforce. Unqualified volunteers working in libraries now number 31,403.

The number of libraries that have closed over the last six years is 343. Another 232 have transferred to community groups or outsourced. A further 111 are proposed for shut down over the next year or so. You can read more about it here with all the stats on BBC NEWS, and on the CILIP blog if you want to know more.

One of the arguments used in favour of shutting down some of the libraries is that they are underused and that not many books are borrowed. I use my local library, and I sometimes use the library in the next borough. My local library does not have the budget to buy many new books. The library in the next borough seems to have more of a budget and gets more new books in.

I can't request books from another borough for my teen reading group, so if my library doesn't have them, then we're stuck. We're getting a lot more stuck these days. Libraries are being run down. Then they are closed.

I love fictional libraries, and there are many, but nothing beats a real library.

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Y.A. at Hay - Celia Rees

I was recently at the Hay Festival, in conversation with Melvin Burgess and Daniel Hahn, talking about Young Adult fiction and our novels, This is Not Forgiveness and Kill All Enemies.

Daniel Hahn, Melvin Burgess, Celia Rees 

The discussion was interesting (I hope for the audience, too) and wide ranging. At one point, Daniel asked us if there was anything that we thought we could not write about, any taboo subjects, any darkness too impenetrable? I found myself giving the stock Y.A. writer's answer about leaving the reader with hope, etc., etc.. Melvin disagreed. This livened the discussion considerably, and his response gave me cause to pause and food for thought. He outlined a thesis which took me right back to where I began as a YA writer and also made me think about how far we have travelled since then but how little ground we had gained. 

It is an accepted shibboleth ( like the one about 'hope') that ‘at one time’ there ‘wasn’t much written for teenagers’, ‘nothing available for them’.Of course, this is not true. Teenagers have always found things to read, books and authors they felt comfortable with, even if those books were not written specifically with them in mind. Books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery. And then there are the sic-fi/dystopian fiction writers: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, John Wyndam’s The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids, J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World and Empire of the Sun, John Christopher’s The Trouble with Grass.

Quite a considerable canon. I read a lot of these books when I was a teenager, back in a time when novels for teens were not supposed to exist. I don’t remember feeling deprived, or thinking I’d have to stop reading because there was ‘nothing for me’. I thoroughly enjoyed the books I discovered on the adult shelves of the library, finding them myself, or being directed to them by friends who liked the same books I did. Reading these books was a rite of passage. I found my mind stretched, my understanding deepened, my assumptions questioned and challenged, my imagination

 fired. They weren’t writing for me particularly, but that didn’t matter, they were connecting with me on all sorts of different levels.

Melvin’s argument was that because these writers recognised no limits, there are no limits. I found myself agreeing with him and thinking that these books and these writers should be our benchmark. Perhaps we have compromised too far. In creating a specific Teen/Y.A. Lit. (although I still think that is important) we’ve wandered away from these writers who had the power to appeal to adults and teenagers alike. We have compromised, we’ve bowdlerised. We’ve listened to outside voices: gatekeepers telling us what is acceptable and unacceptable; Focus Groups and Target Readers; Publishers who tell us what the market wants, what it will tolerate.

Compare some of the books and authors I’ve cited, especially in Gothic, Dystopian and Science Fiction, with what is on offer at the moment in these genre, and you will see exactly what I mean. Where is the depth and breadth of the vision, the resonance and relevance, the imaginative reach, the complexity of the realised worlds, the quality and power of the writing? It is a salutary lesson. Of course, teen readers can go and read these books, and they should, but that is not the point. It is not good enough to mine them, to take from them, we should be producing books that bear comparison.

Creativity is a strange thing. Those books that I read when I was a teenager challenged me to think, fired my imagination, introduced me to ideas, and opened me up to possibilities. Maybe that experience is what led me to want to write for teenagers. True, or not, I’m thinking about going back. At least I’ll be guaranteed a damn good read!

I’m taking a break from blogging for ABBA but I’ve been proud to be part of the blog and to have seen it go from strength to strength. I’ll certainly be visiting regularly in the future to read and to comment.

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RAY BRADBURY, GREEN TOWN, ILLINOIS, AND NEW TENNIS SHOES – Pauline Fisk on the passing of a great writer

I’m not mourning Ray Bradbury, because I never knew him, not like Margaret Atwood who wrote about him so movingly this weekend.  No, I’m mourning that boy who was sometimes called Douglas Spalding, sometimes Will Halloway, sometimes Jim Nightshade, because that boy was my friend and now he’s gone, his life like a leaf blown down a midnight street.

But Green Town, Illinois, still stands.  Thank God for that.  With its ravine, which scared me witless first time I read about it, and its hero celebrating summer and new tennis shoes, it’s alive and well.  All you have to do is open ‘Dandelion Wine’, or ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ or one of the other stories drawing on Bradbury’s childhood in Waukegan, Illinois, in the 1920s, and there it is.

Over the last year or so I’ve been taking part in a Goodreads debate, started by me, on whether ‘Farenheit 451’ or ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ is Bradbury’s best book. In the course of this debate I’ve been introduced to ‘The Halloween Tree’ and ‘From the Dust Returned’.  Both have the power to fascinate, but for me they don’t match ‘Something Wicked.’ And they definitely don’t match the short stories.

Would Bradbury get a look in if he were writing today? How much shelf space would our booksellers – how much media space would our publicists – afford him?  And our publishers, who can’t imagine how to market authors without tidy pigeon-holes – how would they have dealt with a writer like Bradbury who created his own pigeon-holes?

If you’ve never read Ray Bradbury, do so immediately and see what I mean. And prepare to be inspired. Fiction’s a conversation.  You read a story and, by means of your own stories, find the way to join in. I’d never have written my first novel, ‘Midnight Blue’, for example, without ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’.  And how many other authors, I wonder, owe a similar debt of gratitude - not just to Bradbury as story-teller but as wordsmith too?

Bradbury always had a lot to say, but he always got it dead right. ‘The ocean burned,’ he wrote in the short story, ‘The Women’, in the celebrated anthology ‘I Sing the Body Electric.’ ‘A white phosphorescence stirred like a breath of steam through the autumn morning sea, rising. Bubbles rose from the throat of some hidden sea ravine.  Like lightening in the reversed green sky of the sea, it was aware. It was old and beautiful. Out of the deeps it came, indolently. A shell, a wisp, a bubble, a weed, a glitter, a whisper, a gill. Suspended in its depths were rainlike trees of frosted coral, eyelike pips of yellow kelp, hairlike fluids of weed. Growing with the tides, growing with the ages, collecting and hoarding and having unto itself identities and ancient dusts, octopus-inks and all the trivia of the sea.’

See what I mean.

Lately I’ve come to appreciate a more pared-back style of writing. When it comes to short stories, Raymond Carver’s my man. I love the clean, clear lines of Annie Dillard, Marilyn Robinson and - newly discovered by me - the wonderful American writer, Linda McCullough Moore.

When it comes to Bradbury, however, I’m a child again.  His words come tumbling out and I’m tumbling after them, seeing where they’ll take me, clinging on for the ride. Another me - the editor me - might groan as gusting follows spinning, and whirling follows trembles, shudders and inhalations of a wind-sucking kind.  But the reader me would have it no other way. Nor would the writer me, who can’t see a tattoo on an arm without wondering if it ever comes alive.   Nor the explorer me, young again, tucked up in bed with book and torch, waiting to see where Bradbury’s electricity will strike next. 

But now something’s come to Green Town, Illinois, and taken Ray Bradbury away.  Some might say it’s a rocket come to take him to the stars, or a train come to take him on a midnight ride. But I say it’s tennis shoes that have taken Ray Bradbury - shoes soled with marshmallows and woven of grass; new shoes, magic ones, and he’s off, jumping over fences and sidewalks, dogs and houses, rivers and trees. And it’s summertime where he’s heading.

It always is when an author gets new shoes.