Short Stories

I’ve become rather obsessed with these recently. I actually mean the very short ones. I’ve just submitted on to Triond, and I had one published earlier this week on Rainy City Stories – “Wild Geese over Radcliffe”.

I think it’s a really interesting form. It has to be subtle with a bijou plot. My latest one, “Competition” was actually inspired by watching a cookery programme when I was at the gym.

I think they are also extremely subtle and the language can almost be like poetry. There often does have to be a certain amount of telling instead of showing, but there is still room for showing.

There is an “aha” moment. Sometimes it happens suddenly, sometimes it creeps up upon the reader. Sometimes it is the reader, sometimes the main character and sometimes both who have the sudden insight. It is only the reader in my latest two short stories.

Always – though I have come across one exception that worked well by one of my students – there is just one point of view.

Good short stories aren’t actually an easy read. They are a read so they are good for when you don’t have long to read – on public transport, last thing at night or over a cup of coffee. But they probably stay with you for a long time afterwards and you may spend many hours later mulling over what you have read.

They’re fairly literary – if you set aside those written for women’s magazines.

I guess it’s really this interest which has set me off on publishing short story anthologies for Bridge House Publications.

Proofs

Proofs for two of my novels came yesterday. I’ve already started reading them. It’s amazing that at this stage one still finds mistakes – of the copy editing variety. Have the gremlins got into the computer programmes and reverted the text to what it was before the copy edit began? Or am I having an argument with the copy editor?

It’s all about “dad”. I maintain that when it’s used as a name for a particular person it should be “Dad” e.g. “Come on get a move on,” said Dad, or “Eh, Dad, can I watch TV now?” However, when it’s generic, even if you are referring to a specific person’s dad, it should be “dad”. E.g. “All the mums and dads were waiting outside the school gates. Robbie’s dad had a battered old car.” But my text seemed peppered with idiosyncratic mixed examples of these. And I’d swear the copy editor and I had corrected them all before.

That aside, it’s exciting and scary at the same time getting final proofs. You get a sense of how the book is going to look. The text in this format seems slightly strange to you – you have seen it so often before in Word, on screen or hardy copy, but anyway double-spaced and ragged right. Now it’s single or 1.5 spaced and justified right. The pages are smaller. In addition, it’s a while since you saw it. You’ve forgotten things and you’ve actually probably moved on as a writer.

I’m reading Kiters at the moment, a fantasy for 9-11 and possibly the most literary novel I’ve written to date. That infernal inner critic was mumbling something about “Beautifully written, but will 9-11 year olds really appreciate it. Isn’t the main character a bit too old to be interested in kites?” The answer: “But the teachers will probably appreciate it. And the children who like to read about people Robbie’s age probably do still like kites.”

It is a material fact – especially in my case – that writers do move on and change. And often what we’ve written before makes us cringe.