On Silence

When I started posting on websites and forums relating to writing, on a whim I set my avatar on most sites to this image:

For the last couple of years I've been waiting for someone to ask me what it is, or why I've used it, but none of you bastards have. But sod you, I'm going to explain anyway.

Some of you may know it's a close up of a 1615 painting by Salvator Rosa called Self Portrait. I've made sporadic and lacklustre attempts throughout my life to learn more about art, and this is one of the few paintings that's ever really struck me in the same way books or poems or songs do. Typically for me, it's not just the visual side that made an impact, but the words. 'AVT TACE AVT LOQVERE MELIORA SILENTIO.'

'Be silent, unless what you have to say is better than silence'

To me, silence is a blank page.

I think we can all admit there's too much noise in the world. And we all contribute to it: the emails, the Tweets, these godamn blog posts. Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, someone is talking, someone has written something down, usually in an attempt to sell you something. And I'm as guilty of it as the next person; more so, probably. "Buy my book, buy my book" a thousand times a week, each time in some cunning and eloquent new disguise.

But when you sit down in front of a blank piece of paper to write, that blankness is silence, that whiteness is silence. And I always think a writer should make sure that what they are about to write is better than that whiteness. That it's not just noise, that it's not just another cynical attempt to, ultimately, get money from people. That it stands with those other words that have broken the silence and have been better than it. That you're breaking the silence for love, not money.

Some Silence, yesterday.

This is a hypocritical blog posting, no doubt about it, and I deserve to be pilloried for attempting to make myself out to be all high-faluting and concerned with better things than everyone else, when really, really, all I'm saying here is "buy my book, buy my book" and wondering why the new words I'm typing feel so weary and familiar for all their newness. 

But hypocrisy doesn't stop us knowing what's right and wrong, and failing to stick to our own values doesn't remove the obligation from trying again the next time. We're all trying to scrape together money; we're all selling something. And that's the world we live in and that's the world we've created, and who are we to judge?

But when you sit down to write - not sell, not promote, not market, but write - take a long look at that blank white space; take a long listen to that silence. And write something better than it. If it helps, imagine this stern gaze upon you as you do so:

Self Portrait

Oh, and if anyone's still reading and wonders what I really look like, then here I am. Hello.

In Defence Of Short Stories #7: Jim Breslin

Before we dive in today, I'd just like to say to any new readers that I'm still on the look out for 'In Defence of Short Story' guest blog posts; I'd particularly be interested in posts covering different aspects of the short story than those so far: maybe discussions of a particularly story, or reflections on reading short stories live to an audience.

But onto the main event - today's guest is Jim Breslin, author of the literary short story collection 'Elephant' (Kindle UK | US | Nook); you can also sample two of the stories in 'We're Not Dog People' (Kindle UK | US). His short stories have been published in Think Journal and Metazen and he is also founder of the West Chester Story Slam. 

For lovers of short stories I can also heartily recommend paying a visit to Jim's blog, where he has set himself the challenge of reading and reviewing the thirty-six short stories long-listed by One Story - some great stories featured, and Jim's comments always make me want to read the stories, or read them again if I've read them before. Oh, and he also Twitters as @jimbrez

Take it away Jim...

Savoring the Short Story

The short story is the greatest of all art forms, but each one should be handled with the greatest of care. A short story is meant to be savored in quiet, read carefully in one sitting. It’s important not to rush through stories as though they are chapters of a novel. One story at a time. Take a break and refill your wine glass. Reflect. Contemplate. A short story provides a glimpse into every day life. They are often sketches of smaller moments, though some portray lengthier spans, even generations. But the ones I believe work best cover the smallest of moments, such as tracing the stretch marks on a wife's legs or eating crusty rolls in the back of a bakery while in mourning.

In the digital age we have so much information pecking at our brain. We are trained to read shorter bits of information. We spend our days scanning blurbs on the internet, tweets and Facebook posts. Last summer, we asked my 16-year-old son how his summer reading assignments were going. His response? “I don’t have time to read. I have to keep on top of my text messages.” This is a statement of our times.

We have moved from the information age to the digital age. Shorter is better. And you want to talk short form? The first place I was published was in David Pogue’s anthology The World According to
Twitter. I believe the short story is making a comeback because. Compared to reading one-line news blurbs on the Huffpo or Drudge, Facebook posts, text messages and tweets, the short story is the new novel. The world can be, should be, held at bay for fifteen or twenty minutes to escape in fiction, to be swept away by a tight and complete story.

For those that say they prefer a novel, I would like to suggest a new approach. Keep a collection of short stories on your nightstand. Read one story a night before bed, then flip off the light and mull the story over. Think of the symbolism and the themes. What the author was trying to stay? Does it resonate? Swish it around as if at a wine tasting. Smell the oak and the tannins? I think this analogy is very appropriate actually. Although I’m not a wine connoisseur, I can recall five or six wines that, for some reason, were perfect for my taste buds in that moment. A great short story also hits you in the moment. I first read Raymond Carver’s “A Small Good Thing,” while sitting in the back of a van with my brothers and sisters. Nearly thirty years later, I still vividly recall finishing the story, placing the book on my lap, and looking out the window. I didn’t want anyone catching me in tears after reading something so sad and beautiful.

Not many people forget reading Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” or the ending of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” In recent years, I felt my heart stop for a moment at the end of Donald Ray Pollock’s
“Real Life,” and I gasped at Boomer Pinche’s “Bethlehem is Full.” Reading the short story is like pursuing the perfect glass of wine. It can be enjoyed in one sitting, it doesn’t take hours, days or weeks to
get through, yet it resonates within you for a long time. And for this I am grateful.

 

"Alien Beings Who Float to Mischief"

I've been feeling good about my writing recently, so naturally I was cruising for a fall.

I've had a number of good reviews of The Other Room, and more excitingly, living, breathing, real-life readers contacting me to ask when my next book is due out. My initial thought is obviously they are taking the piss, but they were actually serious. Sometimes all you can say is 'wow'. Maybe, I thought, maybe, I'm not bad at this writing lark after all...

So obviously the next book I had to read was so startlingly original and brilliant it made me feel like a rank amateur again, and brought all the old insecurities back, re-energised after their holiday away. Say hello to Cate Gardner and her book 'Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits'.

In all seriousness this is a fantastic book, and one to make every lover of strange short fiction shout about it from the rooftops with excitement (or just, you know, blog about it). It's very hard to describe, but suffice to say if you like fifty percent or more of the things on the list below I think you'll love it:

• Neil Gaiman
• The League of Gentlemen
• The original versions of those classic fairy tales
• The Halls of Mirrors at the fair
• Stanley Domwood
• Deja Vu
• Bagpuss
• The weird bits in Dickens no one talks about
• Pinstripe Suits
• Kafka
• Overdosing on popping candy so much you can hear it in your head
• Deja Vu
• Roald Dahl
• Tim Burton

So check Cate Gardner out; some of you who click on the link are about to find your new favourite author.

p.s. the title of this post is how Google Translate renders a line from my first ever German review. I just love the phrase and have been saying it to myself ever since I read it.

Why Indie Authors Encourage Axe Murderers

I posted earlier about mutual back slapping (MBS) among the self-published community. But of course it existed long before the recent self-publishing boom, and I came across this anecdote the other day...

The author Shirley Jackson had just published her story The Lottery in the New Yorker, and caused a storm of controversy (which she describes in her essay 'Biography of a Short Story'). In amid the ton of hate mail, and the hundreds of letters asking where in the US this tradition happened (no, really) was a rare letter of praise.

Jackson knew she recognised the name, but she had no idea where from. After trying to remember without success for a few days, she wrote a "complimentary but non-committal" (MBS alert...!) reply and posted it. A few days later she was talking to some friends from California (where the letter from the mystery correspondent had come from) and mentioned the name. Really they said, you had a letter from him? His name had been all over the press for weeks; he had been been acquitted on a technicality of murdering his family with an axe. With a horrible sense of realisation, Jackson went and looked at the carbon of the letter she had written; the last line was:

"Thank you very much for your kind letter about my story. I admire your work, too."

The Horror Genre and Cardamom Ice Cream

As I mentioned in my last post, Alan Ryker posted a pretty interesting piece about the horror genre the other day. Which got me thinking about the whole 'genre' concept in general. Some people have really strict definitions of horror, of sci-fi, etcetera, sometimes subdividing to a lunatic degree. It's essentially a book seller's view of genre, as opposed to a book writer's one.

Me I think of genre as more like food flavourings and spices. True, you get some books that are like, say, a curry. One flavour dominates. These are your true genre novels, if we have to call them that. But some of the most interesting cooks are those that use flavours and ingredients in new and exciting ways. Which is why we have cardamom ice cream nowadays, as well as curries.

The books below are all ones that I think of as being like cardamom ice-cream; they might not say 'horror' on the back, but they sure as hell have some of the tang of a horror story, at least to my palate. I've started with one where the flavour is strong and the case obvious to me, and moved on to some where there's a merest after-taste and you may disagree with me entirely; let me know in the comments.

Kafka - Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Now if you don't agree this tastes somewhat of turmeric, garam masala and cardamom, then you should probably stop reading now. While this is, from one angle, the surreal, modernist classic it's always talked up to be, stories like Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony and The Judgement have had an obvious impact on horror writers since they became well known. The obvious literary successor to Kafka would seem to me Robert Aickman more than anyone - The Swords or The Trains being blinding examples.


Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child



I studied this one at university. There was a lot of talk in the lecture halls and seminars about how it comments on modern nuclear families, on the media's obsession with either protecting or demonising young people, about autism maybe. And I agreed. And I said it was also a horror novel.

Notice the "also". I wasn't disagreeing with them that what they saw in the book was there, just that, look, here's something else too. Some cardamom, if you will. I mean, 'evil' children are a cliché in horror fiction and films, probably more so at the time the book was written than now. And it seemed a textbook example of how to get round the 'reveal' - that sometimes dreadfully clumsy moment where an author undoes pages and pages of suspense to reveal just what his or her monster is. Lessing doesn't do a reveal, the book seems to deliberately play with that expectation and then not satisfy it, in a way that I thought was interesting if not, well, fully satisfying.

I didn't think any of this was controversial or unjustified by "the text" as the lecturer insisted we call it, but you should have seen some of the looks I got. Some of the self appointed guardians of literature really don't like you sullying their word-view with genre fiction. Fortunately Lessing, with this book and the sci-fi of some of her others, ignores such philistines.

Philip K Dick - Time Out Of Joint

But of course, science-fiction readers don't always like it when you suggest there's an overlap between sci-fi and horror, either. I mean they'll accept Alien, which is basically Lovecraft in space, but not some of the genre's more intellectual output like that of Philip K Dick. I mean there's no monsters here, like there (arguably) are in The Fifth Child. And that's what horror is, right? Monsters?

No. Horror is an emotion, a spice... And often what it tastes like is this: the nagging, persistent feeling that although the world seems okay, something, somewhere, is horribly wrong. You can taste it in The Haunting of Hill House, you can taste it in The Shinning, and you sure can taste it in Philip K Dick's books. Again, I'm not arguing Time Out of Joint isn't sci-fi, it absolutely is. I just argue that doesn't mean it hasn't also got a tang and whiff of horror to it.

Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

I suspect a few of you who were with me up until this point may be doubting me now. For a start, this is a play, not horror's most natural medium. And it's a play about plays, more specifically Hamlet, and two little people caught up in the action without understanding why. It's very funny, full of slapstick and philosophical humour, but also poignant too - the ending has always stuck with me. It's very British and a bravura display of word power and stagecraft. 

Horror?

Or, to describe R&GAD another way, it's about two people who begin to suspect that something, somewhere, is not quite right in their world... Sound familiar? Taste familiar? 

Seriously, read it again (or read it, if you haven't - it's a play that works well on the page too). Aren't the initial signs a little bit, well, unnerving (those coin tosses)? When the characters try and reassure each other and themselves all is well, isn't that sinking feeling that they're wrong familiar? 

And they all die at the end, which must count for something.

Now, after that post, I really fancy a curry...

In Defence Of Short Stories #4: Iain Rowan

This week's guest blog comes courtesy of Iain Rowan, who writes crime and horror short stories, amongst others. One of his stories, Lilies, has been featured in the Mammoth Best Of Horror Anthologies edited by Stephen Jones. Those of you with any interest in literate and intelligent weird fiction will already know what a big deal this is; to those who don't, I will just say that unlike most things that say "Best Of" on them, Stephen Jones anthologies actually are. And Lilies, also available as a standalone e-book, fully justifies its inclusion.

You'd expect such an author to write a great blog post defending short stories wouldn't you? You betcha.

Take it away Iain...

There are two ways to defend the short story, an easy way and a harder way.

The easy way is this. I say: read Chekhov and Carver, Joyce and  Kafka, Gogol and Murakami. Or I say: read Aickman and Machen, Ballard and Gilman, Bradbury and King. Or better still, read all of them, and more.

Job done, time for tea. 

That makes a dull blog post though, so I will try the harder way, and explain why I love reading and writing short fiction.  There are people who would never choose to read a short story, who don’t see the point of short stories, who don’t like short stories – you may be friends with these people, you may work with them, or you may see them on the street. Don’t be frightened by them – they mean no harm, but they do need your help, so please give generously. Anthologies, collections, whatever you can spare.

You may be one of these people. Don’t feel bad. Well, feel a little bad, because you are weird and more than a little wrong. But you can fight this thing. We’re with you. Well, a few apprehensive steps to the side, because of the whole weirdness thing, but with you in spirit.

I want to start with my defence of short stories by pointing out a way in which novels are better than them. With a good novel, you can lose yourself for hours, days, in a world of someone else’s imagination, that total immersion when the world of the book starts to feel as real as the one that you live in. You don’t get that with short stories. But that’s not a failing, because that’s not what they do. 

Short stories do something different. They are not little novels. They are not novels with lots of words left out. You don’t get immersion, you get a glass of icy water thrown in your face.  Bear with me, it’s more attractive than it sounds. While one of the charms of the novel is the room for digression and expansion, the beauty of the short story is the merciless concision it imposes. The short story ditches all that is dressing, it strips back all that is luxury, and it pares everything down to the single purpose of the story that is being told. It excludes most things, but in doing so attempts to capture one really important thing, whether that is an essential, startling revelation about what it means to be human, or scaring the living shit out of the reader when they turn the lights out later that night. 

One of the reasons why I think some genres work so well in the short form is that they can be read at one sitting. That kind of immersion in the story works well where the atmosphere that the writer builds is critical to the genre, and that’s why for me there will never be a novel of the supernatural that is as great as the best short stories.

Not only can short stories be read at one sitting, but they can be written in one too. Not all of my own stories have been written in this way (for that I’d need a better attention sp—hey look, a pony) but I like the continuity of tone and thought that you get writing the entire piece in one go, or over just a couple of sessions.

I have seen advice to writers which suggests starting with short stories, as if they are children’s bikes that you wobble along on until you are big enough and brave enough to take the stabilisers off and ride your way to a fat 120,000 word novel with as many characters as pages. This is bad advice. If you want to write a novel, you should write a novel. If you want to write a short story though, write a short story.  

Precision, concision, graceful economy. A novel can bring the cumulative weight of the development of plot and character to create an emotional response in the reader, but a good short story has to have the magic to do so in a instant.  One line, one paragraph, one moment of terror or surprise, beauty or revelation. There’s skill, and craft, and art in that.

The novel is an album (some novels, like some albums, are sprawling three-disc concept albums with gatefold sleeves). The short story is the killer three minute single. It starts, hooks you, smacks you around the face, and then when it’s just got started, it stops, leaving you wanting more. But once you’ve heard it, it’s there in your head for years. 

So there you have it. My defence of the short story and a tortured analogy which, possibly for the first time, allows the direct comparison of Justin Bieber to Ernest Hemingway. Thanks for reading it.

 

Lilies, mentioned above, is available on Amazon (UK | US).

Nowhere To Go is a collection of Iain’s previously published short crime fiction. (Amazon UK | US | Smashwords). Read more at his website.

Indie Publishing & Mutual Backslapping...

The first stories I ever put online were on a site called Authonomy - I was lucky enough to be in from the start and involved in the beta version of it. Initially I thought it was great: I got some feedback from readers on some of my stories (many of which ended up being published in The Other Room) and while it wasn't all good feedback they was all serious comments on my work; people had obviously read the stories and thought about them... The quality of the final version of some of those stories that I have published owes a lot to those initial unknown readers and their feedback, and I offer them honest thanks.

But then... Authonomy started to change. You see, there was an overall 'prize' - to get your manuscript seen by a real-life-honest-to-god editor from the Harper Collins! They'd read, comment on, and maybe even publish, books that got the most 'votes'. Now, I was never really interested in all that - I'm self aware enough to know my stories are unlikely to be favourites for anyone other than a small cult audience. I just wanted to see if some people liked them or not. But as more and more people joined the site, and more and more books were added, the quality of the feedback declined. There was less and less constructive criticism, and more and more of what basically amounted to 'vote my book up and I'll vote yours...'

I gave up on the site and removed my work.

Later, I self-published. I started a blog because of that, and wanted 'followers'. I joined Twitter and wanted even more of them, but....

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Two self pub authors, yesterday.

You see, I just can't do mutual back-slapping, or MBS as I'll call it, to make it sound more like some frightful disease. Not just for moral reasons, but because I'm not actually very good at it. I can't fake enthusiasm, and in my head I know that books aretoo important to do so. Maybe not important to the wider world, but important to me. So I was extremely worried about the self publishing world - would it be like Authonomy all over again?

To an extent yes, but honestly less than I feared (I've mentioned before, I spend half my time worrying about things that never happen...) That is, it goes on, but I haven't had to sully my fingers with it. Fortunately, if you look there's a load of great indie writers out there, so there's no need to fake praise for the rubbish ones. I can just talk about the good ones, many of whom I've mentioned before: Alan Ryker; Zabrina Way; Dan Holloway; Neil Schiller. Iain Rowan who I haven't mentioned yet but is doing the next guest blog spot for me, which I'm thrilled about because his story Lilies is fantastic. And all the others I've mentioned, and those fine writers I've yet to discover.

But one worry, for me and this whole self-publishing lark as a whole, is that it can still look like MBS... Someone puts a review of your book on their blog, so you have a look and say thanks and realise they're a writer too, and you see they have the same tastes as you - of course they have, that's why they liked your book. So they're book appeals and you buy it and like it - of course you do, you share the same tastes! So you review it on your blog... Each step perfectly innocent and above board, but the end result sure looks like MBS doesn't it?

But the alternative, not reviewing and not supporting fellow authors whose work you genuinely admire, seems even more unpalatable. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if your see me praise an author on here, I genuinely mean it.

Honest Guv.

And keeping that spirit in mind, I'd like to say a genuine thank you to Iain Rowan for his review of The Other Room on his blog here.

Also, a sample story from The Other Room is available to read on the ace SelfScribes blog; interspersed with the main stories in the book is some flash fiction under the heading Some Stories For Escapists. This one is the third and subtitled The Haunted House.