Thursday, October 24, 2013

Fits and Starts...and Resets

I am rounding out the month of October with this last batch of short stories in hopes that it will give me the UMPF I need to get my November writing on...

Thomas Pynchon-"Entropy"
Michael Farris Smith- "I am Not a Rock Star"
Nikolai Gogol- "The Overcoat"
Charlotte Perkins Gillman- "The Yellow Wallpaper"
O'Henry- "The Thing's the Play"  http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ThinPlay.shtml
Netta Syrett- "Thy Heart's Desire"
Seamus Scanlon- "The Long Wet Grass"  http://www.fishpublishing.com/Fish-Anthology-2011.php#wetgrass

Mixing some flash fiction in to spice things up, I think this might do the trick with only one week left...BRING IT!



Sunday, October 20, 2013

Preparations-short storying it up

I WILL WRITE THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL NEXT MONTH.

Okay, so, maybe not but I plan on writing something, something substantial, and until then, I will have spent October trying to get myself into the right frame of mind, to get my brain working in sentences that DO NOT contain arguments.  It's a struggle, my job zaps it out of me at times but it only takes a paragraph, or a George Saunders sentence like "an empty rocking chair rocks faster than any mortal granny could" and I remember how to do it, or at least how to think about doing it.

Writing it is different.  I've piddled with a few short shorts over the last week to get my fingers accustomed to moving in time with the creative bursts of thought that I hope will get me from word to word and I have to admit that I'm getting excited thanks to the short stories from these authors:

Adam Johnson- "The History of Cancer"
Kim Brooks- "Year's Time"
Penelope Fitzgerald- "The Prescription"
Donald Barthelme- "The School"
Alice Munro- "Free Radicals"
George Saunders- "A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room"
James Joyce- "Araby"
Judith Merrill- "That Only a Mother"
Lawrence Scott- "Chameleon"
Jay McInerney- "Con Doctor"
Ferroll Sams- "Harmony Ain't Easy"


Today, I'm tackling Roddy Doyle's story "Teaching" which can be found here:

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/04/02/070402fi_fiction_doyle?currentPage=all


CHEERS!