I grew up in the heyday of the short story. Every magazine my parents took contained at least one story. I pored over them from the time I learned to read.
Over the year, those stories disappeared and in time, so did most of the magazines. Only a handful of national magazines like the New Yorker and The Atlantic print short stories. Literary magazines continue that genre and now those have their own Internet sites. Most of them pay their writers absolutely nothing except for a handful of issues. To me it is insulting to have to submit a story to a magazine that would not pay me anything and then have it rejected anyhow.
Wade Peterson, Bettyann Moore, and I have our own blog, Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com to send our work out to readers around the world. We make a little money on our ads and our book sales. We are never rejected. Today when Wade's short story went onto our blog it was immediately being read by sixteen people who must have been waiting for it.
This past few weeks I've been reading short stories by other authors like Sherman, Alexie, Junot Diaz, and Eudora Welty. Then I got a copy of The Best American Short Stories for 2012. These stories came from literary journals. What I found out that the editor considered the best were not exactly short stories. They were depressing little sketches of miserable people. I am not against a depressing story, I write them all the time, but these were not my idea of what the genre should be. There was no beginning, no middle, no ending, no real tale. Metaphors and some clever writing yes, but no stories. I struggle to get through them.
The short stories I've admired over my life were written by people like Dorothy Parker, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Ray Bradbury. Those are the writers I try to emulate. I may be out of style but I think I am readable.
*****
Tomorrow I join Susan Manzke and Colette Bezio at Sissy's in Seymour to set up a display of local writers' works. Our books will be there in March and April.
I continue to look for places where we can sell our fiction.
The short stories I've admired over my life were written by people like Dorothy Parker, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Ray Bradbury. Those are the writers I try to emulate. I may be out of style but I think I am readable.
*****
Tomorrow I join Susan Manzke and Colette Bezio at Sissy's in Seymour to set up a display of local writers' works. Our books will be there in March and April.
I continue to look for places where we can sell our fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment