The Querulous Squirrel: Real Books (from Book Fox)

FLASH FICTION, MICRO-FICTION, MEMOIR, REFLECTIONS

This blog consists of flash and micro-fiction. Some of it is truly fiction, some is memoir, some is just reflections about the world.. Sometimes it's pretty obvious what's what. Other times the lines blur. Some of it is memoir-fiction or fiction-memoir. We create our memories anyway, so there's not much difference, is there?

"Flash Fiction" is considered stories 500-2000 words. Most of mine hover under 200-450 often referred to as "microfiction," which is stories up to 500 words. As both terms seem incredibly uncreative, I've given my own blog a different subheading. This makes it very difficult to publish my fiction because most "flash fiction" journals insist on at least 500 words. But I say what I have to say and no more.

Some writers prefer to obsess about the number of words that distinguish flash from micro, from sudden from dribble and drabble. There is no definitive agreement. I have seen the upper limit for flash defined as anywhere from 750 to 2500 words, though usually not over 1000. I myself consider stories in the thousands too high for flash. 750 seems to me a reasonable upper limit. Lower limits can be defined as low as possible, though under 500 word stories are usually relegated to the micro-fiction category. I've also seen 300 listed as the upper limit for micro-fiction, 250-300 being the generally accepted length of micro, just the right size to read a story on a web page without scrolling. You can also find websites for exactly 100 word stories, and as short as 50 or 55 words. Some stories are just six sentences, one sentence or two words. The title never counts so it can be as long as a story itself. That is what I discovered in my own One-Word-Stories (see my directory or Search). Anyway, I just find that the word-counting can get fetishistic and that, basically, all of it is written in the spirit of To Make a Long Story Short.

WRITING WISDOM

"All I can do is be me, whoever that is," said Bob Dylan.

"Write what you want, how you want" Litlove of Tales From a Reading Room
"The significant theme of your fiction and non-fiction? Risk, he said." Shelly Lowenkopf's Blog

"Tell me one time about the cunning plan which sets us free," gingatao aka Paul Squires said to Squirrel, both Secret Agents of Art.

"I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers. The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." Ken Kesey

“One must be pitiless about this matter of mood," wrote Joyce Carol Oates. "In a sense, writing will create the mood…Art is genuinely a transcendental function. I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Flannery O'Connor: "When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience the meaning more fully."

Wisdom

We don’t have to hate ourselves for our own vulnerability. We don’t have to hate ourselves for what life has done to us. We don’t have to hate ourselves because hurt or loss or longing has gotten to us. Our desires will always be with us in some form, keeping us firmly attached to a world that will hurt us. We must come to love ourselves, love our life, in its vulnerability, in its impermanence, not in spite of all its flaws, but because of them. Because the vulnerability, the changes, the flaws make us who we are.

(Barry Magid)

(Thanks to John Simpson Running After My Hat)

The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon

Science Lullabye

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye
Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you’re tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.
Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep.
Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

(Albert Goldbarth [source])

The Querulous Squirrel

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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Real Books (from Book Fox)

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