"A gift you could give to not just your nearest and dearest but to all English-speakers, everywhere, is the gift of a new word. There are plenty that are holiday-appropriate, such the adjective ferial (“pertaining to a holiday”) and the related word feriation (“cessation of work”). Other seasonal words that are fun to break out include galliardise, meaning “merriment or excessive gaiety,” and gilravage, “a noisy frolic, especially among young people.” Those might possibly result from bummock (a Scots word meaning “a large brewing of ale for a merry meeting,” or the ale itself). And if you’re late with your more conventional presents, you can always re-label them as étrennes, or New Year’s gifts."
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(Source: bostonglobe.com)
Breaking my silence because I felt something so strongly while reading a story: disapproval. Senna’s story starts off convincingly enough, but by the end of it, one of the conceits became so absurd that I wondered, “Why is Senna doing this? This situation stretches my credulity. Why is she stretching credulity? Is she trying to prove something? What is she proving?”
Eventually, I had some thoughts as to what message Senna was trying to signal with her story, but writers: don’t do that. Don’t let your writing beg the question. I don’t want to have to think, “This writing is bad. Why is it bad? What is the author trying to accomplish?” You’re a writer! Transmit that message directly into my brain! Or better yet, trick me into thinking there is no message, because messages are for high-schoolers.
This year’s Short Story Month is over. I’ve read and responded to 31 stories, and I’m honestly kind of glad to give it a break. What have I learned? That short stories can do more in 20 pages than a novel can do in 300. That short stories are frequently more imaginative than novels, because there’s no pressure to explain why some creepy old dude will pay you $5 for your dreams, or how a corrupt bookseller didn’t think that one day he’d sell a false invoice to a blind man (long story) (I mean, short story). You can just say, “Blam, here it is! These are the rules for this story, and you’re going to deal with it long enough for me to get to the denouement, but not so long that you start poking holes in my setup!” Short stories are magic. Short stories are excellent for people with 35 minute commutes and even shorter attention spans. Short stories are perfect for that amount of time between getting off the internet and falling asleep. Short stories, short stories, short stories!
Goodbye. (Until next year.)
"New York is no place to fall in love; this is where you ought to come when you want to get over being in love."
— “Master Misery” by Truman Capote from New York Stories. My last story of Short Story Month, and I choose this charmer.
Grace, this is my first time reading you, and I think I love you. Your fictional conversation with your father is like a kinder Art Spiegelman talking to a more affectionate version of his father in Maus.
"I really do believe that whatever is a source of shame—if you are not responsible for it, such as the color of your skin or your sexuality—you should wear it as a badge."
— From the appendix to “Song of Roland” by Jamaica Kincaid
How can I resist a short story with a title like this? But it figures that the titular bookseller isn’t making ends meet through selling books, but rather through…unsavory means!!
This story also contains an excellent screed against beards.
Do you ever read a story about some baddies, but those baddies are so ingenious you find yourself rooting for them? And you think, somewhat morosely, “Ain’t no way these criminals are going to get off scot-free?”
Roald Dahl, at least in his adult stories, is the kind of writer who’ll let the baddies ride off into the sunset, victorious.
