Category Archives: Short Short Story

Your Writing Mind: An exercise

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Do you need inspiration to write? Here are some ideas.

Write a short story, poem, a blog or novel using these:

  • A person who will do whatever it takes;
  • An eavesdropper;
  • A snob;
  • A person who will do what it takes;
  • The first day of school;
  • The third day without sleep

Here’s another idea. To get to the point where you’re writing without your editorial mind, lay some paper in front of you with a pen or pencil. Don’t open your computer. You’ll want to just write with one of your hands.

Then put your left hand behind your back. The left hand (or right hand if you are a lefty) is your editor for this exercise. You don’t want you editor to rise while your writing. You just want to keep writing without lifting your pen or pencil, even if the result isn’t anything you’d want to share.

Look around you for a moment. Then start writing.

This exercise opens your writing mind. And what you write may not come to anything, but at least you’re writing. Do this daily and eventually something will click and before you know it, you’ve gotten a poem, short story, etc.

If any of these ideas work for you, let me know.

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Sue Powers has had many stories published in zines and magazines. She is also a recipient of a fellowship prize from the Illinois Arts Council in Prose and two of her stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Going for the Jugular

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I once had a writing student tell me she wrote for ½ hour straight and when she was done, her writing scared the hell out of her!

Writing can be scary. It can be painful. It can be a lot of things, and good writing can be all of these things. I think because writing is about letting go and going for the jugular – a thing that fiction writers do over and over again, revealing their secret, unfinished business.

Which brings me to wonder? Have you ever written about something you never told anyone before? You know – where you wrote straight through, not stopping to edit, just letting go and going for the jugular?

Try it, and see if you get scared!

Mystery Writing—Oh Dear!

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Bored woman writing immensely long essay.

 

 

I’ve been doing something I’ve always wanted to do: writing a mystery.

Sounds easy, right? Especially if you’re an accomplished writer. Think of a premise and the book should practically write itself. Well not exactly.

If you’ve been a literary short story writer all your life, you might want to create something more than just a good plot.

So I’ve created these goals for myself:

First, add a main character who develops as the plot develops. Which is what I’ve tried to do. But this has turned out to be more challenging than I ever thought.

Second, create 200+ pages. This is definitely a challenge for me. I’ve never even written a novel. In fact, I think the longest story I ever wrote was only 20 pages. Now to write ten times that and make it engaging.

Still, I’m plunging ahead.

But I’m back to being a beginner again. I will admit as a beginning story writer, I once wrote a story from the point of view of a grape. Yes, a grape. You’d think it would have been all downhill after that. But apparently there was enough going for the story that I got encouragement to keep writing from an editor at the New Yorker.

Needless to say I continued. Through my marriage, through the raising of my kids, through going back to school for my master’s degree, and through various jobs. It was hard not to listen to the characters’ voices roaming in my mind, even with toddlers yelling in my ears. So I kept writing. But perfecting my craft took years.

Now I have a book of stories, still waiting to be published…. Should I give up on finding a publisher and self-publish? At what point should I consider this? At the point of despair? I’m nearing that point.

But I’m not giving up. Instead, I’ve switched genres and am now writing a whole book, not a single short story, or a series of stories. An entire book based on a mystery.

But writing a mystery book is totally different from writing a short story. It’s a whole new genre. A whole new beast. Like going from being a water creature to now having to acclimate yourself to living on land. And that’s where I’m at, still acclimating myself.

Except I don’t have thousands of years to adapt. I have to finish the book, fully acclimated or not. And along the way, I have had to ask myself: Is the book interesting? Is the pacing right? What about the narrator? Is she engaging? Do I have too many sentences that begin with “I”?

My writing group thinks it still needs more work, and so do I. So I’m going to keep at it. After all, isn’t an author just an amateur writer who perseveres?

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Sue Powers, aka.S. J. Powers, has received a Prose fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and praise from her writing group. Her story, 13 Rules, won first place in the fine literary magazine, New Millennium Writings. She is now working on a mystery entitled She’s Not There.

 

Calling All Guest Bloggers

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I could have been writing

I should have been shopping my book!

To blog or not to blog? This is the question I pose to you today: Guest blogging.

Yes, I’m looking to feature writers on my blog.

I started some Fridays ago with writers I know pretty well. But I don’t need to know you well at all, or know you at all. And you don’t need to have a blog. You just need to an idea in search of an audience.  J

Why?  For you – well, possible new readers of course, and a chance to plug your blog, if you have one (again, not a requirement).

For me – I need to work on shopping my book. Plain and simple. And since I can’t seem to do that and blog at the same time.

Here’s the deal:

1.     You choose any subject you want to write about. Pretty good deal, eh? Or if you need ideas, just ask.  I am happy to give writing prompts.

2.     Exception: I’m not accepting poetry. Sorry.  When it comes to poetry, I’m the first to admit I’m a poor judge.

3.     Humor most welcome.

4.     Word count – generally no more than 500 words (Ok, I might make an exception.)

5.     Submit to firegut1@gmail.com on Wednesday for my Friday afternoon post.

The post will be under your name, and of course, all rights belong to you. They always do anyway, just being reassuring that you know that I know….:)

Thanks! I hope this will be the beginning of a beautiful writing/blogging relationship!

#

Ps. Feel free to pass this message on to your friends, readers, bloggers and other writers.

A Surprising Measure of Subliminal Sadness

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Stata in velvet

Probable book cover for Welcome to…(copyright my brother, Richard Shandross)

I awoke yesterday thinking about my book title. For ages I’ve thought about, dreamed about, knew I would call it “Welcome to the Sickhouse.” Then suddenly, I had another idea.

My story Welcome to the Sickhouse always seemed a natural title for the book. But naming your book after a story requires that the story be, if not the best, then close to it. Was it? Frankly, I’m not sure it is. Besides, the word “sick” suddenly started to make me feel, well, uh, kind of queasy. ☺

I think I have a bunch of good titles in my book, but again, were any among them the best? I’m too close to judge. And my writer friends all have their favorites – but none of them are the same story. What to do?

I decided to forget the titles and instead look inside the stories. One line. That’s all I needed. Just one line that would make a good book title.

I scanned story after story. Then, lying inside one story called Last Call, was a description of one of the main characters: a lesbian who the waitresses call JD because that is one of the two drinks she always orders. And “when she had too much to drink of either, a set of deeply recessed lines around her startling sea-green eyes, along with a surprising measure of subliminal sadness, rose abruptly to the surface.”

Reflected_sadness

Possible book cover for A Surprising Measure….

And there it was, my new title: “A Surprising Measure of Subliminal Sadness”

Would you be intrigued? Would you look inside?

I need feedback. I’ve asked these same writing friends (who all have different favorite stories in my book), but only one answered, as I think the others are simply too busy writing to look at their emails. ☺

So opinions please! Welcome to the Sickhouse, or A Surprising Measure of Subliminal Sadness? Would of either of these titles make you want to buy the book?

My Success…What a Mess

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I could have been writing

Blogger Fransi Weinstein (Three Hundred Sixty-Five) recently posted: “Yesterday’s Word Press Daily Prompt really caught my eye. The theme? “Success.” “Tell us about a time where everything you’d hoped would happen actually did.” And she did, quite eloquently.

So ok, let me begin by saying I know I’m lucky to have had success in my passion: writing short stories. Let me also say, unlike Fransi, my success has been sketchy, plus I have never made much money at it. In fact, just for fun, let’s do the math:

In-coming:

  • New Millennium Short-Story Story Contest: $1000
  • Illinois Arts Council Fellowship: $5000
  • Illinois Arts Council Grant: $500
  • Some literary mag, don’t remember which: $50 (I’m not counting the copies I received in lieu of payment, the typical literary mag ‘payment’)
  • Part-time teaching adult ed in creative writing: around $300 a semester – yes, 300 – not a typo. (I feel I need to count this, even though I am not a teacher at heart, nor a very good one, but it seemed to be part of my passion while I was doing it.)

Out-going:

  • B.A. (English & Psych) $$$$
  • M.A. (English) $$$$$$$$$$

The total, of course, is a total bust. But who’s counting?

I’m not. Honestly, who regrets getting an education? Especially when loans are finally paid off.  🙂

So, back to the subject at hand: my passion for writing short stories. Long story short, my love of short stories began with J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. One read, and I was hooked. Then when I was in college and majoring in Psychology, my love of literature drove me to accumulate hours in English. I just needed a few more hours and I’d have a double major.

Ah, but all that extra reading! Did I have energy and time for it? Then one day I discovered they offered a Creative Writing Workshop. Well, ever since I was a kid, stories seemed to pop into my head. I had written some stories, though none of them had really ‘gone’ anywhere. Still, why not? I thought. What did I have to lose but perhaps my pride? One or two semesters of this, and I’d have my double major.

Looking back, I see it was no accident that I ‘happened’ to choose a college that offered a writing course (in those days, college writing courses were few and far between). And there I met an amazing writing instructor, and ended up writing a story that was published in a fine literary magazine before I graduated.

And here’s where the tale twists. This first published story got a lot of praise. Success, right? Follow the momentum, follow the passion, keep on writing, right? Well before you can dedicate yourself to your passion, you have believe in it.

One part of me always knew I was a writer. Another part of me – well how to put it – was scattered. Not focused. Not sure what to do with this first success, which a large part of me did not really believe I could ever duplicate.

So I directed my energy elsewhere: raising my family, making money, etc. Oh sure, every once in a while, I couldn’t stop myself from writing a story. But despite my early success, these efforts rarely came to anything. And I guess I thought of these writing efforts as just a creative outlet, a pipe dream, or simply an anomaly.

So, that’s the short of it. Although I started making up stories from an early age, I allowed a lack of belief in myself to get in my way. In fact, I didn’t really start focusing on my passion until somewhere in my 40’s when, kids grown, husband removed from the scene, I remembered I had one.

But that’s another story…. 🙂

Ready, Set, Go…For the Jugular

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Tell us your Secrets

For reasons unknown, I used to teach creative writing. The don’t-think/just-let-it-rip type of teaching, and depending on how willing/able people were to try it, I was mildly successful. I taught this way because it was the only way I knew – or know – how to write. Not suited to everyone, I found out.

But once, a student came back to class and said she let it rip for a half hour straight and apparently, she’d dug deep, pulled out something painful. Her eyes were huge, her voice shaky: “It scared the hell out of me!”

I was young, and as you might have guessed, not a great teacher.  Great teachers clarify, illuminate, impart useful information.  (What made me think I could do this???) So while I felt for her, I had no words to explain it.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I have those words.  I could have told her that yeah, writing can be scary. It can be painful. Because writing is a risky business. Because it’s about letting go and going for the jugular. Because fiction writers have to be prepared to go for their own jugular and dig up their darkest secrets — over and over again.  Agatha Christie put it succinctly: “writing is torture.”

While I’ve never been scared by what I’ve written, I can say, letting the story go where it’s wanted to go, I’ve been surprised by where it’s gone and what it’s revealed.

I’ve read that writer Doris Betts – who writes both novels and short stories – once said that the novel is prose growth, and the short story is prose revelation. This explains a lot to me! It explains why, when my short stories work well, they give me the chills. (I have one particular story that still gives me the chills!)

In any case, if I were ever to go back to teaching (not!), I‘d still use the let-it-rip type of teaching. It’s what I believe in, it’s worked for me and it’s worked for thousands of other writers.

So here’s what I know: I know what works for me, and I know teaching is not for me,  But I very much like certain writing prompts. So how about this one: Write a piece of fiction that reveals something you have never told anyone before.  Don’t think, don’t judge. Just go….

If you get something that scares you – or gives you a little chill – awesome! 

🙂

 

Buck Up and Take It

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Rejection Sucks          It hurts. I admit it.

Over the years that I’ve been writing and submitting my stories for publication, I’ve received hundreds if not thousands of rejection letters and emails, and I’m still not immune to the sting of rejection.

I have enough rejections to line the walls of my dining room. Stuff like, “not for us,” “thanks for submitting, but we’ve decided….” or the worst one: “not funny and not fair.” Yikes!

It’s hard enough to put yourself and your work ‘out there.’ Still, rejection comes with the territory. And of course, one can always rewrite (or not) and re-submit someplace else, move the story to an archive file, join a writing group, or simply rationalize: They wouldn’t know a good story if it hit them in the arse.

In my heart of hearts, I’ve never quite believed that once your writing has reached a certain level of competence, it’s a matter of taste. Still, this is what other (more accomplished) writers have been telling me.

And then this happened:

My story 13 Rules recently won first prize in the short-short story writing contest run by  New Millennium Writings. At the same time that I submitted 13 Rules to NMW, I submitted it along with two other flash fictions to Fiction Attic Press. (Yes, multiple submissions are ok, particularly if a publication’s guidelines say it is.)

When 13 Rules won, I was so bowled over I forgot to notify Fiction Attic and withdraw it from their consideration. Bet you can guess what happened next….

A few weeks after I won the NMW fiction contest, Fiction Attic emailed me to say it wanted to publish two of the three flash fictions I submitted – and the one they didn’t want was – ta da! – 13 Rules.

Which just goes to show:

1)    One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

2)    After a certain level of competence, it really is just a matter of taste.

Of course all of us who have had our work rejected are in really good company. Here are 30 famous authors whose works were rejected (repeatedly, and sometimes rudely) by publishers

p.s. Coward that I am, I never did tell Fiction Attic the story they rejected just won 1st prize somewhere else.

🙂

Shopping (Tiny Fiction #2)

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Shopping, A Microfiction

Shopping

The woman stood in front of her at the checkout counter, needing three receipts for several small items. A few items she paid with food stamps, a few were markdowns from the bargain bin, the last few more markdowns that she paid for with Visa. Loudly, she made much of not having her name spoken aloud by the cashier, a pony-tailed man whom it became apparent she knew. In all, the woman had possibly ten items – this woman in a business suit and smart flats – who needed these three separate receipts and her name not said out loud, as if some one were following her. Or perhaps some one might recognize her, if not by sight, then surely by name.

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Copyright S. J. Powers 2013

What She Knew (Tiny Fiction #1)

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               What She Knew  30th Birthday

She had a birthday, became thirty, became morbid and suffering and told her husband she would bear no children, that inherent in birth is the sentence of death, that all childbearing is selfish, an illusion of immortality and how well she knew that she would die soon (what is forty, fifty more years compared to eternity?), that she was powerless, that her only life was moving along a path she could not remember freely choosing, and she would not know all experience, live all the lives, reach all the corners that she might, but if nothing else, she said, she wished better for her unborn offspring than this anguish, this knowledge of nothingness-after-life.

Take an aspirin, he said. Not unkindly.

# Published inWindy City Times Pride Issue (in slightly different form). Copyright S. J. Powers, 2013.