Stories

So, there is a little thing I have been doing these past weeks that I neglected to tell you about. I don't really know why I didn't mention it, but I think it will be easier to explain in blog post format so it's OK. I been writing some short stories! Because, I just realized, what I really want to do is be a writer and that's not one of those things in which you graduate with a degree and then apply for jobs and work your way up; if you want to do it, you just do it. And I figure, this is my last little snippet of free time before school starts, and then I may be off on a mission, and then who knows, so I've just been churning 'em out and hoping they're good. I've finished two and three quarters short stories (meaning one full story and three quarters of one and half of two others). I am pretty proud of myself.

The thing is, though, I feel like I have no idea what makes a good story. I mean, I've been reading a lot of them lately for practice--ones that are famous and ones that have been recently published in prominent magazines & journals, etc. And I know what I like and what I don't like. But it's sort of difficult to tell whether my own stories are hitting the mark or not. I rented a textbook from the library called, Behind the Short Story: From First to Final Draft, which has been rather helpful. What I mainly wanted to do in this post was to share with you a few inspirational quotes on writing I've gathered from this book, as well as from other sources.

"I can't explain inspiration. A writer is either compelled to write or not. And if I waited for inspiration I wouldn't really be a writer."  -Toni Morrison

". . . I don't believe much in style. In fact, most young writers screw themselves royally when they make a conscious effort at style. They overdo the metaphors and adverbs and clever phrases. They call attention to themselves, relentlessly, rather than to the fictional world they're trying to create. I'm not suggesting that writers should ignore the beauty and elegance of the language. But I am suggesting that such beauty and elegance must emerge organically from an effort to tell the truth. Style is a function of the truth. It is not some free-floating gloss you can dump on your work to make it shine. If you force your characters to face their darkest truths, the language of the story will naturally rise into the lyric register. It will have to do so, in order to express the depth of their feelings."  -Steve Almond

"I want stories to startle and engage me within the first few sentences, and in the middle to widen or deepen or sharpen my knowledge of human activity, and to end by giving me a sensation of a completed statement." -John Updike

"The fiction writer has to realize that he can't create compassion with compassion, or emotion with emotion, or thought with thought. He has to provide all these things with a body; he has to create a world with weight and extension."  -Flannery O'Connor

Also, there is a pretty cool thing I have learned already about writing. While it is easiest to come up with stories based on my own experience, I feel like those stories often end up boring and go nowhere. When I write a main character that is basically me, I don't know how to make the story interesting, even though I feel like my own feelings are very interesting. (The two stories that have stalled at half-finished are basically about me.) I have concluded that it is most fun for me as a writer to try to imagine someone very different from myself. So that accords with these wise words from C. Day Lewis: "We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."

So anyway. By the end of this summer--mark my words--I will have a catalogue of mediocre stories! Then I will make them better, then I will submit them to BYU's literary magazine and writing contests, then depending on how that goes I will submit them to real literary magazines and writing contests, then I will be a real live writer and my life will be complete.