Wigleaf's Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of 2008
Wigleaf has just released their inaugural list of their Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of 2008, as well as a long shortlist of the two hundred stories originally send to judge Chad Simpson by editor Scott Garson. Like most prizes of this sort, these are actually all stories published in 2007, and both the list of winners and the shortlist both provide an excellent snapshot of the flash fiction scene from last year. Start with Scott's foreword and Chad's introduction (both of which are excellent), and then move on to the list itself, which awards stories by writers I admire such as Elaine Chiew, Kim Chinquee, Elizabeth Ellen, Kathy Fish, Jeff Landon, Peter Markus, Mary Miller, Claudia Smith, Joseph Young, and Shellie Zacharie, (and I'm sure several people I'm missing) and of course a lot of writers who are new to me as well. The shortlist is a whole other world, and will keep you reading forever (and congrats to my friend Jeff Vande Zande for making that list).
I think this is an amazing list, pulled off in its first iteration with a thoroughness and obvious love for the form that instantly makes it a great credit to the writers it highlights and a fantastic resource for those of us who love the flash fiction form. Hopefully we'll see this every year from now. Wigleaf has recently become a favorite stopping place of mine on the internet, and this only serves to make it better. Congratulations again to Scott and Chad for putting this together, and to all the writers included. There really were some great stories published online last year, and I'm happy to have a reason to go back and read them all over again.
Matt Bell
in Literary Magazines
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100,000!
I broke 100,000 words on my novel-in-progress at four am this morning. I had no idea it was going to get this long, and there's still a fair bit to go. It feels like an accomplishment, but it also feels a little scary, like it's gotten far too big. I don't even like to read books this long myself, so that's kind of awkward. It'll definitely shrink a very significant amount upon revision (my stories always do, anyway), but that'll come later. In the meantime, I'm going to celebrate 100,000 as a milestone, and get back to work after a couple hours of sleep.
Just for fun, here's some statistics on the first 100,000 words: It took 132 days to get here, which means an average of 726 words per day-- Sounds low, doesn't it? My biggest word count gain in a single day was 2,390 words, and I've only had four days where I wrote over 2,000 words. My writing goal for the novel is five days a week, at least two hours or a thousand words a day.
I hardly ever talk about my own process here, mostly because I figure no one's really all that interested. Thanks for indulging me!
Matt Bell
in Thoughts on Writing
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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' "More News From Nowhere"
I've been enjoying Nick Cave's "More News From Nowhere" a lot since the release of Dig, Lazurus, Dig! It's quickly become one of my favorite tracks on the album, which I'm finding myself frequently listening to as I write. The band just released the video for the song, and it's as long and weird as the song itself is. Clocking in at just over eight minutes, the song has a repetition to it that alternates between sex and violence and excitement and boredom, much like expressions on the faces of the patrons of the surreal strip club in the video. It's a hard song to talk about but a good one to listen to. Here's the lyrics to an Odyssey-inspired verse from the middle of the song, followed by the video itself:
I turn another corner
I go down a corridor
And I see this guy
He must be about one hundred foot tall
And he only has one eye
He asks me for my autograph
I write nobody and then
I wrap myself up in my woolly coat
And I blind him with my pen
'Cause someone must have stuck something in my drink
Everything's getting strange lookin'
Half the people have turned into squealing pigs
The other half are cooking
Well let me out of here I cried
And I went pushing past
And I saw Miss Polly singing with some girls
I cried struck me to the mast
Also, Nick Cave's a terrible dancer. Or, possibly, a brilliant one. Even after eight minutes of his moves, I'm not sure which it is.
Matt Bell
in Rock for Writers
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Elizabeth Ellen's "Fistful"
Elizabeth Ellen has a story called "Fistful" in the new issue of Dogzplot, and it's one of her darkest stories yet. The story is narrated by a pregnant girl named Shannon who lives in a drug house with her abusive boyfriend and a supporting cast of similarly rough characters. It's rare to see a pregnant character callously disregarding the health of her baby, yet Shannon chain smokes throughout the story, moving between accusatory arguments and multiple sexual partners in a downward spiral of degradation. A faint glimmer of hope eventually emerges, only to be crushed as thoroughly as I've ever seen done in fiction. In a favorite passage, Shannon steals her lover's gun as she prepares to leave the house with a different man:
Are we going to need that? Matty said.
You never know, I said. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I guess, he said.
He sounded unconvinced. I wrapped the gun in a towel and shoved it in the bag with the drugs and my makeup. I wasn’t interested in convincing anyone of anything anymore. I figured one man was as good as another, a car as good as a father, a womb full of rage as good as a baby for keeping you warm at night. I sat down on the arm of the couch and laced up my boots. I took a last drag off my cigarette and ground it into the carpet.
At this point, I figured Shannon would escape from that place pretty well destroyed, and although I wasn't exactly wrong, I also had no idea what was coming next. The ending of this story is as dark and terrible as anything I've read lately, a denouement that stunned me when I first read it and upsets me to think about now.
Read "Fistful" in the new Dogzplot, as well as a new Steven McDermott story ("Sisyphus, the Snowball, and Hell," something different from his usual offerings), plus fiction and poetry from many other writers. So far, this is the best issue of the magazine I've read.
Matt Bell
in Literary Magazines
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New Literary Magazine Reviews at NewPages
I'm a couple of days late with the news, but new literary magazine reviews are now up at NewPages, including reviews of the following magazines:
Alice Blue :: Big Muddy :: Blood Lotus :: The Cimarron Review :: Columbia Poetry Review :: Connecticut Review :: Diode :: The Dirty Goat :: Earthshine :: Gargoyle :: Glimmer Train :: The Greensboro Review :: Manoa :: Natural Bridge :: Paradigm :: The Sewanee Review :: SUB-LIT :: Virginia Quarterly Review
An Evening with Kevin Sampsell and Hobart on May 22
Next Thursday at 7pm, Future Tense Books publisher and writer Kevin Sampsell is coming to town reading in support of his new collection Creamy Bullets, and will be reading at Shaman Drum Bookshop, along with myself, Aaron Burch, and Barry Graham, all of whom will be representing the Hobart side of the evening. You can read what I had to say about one of the stories from his collection, or head over to Shaman Drum's website for more info about the reading. Hopefully we'll see some of you local folks at the reading or at the dinner/drinks portion of the evening at Ashley's afterwards. Should be a great time.
Matt Bell
in Readings/Signings
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Absinthe Hosts Festival of New European Film and Writing
This weekend (May 9-10, 2008), local literary magazine Absinthe: New European Writing is hosting a Festival of New European Film and Writing at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. If you're in Michigan and free this weekend, there are a lot of interesting readings and screenings available, all of which are free and open to the public. More information is available here.
Also, Absinthe 9 just came out, and I got my copy yesterday. I can't wait to read it.
"5:25" at Isak
I don't generally write much here on topics other than writing and reading and music, but maybe I should. Anna Clark has taken some time out of her own literary coverage over at Isak to provide "5:25," a great post about the state of our prison system, and I think it's a must read post on a blog I already read every day. Go now and read it.
Matt Bell
in Elsewhere on the Web...
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No Posit Vol. 2 Published
Matt Bell
in Literary Magazines
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New Blog: Five Star Literary Stories
T.J. Forrester has just started a new blog called Five Star Literary Stories, where he invites literary magazine editors to nominate one of their stories available on the web to be reviewed by another writer, combining (in Forrester's words) "three integral facets of the writing life: publisher, story, and reviewer." It's an interesting project, and the first three magazines to participate are Hobart, Night Train, and Summerset Review, all excellent magazines. It's an interesting project, and I'll be reading more as it goes forward.
Thanks to Aaron Burch for pointing this one out.
Matt Bell
in Elsewhere on the Web...
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