SSM 2011: Reflection / Free eBook

Tuesday

May312011

On April 27th, I decided to celebrate Short Story Month by writing a post about a single story for each of the thirty-one days in May, with all the stories coming from recent issues of print magazines. I posted that plan, as well as a call for guest posts to the blog, and then, on April 30th, I sat down to read my first literary magazine issue, to write my first post, a pattern I'd keep up for the next month: Every morning of May, I woke up, grabbed an issue out of my stack, and went downstairs to read a couple stories, looking for one to write about. Then I'd spend the rest of the morning writing about that story, prepping the post for the next day.

Before I started, I posted a picture of my magazine pile atop my desk, what I thought I might cover:

By the time I was finished, my desk was piled with many more lit mags and story collections and other books I read from this month. Very quickly straightened, it currently looks something like this:

I believe I read something out of every single one of those books and magazines, and many of them found their way into my posts. Others still provided valuable inspiration and enjoyment, and I'm so glad to have had the many writers contained within these stacks with me this month.

I succeeded—somehow—in actually writing my thirty-one story reviews, which certainly got more ornate as they went along: What started out planned for 800-1000 words per story quickly turned into 1500-3000 words every day, with my Edouard Levé post somehow tipping the scales at 3600 words, or about the length of an 11-page double-spaced essay. All told (and including my liberal use of block quotes), the posts combined into over 60,000 words this month, which is (to me, at least) a fairly mind-blowing number: I've never written that much that fast, about anything, and of course I had to start by actually reading all this stuff first.

Thankfully, both the reading and the writing were a lot of fun, and obviously well worth the effort. The fifty or sixty lit mags I looked at, the books of criticism and essays and interviews I consulted to help with my thinking, all of these were full of inspiring fiction and writings about fiction. Out of the thirty-two writers whose stories I wrote about, fourteen were completely new to me, and many of the others I was only vaguely familiar with (although certainly there were some favorites included too, and more than a few friends). In addition, I posted something every day taken from an essay or interview by or with some of my favorite writers, many of which I hadn't read before, giving me a chance to learn directly from them. It's maybe the most concentrated reading I've ever done of and about the short story, and it's been a true pleasure to be able to spend the time.

Of course, the time to do all this had to come from somewhere, and it came directly from my own fiction writing time.

Since January 2008, I've written five to seven days a week, every week, for at least a couple hours a day. In that time, I attempted three novels, plus wrote most of what's in my short story collection as well as a novella that'll be published next year, plus several other uncollected stories and essays. In the first part of this year, I finished a second draft of my most-recent novel, turned in a final draft of another manuscript, and then earlier this month I finished and sent out an 11,000-word story I'd been working on since last summer, in the breaks from everything else. So I decided that Short Story Month would be my way of taking a short working vacation from that schedule, and so I have: I haven't written a word of fiction since May 7th. Instead, I got up every morning and spent my usual fiction-writing time reading these recent issues of literary magazines and writing about them.

In some ways, what I found was that I didn't really take a break from writing at all: I still kept a routine, still tried my best to write good prose, still tried to make something that would have worth to myself and to others. I didn't get done with my day and wish I'd been writing, because of course I had been. A while back, it occurred to me that if I never wrote again, I might be just as happy as long as I could still work as an editor or a critic, as long as I could still read actively and widely. What I want, more than anything else, is to be the best writer I can be, but that's just part of the literary life I'm lucky enough to lead, and all of these things are interconnected, part of the same whole: by being a better reader or reviewer or editor or teacher, I also become a better writer. More importantly, when engaged with any of those tasks, I'm living the writerly life I wanted for myself, that I am lucky enough to get to live. So if Short Story Month was my vacation from my writing fiction, it wasn't exactly a vacation from the writing life: at the very least, this was less crashing on the beach and more wandering museums and art galleries.

That said: tomorrow, it's back to my novel. Even great vacations have to end sometime.

Returning to what I read: We live—as it seems perhaps all readers always have—in an age where the end of literature is frequently declared: the novel is dead, fiction is dead, the short story is dead, or else a construct of MFA programs, themselves producing only a million copycat writers, all only reading each other, while the rest of the world goes on uncaring. Every time I've heard such a claim, I've assumed it comes from someone who's lost touch with what's happening in contemporary literature, or whose preferred aesthetic has fallen out of favor. After a month spend reading from these newest issues of literary magazines—some of which have been around for decades, some of which have so far managed only a single issue—I don't understand how anyone could look at the available evidence and find anything other than a vibrant and varied literary culture, one full of exciting writers and writing. I read stories this month by writers who had never published before, by writers who have just released their first books, by writers who have already established themselves toward the possible peaks of their careers, and always the spectrum of aesthetics and subject matter across those works seemed strikingly varied and impressively accomplished: There are many successful literary traditions and innovations evident in our literary magazines, the cutting edge of our trade, and anyone who takes the same kind of time to read a similar sampling of a couple dozen lit mags should come away feeling the same way.

I didn't need to be convinced of this—I've said something similar many other places, to anyone who asks, to anyone who will listen—but that doesn't mean I wasn't happy to have my beliefs reaffirmed by what I read, by what I discovered while writing about it, and also by the reaction to Short Story Month, here and elsewhere: Over forty people contributed guest posts to this blog, while many others celebrated at their own websites, or on Twitter and Facebook. As of this writing, over 11,000 people have visited the 100+ Short Story Month posts here, and presumably others read the versions that auto-posted from here into Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Open Salon, and elsewhere. It's been incredibly exciting to see that kind of response, and I'm incredibly grateful for the feeling of community the month has provided me, as well as the new people I've been able to meet because of it.

What's Next

Because I enjoyed doing this so much this month, I'm going to try to keep doing the same sort of thing, on a somewhat smaller scale: my goal for the future is to write a similar sort of essay once a week, something about a story taken from a recent literary magazine or online journal or collection. I'd also like to continue to extend my invitation for guest posts like those ran this month: anyone interesting in participating in the future can feel free to email me at mdbell79@gmail.com for more details.

The Short Story Month eBook

Because I know there was more content than was easily consumed in the rapid pace of the blog this month, I've compiled my thirty-one posts into a quick and dirty eBook: It's not the prettiest thing I've designed, and of course it shouldn't be mistaken for a copy-edited, final version of anything. That said, it should be at least as readable as the site was, and it includes the full text of my posts (200+ pages of content, including links on how/where to find the stories discussed), plus links to the thirty-one posts of writing advice culled from interviews and essays with great writers, as well as links to the forty-plus guest posts. (Which are even more useful, when used on internet-connected devices: If you're using the Kindle App for iPad, for instance, the links will open inside the app, allowing you to enjoy them without having to leave the book.)

This eBook comes in both .MOBI and .EPUB formats (which will work on Kindle, iPad, Nook, etc.), and is provided here under a Creative Commons license, allowing you to mostly use it as you'd like, as long as you attribute it back to me (with the exception of charging others for it): I know some people have already been referring students to these posts, and I hope the eBook version will be useful for those purposes, if nothing else. (If enough people have an interest in using it that way, I'll gladly take the time to make a little prettier version of it.)

Short Story Month 2011 eBook
(click to post to Twitter or Facebook, then receive a free download):

(or download directly through e-junkie):

Some Gratitude

Thanks to all my guest posters, who this month's wealth of content wouldn't have been possible without, and who I've been both educated and entertained by: Jim Breslin, John Fox, Michael Beeman, Alan Heathcock, Erin Kelly, Don Peteroy, Nina Schuyler, Megan Fink, Marie Schutt, Michael Czyzniejewski, Aubrey Hirsch, Aja Gabel, Christine Chapman, bl pawelek, Mark Cugini, Tom Williams, Nancy Smith, Hazel Foster, Roxane Gay, David Abrams, Jonathan Callahan, Ross McMeekin, Adrienne Crezo, Ben Tanzer, Lori Ostlund, Amber Sparks, Jennifer L. Murray, Stefanie Freele, Carina del Valle Schorske, David Backer, Yelizaveta P. Renfro, Joseph Scapellato, Jeff Vande Zande, James O'Brien, Tim Horvath, Kathryn Houghton, Josh Denslow, Joseph Bates, and Rae Bryant.

Thanks also to the editors and contributors of the following magazines, who all generously sent copies of their most recent issues (not all of which I've been able to cover yet, but I hope to soon): Transition, The Common, AGNI, The Southeast Review, Big Lucks, Colorado Review, TRNSFR, The Connecticut Review, Ocho, PANK, C4, Dark Sky Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Prime Mincer, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Wufniks. I've read at least some of the writing in every one of these magazines during the last thirty-one days, and I was very grateful for the chance to be introduced to or reacquainted with their incredibly varied and impressive aesthetics, designs, and contents.

Thanks to The Paris Review, The Believer, and The Faster Times: the interviews in each of these publications have been an invaluable source of wisdom and inspiration about the art of writing, and not just this month.

Thanks to everyone who posted links to some of the content on Facebook and Twitter, as the site got an incredible amount of traffic this month, which wouldn't have happened without so many people spreading the word. A special thanks to Shome Dasgupta, who I believed posted every single link this month to his Twitter account, which I truly appreciated.

Thanks to Steven Seighman for this year's Short Story Month logo, which he provides for free to everyone who wants it, and to Dan Wickett, for getting this ball rolling at the EWN a few years ago.

If I missed anyone, I hope you'll accept my apologies, and know that your contribution was truly appreciated, even if my memory proved faulty here.

Finally: Thanks again to everyone who participates in this community, as editor or writer or reader. It's no exaggeration that the state of literature is improved by your participation, and I couldn't be more thankful for your efforts, your talents, and your enthusiasm.

Stories Reviewed This Month

Great Writers on the Short Story

Guest Posts

Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 09:00PM | Comments Off |

Reader Comments (2)

Not only was this entire month's coverage amazing, but your essay here makes me so proud and happy to be a part of this community of writers. Thanks so much for this.

June 3, 2011 |

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August 1, 2011 |

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