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I am reading a big book at the moment. It’s long, and I’m loving it. I don’t tend to buy very big books, and when I do, I am guilty of bringing them home and then avoiding eye contact with them while I slip slim volumes down like After Eights (i.e. at any time of the day and in great quantity). Something about commitment; the fear of wasting, or even stupider-to-be-scared-of, devoting too much time to one book with time that could have spent on three or four other books. It sounds like a fling versus marriage analogy might make sense here, but perhaps I just prefer to be married and read lots of short books. Anyway, if I love this long novel to the end, I’ll tell you about it another time. Today, I’m writing to you about brevity.
As well as a preference for short novels, I buy a lot of short story collections. I’m particularly drawn to short-short-stories, and I often reach for these while I’m reading something longer in the other room. The sentence is my favourite unit of language, and it’s integral to the success of short fiction. I love the economic value of them as bound books too; so many stories squeezed in to a paperback, squeezed into a back pocket.
I have a recurring and impossible vision of myself reading just one short-short-story each morning, starting the day with some small stun of inspiration that might make my working-writing-day shimmer when I get to it. But sometimes it’s the cumulative effect of reading multiple short-short-stories that builds up a pressure that I want to respond to. A single piece of fiction can certainly be minty in the mouth, but in some cases it’s not enough to invoke the author’s mission, which can only make sense through more.
An interjection. This isn’t the same a standard short story, which I do believe should be read in isolation from the rest of the collection in which it is published, when possible. This is why I own so many short story collections that I’ve read just one story from.
But back to the short-short-stories, I really mean just a few hundred words. I love them, I’m glad they exist. For me they bridge my frustrations from poems to fiction. I have always been interested in language first, which is why I’ve got a poetry degree. But I am a bad reader of poetry because I am always hoping to find a story. I studied (writing) poetry but always struggled to mean what I wrote. I wanted to be able to say it was fiction. When I try to write fiction, I want to play with language more than I do plot. A language-centred short-short fiction is surely the answer, but I don’t write those either. Something about fear of commitment. Or just fear. But I’ll tell you who does write short-short-stories; Diane Williams.
I was listening to an interview with the writer, Kathryn Scanlan and she mentioned working with the editor, Diane Williams on her stories for the magazine Noon. I realised I’d read stories by this editor, Diane Williams, and remembered that they were unlike anything I’ve ever read. In fact, the only other writer it made me think of was … Kathryn Scanlan. I had no idea the two writers were connected in real life, though of course, it made perfect sense the moment it fell into place. In the interview, which I’d recommend listening to, Scanlan describes how active Williams is as an editor.1 Chopping into stories, removing chunks and in some case even bringing two separate stories together into a new one (remember Patricia Highsmith also mentioned doing that last week?).
I have since listened to Williams talk more about her own writing, and her process for writing these stories is as dynamic as her editing. She describes writing circles of words until little handfuls make connections. She keeps moving the words from circle to circle until some cohesion is created. She says she writes five stories simultaneously, and the texts are in chaos. It sounds so crazy that it might just work.
Reading Diane William’s stories feels like having a daydream, only to wake up(!) in the middle of the night. Everything is ordinary, and usual, sometimes it’s so commonplace it doesn’t even need to be said, but then it isn’t and that makes it strange again. The setting is domestic. The dialogue feels overheard. Everything is loaded. The reader is an active participant in the story because they must complete it. If a story must have a beginning, middle and an end, a Diane Williams story asks, which part do you already know? You will not be assisted in your understanding but everything is there that needs to be. She won’t explain it further. It can feel like work to read in this way, but hasn’t Williams worked to meet you here? When was the last time you questioned a sentence?
I’m very interested in this type of fiction because Williams is absolutely focussed on language, and language as a material of units, which is what I spent those years trying to make poems about. Words as building blocks that move like chess pieces. The point was made enough to get (be) a Master of Arts, but the poems were terrible.
I hate having to be accurate so I’ve always wanted to make things up, and hearing Williams speak about the way she writes makes sense to me. Everyday tools. Doing the work. Scanlan too, who speaks so enthusiastically about the exciting possibility of the sentence. These women are writing for me.
I’ve listened to a few interviews with Williams now, she speaks so directly, and I find her deeply reassuring. In the LRB shop interview someone in the audience puts a question to her and she replies something to the effect of “I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about the things you’re asking me. You have a perspective on my work that I don’t have.” Slightly devastating for the person who posed the question, but delightful for me, walking the dog on the beach.
Titles are significant and names are particular, which has to make you wonder, why aren’t they always?
Williams rejects the term ‘flash fiction’ for what she writes; she says they are stories. Stories, she says, are exciting. She describes writing as ‘stirring’ and that it is her way ‘of being musical’. When she is working on a story, she might move the end of a sentence to its beginning and it’s this risk that makes her work so interesting. She’s prepared to try every option to secure the feelings she wants the reader to have. The feeling should be physical.
Something I am noticing in myself as a reader, is very little patience for writers who are not prepared to write a risky sentence. I have read some more commercial novels recently and I’ve been slightly stunned by the rate of disappointing sentences, lazy phrases and second-hand imagery. Sure, it provides an invisible vehicle for the plot, but I booked a window-seat for the journey. I want to travel in style.
I like Diane Williams’ approach to writing very much and I find that the more of her stories I read, the excitement I feel for what she’s offering us builds up. In one of the interviews I listened to, she was asked about writing a novel, and I’ll admit to you now – as delicious as I find these short-short-stories on a structural, and linguistic level, I still take novels away with me in a way that I can’t for these shorter works (something about commitment?). Williams said she could not write the way she writes and make a novel. She actually said she doesn’t have the ‘character or stamina’ to do that with a novel, and I can see that with her particular practice – the chaos, the stirring - this would not work. For one, she isn’t working to set a story down, but to create a story with the strategic placement of her words as she conducts them, and I feel fairly confident when I say in order to write a successful novel – you need to know that something is going to happen. Williams says she writes to shock herself.
Williams also said of herself that she feels as if she has ‘nothing to say.’ That she has ‘no ideas.’ And that she can’t rely on her own experiences because she has so ‘few memories.’ (Again, this is all very reassuring and familiar a feeling to me.) So the stories are conjured by the constraints of writing, and the hope that combinations of words ‘by chance or accident lead to some exciting language’ – that, she says, is the project.
[I want to reassure my agent, who might be reading this, that I am not about to present you with a selection of my word combinations that have led to some exciting language and hope that by chance or accident it’s any good.]
But back to the novel that cannot be written – I assume these interviews were recorded before Kathryn Scanlan did exactly that in Kick The Latch (but it is interesting that Sonia’s story already existed before it could be written this way, and for a novel, it not strictly a work of fiction). There are more, of course there are. Great novels made of great writing happen all the time. I understand why Williams won’t write longer work, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I know they’re out there, winning the Nobel prize for Literature or shushed in a slush pile. But, perhaps, I don’t want to read them. It is exhausting to read that way, and none of the novels I’ve truly loved have ever exhausted me. There is a sweet spot somewhere (it’s Kick the Latch). Tell me in the comments if you’ve found it.
And short-short fiction, do you like it, or write it, and what is it good for?
I am always surprised by the things I have not tried to write. (Fear of commitment). I do a weekly writing club and we often respond to writing prompts during the session. Sometimes I even like what I have produced, in the musical sense, but I don’t know what to do with it. I suppose I have never really considered the possibility of short-short fiction for myself, because it is not very publishable or because it might look like a poem or because of the fear of one of the commitments. But Diane Williams does it, and continues to do it. She started writing fiction in her forties and now there is a whole book collecting the volumes of short-short stories she has made. It is 748 pages long.2
Williams compares the work to mining, she stresses how difficult it is. I don’t doubt it, and in the light of her work, when I look back over the short writing I have done, I find that it is not a story, exciting word combinations aside. A story was not conjured, perhaps the circles were not stirred long enough. But I make it my life-long mission to avoid lazy sentences and maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to write something short enough to make them shriek.
You can read some of Diane Williams’ stories on the LRB here and read an interview in The New Yorker with her here. This White Review interview includes two stories. Five more stories here in Harpers, and plenty more on Granta. Another one in The New Yorker, as part of their Flash Fiction series - though she’ll be mad about that.
This sent me down a rabbit hole regarding Gordon Lish, Williams’ teacher and Raymond Carver’s editor, who was similarly dynamic with a red pen.
I am not suggesting you leap in with this tome. A single collection would make a nicer introduction, and there are plenty of of her stories available online to read or listen to. I’ve purposely not quoted any because I don’t think they should appear out of context. The collection I have at home is Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine - which is no longer in print.
Thanks for this brilliant read and so interesting to learn more about Diane Williams. She’s so influential but it’s hard to find her books here. Thanks for sharing the links! 🔗 exciting stuff ahead to listen to!
Hi Katie! So interesting, I really enjoyed this and will look up Diane Williams and Kathryn Scanlan! I have been known to enjoy a short story. I recently read a book of George Saunders’ short stories, Pastoralia and was reminded that they can be very satisfying. My very best, and oft returned to short story collection is Kiss Kiss and Someone Like You, and are there some in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar? All by the wonderful Roald Dahl of course.
Some of my most enjoyed books recently have been whoppers that I eyed with caution for a while before opening. Memorably, The Goldfinch, which I bloody loved! And The Luminaries, which I really enjoyed. Both ginormous beasts, and surprisingly quick reads because I enjoyed them so much! Xx