Fall issue “OLD ANIMALS, OLD PEOPLE”
Category: From the editor
Spring flashes out it’s paper prose with Nathan Alling Long
Paper! What a crazy and amazing invention. Could you imagine us with a hammer and hundred of iron letters on our writing desks and large slabs of stone? Ah, suddenly… thinking of paper makes me feel I’ve lost a gazillion pounds and Shakespeare is whispering sonnets in my ear. Thank you paper, I love you!
Though paper was invented in 105 AD in China, our featured writer, Nathan Alling Long’s richly layered story “In China” is far from the invention of paper. The piece invents in other surprising ways. With paper as a witness to treacheries outside, it acts as unifying element of grief on the human level. This is a beautiful story. “In China” excerpt:
Every day I read the paper, looking for such disasters—new piles of bodies found in Rwanda, an earthquake in Chiapas, a derailed train outside Copenhagen. The worst news always makes me feel a little better, always lessens this feeling that I’m the only one with loss.
In his story “Flies” I get a visceral thrill—a good physical dose of the power of paper. And, the symbolic gestures are something to consider. A short excerpt to give you a taste:
I have to say, I get pretty damn good at knocking these things off the wall. The real pleasure is hearing them land on the floor like tiny bits of paper, a faint sound, like a fallen angel. Killing is not so bad in tiny amounts, it strikes me now, and I wonder if I might be able to kill a person this way, one gram at a time. What if these flies are really one body, just broken up into tiny soldiers?
CR Stories is proud to present Nathan’s talent for the Spring showcase. Did we get other flashes for the paper theme? Yes, we did. But Nathan’s work captured the CR Stories spirit of richly layered prose using paper as a unifying element. So Nathan steals the spring show. Enjoy his work. Stay tuned for the interview next week!
Your curly red editor and founder, Niya.
A Note from Straight Blonde
Okay, so “Straight Blonde” isn’t nearly as catchy or winsome as “Curly Red,” so this is the first and last time you will see me use that nickname in reference to myself. I just had to try it out. Don’t you just have to try out the words sometimes? Type ‘em up, read them on the screen—take your ideas for a little test drive?
That’s one of the great things about flash fiction. Its design lends itself well to experimentation. Which is not to say it’s easy or fluffy, or necessarily even edgy. A quick tour around the stories on Curly Red will show you a range of tone and topics, from heavy to light, sunny days to darkest night.
Here’s the deal: whether you view flash fiction as a creative writing exercise, learning tool, or legitimate literary genre (we do), writing flash will make you work. It will sharpen your writing and editing skills. If you can craft an engaging story—complete with a beginning, middle, and end—in 750 words or less, chances are you’ll be capable of longer forms. And once you’ve got the longer forms down, turning a 10-page short story into flash is an excellent opportunity to practice “killing the darlings,” cutting all but the most essential words, sentences, and paragraphs, while leaving intact the story’s guts. Less can be more.
And, just so we’re clear: flash fiction is not the 21st century-American literary fad you may think it is. With roots in ancient fables and parables—from countries as remote from the West as China and Japan—microfiction is nothing new. (What is microfiction, and how does it differ from short or flash or prose poetry or sudden fiction? Is there a difference? We’ll cover these questions in another blog post down the road.) What’s still true of the style is this: it allows you to play with words and ideas, and create a world with very few, strategically selected words. In a very compact space, you can populate this world with characters, color it with conflict, even drawn an arc. And we’re talking hours/days/weeks to make a story take shape, not months or years.
So try it out. Mess around! Sculpt some small but sturdy little tales, and send them in. I am eager to read your work, delighted to serve as editor of stories, and honored to be invited into the worlds you create. (Thanks, Curly Red!)
–Beth Bates, Stories Editor