And while on the subject....

         .....of short story writing, have a look at the piece of the late great Les Murray's over in "Other Voices". When we can get to that status we can feel just a bit pleased with ourselves.

             T.R.E.

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The "short story" thing

        Not sure what you made of "The Man Of Three Coats" (over in Pandora's Box, for a couple of more days), but it got me thinking about the whole nature of "short" fiction, which is, at the very least, a wonderful training ground for aspiring writers. Not much market for it, but who cares, do it anyway, it's good for you!

        But what of the types?

        There are short stories, microlit, anecdote, slice-of-life, and poetry in both free-form and rhyme. And then there's those spontaneous scraps that aren't really poetry but look a bit like it. You've seen heaps of those scattered around here, and collected on the "Scabbanalia" site, but I have no idea what to call the "style". I think of them as Quickbits. Best name I can come up with. I find them invaluable when it comes to snatching down a few thoughts on something that's rattling around, which is why they often look unedited. Because they're not. Wham bam thank you mam onto the page or screen or scribble pad, job done! Astrid Green showed me how to do that, how to let the ghost loose. Forever in her debt.

        And while on the subject of spontaneous writing, do you hate (hugely hate!) the stuff that comes with rules like I do? I mean, what the hell is haiku all about? Cleverness? And ohmygod the old schooldays poetry of strict meter and rhyme! Twisting syntax to get a rhyme and in the exact right place to make it a correct AB AB or whatever structure. Like trying to run with your right wrist handcuffed to your left ankle. Because it's the Rules. And then there's the short fiction competitions that say it has to be of a "theme". I'm happy to conform to maximum length, but geez I don't feel inclined to dash off something to fit the "theme".

        Okay, grizzle not over yet - what about length? A short story should be short! Show some tightness, not go rabbitting on like it can't think of an ending. For my money (and personal enjoyment) I like no more than say 3,000 words. If you can't nail it in that time, give it up.

        So, having gone on and on a bit, is "Three Coats" a short story? I'll probably finish up putting it in the hard copy collection (coming soon), but I'm not sure it's worthy. Is it more of an "anecdote", or even a "slice-of-life"? Hmmm, jury's out. By my own criteria a short story has to have a "punchline", that closing sentence or para that somehow nails the deeper thing, the story behind the story. Not always easy to do, and I'm sure if I looked back over my own I'd find I missed the target sometimes.

        Anecdotes. They're great when well told, mostly (always?) in the First Person, and they can often be made into a short story. Slice-of-life things can be good as well, but they're not a short story. I read a "short story" collection of E. Annie Proulx's some time back, and was surprised (and bloody disappointed!) to find it was just about all slice-of-life dished off as short fiction, as if she simply scraped up all the offcuts and out-takes from her other writings.

        Having said that, I have sliced discrete chunks from my novels, and used them as short stories. But only if they can stand alone. It's so easy with "Melrose Street" because that started life as a collection of short stories, and only later morphed into a novel at the suggestion of my agent. Hopefully I'll have enough material for a true collection without having to fall back on them.

        Okay, that's enough waffle. Hope there's something of value to you amongst it. More soon...

            Cheers....

                    T.R.E.

ps - nothing to do with the above, there's a refreshed list of books in my "Waiting In The Wings", if you're looking for something to read.

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Plodding on

         Still plodding on - enjoyably - through my collections of Pascoe's short story quarterlies, relishing the diversity they give. And I'm sure it's no coincidence that I'm happily back writing again myself, decided to put my latest piece in Pandora's Box, not sure why, not even sure if it's a short story or not, but it needed an airing. Or something. Writing is a funny old compulsion eh?

        As Pascoe's bunch of issues are all from the 1980s, there's quite a few listed as first stories, those modest beginning works of writers, some who flourished and some who didn't.....

        There's Bob Hawke (who I must admit I always found a little hard to take, and who actor Sam Neill called "the rudest man I ever met"!), who I expected would be boring - no idea why - but actually wrote a small entertaining piece, about a guy who sat next to him on a long flight. But it's really an anecdote, albeit a good one, well told.

        Then there's Gillian Mears, her first ever story (she was 22 at the time), something meaty and insightful, and would've - and rightly so - promised a great output to come. Sadly, after a great clutch of awards and accolades for her work, Gillian died in 2016 aged only in her early fifties. But, I have to admit, this one short story is the only thing of hers I've ever read, a gross oversight I intend to fix.

        And then Bill Clancy - with a small but great story "Selling The Farm" which I loved - who went on to do heaps of material, mostly under William Clancy if you're looking, a lot of it political. But I'd love to see more of his fiction.

        But what happened to Marianne Szymiczek, hard to find anything at all online, although her one-page short story is full of promise.

        Ah, what about Trevor Edmonds! His first ever short story shows promise, what did he go on to do? Ohmygod there's three of them out there! (His is the good stuff folks, trust me).

        I also love the "biogs" in the back of Pascoe's editions...

            "Tom Flood - lives in a house in Chippendale with a green door".

            "Murray Gray - normally a peaceful man, he has been attacked recently by jaundice..." and then goes on at length about the price of wheat and the inequities of the drink-driving justice system!

            "Syd Clayton - (after normal biog bit) "I'm a pinpoint, a crystal a bit of dust a droplet, an atom, a piece of wizened rust, a midget, a pygmy, a thumbnail sketch, a Lilluputin hero and a Tom Thumb wretch. I'm only half a man, I know I am, without your loving, I'm only half a man."

        Clearly Pascoe simply put in whatever was supplied! And goodonya Bruce!

        Okay, that's enough, but next I intend to explore the definition of what a short story is. More soon....

                Cheers.....

                        T.R.E.

ps - and please please please keep up your writing, the world is the poorer without it.

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Right ??

         Let's see - have I got this right?

        Hamas and the Israeli Government and Army between them kill 14,000 nameless faceless kids who live in a walled-in enclave and can't run away and in the process of this they bomb their cities back to the Stone Age and set up the starvation of the kids who are still alive, and it creates a bunch of political posturing and passive do-gooder (like me) hand wringing, but nothing else. Kill seven aid workers with names and who have free-nation passports and relatives who vote, and there's lamentations all round and cries for investigations and culpability.

        Have I got this right??

        And do I understand that by doing all this the Israeli people will have a more secure future? The truth (well, MY truth) is that if you hang around for about 25 years (maybe less) the next cycle of the same bloody thing will kick off all over again. Simply because all the Israel Govt is ensuring at the moment is that the next generation of Hamas terrorists/freedom-fighters is being created amongst the kids who survive. If any.

        As a matter of curiosity - maybe hopeless desperation - I've been doing a heap of historical research on the last 2-3,000 years that have led up to the last six months carnage. And the only answer I can find from it, is that there is no answer. They will keep on doing this for the foreseeable future. Because of the human need for Tribalism (coupled with Excessive Procreation), that need we have to say -"I'm different from you" - I have more rights, I have a truer God, my kids are more important than your kids, stuff like that.

        So, switch off the News, this one isn't going to change, at least until the USA and Iran decide to stop waging ideological war against each other through the Israeli and Palestinian people.

        But what the fuck would I know. I'm just an ignorant spectator who simply senses that I'm watching a horror that has no perceptible end.

        T.R.E.

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Currently reading

"DANGER DREAMS" - Willie McRae (Aust/UK 2016)

        I seem to be on a short story bender lately, but that can only be a good thing, as it has at least propelled me back into my own writing after such a long layoff, now with an addition to the upcoming collection done, and a new determination to get some more in the pipeline.

        Anyway, a while back I was struck by how much one of our early coffee-cafe mates looked like the image on the front of "Myths, Sins, & Cosmic Machinery" and dragged in a copy to show him. He was clearly taken aback a bit, and chuffed too I think, but the upshot was that he said he had a connection to a young-ish guy who writes short stories, and he lent me a copy of his only publication so far.

        Willie McRae clearly has talent, and I'd bet London to a brick that he'd be a fan of Stephen King (or from my era Rod Serling and "The Twilight Zone"), as his stuff is of a similar style, a touch surreal, bizarre, "out there", but cleverly done. Worth tracking down this slim volume (self-published I think, but it can be found on line) if you're into surreal and bizarre, or simply looking for something fresh and creative.

        Cheers....

                T.R.E.

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Just finished reading

"CRACKING THE SPINE" - Spineless Wonders Pub (Aust 2014)

        Spineless Wonders (not to be confused with the WA environmental group of the same name) is a Sydney publishing house that has a heavy accent on short stories, and well worth looking up...

SPINELESS WONDERS

...and this is one of their many compilations. But this one has a twist.

        It has ten short stories (all Aust) from well-published writers, but each one is followed by an essay by the author, partly on the background of the writing of the story, and partly on their approach to writing generally.

        It's these essays that are the strength of this collection, and any aspiring short story writer should hunt down a copy of this book, for the essays if nothing else, as they so clearly spell out what writing short fiction is all about. And compiled the way it is, with the essay immediately following the story, gives an added value to the content.

        Cheers...

                T.R.E.

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Back to it

        The switch from my recent burst of reading only reality, back to my first love, being short fiction, has paid off. I finished the second volume of Pascoe's Short Stories Quarterly during the week, felt the Ghost stir (after a 15 month hiatus), put up my WIP file, picked the one off the top of the very long list - "The Great Banana Oath" - and got stuck in. Like I'd never stopped. Felt great.

        And it occurred to me that a sudden switch, from non-fiction to fiction, is like going from photographs to paintings, both capable to be brilliant and evocative, but very different in their impact on the eye and the soul. And I have to say, I like fiction the best, there's so much scope. To get your insides out there into the light.

        All of which got me mulling over the whole thing that I choose to call "The Ghost" - that intangible force, that wonderfully abstract place in our heads and our hearts, from whence comes the images and the feelings, and the words that paint the story. The beast that is so full of energy it has to be kept in a cage for some of it's time, but also let loose occasionally, out in those wild spaces where it can be itself. Something like that.

        As I don't actually know many people who are compulsively "creative" writers (painters, sculptors, musicians, et al) I guess that not everyone arrives on earth with a ghost attached, stuck in their genes. Forever whispering in their ear. Although, in fairness, when I watch Jess tending her gardens, with the loving (and sometimes fretful) approach of a true mother, I have to wonder if creativity comes out in other less obvious forms, forms that we don't always acknowledge.

        Tossing all of this around, I came to wonder, in my own life, when "The Ghost" actually first made itself felt, rattled its chains and demanded to be let loose. So I thought back over my history of creative output and realised that it first reared up and bit me when I was 13. Caused me to win a writing prize at school and several large pats on the head from well-meaning adult relatives, which made my head swell, and crippled my embryonic ghost. Till I was 18. When it broke out of its cage in a frenzy of self-esteem and made me fling words down onto the page (at an astonishing - some would say mindless - rate!), all of it bad, all of it long since shredded out of existence.

        So the beast crawled back into its cage. Until my late 20's, when it sort of stirred and wrote some folksy stuff from inside confinement. But in my 30's I let it out. Unfettered. It went berko. The torrent nearly tore my head off. (You can see the comparison in the first two sections of "Scabbanalia".)

SCABBANALIA (1960s)

        Since then I've learnt to exercise control over it. Out but on a leash. Sometimes though I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

        I have no idea if any of this is of the slightest use (or interest) to you as a writer, but I sure feel better for putting it down.

        Cheers....

                T.R.E.

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Pascoe's SSQ

        Bruce Pascoe's Short Stories Quarterly started in 1982 and lasted till 1998. Always a slim edition of about 100-120 pages covering anywhere from 12 to 20 stories, with an eye-catching cover (Pascoe was also ever-ready to give a passing artist a go), it was a great platform, and saw the debut of many writers you now know well. (The only story of mine he bought is in No 22, in 1988).

        Nowadays these can be found for next to nothing in most Op Shops, and are well worth chasing down if you're into the short medium, as you should be if you're serious about keeping up your writing skills. And okay, I won't guarantee you'll love every story, but that's all in the taste thing, and I find only about 2-3 each edition that doesn't get me in.

        I already had three editions from the late '80s, but was given another seven at Xmas from the mid '80s, back when publishing (in my opinion) was still driven by a sense of being in the "art" and "literature" business. Unlike today, where fiction is just another consumable, like moisturisers and pop singers and KFC-Hawaiian-Double-Zinger-Chicken-Burger-For-A-Short-Time-Only, where image and marketing is king and it's a matter of a quick blitzkrieg campaign and sell sell sell then ditch the remainders and "Okay, what's (and who's) the next big thing?"

        While short stories don't tend to stay with you like good novels, the essence of them is novelty. Quick turnover novelty, that gives you the opportunity to sample a wide range of writer's work in snappy bursts. And Pascoe selects well, sticks to mainly Aust settings (but not always), and Aust writers. The industry lost a valuable asset when this series was discontinued.

        As an exercise, I thought I'd pick off a few bits about some of the authors I enjoyed in the first couple of editions I've finished, but strange how hard it can be to track some down, as precious few pop up on Wiki. If you're curious, here's the handful that caught my eye...

Peggy Kerr - struggled to be sure I had the right person! You may do better.

Kenneth Gasmier - a West Austn from the wheatbelt, lots of SS's to his credit, and one pretty good gong.

Macted - an interesting character! Google him and see what you get.

Olga Masters - a household name in Aus Lit, even though she didn't really start till aged 58, and lasted only 11 years to her death in 1986. Always worth reading. (I once had a publisher evoke this lady's name and example when I was moaning about leaving my run a bit late!)

Sue Hancock - what can I say? - this is a lady who's work I've always enjoyed.

Mark O'Flynn - never consciously fallen over his stuff before, but glad I did at least once.

Bruce Pascoe Himself - has quite a story, check it out on Wiki below. I've never seen one of Bruce's own stories in SSQ, but he has slipped material in under a pseudonym, not sure why.

BRUCE PASCOE

        Cheers.....

                    T.R.E.

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The Thomas Perry gene

         There is a gene that compels some folk to Ramble-and-Record. I like to think of it as the Thomas Perry gene, and I have it. It makes you wander  endlessly on your feet, makes you think about what you see, makes you write it all down. Compulsively. You have no control over it. I inherited it from my gr-gr-gr-grandfather Thomas Perry who, quite possibly, invented it in the first place.

        Thomas Perry was a kind, modest, family- (and God-) loving Quaker who was born in Kent in 1777, ran a foundry for a while as a young man, married and had kids, went broke, moved to Jersey (Channel Islands), then to Berkshire where he set up a modest town biscuit bakery and shop. Nothing special about him. Except that he left (to me personally I like to think!) a host of writing, as letters and notebooks, which I tracked down throughout my extended family, collected and studied, then transcribed or digitised, and deposited in the State Archives.

        He was a man who loved to wander the countryside, and write things down. And think about what he saw. Totally could not help himself. (There's no image of him, but I have always seen him as this small ceramic figure I keep on my shelf, doing one of his talks to The Geological Society.)

        But this inner drive took him into conflict between his Logic and his Quaker-ness, his traditional teachings (of the pre-1840s) about the origins of the universe and humankind, which was still sticking with the literal truth of Genesis, compounded by Archbishop James Ussher (1582-1656) and his calculations that God created the universe in one big week commencing on October 23rd, 4004 BC. It must've been a Monday.

        But Thomas lived long enough to cross the time of the writings of William 'Strata' Smith (1769-1839), who made that Map That Changed The World (see "Books that rewired my brain" here somewhere). But poor old Thomas Perry could not quite abandon his entrenched beliefs, even when the evidence stared him in the face as he walked the hills and valleys of England, but especially the new railway cuttings that were appearing everywhere, as it had been the exposed strata in cuttings (in Smith's case for all the canals that just preceded the railways) that had made the penny drop for William Smith.

        Yep, old Thomas Perry is my favourite ancestor. A dedicated Rambling-and-Recording guy. Okay, he didn't do fiction, but that doesn't matter, he just HAD to make the record of what he experienced. And what it meant. To him. I can truly relate to that.

        Cheers...

                    T.R.E.

ps - if you'd like the whole Thomas Perry saga, along with some of his notebooks, of a man grappling with life....

THE QUAKER WHO LOVED GOD AND ROCKS

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The 25 books of Xmas

         My nearest and dearest tend to give me books for Xmas, for some reason. And I guess it helps when one of them runs a large online bookshop sourced from Op Shop shelves (on the understanding that any that I don't want to keep should go back to charity as he gets them in job lots), and another works in a big bricks-n-mortar job who give away leftovers to staff. So I finished up with a rather eclectic collection...

3 slim volumes of poetry
        Each by a single author from the 70s, none of which I could get into because they were each so intent on being clever they didn't quite get around to telling me the story - broken verse lines, large spaces in the middle of others for no apparent reason, all that. Already back in circulation.

"Military Motorcycles of the World"
        Coffee table charmer that was a great browse and one my mate Brian will be rapt to see.

7 editions of Bruce Pascoe's "Aust Short Stories Qtly"
        Always worth picking up these 1980s slim collections if you see them, as you're sure to find that at least 50% of the 15-20 stories will appeal to you. I'm particularly looking forward to the one that includes "Bob Hawke's First Short Story". (The first story I ever sold went to one of these editions).

"Country Childhoods"
        A 1992 collection by Geoffrey Dutton of Aust childhoods. Picking through that as the mood takes.

"The Stone Book"
        A slim volume that is an absolute gem, and I'll feature this as soon as I've finished it.

"Fabulous Furphies"
        "Ten Great Myths From Australia's Past", one of those browser collections you pick through when you've finished with the others.

"A Pocketful Of Lies"
        "A true story behind an Australian scandal", but hasn't come to the top of the list yet.

"Big Week"
        Something about the biggest air battle of World War II, waiting in the wings.

"Rambling Man"
        Another Billy Connolly memoir, of life on the road. Look forward to this one.

"Capt Scott"
        A tome the size of a breeze block, of Scott the explorer. This one could be last.

A Diary...
        This one has already been recycled and I've forgotten it's title, but it was the actual two-year diary of a teenage farm boy in South Australia's mid-far north in the 1880s. Great piece of local and cultural history, but as dry as chaff.

"The Bonobo Gene"
        The bonobo monkeys are those that are sex mad. I think this one is a tongue-in-cheek job that attempts to say something about the true nature of the human male!! Surely a skimmer only?

"Austin Seven"
        The history of the Austin Seven car, one more to add to my collection, as I have a soft spot for these vintage gems, my first wheels having being one, so am sentimentally attached, even though it was a hard mechanical and financial lesson to my 16-year-old self.

"The Book Of Peanuts"
        One of my three favourite cartoon series, the other two being...

"Garfield - Fat Cat 3-Pack"

"The Essential Calvin & Hobbes" - two volumes.

        So there ya go - eclectic or what?! Add to that a fabulous coffee table book on Aust silo art, and a hefty biography of Monet, which both arrived ahead of Xmas, and you'd have to say that my reading pleasure has been well sorted for 2024. Will dwell further on anything I think you need to know about as I go along.

        Cheers....

                    Trev

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