Spineless Wonders asks Ryan O’Neill
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Of writers outside Australia, I love Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield and Vladimir Nabokov. There are many Australian short story writers I love. In the 1970s Peter Carey and Murray Bail wrote some of the best short fiction ever produced in this country. Gillian Mears is another great writer who I wish wrote more stories. Of contemporary short fiction writers I admire A.S. Patric, Michael Sala and Patrick Cullen
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
There are probably two that tie for this. The first is “In the Penal Colony” by Kafka. The objective, everyday tone, contrasted with the horrific, nightmarish events in the story lingered in my mind for months after reading. The other is ‘The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe. It is a brilliant first person portrait of a psychopath. I re-read this years ago and it disturbed me so much I vowed I would never read it again.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
First and foremost, the variety it offers in form, style, setting, and characterisation. There is also the possibility of perfection. A short story can be perfect in a way a novel can never be.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Traditional and/or experimental.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
The story I am most fond of is “The Eunuch in the Harem” a story told through a series of book reviews. I love it because it was easy to write, because it makes people laugh (something I thought I could never do) and because it opened a door for me to get my collection published by Black Inc. Also, it’s the one story I’ve written that I can reread with some pleasure.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Sometimes from an overheard conversation, sometimes from reading a different short story, and sometimes I just want to do something that I haven’t seen before, just to see if I could do it. For example, I’ve always wanted to find a way to put a crossword into a story, and the story* itself flowed from there…
*Ryan’s story, ‘My English Homework’, which includes a crossword and many other ESL exercises such as a family tree, is published in Escape: an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011)
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I write the first draft, (which is my least favourite part of writing) and then I revise, revise, revise. I’m extremely fortunate to have a number of friends who are writers, and so I then send the story off to them to see what they think. After another draft, I usually send it off to a journal. If I’m lucky enough to be accepted, I look at the editor’s comments and fix up any other issues. And then the story is published.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I think the short story form in Australia hasn’t flourished since the 1970s. I think it endures, has endured for decades and will continue to endure. It is valued artistically, but not commercially, as can be seen by the aversion of some publishers to publishing collections. Yet there are always journals, and publishers, who are willing to take a chance on short stories, and I don’t think this will change anytime soon.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I think it’s exciting, but also a little scary. For me, a book has a front cover, a back cover and a few hundred pages in between. I sometimes find it hard to accept other media.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Don’t be afraid to experiment and take risks.
Ryan O’Neill’s stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Westerly, Best Australian Stories, New Australian Stories and the Sleepers Almanac. He has had two short story collections published, Six Tenses and A Famine in Newcastle, the latter of which was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. His new collection, Weight of the Human Heart, is published by Black Inc in 2012.
small wonder: Charles D’Anastasi
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in small wonder?
I like to build poems out of small incidents that take place around me. ‘Madame Bovary’ grew out of such an incident. During a poetry reading while listening to one of the poets, I became aware of the sound of horses’ hoofs and the accompanying noise of carriage wheels (the horse and carriage experience that’s seems to attract certain tourists) coming through one of the open windows. I stopped listening properly to the poet reading, although I still registered all sorts of minute details of the proceedings inside the room. Because of the sound of the horse’s hoofs, I gradually started to make a connection with the present and with that famous scene in the book. This connection made such an impression on me that I felt I had to try to write something about it.
2. Tell us about that process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
Usually, I do start in a small way. I might have one central idea and try to build around it. Often, I find that this isn’t enough – a dead end. I might leave the piece for a few days, perhaps even weeks or months. Sometimes, I abandon it. On other occasions, when I feel that something is working well I persist. I take notes. I try to think of different lines that might propel the piece forward. It might go either way – persistence or abandonment. I do try to research the subject matter, especially if historical details are involved. Intuition comes into it of course. Surely, this has something to do with the writer taking some risks, looking for possibilities in all sorts of places. Ultimately, for me, the process involves a lot of coming and going, a lot of rewriting and discarding of some troublesome word, or even an entire piece of writing. Also, I find that sometimes insightful comments from members of the writing group I belong to are a great benefit.
Repeatedly, I find myself working in terms of associations with objects. For example, I wrote a prose piece about a small photograph of a young woman that I found in a park on one of my walks. What happened, sent me to another photograph related story of a relative, which I interweaved with the story of the found photograph. Each episode helped me link both stories, and hopefully come up with a finished piece that deals in a satisfying way with the idea of rejected or lost images.
3. What advice do you have for other writers – about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
Once, I heard a poet say that there are times when the title of a poem (I suppose this also relates to other forms of writing) is a poem in itself. In other words the title has a life of its own, while at the same time it must make one feel that it’s doing something special to enhance the rest of the writing.
In regards to first lines, I think one of the most obvious rules is that these lines must really hold the reader’s attention. At the same time, rules can be bent or stretched. One could start in a very simple and innocuous way; for example, ‘It was always going to be blue…’ and then try to build on that simplicity – and somehow find a way to get under the skin of the reader.
Last lines are just as vital. They seem to work best when they clinch a situation – perhaps leaving you agitated or numb, or pondering; possibly, even feeling disgusted, which would always be preferable, to leaving you feeling indifferent.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Everything and everyone around me inspires what I write. Everyday domestic incidents, news items, snatches of overhead conversations. It’s all there in the hard rubbish collection of everyday living. I’m sure that the most wonderful treasures are just there for the taking. And of course constant reading and pouring over all sort of books. I do believe that ultimately writing and reading feed off each other.
Over the years, the writers that have inspired me are the ones whose imagination, vision and writing skills have really moved me and stayed with me, writers like Alice Munro, Borges Julio Cortazar and Marina Tsvetaeva. Also the writing of Lydia Davis, joanne burns and Emma Lew. Of the new writers, I feel that Karen Hitchcock’s writing stands out. And I keep going back to the prose poems of Gary Catalano, for their clarity, yet enigmatic insinuations, and the marble sheen quality of their stillness.
5. Tell us what do you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
Often, when I’m stuck, I go to my notes. I’ll try to revive a piece I might have discarded, try different angles, with a word or a phrase. I find that I get many of my ideas for writing when I go for walks. Most of the time I find that walking has a calming effect on me, and creates a rhythm that puts my mind at ease and free to roam and explore. Afterwards, I might jot down a few exploratory sentences, with the hope that I can expand them into something meaningful and cohesive.
When it comes to writing poetry, which is my main interest, sometimes I try to get going by writing in some specific form, like the pantoum, which because of its repetitive line structure, provides one with a bit of a challenge, and the impetus to come up with the next line.
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I really don’t think that I have a particular writing exercise that always works for me. My own writing seems to be the result of any combination of the above, with an emphasis on persistence, revising and searching.
Charles D’Anastasi is a Melbourne poet. His work has been published in various literary journals. His chapbook The unreliable harbour was published by the Melbourne Poets Union. Recently, his prose poem The Weaver was selected as part of the program The Ariadne Project, based on the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne and Theseus, on the ABC 360 Documentaries.
Like to hear Charles read his prose poem, Madame Bovary? Available as audio download here.
Spineless Wonders asks Sue Booker
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Those who spellbind me not just in a few of their stories (like Raymond Carver) but all through each collection they put out, like Amy Hempel, David Foster Wallace and Western Australia’s Chris McLeod.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
While 26+ pp puts this at the longer end of the genre, I’d have to say ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #20’ by David Foster Wallace. You can read it in one sitting if you’ve got a spare 50 minutes. First, it’s a story within a story within a story. The framing story – a gender politics discourse – contains a love story wrapped around a horror story, a harrowing psychological what-if. Second, Foster Wallace gets away with talk of the soul by hiding behind a sceptical narrator. Third, the whole package delivers several twists or reversals, including a rape that isn’t a rape, a psycho killer who loses his nerve, and a rationalist who falls in love with his one-night stand. If it sounds like there’s too much going on, a lot is still omitted. For instance, we have to infer the nature of the ‘interviewer’. And last but not least, the theme is empathy for the other, however repulsive. Yet Foster Wallace, elsewhere a brilliant ventriloquist, achieves his effects without recourse to the popular device of adopting a guise far removed from the author.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I love dense, complex and/or enigmatic narratives that need to be read more than once to make sense, and shortness makes this more practical. Shortness also necessitates omission, allowing the reader more scope to participate.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
So far, it mostly pans out as character-driven narratives about the crossing or violation of boundaries (physical and/or psychological) or taboos (personal and societal). Before writing took over, I’d spent years painting and dancing, neither medium of which I’ve abandoned, so it’s possible those disciplines condition my use of language.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
My fondness can change allegiance on a daily or hourly basis. It’s first an index of ideas that might yield new (or radically reborn) work; that is, the fondness is less for the story alone than for the ideas that flow from it. In this sense, ‘Under the Skin’ (in the Escape anthology) feels fertile; it continues to suggest further characters and experiments in form.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
The ideas can come from anywhere, but unless they’re marked by synchronicities or entwined with strong emotions, most of them will fade and dry out like pressed flowers in notebooks. For instance, the idea for ‘Under the Skin’ grew from a shouted conversation with a woman I barely knew. Some women, on hearing what I heard, might vow never to be without a mobile, but my sole concern was, what would stop my character from using hers? At some point, the woman’s chilling account reminded me of something an ex had once told me (which also served as a warning even if he didn’t know it!) and I began the story without knowing where it was going (not my usual MO). Then halfway through writing the first draft, I got injured by a total stranger, which modified the narrative arc in unexpected ways.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Sometimes I’ll bounce ideas off my partner if they come up while I’m with him. Often I’ll brainstorm outdoors on scraps of paper. When there’s a draft that gels I’ll run it past random strangers (writers) online, some of whom won’t pull their punches or share my cultural assumptions etc. (good for objectivity), then I’ll rethink and rejig if necessary, edit and re-edit. It can take weeks or months but more often takes years to produce a story that satisfies me. Then comes the hard part: gauging where to send work that’s not geared to the established outlets.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yes. The fact that in recent years (or months) so many new venues have sprung up, e.g. literary journals and adventurous small publishers like Spineless Wonders, just confirms the growth of a short-story audience.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Digital forms have opened doors for a renaissance of the short story. And as I always read aloud throughout the writing and editing process, my work’s inherently geared for audio. So bring it on…
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
(Ahem…) As a helplessly visual person, I can’t stress the importance of seductive, standout cover design enough.
Sue Booker’s short fiction has appeared in Meanjin and Encounters: Modern Australian Short Stories. Her long fiction has attracted mentorships from Varuna and the Australian Society of Authors. She is currently exploring in-between-length fiction. Sue’s story, ‘Under the Skin’ appears in Escape, an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011).
Spineless Wonders asks Doreen Sullivan
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
You know, and this is terrible, I tend to remember stories more than individual authors. But some names that I have gone looking for after being wowed at least once include: Maggie Alderson, Teresa Ashby, Steve Beresford, Leanne Hall, Cate Kennedy, Rose Mulready, Flannery O’Connor, Glenys Osborne, Elliott Pearlman and Diana Spelcher.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
There’ve been a few. One is ‘The Debutante’ by Leonora Carrington, first published in 1936. Woman invites a hyena to take her place at the debutante ball. Hyena behaves with impeccable hyena manners—that is, true to her species. I read it first years ago, and can still recall my amused surprise at how it unfolds.
Another is ‘In Reference to your Recent Communications’ by Tessa Brown, published in Harper’s Magazine in 2005. A very funny story that I showed to several friends and family members if they had ever expressed even the faintest interest in the short story form, and practically insisted: Read this. Now. It stood out for the character of the deluded girlfriend who did not accept her romantic break up. Very clever. The boyfriend is never on the page, and there’s creepiness to this story, just a tad. A hilarious creepiness.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
As a reader I like that it’s short, just the perfect length often, for a 30 minute tram commute, if it’s a longer short story.
I like the variety in anthologies, collections, and in magazine fiction specials.
I like how stories sometimes linger in my memory for years.
I like how stories turn up in surprising places, beyond the literary journal or general magazine. You can find stories in Cosmos, Nature, and even the medical journal The Lancet. Mind you, The Lancet fiction was from a one-off 2007 competition.
I like that most short stories are character studies.
As a writer I like that short story writers are pretty anonymous. No one has ever heard of you. There’s freedom there.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Someone once said my old stories had their own illogical logic. I’ve always rather liked that.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Prototype Number One, because it was a lot of fun to write.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
The stories come from fragments of conversations, fragments of lyrics, and sentence fragments. Aural-snippets. Rhythms.
Having said that, the idea for Prototype Number One originated in a 2005 magazine writing class. Our teacher gave us an in-class exercise: Your house burned down. You need to tell your best friend, boss, and parents by email. Go. For the parents, the thought of a dinged up, disgruntled robotic type of person needing to go back home for repair after fire popped into my mind. But I wasn’t brave enough to go down that route and read it out. Instead I wrote something more standard. Safer. The idea stayed with me though.
This year, at a work conference, I picked up a sample copy of Cosmos magazine, thrilled to read a witty, whimsical short story in it about a man’s computer taking over his life, co-opting his girlfriend, etc. Loved it, though when I read others, I realised that first read story was atypical for the magazine. I saw (or I wanted to see) some broad similarities with that writer’s style and content and mine. So that gave me ‘permission’ and confidence to write a more fanciful story—knowing that some magazines publish this type of fiction.
7.What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I often bring stories to my critique group. The story published in Escape by Spineless Wonder story, Unrequited was read by them. Just having them as first readers often helps—especially for picking up inconsistencies like having timelines out of whack. Or letting me know if I’m going to try a macabre twist in the tale, then I need to give inklings of that from the beginning. This is true. I remain annoyed with a novel I read a good five years ago that was a delightful domestic comedy until the car crash horror in the final chapters. Man, did I feel cheated.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I think the form is appreciated by some, but not most. Though there seems to be a resurgence of interest over the past two years or so in literary journals, with new publishers. But I also think people not caring for the form is fine. If you don’t like something, you don’t like something. If you come to my place for dinner and you hate pumpkin I won’t force it on you, insisting you should eat it because it’s nutritious. And because I made it special. Just for you.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Great! Especially audio. Years ago I had the radio on for background noise and a play came on that so captivated me I stopped what I was doing and sat down to listen. Abandoned everything and gave it my full attention. If something I wrote ever affected anyone like that I’d be super chuffed.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
None. I’m thrilled you’re on the scene.
Doreen Sullivan wonders if it wise to crave anonymity. She is certain she has achieved it in most quarters, although her parents seem to know who she is. Sometimes she shucks her cloak of invisibility, for a nanosecond, to publish stories in Escape and Sleepers Almanac No. 7.
The Column – one year on
In the past year we’ve had 11,000 visitors to our blog. We’ve posted interviews with 45 top writers of short Australian stories as well as discussions, reviews and essays on what’s new and what matters in the short fiction scene. So, why not join us …
Spineless Wonders is looking for contributors to The Column.
What have you noticed about the themes preoccupying Australian short fiction writers today? Do you notice any trends (or radical departures) in the style or form of recent short story collections?
Do you have anything to say about the status of the short story here in Australia in comparison to other countries? Do we need a short story festival or a national body such as we have for Australian poetry? Do we need more awards to celebrate anthologies and collections? Why are our short fiction writers so under-represented in international competitions?
Last year we ran a feature on opening lines where three guest writers each chose a story with an arresting first sentence and told us why it stood out. You are welcome to send us your choice of openers. Or perhaps you’d like to write about stunning final lines. Send us your choice of final sentence, details of the story it is from (title, author, where it is published) and a brief comment.
Whether you are a student, an emerging, experienced or established writer or an avid reader – all contributions, large or small, are welcome. Write to bronwyn@shortaustralianstories.com.au
Spineless Wonders asks SJ Finn
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Annie Proulx, Elizabeth Jolley and Carson McCullers are a few of the many writers I admire for their short fiction. From a closer position I’ve gained knowledge and been influenced by collections such as Anson Cameron’s, ‘Nice Shootin’ Cowboy’, Tim Winton’s ‘Minimum Of Two’ and Thea Astley’s ‘Collected Stories’.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
If I pondered this question for longer I may come up with something else, but the story that keeps pecking at my brain is Fiona McFarlane’s ‘Those Americans Falling From The Sky’. The narrative is wended beautifully into a seamless and beguiling story while at the bottom of things, like a well with stones in it, there’s something quite disturbing going on.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I like the power the short story form holds, like a secret behind a door that begins to be revealed the moment it’s opened. It’s not that everything is seen at once but good stories take you to the heart of the matter very quickly unlike a novel which is more like being outside a house and first having to take in the garden, the path, the garage etc. before opening the front door. It’s the intensity of the short form that is attractive to me.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
My writing can be high tensile as it is in my story ‘Agapanthus’ in Sleepers Almanac No. 5, or it can be a little sinister as it is in ‘Angus’s Playground’ on line here. I do enjoy words which means employing discipline as a matter of course – while ‘matters of course’ require the same diligence as any matters, big or small. I’m drawn to the excavation of character, such as in my story ‘Flame Game’ from Going Down Swinging No. 27 and online here. And, lastly, my writing can be more emotional and interior such as ‘Paper Anniversary’ which has come runner-up in the Carmel Bird Short Story competition and appears in the anthology put out by the good people of this website, Spineless Wonders, called ‘Escape’.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I am partial to my story ‘Flame Game’mainly because it’s the first time I’d written in the second person and realised the power of the device. While bringing the emotional territory of a character closer, it creates a certain disturbing distance at the same time, the overall effect being ephemeral and spooky. The story, despite its brevity, manages to capture the protagonist’s character and explain why he did the terrible thing he did. In so doing, I feel as if I was just the conduit through which his voice was flowing; something that makes a story wonderfully watertight.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
To stick with ‘Flame Game’ (I have written other stories from similar kernels of thought, or is that emotion) I read an article in The Age newspaper about a Canadian psychologist who was treating convicted arsonists. I have a clear memory of where I was when I read the piece, the exact time and place, indicating perhaps the significant impact the article had on me. Stirred, I wrote the first draft in one sitting soon after. And it’s wonderful when that happens, when there’s something so truthful about the voice in a story that it flows from the fingertips, uninterrupted.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I love uncovering the first draft and find that the most exciting part of the process. I also enjoy the re-working, especially when the story starts to really shine through. I’m inpatient, however, and find myself sending my work off too soon, which can only lead me to conclude I’m in need of a writing group; even a ‘reader’ would do.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
The short form’s value (relatively speaking) is, I think, on the increase in Australia. The steadiness of the growth of publications of anthologies and collections is testimony to this. However it seems we’re way behind North America in regard to the short form’s status and I have a feeling that those reading short stories are mostly those who are writing them.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Good.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Maintain standards – contemporary but top shelf. In the end, harsh as it might seem to writers struggling to get published, the process of rejection will improve their work.
SJ Finn writes poetry and fiction, opinion and commentary for the Overland Literary Magazine blog. Her short stories have appeared in Going Down Swinging, Sleepers Almanac, as a mini shot for Vignette Press. Finn’s poetry has appeared in The Age newspaper, The Green Fuse, Cordite and Snorkel. War Through The TV appeared in the Best Australian Poems 2010. Her novel This Too Shall Pass was published by Sleepers in March 2011 and was highly commended in The Barbara Jefferis Award 2012.
She has a website at: www.sjfinn.com
Spineless Wonders asks Pierz Newton-John
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
There are so many! But some who spring to mind include Anne Enright, Wells Tower, Peter Carey, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Borges, Kafka.
2.What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
If pressed to name a single one, I’d have to go for Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’. It is a nightmare put on paper, distilling the horror hidden in a certain kind of ordinary existence. The image of a man suddenly and inexplicably transformed into a grotesque insect could be read as an allegory for many things: mental illness, neurotic self-rejection, the fate of the sensitive man in a bourgeois, materialistic society. What makes it great literature is that almost everyone who reads it shudders with an obscure sense of recognition. Somehow it is a universal nightmare.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
Ben Okri once described a novel as like a river, a short story as like a glass of water. That seems utterly apt to me. It captures the short story’s clarity, its self-containment, its capacity to be taken at a gulp – and a certain salutary asceticism about it. I suspect that ascetic quality is why the short story languishes in today’s culture, along with the poem. Short stories do not satisfy in the complete, explicit way of novels or movies. They sit subtly on the mind after one has finished them, pervading the intellect and the emotions, suggesting associations and meanings the way a fine wine suggests cinnamon or vanilla (to perform a Jesus-like trick on Ben Okri’s metaphor). To enjoy them requires the capacity for subtlety, and indeed they teach subtlety. Unfortunately, we do not live in subtle times.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I suppose I veer towards the melancholic, the elegiac, sometimes the blackly comedic. Writing is no fun if you’re not expressing forbidden thoughts and feelings. In my case, it seems to be the suspicion that things are more awful than we like to admit. The freedom of writing is honesty, unglossed by our usual defensive manoeuvres. Yet I think there’s an aesthetic sensibility to my writing that brings a redemptive touch, even if the story is black. I treat my characters with empathy and sensitivity, even while I torture them!
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Right this very moment I harbour an affection for the odd man out in of my collection: ‘Comrade Vasilii Goes to War’. It’s the shortest story and unusual in being set on the border of two fictional eastern European countries when all the others are set in (more or less) modern Australia. Somehow I feel a great warmth for the bumbling, self-effacing Vasilii. Perhaps, when I think about it, it’s that he actually is a hero of sorts, in spite of his conviction that he is the worst soldier there ever was.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Autobiography is always a great starting point, though the stories seldom remain there. Autobiography is like an armature you can build on. It can give you the confidence and the structure to start crafting something. Then slowly the thing starts to want to take its own shape, and eventually the real events are so deeply buried only I, the author, can still make out the rough bones of them underneath. Sometimes the story starts with someone else’s life. ‘The Thief’ – about a jazz guitarist in the late sixties – was based on my old jazz guitar teacher who died sadly of a stroke a number of years ago. He told me once about how he had heard ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ for the first time on the radio while driving in his kombi van, and how much it had moved him. I imagined the circumstances of that moment and it became the seed for the whole story.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
It begins in anguish and procrastination. I always have many ideas, none of which seem quite good enough. I start many, many more stories than I finish, a bad habit, because in truth I believe that the failure of a story should not be an end point. It should be the beginning of the next incarnation, born from the ashes of the last through a process of understanding what went wrong. Many of my final stories are like that – refined from countless cycles of death and rebirth like the Buddha! Still, I suffer from the delusion that perhaps this time, writing won’t be such hard work.
As for the involvement of others, yes I absolutely believe in that and rely on it. I have a hardy band of reliable critics whose feedback I always solicit before sending my work anywhere. A good writing group is gold.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Valued by whom? It is valued highly by a certain subculture of literary types, but the value ascribed to it by the broader culture can be assessed easily enough from the financial rewards of writing them. Money is our system of agreed value, and while one can make a living from such activities as spamming ads for penis enhancement pills, bashing people weaker than oneself outside of nightclubs, and short selling collapsing stock markets, even a rare talent like Cate Kennedy can’t make half of a decent living out of writing short stories. It’s quite remarkable that we do it at all given how painful and difficult it can be, the number of brusque rejections we face, and how pitiful the pay cheques are (if we get one at all). And most of the money comes indirectly from government grants; it’s not even a reflection of true market value. Fortunately those who do value it, value it deeply, and it’s for those people we keep going.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I think I’m not alone among writers in my sentimental attachment to good old paper. And maybe there’s good reason for that. Talking about value, to put words on paper (trees after all) is to enshrine them in a valuable medium, to bestow the dignity of a certain permanence. Whereas we know from all the worthless blogs, all the proliferating online verbiage, just how cheap a byte is these days. It’s hard to know the value of what you do once your product is virtual, once it vanishes it into the great, undifferentiated digital sea. That said, the economics of the e-book are becoming increasingly compelling and if e-books and e-readers help to create a new generation of literary readers, I’m all for them. As for audio books, I adore the idea of being someone’s bedtime story.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
No advice, just thanks for bearing the standard for Aussie short story writers.
Pierz Newton-John lives in Melbourne. In addition to being a writer, he is a guitarist, web developer, former psychotherapist and father. His stories have appeared extensively in Australian literary journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Overland, New Australian Stories, Kill Your Darlings and The Sleepers Almanac. He won the Alan Marshall Award in 2008 for ‘This Old Man’. His collection, Fault Lines, published by Spineless Wonders will be launched in Melbourne on March 15th at the Hill of Content Bookshop.
Spineless Wonders asks Sam Cooney
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Ryan O’Neill, Eva Hornung, Peter Carey, Jessica Au, A.G. McNeil, Amanda Lohrey, Frank Moorhouse Gerard Murnane, Denis Johnson, David Foster Wallace, Doris Lessing, Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Barthes, Miranda July, Michael Cunningham, Raymond Carver.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Borges’s ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’. Like, hypertext magic alert! So many layers/tangents/literary recourses. A maze-like story about an infinite maze. Jesus Jumping Beans, did this guy sort of invent the internet or something?
The story is kind-of epistolary (a style which I really dig) and it melds philosophy with storytelling (which is why I open books). Affecting and clever!
The first time you read this (or many other of Borges’s short fictions) your brain sizzles itself a thick new synapse, one that can never be unsizzled.
Also, “Jorge Luis Borges” is fun to say in a faux-Spanish accent.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
With tongue entirely in cheek but also in utter earnestness: the shortness. A short story is by name and definition succinct/brief/fleeting. When a short story is no longer short — say over 15,000 words, to pick a number — it loses the lustre of immediacy. This is true for both reading and writing short fiction. As a reader, to step into a short story is like having a shower (opposed to lolling in a bath). You know as you enter either a short story or a shower that it’s going to be quick and warm, and that it will charge your energy levels so that chores or creative toils or making that difficult phone call are suddenly not as unfeasible as they were before. As a writer, short fiction is graspable. An idea filters down through the top of your head like coffee into a cup, and you can seize it and jot down a few seconds of notes and then punch away at the keyboard, and a day or two later, you have the chassis of a story ready to be tricked out. Even if the end result is just crap, that 48 hour period of writing writing writing is better than [insert hedonistic pursuit here].
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Try-hard. Fuelled. Noisy. Optimistically cynical. Like hugging a cactus.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
One that I haven’t written yet; pick any of the hodgepodge ‘story idea’ Word docs that stare out at me from my desktop.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
I’m not sure where ideas come from. I can’t even go as far as calling them ‘my’ ideas. Does anyone really have an answer for this question that isn’t just horseshit? An idea appears. Sure, it’s an electrochemical process in the brain, as far as our current thinking goes. And sure, it’s also explainable through personality and character and private history. But none of this is ever going to be satisfactory. Try explaining to a five-year-old the physical reasons why a group of whales kill themselves by drowning in air on a lonely beach. How much can you persuade this five-year-old with an explanation?
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Alone alone alone, until the very end, when I reach out for friends. I don’t reckon there’s any other way to do it.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yeah, sure it’s valued. I value the shit out of it, and I know many other Australian citizens who do also. That’s enough for me, for the moment anyhow.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
No wuckers is how I feel. Do with it what you will, it’s not mine anymore.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Um, read? No matter what else, for me everything always comes back to reading. (By ‘reading’ I mean ‘experiencing art’, like books, films, fine art, music, public transport, people, walking, sex.)
Sam Cooney has published fiction, creative nonfiction and journalism in a variety of places, both in Australia and overseas. He has also commissioned and edited writing for a few major Australian journals and magazines, and is currently the fiction editor at the Lifted Brow. His story, ‘From on high’ is published in Escape, an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011).
Spineless Wonders asks Michelle Cahill
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
I admire Cate Kennedy’s short stories, Maria Takolander’s psychological fragility, Nam Lee’s compelling realism and the fantasy in Tom Cho’s writing. I also like Roberto Bolaño, Sushma Joshi, Aravind Adiga, Jhumpa Lahiri. And of course I’ve loved reading Chekov, Borges, Hemingway, JD Salinger, and the autobiographical trauma in Raymond Carver’s restrained poetic shorts.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
One of my favourite stories is JD Salinger’s “For Esmé with Love and Squalor”, which tells of an American intelligence officer’s meeting with an English schoolgirl, opening to the themes of foreignness, love, war, youth, innocence and experience. An intimate cameo forms within a larger framework of human tragedy so that poignant emotions are delicately expressed through dialogue as the characters emerge. The perspective of the narrator changes half way through the story; the point of view subtle, since in telling about his encounter with the girl and the letter she sends him, the narrator is also telling us about himself.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
It’s a beautiful genre. I enjoy drafting sketches into detail, expanding the language, colouring in and segueing together its parts. The short story requires really careful attention. Unlike the novel it may be read in one go, so inconsistencies of tone or style become apparent. It’s not as indulged as poetry, which isn’t to say that it can’t be experimental, abstract or edgy. A poem might be easier to complete than a story, though I think a good poem is as challenging to write. Readers have expectations of a short story that a writer may provoke to some extent, but never entirely neglect. The poem might be dismissive or aloof, whereas the short story needs to engage the reader.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I guess my writing reflects a sense of fragmentation caused by the movement between countries and cultures. I’m interested in reinscriptions, also in magic realism, which can playfully disrupt logic and power. Writing from, or reinventing personas can be homage. It permits me to express irreverence for traditions and history. Intertextuality is a way to share one story with many stories, to revisit the past and question its authority.
There’s an emphasis on language in my writing, but the pleasures of language are not purely aesthetic for me, not just about style. I’m interested in perception, place, nuance and how dream moves forwards and backwards in time. Language is so many things: refuge, asylum, curiosity, home, power, and exhaustion.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
My favorite story is “Chasing Nabokov” It took me an embarrassingly long time to write but I’m glad for the immediacy and intensity of the voice. I like that it writes back to Nabokov with homage and audacity and a female voice.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
I’m inspired to write by place, scene, mood, and experience. From the words I’m drawn into themes, characters and specifics. This involves lots of redrafts before the story emerges, so I can’t be in a rush. I like that fiction is so painstaking. Sometimes travel might intersect with writing a story, though the two are mostly accidental encounters. An example of this is “Duende.” I’d read about Lorca’s theory of death and art. I’d travelled to Seville myself, for another project. The brutality of the bullfight was confronting to me. Still I was intrigued by the risk and ritual, which goes back to ancient times. Slowly, the story took shape: it’s about betrayal, love and exile.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
The process is a lingering one. It begins with slowing down into words, ideas and is followed by lots of drafts. But this is also the part which I find relaxing because I enter into another world, intense and vivid. I become responsible for its symmetry and connections. I start to be fond of the characters. It can certainly be frustrating when it doesn’t all cohere and mostly my drafts start out like this. But you give them the patience and craft they deserve. I have one or two close friends, with whom I share my writing. A brief comment or hint might be a guide in the right direction. Mentorships are wonderful and so are writing retreats where you have the space to slow down into your rhythm.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
The realities of how difficult it is to publish a collection of short stories suggests that the form is not really valued in this country or, for that matter, abroad. Fiction is a tough genre in which to be published, it seems. But I think it’s true that amongst writers, the genre is appreciated, particularly as it appears in literary journals.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I’m sad about book shops closing. Digital forms of publishing are changing the status and role of books altogether. We’re witnessing a dramatic evolution of technology impacting on the way we read and write. Text, particularly in commercial forms, is becoming more accessible, virtual, abbreviated, networked. The potential readership from digital publishing far exceeds the potential from print. Still, I’m surprised by how many books sell by word of mouth, and I think small scale print publishers can be successful in expanding their readerships through their own networks and communities.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Keep talking to writers like this; and keep publishing excellent Australian short fiction!
Michelle Cahill’s fiction has appeared in Southerly, TEXT, Transnational Literature, Prosopisia, Famous Reporter, Escape and forthcoming in Antipodes, Alien Shores and Etchings. She received an Australia Council grant in fiction to undertake a residency at Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi. Other fiction residencies have been at Varuna, the Writers Centre and the BreadLoaf Writers’ Conference. Her collections of poetry are The Accidental Cage, Vishvarupa and Night Birds. She received the Val Vallis Award and was highly commended in the Blake Poetry Prize and the Wesley Michel Wright Prize.
Spineless Wonders Asks Jon Steiner
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Well, David Foster Wallace, for one, obviously. Here are some others: ZZ Packer, Robert Drewe, Jhumpa Lahiri, Grace Paley, Sam Shepard, Richard Yates. But also, I often read a story somewhere that totally blows me away—in the New Yorker, or an anthology or something—and I resolve to remember the name of the author and track down more of his or her work, but then I forget. But I admire them too.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
It’s hard to pick just one, but “Why Don’t You Dance” by Raymond Carver had a profound effect on me when I first read it, and is probably largely responsible for my lifelong interest in short fiction. I thought, “I didn’t realise you could do this! I want to do it too!” It’s a great example of the short story form at its best. It hooks you in right away: “In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard.” The writing is tight and spare, mostly single lines of back-and-forth dialogue, but there’s so much going on—the man’s unusual reaction to the end of his marriage, the dynamics between him and the young couple, the way the young couple relate to each other. It’s the kind of story you think about a lot afterwards, you go back and read it again and again, savouring the words on the page, mulling over the layers. And it has a quintessential Raymond Carver ending, with the point of view shifting suddenly from the older man to the young woman trying to tell the story to her friends afterwards: “There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.” What an ending! Goddamn. It’s a good fucking story.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
It’s so flexible. What makes a short story, really? A block of prose under, say, 9000 words? Beyond that, you can be as experimental as you want. I also love the economy of short stories; every sentence has a reason to be there. When a short story is good, when it really works, it affects you just as much as a good novel, but it’s in a highly concentrated form. It’s like freebasing literature.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I tend to write pretty short stories, usually based around some quirky premise or character. I usually like to use dialogue and action more than exposition, so people sometimes tell me my stories read like short films. I don’t know about you, but I hear the story in my head when I read, and good writing is a pleasure to “listen” to. So I try to pay attention to the sounds and rhythms of the sentences. When I’m revising my work, I read it over and over, listening for places where it doesn’t flow quite right and fiddling around with the text until it does.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I wrote a story about a rich guy who has a skyscraper built in the middle of the desert just because he’s interested in seeing what it would look like. I’m rather fond of it, though I’m not quite sure why. I think it has some deeper meaning, but I’m not quite sure what.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
They come from all sorts of places. Sometimes mid-conversation with someone I’ll think, Hey that could be a good story! Often they come at rather inconvenient times, like when I’m in bed almost asleep, or driving, or in a meeting at work, or in the shower. But I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how much I think I will remember a good idea later on, all I will remember is that I had the idea, not what it was, so I always try to write ideas down somewhere. I have various notebooks and scraps of paper and Word documents scattered around with random bits: plot ideas, characters, sentences, sometimes just a word I liked at the time. When I feel like doing some writing, I leaf through the notes and look for something that interests me.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I am not at all disciplined about writing. I write very sporadically. I always feel like I need to be in just the right state of mind, and then I usually just spend an hour rewriting the first sentence over and over. I know that a writer should really write every day, even if it’s total crap, just for the sake of putting words on the page, to develop the habit so that when a good idea comes along, they’ll have the chops to take it somewhere. But even though I know that, and constantly resolve to do it, I don’t do it. I had a writing teacher who said that every semester she saw two or three people in her class who had real talent, but only every few years did she see someone who had the other, more rare quality that makes a writer: the strength of character to sit down every day and do the work, to forego social events and television and Facebook and just put in the hours at the keyboard. Unfortunately, I am not known for self-discipline. But on the rare occasions when I do write something half-decent, it’s usually in one hit—I get in the zone and the story just tumbles out. I then read it over for a few days, fiddling around with the words a bit. I bring it along to a meeting of The Beak, my writing group, I get a writer friend to look it over, I get my wife to read it, and get feedback from them all, which I incorporate into the story if it seems like a good idea. Next I move the Word file to a folder on my computer called “Finished.” Every now and then I look through the stories in the “Finished” folder and think, well, yeah, I guess some of these are all right. Once in a while I submit something.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Last year I went to a talk at a conference where this e-publishing guru from California said he saw a great business opportunity for something like iTunes selling short stories for e-readers. He predicted that the digital age would bring about the renaissance of the short story, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I think short stories have a lot of competition for people’s shorter attention timeslots nowadays: television, YouTube, Facebook, Angry Birds. For the longer attention timeslots, novels only have to compete with television series and maybe those role playing video games. But there is definitely still a niche of people who enjoy reading short fiction, probably populated mostly by people who are also interested in writing it, and that niche in Australia is just as robust as anywhere else. We have a very respectable number of literary journals and Graduate Writing programs per capita.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I know digital is the future and I don’t want to be an old fuddy-duddy, but there’s still something kind of cheap and soulless about it. Reading stuff online or on a Kindle just isn’t the same experience as reading a book or magazine, and never will be. Now, audio is interesting because there you’re venturing into the territory of performance—the art of reading a story well. It would be interesting to hear something I’d written as an audio item. But I will still always hold print in the highest regard. There’s a certain honour that derives from somebody deciding your work is good enough to be printed.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Keep forging ahead. Build a short fiction empire!
A native of Washington, D.C., Jon Steiner moved to Australia in 2000. He studied writing at the University of Technology, Sydney and has been published in the UTS Writers’ Anthology. In 2010, his short story, The Robber, was published by Parsnip Press and can be purchased from parsnippress@bettinakaiser.com
