Drive-By Fiction

Original Flash Fiction: Lightning In a Bottle

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 02:02:00 +0000

Lightning bugs blanketed the air during the summer. Every night in the low light of dusk their lantern light flickered on, almost in unison with the streetlights on our cul-de-sac.

Our mother would stand fanning herself on the back porch, trails of smoke curling up from her Lucky Strike, as we zigzagged through the yard. She’d watch as we ran, mouths agape and mason jars in hand, waving our arms in the direction of each new flash.

“You’re falling behind,” my brother would tease, never breaking focus from his twinkling objectives. But I’d always come up just short, and we were forced to release our temporary captives before our mother ushered us inside for the night.

I’d often lie awake in bed, wondering where those bugs went during the day and whether or not they spent all night signaling each other, illuminating everything with their phosphorescent shades of yellow and green.

One night, I left our room, my brother asleep in his bed, tiptoed silently across the cool linoleum of the kitchen, and retrieved the jar I’d hidden behind our father’s toolbox in the garage.

Lying in bed, I watched as the bugs buzzed around, clinking against the glass and each other, my own living night light.

“What do you think you’re doing,” my brother said, shoving me awake the next morning. “You didn’t even put holes in the top.”

I rubbed my eyes with my fists as I sat up and looked down, the jar on its side underneath my arm. I examined it against the morning light sneaking between the shades. The bugs were motionless in heaps, all antennas and wings, and they rattled like chickpeas when I tried shaking them to life.

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Original Flash Fiction: Pullchain

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:51:00 +0000

There are lights on each side of our bed, controlled together by a switch on the wall by the door, or individually by pull chains. At night, when we’re in bed, my side stays in the light, so I can read.

I thumb through the pages of classic novels and short stories, dogearring pages and writing notes with a pencil I keep behind my ear. I search for inspiration. I have none during the day, and my own stories never quite get “there.” How can such mundane subjects light up the pages for everyone else?

As I flip the pages, Mary moves closer, like an inchworm wriggling her body next to mine. I can’t tell if she’s pretending to sleep or not, so I roll my eyes and gently elbow her, hoping the slow, nasal snores will stop.

Glass smashes against the sidewalk outside. A couple is stumbling home from the corner bar. “You can’t pee there,” she says, laughing, and their voices trail off as they stagger between the lamplight down the street.

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Raymond Carver Essay on Short Stories: Where Do Stories Come From?

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:26:00 +0000

I recently came across an essay by Raymond Carver that originally appeared in the New York Times Book Review in 1981. Among other things, Carver discusses writing habits and his decision to focus his work on the short story.

I found Carver's thoughts on the creation of short story ideas particularly interesting. He quotes Flannery O'Connor, who famously stated in an essay that she most often did not know where she was going when she sat down to work on a short story.

To my surprise, Carver was shocked to find that O'Connor wrote stories in that fashion:

When I read this some years ago it came as a shock that she, or anyone for that matter, wrote stories in this fashion. I thought this was my uncomfortable secret, and I was a little uneasy with it. For sure I thought this way of working on a short story somehow revealed my own shortcomings. I remember being tremendously heartened by what she had to say on the subject.

As a fiction writing newbie, I've struggled mightily over this issue. I felt certain that any writer worth their salt, especially master storytellers like O'Connor, knew exactly what they wanted out of a story before putting pen to paper. And this news is as heartening to me as it seems to have been to Carver.

How about you? Do your stories spring forth from your mind fully formed? Or do your writing habits more closely mimic those of O'Connor and Carver: writing until the story reveals itself? Let me know what you think!

Read the entire Raymond Carver article at Story.

Original Flash Fiction: DeSoto of the Night

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:25:00 +0000

Our dad was a plant doctor, a botanist, and he’d take us on nature hikes through the woods behind our house on Hyde Park Drive. We’d run ahead of him, through the fields of knee-high monkey grass, and hide in waiting behind one of the live oaks dripping in Spanish moss that bordered the forest.

We’d walk along trails, kicking up dust and sending rocks into the shallow stream that bubbled from a source we’d never seen. Our dad would teach us the names of different trees: live oaks, poplars, and southern pines. And we learned the difference between poison ivy and poison oak.

“Leaves of three,” he’d say.

“Let it be,” Jack and I would chime in unison.

At night, after our hikes, our dad would tuck us into twin beds, and he’d tell us stories of the Indians who lived in Alabama hundreds of years before us. He’d dazzle us with tales of hidden treasure buried deep within the woods by DeSoto before he turned west to cross the Mississippi.

“Nobody’s found it to this day,” he’d say, his grin illuminated by the faint yellow of our night light. He’d kiss our foreheads and shut the door as he left, and Johnny and I would dream aloud about what we’d do if we ever found DeSoto’s gold.

“A new Schwinn,” Johnny’d say. “A ten speed.”

“What about a puppy,” I’d say, seeking approval in the dark.

“Don’t be stupid,” he’d say, frowning. “You know Dad’s allergic.”

I’d ignore him, and roll over, pretending to sleep. But our bedroom shared a wall with the living room, and at night I heard the muffled sound of my parents. They sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher, only much louder.

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Original Flash Fiction: Morning Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 06:31:00 +0000

Frank Baker sat in the wingback chair his wife, Carla, had left him in her will. He thumbed a stray thread on the armrest and thought about how much he didn’t care for the chair. It didn’t recline, and the faded floral cushions were stiff and uncomfortable, like sitting in the backseat of a pickup truck.

He leaned forward and collected a crumpled piece of paper from the living room coffee table—Carla’s will. Frank had read it many times over the past few months, but he never tired of seeing her chicken scratch scrawled across the single crumpled sheet. Sometimes he thought of it as her last physical connection with the world, a pen to a piece of paper, and another humorous jab at her husband of forty years. Frank smiled.

He and Carla had no use for wills. They never had children, and anything they owned would have belonged to the other. But during the final stages of radiation, she’d drawn one up. Nothing legal or notarized. She’d omitted anything of traditional value, instead leaving Frank many of the items they’d often playfully debated the redeeming values of: unusable decorative pillows, a life-size blown glass recreation of a badger, and her grandmother’s wingback chair.

Frank set the will on the coffee table, next to the letters from the bank informing him of his home’s eminent demolition, picked up a sweaty, watered down glass of bourbon, and finished it in one swallow. He’d spent nearly all of their money on Carla’s treatment, and the boxes of their half-packed personal possessions were all he had to show for his efforts.

Earlier that day, Frank had stood behind the screen of his front door when an old Dodge finally parked in front of his house. He’d heard it crunching gravel before it appeared from around a line of pine trees kicking up plumes of earth.

Frank made out two men inside the car, talking, from what he could tell, before they cut the engine and walked past the single Oak tree in his yard.

Father Muller from St. Peter’s and the branch manager of Frank’s bank stood in the shade of the porch.

Father Muller offered sympathy, condolences, and prayers. “You’re not alone, Frank,” he said.

The branch manager offered none. “We’ve been generous with you given your situation.”

“We’ve got a spare room in the rectory,” Father Muller said. “Just think about it.”

“It’s time, Frank,” the branch manager interjected. “It’s coming down tomorrow morning whether your stuff is out or not.”

“Well I guess I better finish packing,” Frank said. “Nice of y’all to drop by.” He closed the door and left them standing on the porch in the summer heat.

“He’s a damn fool,” the branch manager said as they walked back towards the car.

Frank woke the next morning before sunrise. He had slept fully dressed in his sneakers, jeans, and a faded denim shirt he wore when working in the yard. He brushed his teeth in the dull glow of the pull-chain bathroom light, and he walked downstairs in the darkness, past boxes of packing peanuts and rolls of bubble wrap, into the living room.

By fresh lamplight, Frank picked up the wingback chair and carried it down the hall towards the front door. He propped open the screen with a half-packed box marked kitchenware in black marker, and he carefully angled the chair through the door, setting it down on the front porch to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

Frank squatted and lifted the chair again, navigated the front steps, and loaded it in the bed of his rusted red pickup truck, careful not to snag the chair’s fabric. Frank turned back towards the house, but opted to forgo closing the door. He got in the truck, turned on the lights, and revved the engine.

Frank drove down the two and a half mile drive that led to Highway 8 and the rest of the world. It was a mix of sand, dirt, and gravel, and the sound of the tires against the drive almost lulled Frank back to sleep.

Halfway down the drive, Frank pulled his truck off to the side. He cut the engine and turned off the headlights, and he sat quietly staring into the wheat fields, watching the lantern light of fireflies play against the grass.

The first slivers of sunlight appeared over the field. Frank got out and pulled the chair from the bed of the truck. He walked to the middle of the drive and set it down facing the highway. Frank dug the decorative, clawed wooden feet into the gravel. He closed the truck’s tailgate and returned, sitting firmly in the chair.

Frank leaned his head back, letting the gray morning light hit his face, and listened to the buzzing of the cicadas as it echoed off the pines. Faintly, he heard the sound of tires on gravel as demolition crews ahead turned from the highway onto the drive. Frank crossed his legs and smiled, thumbing that same stray thread, as the first of several headlights came around the bend, bathing him in yellow and white.

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Tobias Wolff Interview: Story Structure and Possibility

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 07:42:00 +0000

I recently found an old Tobias Wolff interview that originally appeared in the Paris Review in 2003, just after the publication of his novel Old School. In the interview, Wolff, most noted for his short stories, discusses his novel as well as his thoughts on short story writing, the teaching of writing, and his personal writing habits.

While discussing Chekhov, Wolff provides his take on what he feels is the most troubling sin of many writers:

I think the most besetting vice of most writers is a programmatic intention, making a story like an algebra equation with a solution at the end. Chekhov gives another model of conclusiveness—that conclusiveness inhabits the whole body of the story, not just the ending. That every good story expresses inevitability in all its parts, and yet is not foreclosed, shut down at the last word. A good story somehow continues in a shimmer of possibility.

I must admit that in the infancy of my fiction writing, I’ve often looked at the structure of a short story as some sort of complex formula with a predetermined solution, bemoaning my own shortcomings and inabilities as a literary mathematician.

But Wolff’s comments struck a chord in me. After reading this, I’ve found myself rereading short stories with a renewed, optimistic sense of purpose. And I’ve begun the arduous task of looking at my own work, attempting to avoid this same pitfall that’s plagued me in the past.

What about you—are you guilty of this same way of viewing story structure? Is there another, greater writing mistake you feel many writers make? Let me know!

Original Flash Fiction: The Pool

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:41:00 +0000

Every day during the summer we gathered behind my parents’ apartment building. We leaned against the cheap wooden railings of our back porch, dreaming aloud what we’d buy if we ever found buried treasure in the nearby woods. A new ten speed, a pair of walkie-talkies, even a puppy.

We spent the weekends at the pool across the parking lot. Our parents sunned themselves on cheap, plastic chaise lounges, clinking wine coolers in approval of fresh gossip or chucking crumpled, sweaty Budweiser cans in and around the nearby trash bin.

We ran wild in and out of the pool, between the buildings and alleys. We danced bare-chested along the cool white parking lines until they disappeared into an ocean of steaming black. We burned our feet on the sunbaked asphalt, screaming words we learned through our parents’ paper-thin bedroom walls. “God damnit,” and “Son of a bitch,” rang out, echoing off vinyl siding and hanging in the air like it was the Grand Canyon.

We never had money to call our own, but there was always spare change hidden beneath the Coke machine at the pool, and one by one we wriggled our pruned fingers underneath, searching for quarters, dimes, and nickels that were long forgotten. We encouraged each other: “Come on, come on,” and “You’ve almost got it.” We despaired: “We need a coat hanger!”

While our parents baked, we scavenged the bottom of the pool like a team of treasure hunters, chlorine burning our eyes. But we usually surfaced bleary eyed and empty handed.

I lived the closest. Our apartment was just across the parking lot. I could have been there and back in thirty seconds with enough change from my father’s mason jar to empty the entire machine. But the hunt was better, even if we never found enough money to split a single Coke four ways.

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Writer's Block: The Editor Inside

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 19:46:00 +0000

Writer's block takes on many forms, and I'm sure almost any writer has experienced the condition in one way or another. There are dozens of websites dedicated to "curing" writer's block, but, for the most part, they've never provided me much assistance.

In the brief period I've been writing fiction, the biggest obstacle I've found to writing stories is the nagging voice inside my head: the editor inside.

Whenever I sit down to write, the cynical editor in me rejects sentences almost immediately. "That's banal and silly. That doesn't make sense," the voice says. Often the nagging voice causes me to strike down ideas and sentences before they even appear on the page.

The following are a few exercises and bits of advice that have helped me over the past several weeks.

1. Accept the nagging editor – Accept that the nagging editorial voice in your head isn’t pure evil. In fact, it’s the rational voice that’s quite useful during the revision process. I’ve found this acceptance goes a long way in alleviating the pain of writing a first draft. Simply tell the voice that the time for molding and cutting will come, but if it wants anything to work with, it’ll have to shut up for now.

2. Write a crappy first draft – This is perhaps one of the better pieces of advice I’ve come across, and it’s courtesy of Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Don’t be afraid to write a really crappy first draft of your work. After all, it’s a first draft, and nobody will see it but you. More often than not, crappy first drafts turn into decent second efforts and quite good final revisions.

3. Free writing – Write for any length of time (I’ll often sit down for 15 to 30 minutes) with no clear goal in mind. Simply write what you’re thinking. The idea behind free writing is that it’s supposed to put you in a creative state of mind. I frequently find that among the rubbish, there are often a few nuggets of usable story ideas and material.

4. Keep a journal – Similar to free writing, keeping a journal, whether you realize it or not, helps put you in a creative state of mind. It also creates a habit out of putting your thoughts into words on the page, the idea being that you’ll be more likely to do so for your stories.

5. Look at a photo – I’ve found that looking at visual works of art, especially interesting photographs, often helps get the creative cogs turning in the brain. Ask yourself questions when looking at photos-who, what, why, and where? Story ideas might come fast and furious from a place you’d never expected.