The Anxiety of Brevity
The Rise of Flash Fiction
by David Peak
We’ve all heard the anecdote: Hemingway sits at a table with six or seven other writers. He claims that he can write a six-word story. Everybody balks. Money is thrown on the table—ten bucks a head. The stakes are set. Hemingway uncaps his pen, leans over his napkin, and writes, “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
And just like that—a few slashes of Papa’s pen—legend is born.
Some seventy, eighty years down the line, the shadow of Papa’s legend still looms. Anyone even halfway familiar with the online publishing world knows this, knows the anxiety of brevity, the need to be succinct, to be precise. Go ahead. Get online. Find ten web publications and read their submissions guidelines. What do you notice? What patterns can you find?
How about this: 1,000 words or less. Sound familiar?
The world moves quickly in 2009. The writer’s game used to be synonymous with patience, but now we’ve got instant access. E-mail, tweets, blog posts—these things move at the speed of light, reflect our thoughts and moods by the
hour, sometimes by the minute. And the form of the short story is changing alongside our need to look at a screen, process a full movement, and get on with our day, refreshing our e-mail account for the thirty-seventh time, checking to see if our blogroll has any updates.
It’s a new world. Opium Magazine gives you an “estimated reading time” next to the story title. Wigleaf’s editor declared 2009 “the year of the micro.” “Hint-fiction” contests challenge entrants to write the best story in twenty-five words or less. Readers and writers alike flock to these sites. Audiences are born.
In 1973, Harold Bloom wrote The Anxiety of Influence, in which he stated that all poets—all writers for that matter—are hindered in the creative process by their precursors. That was thirty-six years ago. Now we have the Internet. Things are more complicated. Not only does the modern writer struggle to find their voice beyond the echoing barrel of the Canon, now the modern writer must adhere to the limitations of the reader’s collective attention span—or lack thereof.
Flash fiction. Micro fiction. Short-shorts. Texts. Whatever you want to call them. The Web’s crawling with them. And like any writer who wants to be read, I’ve had to adjust my process. I’ve gotten used to sitting at the computer, writing and re-writing my first sentence over and over again, taking words out, rearranging the syntax, scoffing at adverbs, befriending the semi-colon. No longer do I feel comfortable leaning back in my storytelling chair, reclining, putting my feet up, flexing my five-thousand-word, sustained-scene muscle. Why? The answer is that I want to see my writing published. But what about print journals?
Sure, they’re still out there. But do I really want to send my work off to Tin House, wait two months for a response, when I can send it to Night Train and get a response in two weeks?
A few weeks ago I was having an after-class beer with one of my professors. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and said, “David, you shouldn’t give away your writing to online publications. Save your best stuff for print.”
I thought about this for a few minutes. I nursed my beer. Finally, I said, “But what’s the difference, really? And how many people are gonna go to the bookstore, pay ten bucks for a journal, sit down, read the entire thing? How does that compare to the thousands of hits a notable web pub gets when a new issue goes live? Isn’t that what this is all about? People reading our stuff?” She shook her head. “No. It’s about crafting things that last.”
More than anything, I think that’s the issue here: flash fiction as generational gap. Who’s to say that writing on the Internet won’t last? Who’s to say that books will always be cherished? If a writer can open up a world for a reader in less than 1,000 words, then haven’t they done their job?
by David Peak
Photo by Ian Merritt
We’ve all heard the anecdote: Hemingway sits at a table with six or seven other writers. He claims that he can write a six-word story. Everybody balks. Money is thrown on the table—ten bucks a head. The stakes are set. Hemingway uncaps his pen, leans over his napkin, and writes, “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
And just like that—a few slashes of Papa’s pen—legend is born.
Some seventy, eighty years down the line, the shadow of Papa’s legend still looms. Anyone even halfway familiar with the online publishing world knows this, knows the anxiety of brevity, the need to be succinct, to be precise. Go ahead. Get online. Find ten web publications and read their submissions guidelines. What do you notice? What patterns can you find?
How about this: 1,000 words or less. Sound familiar?
The world moves quickly in 2009. The writer’s game used to be synonymous with patience, but now we’ve got instant access. E-mail, tweets, blog posts—these things move at the speed of light, reflect our thoughts and moods by the
hour, sometimes by the minute. And the form of the short story is changing alongside our need to look at a screen, process a full movement, and get on with our day, refreshing our e-mail account for the thirty-seventh time, checking to see if our blogroll has any updates.
It’s a new world. Opium Magazine gives you an “estimated reading time” next to the story title. Wigleaf’s editor declared 2009 “the year of the micro.” “Hint-fiction” contests challenge entrants to write the best story in twenty-five words or less. Readers and writers alike flock to these sites. Audiences are born.
In 1973, Harold Bloom wrote The Anxiety of Influence, in which he stated that all poets—all writers for that matter—are hindered in the creative process by their precursors. That was thirty-six years ago. Now we have the Internet. Things are more complicated. Not only does the modern writer struggle to find their voice beyond the echoing barrel of the Canon, now the modern writer must adhere to the limitations of the reader’s collective attention span—or lack thereof.
Flash fiction. Micro fiction. Short-shorts. Texts. Whatever you want to call them. The Web’s crawling with them. And like any writer who wants to be read, I’ve had to adjust my process. I’ve gotten used to sitting at the computer, writing and re-writing my first sentence over and over again, taking words out, rearranging the syntax, scoffing at adverbs, befriending the semi-colon. No longer do I feel comfortable leaning back in my storytelling chair, reclining, putting my feet up, flexing my five-thousand-word, sustained-scene muscle. Why? The answer is that I want to see my writing published. But what about print journals?
Sure, they’re still out there. But do I really want to send my work off to Tin House, wait two months for a response, when I can send it to Night Train and get a response in two weeks?
A few weeks ago I was having an after-class beer with one of my professors. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and said, “David, you shouldn’t give away your writing to online publications. Save your best stuff for print.”
I thought about this for a few minutes. I nursed my beer. Finally, I said, “But what’s the difference, really? And how many people are gonna go to the bookstore, pay ten bucks for a journal, sit down, read the entire thing? How does that compare to the thousands of hits a notable web pub gets when a new issue goes live? Isn’t that what this is all about? People reading our stuff?” She shook her head. “No. It’s about crafting things that last.”
More than anything, I think that’s the issue here: flash fiction as generational gap. Who’s to say that writing on the Internet won’t last? Who’s to say that books will always be cherished? If a writer can open up a world for a reader in less than 1,000 words, then haven’t they done their job?
