Jensen Beach, "Wyoming"

I like this short flash piece, "Wyoming" from jmww.

It speaks to what we do and why we do it. It speaks to those stories that make us laugh or cry and why.

A line that stood out to me was: "People die all the time, of course, and it almost never makes the news unless the death was somehow unusual or horrific."

This story made me think about the kinds of deaths that we think about as tragic and why--the interconnectedness of life. Or at least some life. Why do some stories get to us and grab us while others don't?

"The Oranges" by Summer Robinson

There are so many good stories out there on the Internet. Sometimes, though, you may not know where to find them. One website I like is Everyday Genius. Everyday Genius publishes new writing daily Monday through Friday.

I really like Everyday Genius' pick for December 9, "The Oranges." The story was strange, interesting, and unexpected.

At first, I didn't know what was happening in the story. In fact, I read it over again--several times. I think I understand it now. If not, I believe the failing is mine. Did you like this story too? If so, what did you like about it?

What do you think makes a good story? What does it take to grab your interest and keep it?

My name is Lori D'Angelo, and I--proudly--have an MFA

Have you seen articles and comments like this: "An MFA is not for everyone" or "My MFA was a waste of time" or "MFAs are ruining writing"?

I don't know that there has been one lately. Oh, yes, there has. Of course, there has. There always is. That post. That comment on facebook or Twitter or Pitterpattertwatter that says an MFA is a waste of money, time, or even, ridiculously, that an MFA ruined someone's life.

Lately, one of those comments or posts or whatever has especially annoyed me. And so I, finally, decided. I'm going to say something. Publicly.

An MFA is not a miracle drug. It will not make you into Charles Dickens or Jane Austen or David Sedaris or Aimee Bender or any writer that you aspire to be or be like overnight or maybe ever. And, by the way, the goal of an MFA is not to make you into some other writer; it's meant to help you become the best writer you can be.

An MFA program will likely be hard. You might cry in or after a workshop. A fellow writer might tell you he or she couldn't wait for your character to die. You take all that. You listen. And then you graduate. You leave. You decide. Will I ever write again? That is up to you. You aren't forced. It might be hard at first to find your rhythm, your groove, after the MFA when you don't know what kind of job you'll have or if you'll have a job at all, but if writing means anything to you--still--you will find a way to write because you can't not write. It's such a part of who you are.

That is not to say that there might not be disappointments in your MFA program and after. Of course there will be. You may not get a fellowship or an internship or a job. You may not be admitted into a PhD program. You may not win a contest or get an agent. Or maybe you will, eventually, in time.

But before I got my MFA, I didn't know how to submit to literary journals. I didn't know what I needed to do to ready my work for publication. Some people learn these things on their own. Great. Good for them. But I didn't, and I probably wouldn't have. I needed a concentrated setting to have my work and my ambition validated.

I needed to know that someone believed in me. Maybe it wasn't all of my classmates. Maybe it wasn't any of them. But it was the MFA program that admitted me and the teachers there, or they wouldn't have admitted me. Time and time again, it meant a lot--everything--to know that someone thought I could do it, so maybe I could do it. I know now--after my MFA--that I can do it. And I believe absolutely and without a doubt that because of my MFA program, I am a better and more confident writer.

Jacob Knabb's "Studebaker"

I like Jacob Knabb's short piece "Studebaker" which you can find at the cool website, Everyday Genius.

It was posted on 10/25/11. If you haven't checked it out, you should. It's a web journal that's updated Monday through Friday. Different months of the journals have different editors. Some of the stories in the journal have been featured in Wigleaf Top 50 Stories for 2011.

The piece is about a kid whose father's car has been in an accident. The piece begins, "I have never been able to describe the way my father’s voice sounded with his nose full of blood as cars passed us on the interstate." Check out the story here: http://www.everyday-genius.com/2011/10/jacob-s-knabb.html

What do you look for in a short piece of fiction? What grabs your attention and compels you to keep reading?

"Indian Summer"

I really like the lyric eeriness of this piece in the generally excellent journal, Stirring:

http://www.sundresspublications.com/stirring/briggsm.htm

(Admittedly, they once published one of my stories. Does that mean my story is excellent?)

Do you like this story? How would you characterize it? Do we need to characterize it? I really like the density of this piece. What do you like about it? There's so much here--life, death, seasons.

In addition, there are some fine poems in this issue of Stirring that I would check out as well. Enjoy this story and the literature of fall.

Literature and math--a flash fiction piece from jmww

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor were an equation? If you're answer is no, you're not alone because neither have I.

If you're answer is yes, you're not alone either. Gabriel Blackwell explores this interesting and somewhat unlikely scenario in his flash fiction piece, "Solve for x, where x is an integer such that x>0" in the online literary journal jmww. I think that this piece shows the possibilities that can open up for writers when we think of literature in terms of other, sometimes unlikely, forms.

Check out this piece. Read, and enjoy!

"The Look-Alikes"

"Mixed Fruit" is a new online literary journal. One interesting thing about their submission policy is that they read blind. In other words, they read submissions without knowing who wrote them. I think that this is a great idea. By doing this, it really does allow the work to speak for itself.

In Andrew Valencia's short story, "The Look-Alikes," Richard, a disgraced literature professor tries to redeem himself and win money in a Hemingway look-alike contest held at Hemingway's home in Key West. Along for the ride are Becca, who knew and fell in love with him in better days, and two former students, Silas and Nate. This story raises interesting questions about the nature of loyalty and the meaning of failure and success.

Did you ever have a mentor like Richard?

"What I Lost"

Vestal Review bills itself as "the oldest magazine of flash fiction."

Today's story, "What I Lost," by Dean Keller Jacobs, is in some ways a list of things lost. But it's also a story. The things go from physical objects to abstract ones--teeth and faith. The juxtaposition of the concrete and the abstract is interesting and the way all of it comes together to tell a story. For example, "I lost Dad to AA later that year. I lost myself in the bottom of his bottles."

In a short space, the story tells of lost hopes, lost loves, lost fears. It's a sad story of many losses.

In what way does the list of losses work together to tell a story? Do you find the structure of this story to be effective?

"Ella and the Elephant"

Tiegen Kosiak’s piece “Ella and the Elephant” from the online journal Hot Metal Bridge is well written and sad. The title may very well also be a reference to Hemingway’s story “Hills like White Elephants” although elephants are also mentioned in the story itself. It is set during Lent and covers a week’s worth of time from Saturday to Friday.

I can see how the story fits the journal’s submission guidelines: “We want literary fiction that is so well written, it has a magnetic pull. Stories that make us want to google you and read everything you’ve published. That get us fired up and make us want to write or read or create.” This piece did, in fact, make me want to google the author.

From googling the author, I learned that she has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Minnesota State University Moorhead. I also learned that the author writes poetry, which doesn’t surprise me since the language in this story was so lyrical.

"Peacocks"

It's Saturday night. As Hurricane Irene continues up the coast and to New York, maybe it has already hit, I read this story that screams New York and feel nostalgia for a place I've never lived but always kind of wanted to.

Today's story, "Peacocks" by L.E. Miller is a good story from a good journal, Ascent. The point of view, which at first appears to be the collective "we" is also very interesting, but it later turns out that one women rather than all is narrating, telling the story for the group of them. The story, which is mostly set in the 1950s, begins: "We had values. We had Le Creuset pots. We had fold-out couches in our living rooms, where we slept with our husbands at night. "

The story describes the women in the story as "landsmen, all of us dark-haired women who carried the inflections of our parents’ Yiddish in our speech. Our cramped apartments were fine with us; we would never in a million years live in some bourgeois outpost in Long Island, and the only way we’d return to Brooklyn was in a coffin. We called ourselves The Quorum. We called ourselves the Collective Unconscious of the Upper West Side. " These women are mothers whose children play together "in a bleak little playground near the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine."

All of the women have something in common, but then a new woman moves in who doesn't seem to fit in. The other woman take satisfaction in their lives, but the new woman seems above them and apart from them. But is she really that different?


Like the narrator, do you see a little bit of yourself in Rebecca?

a ballad of childhood

Today's post, focuses on a flash fiction "Ballad of a bumble bee trapped in honey," which is about the senseless cruelties of childhood. But it's about more than that. It's about a moment of innocence turning. It's about a child who doesn't know something, and then he does. It's about learning to make sense of the world. It's about killing bees, but it's also about things and people remembered and lost.




The piece, by Matthew Burnside, comes from the journal Contrary. It's an independent literary journal that's run from the South Side of Chicago.

Read. Write. Think. Discover, and enjoy.
--Lori