January 2025 – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

Understanding Flash Fiction to Novels: A Writer’s Guide — Slattery’s Tao of Writing, Part 7

If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know that I believe that a work should be as short as possible, because, like a bullet, the smaller it is, the more powerful it is. I try not to have a preconceived notion of how long a story should be. I try to just write the story, keeping it as short as possible, and let the story decide its own length.

To market my works I use duotrope.com, who uses the following categories of length, which often vary from publishers’ definitions of these same categories:

Flash fiction: less than 1,000 words
Short Story: 1,000-7,500
Novelette: 7,500-15,000
Novella: 15,000-40,000
Novel: Over 40,000

One of the first things I have learned is that there are no hard and fast definitions for each of the above categories, only generally-accepted guidelines that change over time. My rule of thumb is that flash fiction is anything under 1,000 words; short stories are generally 1,000 to 17,500-20,000; novellas are 17,500-20,000 words to 40,000; and anything over 40,000 is a novel.

Now it seems that the Duotrope guidelines are reasonably accurate with the following exceptions: short stories are still often considered to be works up to 10,000 words; novelettes are generally from about 10,000 to 17,500 or thereabouts; novellas from 17,500 to 40,000-50,000 or even higher; and novels beginning sometimes at 40,000-50,000 or even 70,000 or greater.

However, as several websites, authors, critics, and publishers point out, categories by length are often arbitrary guidelines produced by publishers. From an artistic standpoint, what determines the category of a work is its length compared to the complexity of its plot.

A short story of 2,000 words does not have space to explore character development, subplots, or multiple events. A 2,000-word short story usually describes only a single event and may give some insight into the characters. The even shorter category of flash fiction and its subcategories, such as smokelongs and microfiction, have no space for anything more complex than a good twist to its ending. Examples of some of the more famous short stories are:

“The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
“The Lottery Ticket” by Anton Chekhov
“To Build a Fire” by Jack London
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce

A novelette can have some of the complexities of a novel, but usually deals with a single event, and it is briefer than a novella. Maybe novella lite is a more appropriate term than novelette. In my humble opinion, “novelette” is either just a little more complex form of a short story or it is just a term to boost the egos of those who write a bit more complex short stories but haven’t progressed to writing novellas.

A novella can have many of the complexities of a novel, but usually deals with a single event. In the US, I think this is an underused classification, perhaps because novellas are less marketable in the US than the longer novels. That is a shame as some of the most famous and most powerful works in world literature are novellas. Here are a few examples:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

At the other end of the scale from the short story sits the novel, which can include all the aforementioned complexities of character development, subplots, and multiple events. Examples of famous novels are:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Unfortunately, trying to categorize a work based on its relative complexity is a complex task in its own right, which is undoubtedly why the much simpler method of categorization by word count dominates the literary world.

So what does all this mean for the writer?

There must be a balance between length and complexity in a work if it is to be considered as serious writing by the literary world. If a work is too complex for its length, it may be seen as muddled, confused, puzzling, or even unintelligible. If it is not sufficiently complex for its length, it may be seen as wordy, boring, and unnecessarily long.

The best a writer can do is to keep the work as short and powerful as possible, making the story only as complex as is necessary in order to bring out the intellectual and emotional nuances that will enable the reader to live the work vicariously. If that is done, the length and category will take care of themselves.

How will the writer know when a work is of sufficient complexity compared to its length?

There can be no hard and fast rule or guidance on this. It is subjective, therefore the writer must have an innate “feel” for this balance. The best way to develop this feel is probably just to read as much as you possibly can of the acknowledged masters of each category. Yes, you could obtain a Ph.D. in World or English Literature, but to get that, you will still have to read a lot of novels, novellas, and short stories, but you will also have to listen to a series of professors teaching the accepted views on each, when you want to develop your own creative viewpoint. I am not saying that is without merit, because in order to think outside the box, you have to be familiar with the box, which is what any degree teaches. This, of course, begs the question of how essential a college or post-graduate degree is to write well. All I can say is to look up the biographies of those considered masters of the art and find out what degrees they had. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Poe, Flaubert, Conrad, and many others had no academic degrees. Many, like Hemingway, had experience in journalism or just felt compelled to write since they were children. This is a fascinating subject and would be well worth your time to research.

AI generated image from Pixabay

Writing for Decision Makers: Key Strategies Unveiled

From 1989 to 1991 I worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC. Part of my duties included writing short briefing papers for high-level Pentagon and State Department officials. As part of my training, I took a DIA course called Writing for Decisionmakers. Its aim was to teach analysts to write short briefing papers for users who would be under daunting workloads and considerable time constraints. These papers were to be superficial treatments of complex topics, so that a diplomat, who had never been to a country, could read these on their first trip there and familiarize him/herself with the situation waiting. Topics could be anything from the biographies of officials he/she would meet to the operational status of an air force or air defense command or navy, etc.

The papers we had to write had to be no more than the front and back of a single sheet of paper with the more graphics (pie charts, maps, etc.) and the more white space the better. If I recall correctly, the text could be single-spaced.

This was the only true writing course I ever had and the lessons I garnered from it have lasted decades. For your enjoyment and edification, here are the lessons from it and from experience that have lingered for over thirty years.

The first lesson I learned about writing these papers, though from experience and not from this course in particular, was how to take my broad knowledge of a subject and boil it down to its essence, down to the critical bullet points that official would need. This I had to learn on my own through trial and error, but the paper format did help somewhat, because each paper had to begin with a two to three line executive summary, so that if the official had almost no time, he/she could read that summary, know the most important point(s) of the paper, and decide whether to read the rest.

Over the years, using my lessons learned from writing executive summaries plus lessons from other organizations and my experience giving numerous briefings and presentations, I found that the best way to write official documents and most non-fiction material (and for writing a speech) is to write it like a newspaper article: put the most important point as the first sentence in the text. Then the second most important point is the second sentence, the third most important point is the third sentence and so forth. Then if the reader reads nothing but that first sentence and is suddenly called away onto some emergency, they still know the most important point of your document.

The next lesson was to use short, declarative sentences in the present tense. This keeps the action flowing and lets the reader know exactly what is happening at the moment he/she is reading the document. It also lets the reader know exactly who is performing which action. For the purposes of writing fiction, this taught me that packing more action into a sentence keeps the story from being boring.

The third most important lesson I learned was to eschew the passive tense. Passive tense is used a lot in government organizations, because it simply states that an action has taken place but doesn’t have to say who performed that action. Therefore, it is useful for avoiding blame for some snafu or to avoid pointing out who is responsible (for example your supervisor, your colleague, or a combination of people) if you want them to avoid blame for something or if you want to ensure they receive the blame for something. That is cold to say, but it is the reality of bureaucratic Realpolitik.

Finally, one critical lesson was to use as few words as possible (which Strunk and White’s Elements of Style also advises). Do this by packing as much meaning into each word as possible by using words precisely and avoiding adverbs. Each word has a specific meaning. Find the word whose meaning reflects precisely the action you are describing. Why say “John walked slowly and lazily into the room”, when you can be more descriptive and more precise by saying “John sauntered into the room”? Using specific, meaning-charged words also packs power into whatever you are writing. Why would you say “Joe went to the store” when you can pack more meaning and action into the sentence by saying “Joe raced to the 7-11 in his ’78 Camaro”?

A good example of a sentence that would benefit from these lessons would be:

At this moment in time no changes in enemy operations have been observed by our local personnel.

That is a good example of what I think of as governmentese.

A little thought shows that:

“At this moment in time” = now. But you don’t need now, because the verb is present tense, which also equates to now.

Now change from passive voice to active and the result is:

Our local personnel have observed no changes in enemy operations.

Why not say: Our local personnel have not observed any changes in enemy operations. ?

The first example contains nine words. The second example contains eleven.

You may also notice a device I use which is technically correct and which helps understanding. I spelled out the numbers 9 and 11 versus using the numerals. Different style guides have varied guidance on this, but this is a good, general rule of thumb from Grammarly:

It is generally best to write out numbers from zero to one hundred in nontechnical writing. In scientific and technical writing, the prevailing style is to write out numbers under ten. While there are exceptions to these rules, your predominant concern should be expressing numbers consistently.

What I like about this is that if you have a single number, it prevents changing the entire meaning of not only a sentence, but of a paper, if you have a typo. Consider the sentence:

3 strikes and you’re out.

A typo changes it to: 5 strikes and you’re out. This is bad if you are writing the Official Baseball Rules, published by Major League Baseball. It is incredibly bad if the typo goes unnoticed and is published. But if you write out the number and have a typo, it may look like this:

Threy strikes and you’re out.

Even if you are not familiar with baseball, you know what the author intended the number to be. If it manages to go to print, you look like an idiot, but everyone who reads it knows what you meant.

My personal preference is to go with writing out numbers under a hundred whenever I can and ones over a hundred if they are important. Of course, I use numerals when it is practical to do so.

Someone I knew who used to be a bank teller told me that banks never look at the numbers of an amount on a check. They always go by what is spelled out on the line below. This is wise. Likewise, I write out any critical number in any document just to be certain that I cannot be misunderstood, or that the meaning of the entire document cannot be changed by a typo.

Another example: suppose you gave an organization a promise to pay them $1,000, but a typo changed it to $3,000. It would have been better just to write out one-thousand dollars. Also, it is harder for someone to deliberately cheat you out of more than you owe.

These are just a few thoughts on my philosophy of writing and how it has developed over the years. Stay tuned. More are coming.

I hope these few pointers help in your writing experience.

Image generated by AI.

Rohwer Relocation Center: A Hidden History

Full resolution photos of the current Rohwer Relocation Center National Historic Landmark were taken by Phil Slattery at Rohwer on July 5, 2020, and are downloadable from Wikimedia Commons. If that link doesn’t work, search in Wikimedia Commons for “rohwer relocation center slattery”.

For several months, a lot of people were visiting my article on returning to Rohwer War Relocation Camp. I am not complaining. I am simply mystified that there is so much interest in it, much more than my other articles. I do not know if it is something I said about the camp itself or about the photography set-up for a YouTube video or what. I am sincerely grateful that one article of mine is getting so much attention for whatever reason. I am glad to have supplied something that apparently benefits so many people.

Today, I want to set down some thoughts on the Rohwer camp.

The township of Rohwer is very small. Very little information is available on it. Arkansas Tourism has a brief but enjoyable article on it, but Densho has an extensive article with an incredible amount of information on the camp.

Having originally been there in July 2020, my first impression of the location is that it was hot, empty, and lonely. The camp sat in the center of what are now hundreds of acres of cotton fields with trees along their distant perimeters. During the time of the Relocation Camp, it was quite different, but the overall condition remains much the same today with hot, muggy summers filled with mosquitoes and other insects.

The land and climate of the two Arkansas camps were fundamentally different from the barren, desert-like settings of the other WRA sites, in that it had dense vegetation, boggy soil, and was surrounded by trees, some of which extended into the inmate sections of the camp. The weather was hot and sticky in the summer and mosquitoes swarmed. Calling the area “low and badly drained and … typical malaria country,” a Malaria Control Program had to be started in the spring of 1943 that resulted in the spraying of breeding areas inside and outside the camp. Winter and spring rains (and occasional snow) brought slippery conditions and sticky mud. A 1990 Rohwer Reunion Booklet recalled how the “soil of the area turned to dust in the summer and into a gooey stick muddy mess during the winter.” In a 2011 interview, Takeshi Nakayama recalled mud that “was almost like quicksand” in which one of his brothers “got stuck and he couldn’t get out.” In reaction to the mud, wooden walkways were built, which addressed the mud, but exacerbated the slipperiness. Yoshie Ogata wrote in her diary in December 1942, “[t]he wood slate for walks are very dangerous—slippery when wet.” A diarist writing in January 1944 noted that “today was by far the most slippery on record” and reported seeing women “crossing narrow bridges on hands and knees” while others “tied pieces of rope or sacks around their shoes as ‘skid chains,’ and many women wore socks over their shoes.” ^[2]
Densho.org

The camp was modified to interface with the environment to some extent.

While the general layout of Rohwer was similar to most other WRA camps, the unique conditions at the Arkansas camps led to some interesting aspects of the physical setting. While most of Rohwer had been cleared of trees and other vegetation, nine or ten blocks in the southwest portion of the camp were built on a forested area and thus included numerous shade trees, something not found at the non-Arkansas WRA camps. The swampy conditions also required that special attention be paid to drainage. Thus, drainage ditches ran between barracks and along the roads that separated each block. These ditches drained to the southwest corner of the camp, where they extended 1½ miles to empty into Coon Bayou. Waste water from the camp sewage system also drained there. Being the lower end of the camp, the forested southwest corner of the camp was also prone to flooding. Sandbags were deployed to keep the entrances to the mess hall and latrine buildings from flooding. Other unique environmental hazards included numerous flies and mosquitoes, as well as biting insects known as “chiggers” that bored into the skin. The camp’s water supply was also contaminated into the spring of 1943; inmates had to boil water before drinking it. ^[5]
Densho.org

According to the Densho article, inmates had some degree of freedom, being allowed to have jobs outside the camp and to go shopping in nearby McGehee. However, there were some restrictions as Arkansas law prohibited them from working in the local agricultural industry (nonetheless, some inmates did find agricultural work–albeit illegally). Inmates were also granted honorary “white status” and were prohibited from interacting with the local African-Americans, which made up most of the local population. Buses that took the inmates to McGehee could take them only to places owned or operated by white people.

Could internment in southern Arkansas have actually prevented someone from spying for Japan? Definitely-if any of the occupants were spies. For one thing, it would have been easy for camp authorities to monitor inmate activities. Plus, there were no real opportunities for espionage in the vicinity of Rohwer. Even the closest military installations were at least a couple of hours by car from Rohwer and someone of Asian descent would readily stand out among the vastly predominant Caucasians and African-Americans who inhabited southern Arkansas at the time. Rohwer’s remoteness protected the military installations in the area, much as Alcatraz’s remoteness protected the nation from its inmates.

According to The Encyclopedia of Arkansas, there were six ordnance plants in Arkansas. The two closest to Rohwer were at Camden and Pine Bluff. Other relatively nearby military installations included: an Army Airfield at Stuttgart (now Stuttgart Municipal Airport), Grider Field in Pine Bluff (a training facility now used at Pine Bluff Regional Airport), and Camp Magnolia (a work camp for religious conscientious objectors who performed manual labor as had the Civilian Conservation Corps of earlier years and who participated in government controlled medical experiments involving disease and malnutrition)

Most of the facilities anywhere near Rohwer were training facilities of probably little intelligence value to the Japanese, except for one: the Pine Bluff Arsenal.

The Pine Bluff Arsenal was established on November 2, 1941, for the manufacture of incendiary grenades and bombs. 5,000 acres, purchased from local physician James W. John, Sr, served as the foundation for the site. It was originally named the Chemical Warfare Arsenal but was renamed four months later.^[2] The mission expanded to include production and storage of pyrotechnic, riot control, and chemical-filled munitions. At the height of World War II, the plant expanded from making magnesium and thermite incendiary munitions to a chemical warfare manufacturing facility as well, producing lethal gases and chemical compounds installed in artillery shells and specifically designed bombs.^[3]

–From the Wikipedia entry on the Pine Bluff Arsenal

Per Google Earth, along today’s highways, the distance from Rohwer to White Hall (where the Pine Bluff arsenal is located) is about 72 miles. That’s easy to travel with today’s vehicles on today’s roads, but in the 1940’s, before there were freeways and most roads, if not dirt, would have probably been two-lane at best, it would have been a different matter.

But then, most of the inhabitants of Rohwer would have come from the west coast or other places outside Arkansas. Rohwer wasn’t established with the intent of protecting military facilities in Arkansas but in strategically valuable places like San Francisco or San Diego. Protecting military bases in Arkansas would have been a secondary aim, at best.

One question that I have not seen posed elsewhere is whether it was possible that some of the Rohwer inhabitants were actual spies? It is possible.

Wikipedia provides a list of Japanese spies during the Second World War. In it are noted the following intelligence organizations that operated in the US:

Since the 1920s, the intelligence services also used Doho or dokuku jin – (nikkei) cultural groups in the Pacific War as alternative secret agents. These were Japanese citizens with foreign nationality, with loyalty to the emperor and Japan; they lived around the world.

The Black Dragon Society, the Kaigun Kyokai (Navy League), or the Hoirusha Kai (Military Service Man’s League), and other similar societies. These Japanese secret groups were well known to the US Naval Intelligence Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the subversive actions in the United States among some elements of Doho communities.

Other overseas Japanese agents of Black Dragon Society were the so-called “soshi” (Brave Knights). At the same time, referring to superior commander as the “Darkside Emperor” mentioned agents since the 1940s, operating worldwide, as far away as North America, South America, and Morocco. They formed covert ties with the Nazis.

However, spies can be expected to be a miniscule part of any populace. Do the odds of having a spy in a city justify rounding up everyone of a race, disrupting the innocents’ lives, and shipping them off to internment camps losing almost everything they have in the process?

We will never know. We don’t know what information one person might have collected. It might have been something of critical importance. Spies, even of those pre-satellite times, operate in different ways.

Some are given intelligence collection training and covertly inserted into a nation where they observe ports and bases and radio back to their agencies what they have seen or rumors that they have heard. Germany did this often in England and the US during the Second World War. One of the Rohwer inhabitants could have likewise been inserted into the US. Relocation to remote Arkansas could have interrupted such an operation.

Another way spies can collect information is not by observing it themselves, but by buying information from traitors in the country. It is not impossible that one of the Rohwer inhabitants might have operated in this fashion. Just as with spies who observe bases directly, relocation to Arkansas would have negated such an operation.

Another way spies can operate is by relaying information from an agent who collected it to the home agency. Again, relocation would have interrupted this type of operation.

We will never know the effect the relocation program had on Japanese intelligence collection operations.

However, I agree with what is probably the prevalent public opinion about the Rohwer, or any Japanese-American internment camp in the US, which is that it was an ugly chapter in American history, especially in the history of civil rights. The lives of thousands of innocents were needlessly ruined for the actions of a few and probably for the most part for what is termed today “optics”, known then simply as “appearances”, that the government was doing something to secure the nation against Japanese aggression.

Obviously, I do not know what opinions are held in private today. I feel certain that a few opinions might be in favor of such camps and probably a very few would like to have them for various races even today and very likely for immigrants (documented or not) from Central and South America.

The bottom line for any ugly issue is always the same: what can be done to rectify it or to prevent it from happening? I don’t know if anything has been done to compensate the Japanese-Americans who were interned at Rohwer or anywhere else in the US. I have yet to research that. But the bigger question in my mind is whether anything can be done to prevent it from happening again?

There are laws prohibiting this type of governmental action now. However, legislators can change laws on whatever they agree upon based upon the prevailing public opinion that elected them. If the prevailing public opinion is that a certain race should be interned, if enough legislators agree, that race will be interned though the arguments for it may be disingenuous or spurious. The critical element of such a situation is not that a government allowed it to happen, but that a section of humanity allowed it to happen. Rohwer Relocation Center is just another cold-blooded example of “man’s inhumanity to man”.

Can anything be done about humanity’s innate cruelty to those of its own species? I sincerely doubt it. Even if the nature of people allowed everyone to think reasonably as a mass, just as they can now be angry in great masses, people often need to control other people. This is not just a psychological quirk of humanity. Sometimes one segment of people needs to control another in a broad variety of ways out of the basic survival instinct or face extinction themselves.

Ostensibly, it seems these people were interned here out of that basic survival instinct. No one could be certain that any of these people were not spying for the new enemy of Japan. However, why weren’t people of German or Italian heritage interned? They had been enemies longer than the Japanese. Perhaps because it was easier to spot someone of Japanese descent in public than it was to spot someone of German or Italian descent. In those cases, it wouldn’t have been as easy for the government could make it appear as if they were doing something to root out spies and saboteurs.

Perhaps you have read about the scrap metal drives of the time. The government asked people to contribute their scrap pots and pans and other metal objects to scrap metal drives. The pots and pans would then be melted down and turned into bullets and other useful tools of war. Unfortunately, the technology to do that did not exist at the time. The pots and pans were simply hauled off to the nearest dump in secret. However, the drive’s value to the government was that it boosted national morale by making people feel as if they were contributing to the war effort. The benefit of Japanese-American internment camps to the government was probably along the same lines. It had no practical effect on the war, but it gave the public a good feeling that something was being done to root out potential saboteurs. No one would notice if someone of German descent was removed from the streets, but they would notice if someone of a different race was being hauled off.

Slattery’s Tao of Writing, Part 2: the Allegory of the Stream

Thalia Muse of Comedy and Bucolic Poetry Illustration by Arash — Thalia
Muse of Comedy and Bucolic Poetry
Illustration by Arash

This is a reprint of a previous post from several years ago.

Once in a while, I come across some gem of the writer’s art that almost strikes me breathless with its beauty. The poems of John Donne are one example. The poignant first chapter of A Farewell to Arms is another. Recently, I began reading Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and every time I pick it up, I am nearly struck breathless with his simple, understated eloquence that touches one’s very core. Today I read a post at winebbler.wordpress.com and her simple, fun voice and flowing, relaxed style combined with playful use of the English language made for very entertaining and enjoyable reading beneath which I thought I could sense an undercurrent of growing artistic beauty.

That article made me start to think about what makes a work of writing aesthetically beautiful. After some thought, I reached the conclusion that every work of literary beauty has the same qualities as a powerful but smoothly flowing mountain stream: clarity, power, and an uninterrupted flow. But unlike a stream, a work of literary beauty must also be reasonably brief.

In every literary work I consider beautiful, the first universal characteristic that comes to mind is that the author uses a simple voice comprising simple, everyday words that anyone can understand. Writing is communication. Communication is one person disseminating ideas to others by using words, which are collections of sounds representing ideas. By using simple words everyone understands easily, the writer makes his ideas easier to disseminate. Why use a word that few can understand, when you can use a simpler word with the same meaning that everyone can understand? Therefore, our stream must be crystal clear and free of mud or anything that would hinder insight and perception.

If ideas equate to the water in our allegorical mountain stream, the precision of the component ideas, the words, give the stream its force. As I mentioned in my post “Slattery’s Tao of Writing, Part I”, words chosen for their precise meanings have power. As I said earlier in this article, words are ideas. Precise words are precise ideas. Precise ideas are powerful ideas, powerful emotionally and intellectually. Like all other forces in the universe, powerful ideas become more powerful if combined and organized with one idea leading logically, flowingly to the next. This facilitates understanding and the reading experience.

When my stream of thought is uninterrupted and powerful, I become immersed in the work. I can be swept away and can lose track of time and of everything happening around me. To my mind, every writer should aspire to instill this experience into his readers. When this happens, the writer has made an emotional and intellectual connection with his reader and the reader is grasping the writer’s ideas.

If organization is lacking, ideas are scattered like boulders in the stream and on the banks, creating rapids and breaking up the smooth flow. A powerful, disorganized stream is a torrent, destructive of everything along its banks, stiking out at random, benefiting no one. In communication, disorganization is the source of misunderstanding, the antithesis of understanding. The stream becomes destructive.

If a writer uses words his readers do not understand and they have to turn to a dictionary to find out what the writer intends, the clarity of the ideas is lost and the reading experience is muddied. Furthermore, the reading experience flows even less smoothly. Even if the reader can reason out the meanings of the words from the context, the stream of thought is still disrupted and muddied, even if to a lesser degree. The words will also lose much of their power, because the reader cannot appreciate the nuances of what he or she does not fully understand.

Lastly, every beautiful work has been reasonably brief. Reading anything exasperatingly long becomes tiresome for everyone. When readers become weary (word-weary so to speak), they can lose focus on what the writer is trying to communicate. This detracts from the reading experience just as if someone who enjoys swimming in a mountain stream can no longer enjoy their swim if they become overly fatigued with exertion.

That said, I will now close tonight’s blog before I wear you out with my ramblings.

Thoughts? Comments?

RFM’s Rising Popularity Among Sri Lankan Readers

RFM has had a significant uptick in the number of views it has been receiving from Sri Lanka. I don’t know what is driving this, but I appreciate it very much and I hope that our Sri Lankan readers find and enjoy whatever they are seeking in RFM.

If you are not familiar with Sri Lankan literature, here is a link to the Wikipedia page on Sri Lankan literature. Also, here is a link to the list of popular Sri Lankan Literature books on Goodreads.

I was surprised to find out that Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-Canadian author. Perhaps his best known work, The English Patient, came out in 1992 and was made into a popular movie in 1996. I have read the book and have seen the movie. I found both fascinating and the movie helped my visualization of the book immensely. However, the ending of the film varies from that of the book, which I thought was a great ending, but I can see how capturing it on film in 1996 might have been difficult.

I thought the book was beautifully written and I recommend it highly to anyone who enjoys good literature that transcends genres. It is poignant and intricately woven. Ralph Fiennes stars as Almasy, the lead actor and Kristin Scott Thomas as Katherine Clifton, his love interest. Wikipedia sums up the film thus:

The eponymous protagonist [Almasy], a man burned beyond recognition who speaks with an English accent, recalls his history in a series of flashbacks, revealing to the audience his true identity and the love affair in which he was involved before the war. The film ends with a definitive onscreen statement that it is a highly fictionalized account of László Almásy (died 1951) and other historical figures and events. The film received widespread critical acclaim and emerged as a major commercial success at the box-office.

I recommend highly that you read the novel and watch the film in that order.

–Phil Slattery, Publisher, RFM

Image generated by AI. Please let me know if this does not capture Sri Lankan culture accurately.

RFM Call for Submissions: Stories Set in Coffee and Tea Farming Regions Around the World

Rural Fiction Magazine is (RFM) seeking short fiction and poetry that involve coffee and tea farming or are set in coffee and tea farming areas…

Rural Fiction Magazine is (RFM) seeking short fiction and poetry that involve coffee and tea farming or are set in coffee and tea farming areas. Please see RFM’s Submissions page for details on how to submit stories and poetry for publication. Of course, as always, there is no pay for any stories or poems except exposure to the English-speaking, especially American and British, markets.

RFM believes strongly that all stories are ultimately about people and that genre is secondary. Likewise any story submitted that involves coffee and tea farming should be primarily about people and human interaction and not about production methods or strategies or any technical aspect of coffee and tea farming.

These stories may be of any genre but the mainstream and literary genres stand a better chance of being accepted than experimental stories.

These stories may also be from any nation but stories from coffee and tea producing nations will be especially appreciated.

If you have questions or would like to query RFM about a possible submission, contact RFM through the Contact page or via ruralfictionmagazine@gmail.com.

Image generated by AI