Tag: Sudan

Publication Announcement: “Sudan” and “Decision”

100_1736I am very pleased to announce that two more of my stories will be published very soon, albeit as re-prints:  “Sudan” and “Decision”.  Both will be published by “Through the Gaps” (http://throughthegaps.com/).   On their About page, they describe themselves as follows:

“Benjamin Choi founded Through the Gaps in 2014 with the help of his associate Raghav Mathur. From there, the site expanded to include over twenty original contributors releasing content in several unique categories on a daily basis. Here at TTG, we are dedicated to expressing opinions and starting discussions in a nurturing environment.”

In their submissions guidelines for fiction, they also note:

“We accept fictional stories of all genres. However, above all, we are looking for stories with a powerful message. More specifically, we are looking for stories with powerful comments on the state of our society and/or the human experience. Stories with a political or social message are the best examples of such a story. We are even willing to overlook subpar storytelling or weaker character development if we feel the story’s message is powerful enough.”

As noted, these two stories are re-prints of stories I wrote and had published long ago.

“Sudan” was first published in 2002 by Canadian on-line magazine “Ascent Aspirations, where you can still find it (www.ascentaspirations.com).  It was based on a story I heard from a former US assistant agricultural attaché to Sudan, whom I happened to meet when I was touring Luxor, Egypt in 1989.  If I recall correctly, we were splitting a horse-drawn carriage ride from the Hotel Jolie Ville, where we both happened to be staying, to the Temple of Luxor.   As strangers do when they meet while traveling, we fell into a conversation starting with a basic introduction of ourselves, our professions, and how we happened to be in that locale.   From there the conversation deepened and she told me this story that she had heard from two English nurses she happened to meet (I think) in Khartoum.  The story was so poignant, that I remembered it for several years and when I started to write fiction.  It was one of the first I developed into a short story.  I have always loved the story and recently decided to resurrect it along with several others of my first works to see what I could get re-printed.  “Sudan” will be published in about a week on the “Through the Gaps” website.

“Decision” is a very poignant tale as well.  It was first published in 2004 by “Spoiled Ink”, an English hard-copy magazine based in Denmark.  It is not based on any actual event.  Instead it was an idea I developed while thinking about racism and how feelings about race have changed since I was a boy.   I based it in Kentucky simply because that is the culture I knew as a boy, although the story is set in eastern Kentucky and I grew up in central Kentucky (for those not familiar with the state).  I wanted to write a story, in a sense, like Hemingway did in his early short stories using the culture and background with which he was familiar.  He could bring out the crunch of leaves as one went hunting or almost make the aromas of the forest almost come alive.  So I endeavored to do the same.   I don’t know exactly how I came up with the idea for the hunt that takes place.  I may have been inspired by “The Most Dangerous Game” or a similar tale.   I don’t think you can find “Spoiled Ink” any more.  It may be defunct.  If so, this will be the only place you will be able to read this story.  It will appear in two weeks.

If you get a chance, check out “Through the Gaps” even before my stories appear.  It seems to be a very eclectic, nurturing site with a lot of positive energy to it.

Considering the description of what they want as stated on their submissions page, I feel very honored to have my works published on their site.

Thoughts?  Comments?

 

Slattery’s Tao of Writing, Part 4: “Warehouses and All”

Lovecraft in the Agony of ContemplationIllustration by MirrorCradle
Lovecraft in the Depths of Contemplation
Illustration by MirrorCradle

 A problem I have encountered over the last few months is that most of the short stories on which I am working are too long for most publications, but too short to publish as novels.

Most magazines accept short stories of about 2,000 words.  Above that, there seems to be a law of inverse proportions :  the more words your short story has, the fewer publishers who will take it.  Unfortunately,  lately I find it difficult to write a story in less than 10,000 words.   

Usually, I start with a simple concept for a story, but as I write, I see more and more details coming to light, details I think are important to understand what is happening in the story.  I keep whittling down the words, contracting here, expanding there, omitting this and that, keeping the story as lean and muscular as possible while fleshing out the story enough so that the reader can live the story vicariously, but somehow the story keeps growing.

There is a school of thought that stories are out there in the literary ether, just waiting for the right author to come along and give them birth.   That is certainly the way it seems at times.  We could expand that comparison even further and say that stories are also like babies after birth and each will eventually grow to a certain size–whether we want it to or not.   But we have much more control over the size of a short story than we do the size of a baby. 

Here is a link to one of my earliest stories, “Sudan“, which was published by Ascent Aspirations several years ago.  It has 2,095 words.  It is not a work of horror.  It is by my current standards rather amateurish.   I based the story on a rather poignant story told to me by a former US assistant agricultural attache to Sudan, whom I met in Luxor, Egypt in 1989.   That story lingered in the back of my mind for some time, almost haunting me, as if it had always been waiting to be told to the world and it refused to pass up this chance, before I finally wrote it down.   It was published by Ascent Aspirations in August, 2002. 

In 2009, I came across www.sixsentences.blogspot.com, which challenges writers to tell a story in six sentences or less.   The assistant attache’s story still touched me after twenty years, so I decided to see if I could tell it in six sentences.  I did.  I changed the title and location and submitted it as “Warehouses and All“. 

While the original Ascent Aspirations version was good, I believe the Six Sentences version is much better, more powerful, more poignant, perhaps because it is more compact. 

Both these stories have exactly the same meaning.   Which length suits it best?    It is hard to say.  Ultimately, deciding the length of a story depends upon the effect the writer wishes to instill in the reader.   I do not think there is any way to concoct a rule of thumb about how to determine the length of short story.   The writer must simply have a subjective feel for what length is appropriate.   That is part of the art of writing.

There are probably many wonderful stories out there that cannot find a publisher because they do not fit the space constraints of most publications.   The reality of the literary world is that publishers do have space constraints and if a writer wishes to be published, he will have to conform to those constraints.  But this should not be seen as a brutal, demeaning demand for an author to butcher one of his stories as if he were a literary Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac on a stone altar.  It should be seen as a challenge, an opportunity for personal growth as a writer, because then one is forced to look seriously, impartially, critically, and clincally at the work, and to ask oneself, “What is it that I really want to say?  What do I want the reader to experience?  How can I make this more powerful, more meaningful?  What is the essence of this story?” 

You may find that while it is challenging, it is not impossible to pack the meaning of 2,095 words into six sentences and still achieve the effect you wish to impart.

Now, if you will pardon me, I have to go listen to my own advice.

Thoughts?  Comments?