Yesterday's post about short fiction has gotten talked about over here. It's interesting that most people replying appear to have thought that I've made a judgment call about short fiction and said that I must read trash because I said I read and write short fiction for that burst of the moment and you move on afterwards.
The problem with that conversation, I guess, is that the word disposable appears to have been linked to the quality of short fiction, to suggest that a short story can't linger, can't alter the reader, can't have a point, can't whatever. Which is not what I said. It can do all those things. Why wouldn't it? But when I talk about the fact that fiction can be seen as disposable, I was talking about the time factor in reading it, and the fact that it is a small bit of fiction. After you've read it in a magazine or a website you can forget about it easily if you don't like it, even throw it away, not worry about it so much because it's small. The risk is less for your time. Whereas with a novel, you generally invest more time and you keep novels for the most part. Which is why archiving short fiction doesn't appeal to me much.
It's also worth pointing out again that I don't see the word disposable as a bad thing. I love the idea of disposable fiction. It's really quite freeing.
But whatever. It's fun to watch people react.
The problem with that conversation, I guess, is that the word disposable appears to have been linked to the quality of short fiction, to suggest that a short story can't linger, can't alter the reader, can't have a point, can't whatever. Which is not what I said. It can do all those things. Why wouldn't it? But when I talk about the fact that fiction can be seen as disposable, I was talking about the time factor in reading it, and the fact that it is a small bit of fiction. After you've read it in a magazine or a website you can forget about it easily if you don't like it, even throw it away, not worry about it so much because it's small. The risk is less for your time. Whereas with a novel, you generally invest more time and you keep novels for the most part. Which is why archiving short fiction doesn't appeal to me much.
It's also worth pointing out again that I don't see the word disposable as a bad thing. I love the idea of disposable fiction. It's really quite freeing.
But whatever. It's fun to watch people react.
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Comments
The fact is that short fiction does sell, just not as much as novels do, and when major publishers are choosing between something which sells well and something which sells better...
i like risks--but i'm a little less willing to try a risk of six hundred pages than a risk of fifteen, but that's just me.
If a story can linger, can alter the reader, can have a point, then why dispose of it?
You seem to be saying it's easier to get rid of bad stories, and thus you can take more risks with the time involved -- which is fair enough. But why should a strategy for bad stories affect the good ones?
i didn't say you should. keep it.
it's really not a comment on quality. but if it has a good affect on you, neat, joy. you still move on though, don't you? i mean, you go on to another story, maybe by the same writer, maybe not... but you get another twenty thirty minutes, then you have another bit of time you can give to a short story.
I'm very much a "new things" kinda guy... I don't reread much... although maybe one story in every anthology I might reread... if that...
my favorite stories i reread. And with exceptions (Vonnegut, the Little Prince) I'm a lot more likely to reread short stories than novels... that's just too much time to commit...