Be Brave

Thanks to the part-time paying gig, I didn't get the chance to finish up the first set of reviews I wanted to share today.  I blame the broken promise on the fact that I had to spend an evening proofreading text full of Chinese characters, typeface not people.  Let's just say I'm still hungover, so here's a little something from Roberto Bolaño's "Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories":

Now that I'm forty-four years old, I'm going to offer some advice on the art of writing short stories:

1. Never approach short stories one at a time. If one approaches short stories one at a time, one can quite honestly be writing the same short story until the day one dies.

2. It is best to write short stories three or five at a time. If one has the energy, write them nine or fifteen at a time.

...

6. A short-story writer should be brave. It’s a sad fact to acknowledge, but that’s the way it is.

...

9. The honest truth is that with Edgar Allan Poe, we would allhave more than enough good material to read.

You can read the entire piece here [pdf].

Comments

[callie]

Ah - thank you for posting these! What gems! Bolano's ideas on short stories mesh nicely with why I love short story collections more than individual stories. I think there is something to that...writing them at once, not thinking about them as one-offs.

Thank you - what a lovely peek inside his head!

[Sylvia]

Nine stories a day? You are right...I can hardly ever do even one...it's got be like a discipline. Write everything down before you lose the flow. Thanks for listing those tips!

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