Snow, Short Stories and Memoir

Hi Everyone

So, the snow has gone and I for one am very glad. I don’t enjoy the cold. For me, cold is a retreat into myself, another form of isolation – a hibernation if you will. Muffled in layers I grow more silent; still, as if holding my breath to conserve warmth. And the snow, pretty though it is for those first few days, drains the colour from the land. I’m glad to return to the muted palette of late winter, dare I say early spring? The soft greys and greens, the snowdrops and grass – time to breathe out.

Last weekend I attended the online Memoir, short course (City University London) that I signed up for on New Year’s Day. It was well run, a good tutor who covered a lot of ground in not much time and a small group of writers who were interested and supportive. It was a move away from isolation, so good to be talking about writing with other people, even if the setting was virtual. The course made me think particularly about structure. It reminded me too, of the power objects have to get at the past and how slippery the truth can be. In the end we only have our own truth and though it’s important to acknowledge this, I’m of the- ‘If you got to live it you get to write it,’ school. (Apologies – can’t seem to find who said this.)

Whether I will write a memoir (I’m thinking particularly of my years at home, growing up) I’m still not sure. It’s a difficult story to tell and no point in doing it if I’m not honest. I have fragments of writing and a structure in mind so we’ll see…

Regardless of will I or won’t I, the course gave me a renewed energy for writing – we can’t keep taking out without putting something back in – and just this week I took a story I wrote a while back, which I was fond of but never entirely happy with and cut it in half. I lost a lot of words but the story came alive – it breathes – there is so much more space in it – below are some thoughts on space in the short story, from my book- From Writing With Love

Icebergs

What to Leave Out

Good short stories do not tell us everything. They tell us enough while at the same time leaving space for the reader to bring their imagination, experience and interpretation to the piece. They pose questions which are not always answered. We do not expect good short stories to tie up all the loose ends. Writing good short stories means as writers we’re often managing the balance between what to put in and what to leave out. Also between the seemingly contradictory: transparent prose and layered meaning, intensity and elusiveness, density (of ideas or feeling) and space.

Ernest Hemingway is the writer best known for describing the way in which creating space within a good short story works with his famous iceberg principle: 

If it is any use to know it, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn’t show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.

I try to do this in my own writing of short stories in several ways:

When I’m editing I ask myself what I can take out or where taking something out will add strength and another possible layer of meaning; room for another interpretation – a certain kind of ambiguity.

I use clear simple prose. The right language – not over fancy or complicated – automatically creates space.

I try to know as much as I can about the people in my story, what their lives have been  and then as Hemingway says leave most of this out and not worry about it because it will show through in the writing. What’s not said becomes implicit in what is said.

I try never to be deliberately obscure or tricksy but to write honestly; even if the story is surreal or fantastic it must be truthful at its core. All writing should be truthful at its core…