How writing short stories can improve your writing by Leanne Dyck

(What is housed in this tent? And why is it good news for my writing?
For the answer, stroll down to the very end of this post.)

'An ordinary day--but with a suitcase it in. -Arleen Pare (Leaving Now)

'There is a story always ahead of you.' -Michael Ondaatje (The Cat's Table)

'They would always go home; they belonged to the place they came from. Other people were destined to keep leaving, over and over again.' -Alix Ohlin (Inside)

'She swung the thick, strong rope of her voice round the words, coming down hard on them, cinching them together. Then she flung the notes bold up in the air, high and hornlike.' -Esi Edugyan (Half Blood Blues)

'It was a wisp of a dream, like trying to catch wind in your hand.' -Will Ferguson (419)

'It was like walking into joy.' -Louise Penny (The Beautiful Mystery)

How do you learn to write like this?

Perhaps by learning how to pick the right word.

And how do you do that?

By chiseling away at your writing so that plot; character development--nothing matters but the words. By writing flash fiction... 

Flash fiction:  a self-contained short story (meaning the story has a beginning, middle, end) with a limited word count (usually under 1,000 words).

As you can imagine, such a reduced word count is extremely limiting. You are limited to one moment in time. Such writing relies on the author's ability to choose the correct word. You don't have the luxury of padding. It's challenging but very enjoyable. And many authors find it to be the perfect counterbalance for working on longer work.

'The challenge of flash fiction is to tell a complete story in which every word is absolutely essential.' -Jason Gurley

For sale:  baby shoes, never worn.
This six word story by Ernest Hemingway's is an extreme example of flash fiction.
More about this story

Here is one of my attempts at extreme flash fiction...

One sunny day a worm went for a wiggle. He meets a robin.

1,500...1,000...500...20...6? How low will you go?

More tips...

Stories in your pocket:  how to write flash fiction



Sharing my author journey...

What do you feed a writer?
Good books, of course.
Where do you get good books at a price a writer who is establishing 

Guest Post: Author Arleen Pare

Next year I will have a third book.  This is a minor miracle.  I have come to believe that the process of making books, who gets a manuscript published, how a book comes into the world with my name on it, for instance, is a mysterious thing.  Each of my books has been a surprise.  Not that I didn’t write them or that I don’t take responsibility for them, but every time the process has felt precarious, unpredictable.  I am grateful each time, but I don’t understand anything more now than I did when I first started submitting manuscripts for publication. 

This may be that I have come to writing late in life.  For most of my salaried work life, I worked as a social worker.  I understood the field of social work, how an individual would apply for a job and be hired -- or not.  I understood job descriptions and how jobs were managed, how decisions were made.  I respected the levels of work, the chains of responsibility.  But a career in creative writing is different, more, in fact, unwritten, without clear job descriptions or hiring processes, more shrouded, obscured.  

My third book will be a book of poetry, themed, about a lake I knew when I was a child, the Lake of Two Mountains, which will be its title, and it will be published by Brick Books.  I am thrilled, over the moon.  I feel like I’ve won the lottery.  It is the third minor miracle.  And I have a fourth manuscript that I am editing right now.  I will send it to various publishers when I think it’s ready to be sent out, but I will still find the process confusing.  I will still feel like I’ve entered a lottery contest.  If I win, I will be delighted.   Of course.  If I don’t, I will keep sending the manuscript to more and different presses, hoping each time to have the winning ticket.  But how will I know when I have finally and for sure - not won?

Arleen Pare

(Leanne Dyck's interview with Arleen Pare)

Paper Trail

Leaving Now

(Leanne Dyck raves about Leaving Now)

Guest Post: Author Arleen Pare (interview)

How/why did you start to write?

I started to write creatively after completing a graduate thesis in 1994.   I remember driving home from UBC after my oral defense, thinking it was too bad that I had finished the project because I had enjoyed the writing process, the business of chewing over ideas and arranging them.  And revising.  And then immediately the idea of writing a novel popped into my mind.  And I don’t have to include footnote, I thought.   So the next morning before I went to work, I began my novel.  Fifteen minutes in a coffee shop.   it was about four chapters long before I abandoned it.  In the meantime, I had joined a writing group, enrolled in a writing class and started to write poetry, which is my main love.

How did you become an author?

I kept taking writing classes.  I did a reading or two.  I made friends with other writers.   One day, after sending my new manuscript to several presses, one of them accepted it.  The process was more complex, and I began to think the manuscript would never get published, but one of the editorial board at my first published was willing to take a chance on an experimental book – mine.

What was your first published piece?

I took the SFU Writers’ Studio program with Betsy Warland in 2001/2.  It lasted a year and was organized to accommodate people with full-time jobs.  I learned so much.  At the end of the year, the students put together an anthology.  I think that was where I first published a number of poems.  The program is in its 12^th year, and is very popular.   I think it’s really important to learn as much as possible about writing, retreats, workshops, classes, programs, degrees.   I’ve taken them all, and I still want to take more.

Where was it published?

How long ago?

What did you do before embarking on your writing career? Was it an asset to your writing? How?

I became a writer late in life.  I was forty-nine when I began writing the novel.  I called it Lake City.  I worked for over twenty years as a social worker and social work administrator in Vancouver mental health services.  I am a mother.  After I had children I went to McGill University and became a social worker.  I keep going back to school.   I love going to school.   I wrote my first published book about working in government bureaucracy.  It’s called Paper Trail (NeWest Press, 2007) and is written in mixed genre, much like Leaving Now.  People who work in bureaucracy have told me that Paper Trail speaks to their own situation.   It contains some poetry, some narrative, some fantasy, with Franz Kafka racing around the corridors of the office building.   It won the 2008 Victoria Butler Book Prize, and was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award for Poetry.  Both are very prestigious BC prizes; I was enormously chuffed.

What inspires you?

Reading other poets, good and excellent poets can inspire me most.

Please share one of your successful marketing techniques

I think networking is important.   Going to classes.  Getting to know different authors.  Using the new technologies, like blogging and face book.  I think these activities can help to market authors and their books.

Parting words

If you love to write, write what is difficult for you, what keeps you awake at night.   Make what you write the most beautiful piece of art you can.  Get other people to help edit your work.   Revise, revise, revise.  

Leaving Now (Arleen Pare's most recent book)

In Leaving Now Arleen Pare, winner of the 2008 Victoria Book Prize, weaves fable, prose and poetics to create a rich mosaic of conflicted motherhood. Set in the volatile 1970s and 80s when social norms and expectations were changing rapidly, Leaving Now is the emotionally candid story of a mother's anguish as she leaves her husband to love a woman. In this second book, Pare masterfully blends aspects of her personal journey with her own version of a well-loved fairy tale. Gudrun, the five-hundred-year-old mother of Hansel and Gretel, appears hazily in the narrator's kitchen--presumed dead, all but written out of her won tale, but very much alive. Gudrun spins a yarn of love, loss and leaving, offering comfort and wisdom to the conflicted young mother.

Raising children is not for the faint of heart, all parents know the anguish of parting from a child, even if for the briefest moment. Leaving Now is for mothers, fathers, son and daughters. It is for anyone who has ever lived in a family.

Arleen Pare's website

Book Review: Leaving Now by Arleen Pare

Allow me to begin with a little bit of self-talk. "Leanne, this is an example of why it's important to leave room for a book to find you. Listen up." Okay, I feel better. Thanks. Now...

Background:  The night before finding Leaving Now I'd actually started reading... Well, the name of the book isn't important. By... Well, the name of the author isn't important either.... It's enough to say that I'd read another books by the author. Other books that I'd enjoyed. So, I began reading that book with hope in my heart. I'll enjoy this, I told myself. Half-way through the first chapter, I kept reminding myself, any time now I'll begin to enjoy this. 

The problem was the author. I could compare him to a bully. He was holding the story over my head. I could see it danging there in front of me. But when I reached out to grab it he pulled it away. 

Finally, I told him. "Fine. If you don't want me to have it, I don't need it." And I left the author with his story. 

But that left me with a new problem:  what do I read now? 

The problem was that I had too many books to choose from and none of them called to me. 

That evening I went to Arleen Pare's book reading. 

Leaving Now jumped right up, waved at me and said, "Yeah, I'll be happy to entertain you. Just bring me home."

So I did and Leaving Now didn't disappoint. In fact, it charmed me from page one, with turns of phrases such as 'An ordinary day--but with a suitcase in it." (p. 9)

The cover is a well-executed work of art--weaving pink and blue. 
It speaks of times long past--1952. 

Buy Link

Please visit the book cover artist, Arleigh Wood

Arleen Pare's writing is emotionally deep with a poetic style. Reading her words inspired me to try my hand...

Satisfaction comes from developing your craft.
Ink on paper...capturing...emotion...writing deeply...capture the minute, the essence.

Satisfaction is achieved by sitting with your pen.
Exercise your brain...focus...execute...breathe life into word.
Build a world...watch your characters come to life...
Stand for something...make a point....

Don't worry who will care. You will.

Yes, Leaving Now captured me--right up and including the very last page.
'That's what happens in a fairy tale. That's the way the endings work. Perfectly. That's the law. I close the book.' (p. 162)

So, wanting more, but knowing the story was complete, I, indeed, closed the book.



***
Next post:
After all that, would you like to meet the author of Leaving Now? I knew you would. Arleen Pare will be here tomorrow. 
Can't wait?
Neither can I. : )
***
Work in progress
Word count:  64,638 words
Just two scenes left. I'm so close I can taste it--and it's so sweet. Then I let it rest for a few days (as many as I can stand). After a through editing and polish, it's submission time. If all goes well this progress should start in December or January. After the holidays or before... Huh? I've worried over this dilemma more than once.

This week I finished Room by Emma Donoghue. I thought I'd leave it at that. But as with so many books it seems I have something to say. So, please, watch for this review.
***
News:
I will be attending two writer workshops this Saturday...
Write with Geist
Fall Workshop series
Getting It Into Print 
(Billeh Nickerson reveals the secrets of how to get published in literary journals.)
Art of the Sentence
(Stephen Osborne explains how to identify strong sentences and how to write them)
I've been fortunate to be published in some literary journals. But I want to do more. And my sentences are strong but they could be stronger. (couldn't everyone's?)

Oh, yes, and this coming Tuesday at 9 pm my favourite TV show returns.
Scotiabank Giller Prize (link)

Confessions of a writer by Leanne Dyck

Each Friday, on this blog, I feature a guest post. I promote my guests on Twitter, Google + and Facebook. I'd planned to be away last weekend--catching the ferry on Thursday. Knowing that I won't be able to promote the guest post, I rescheduled Mike Force and Chris Di Giuseppi's guest post for this coming Friday. (I'm really looking forward to Mike and Chris' visit--they're my first team authors; they were generous with their questions and their book looks very interesting.)
So no guest post last Friday instead because I would be away--of island, for a break. Or at least that's what I thought. That's the thing about plans--they change. 
Around the time I should have been planning what to pack, my muse found an oasis of inspiration. Words flew onto paper. This left me with a difficult decision--stay home and work or leave and relax. 
Well, I look at achieving a steady flow of words as a gift. And, I reasoned, one I didn't want to stop receiving. So I stayed and worked.
The plan:  From Friday morning to Sunday night my fingers would be on the keyboard and my pen would be in my hand--no Internet or email.
On the whole, I did stick to this plan.
However, there were some diversions and now, to clear my conscious, I'd like to confess them.
Early Friday evening I attended Arleen Pare's book reading.

And I left with her book in my hand.

'In Leaving Now Arleen Pare, winner of the 2008 Victoria Book Prize, weaves fable, prose and poetics to create a rich mosaic of conflicted motherhood. Set in the volatile 1970s and '80s, when social norms and expectations were changing rapidly. Leaving Now is the emotionally candid story of a mother's anguish as she leaves her husband to love a woman. In this second book, Pare masterfully blends aspects of her personal journey with her own version of a well-loved fairy tale. Gudrun, the five-hundred-year-old mother of Hansel and Gretel, appears hazily in the narrator's kitchen--presumed dead, all but written out of her own tale, but very much alive. Gudrn spins a yarn of love, loss and leaving, offering comfort and wisdom to the conflicted young mother. 

Raising children is not for the faint of heart, all parents know the anguish of parting from a child, even if for the briefest moment. Leaving Now is for mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. It is for anyone who has ever lived in a family.' (From Caitlin Press' web site)

I forgave this diversion because, after all, it is one of my tasks, as a writer, to network. It wasn't my fault that the evening was so enjoyable.

Saturday I spent at the Mayne Island fall fair. Here's a taste...

I forgave this diversion because, I felt, attendance was my civic duty as a Mayne Islander.

I spent Sunday wading in words. This Thursday you'll be able to judge for yourself how well this went when I report my manuscript's latest word count.

I hope you enjoyed your weekend whether it was work, play or a little bit of both.

A Love Letter (short story) by Leanne Dyck

A Love Letter

We have always had a special relationship. When we meet you woed me with your clever tricks. You were never the same way twice. Sometimes your "b" looked like a "d". Sometimes your "p" looked like a "q". I was surprised to hear that you didn't entertain everyone in this manner.

Later our relationship grew and I learnt that you could be collected into a group. I was informed that this group was read as a word.

Ah, how your words danced before your eyes. Sometimes "w-a-s" danced. How it waltzed. How it jigged. How it jived. Watch it now as it twists into "s-a-w". Amazing! Thrilling! Yet you only danced for me.

Your behavior does make our relationship challenging.

Words dance before my eyes...unclaimed. Sometimes I am forced to guess at your intent. You are always a puzzle, a surprise. You intrigue me. You entertain me. You embarrass me.

Do you remember the time I was reading you to a group of children? I thought we were having a merry old time until one of the children stopped me. It seems you had fooled me yet again but you hadn't fooled the child. Never mind, it was long ago, and I have forgiven you.

It doesn't matter to me that your relationship with others is easier and more harmonious. 

My passion for you grows stronger every day.

About this story...

For many years I felt that dyslexia was an obstacle I had to overcome in order to become an author. In fact, I used it to keep myself in a comfortable nest. Safe and warm, I had an excuse not to shot for the stars--not to attempt to become an author.

But the wind blew and my nest rocked when I heard of authors such as Jules Verne and Agatha Christie. They didn't let dyslexia stop them, I was forced to realize.

And, then, I lost every last twig from my nest when I watched a documentary called Journey into Dyslexia. I sat transfixed as those interviewed helped me see some common misconceptions regarding dyslexia. The major one being that it is a limitation.

Dyslexics are driven to create. Our inner lives are deep pools of inspiration. Now I'm beginning to value my mind for the amazing tool it is.

***

Work in progress

I'm on a little bit of a high this week. My clever muse has led me down a path that is so brilliant. I can't wait to share it with you. In fact, if I could you know I would. But, sadly, we all must wait. But know this, I'm having tons of fun writing.

Word count:  22, 162 words

***

Next post:  There will be no guest post this Friday. I will be away from my computer.

Where will I be?

I could be at Arleen Pare's book reading

'On Friday, August 17th from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. Arleen Pare will be reading from her new book Leaving Now. Leaving Now is a beautifully written story of a young mother who must leave her two sons to follow her heart.' (quoted from the MayneLiner)

I could be at the Mayne Island Fall Fair

Who wouldn't be? It's tons of fun.
Go to the Mayne News blog, for more info. Scroll down to '87th Annual Mayne Island Fall Fair'

I could be here Writers' Festival -in my dreams, I am. : )
'August 16 - 19, 2012 -- Sechelt, BC
Join Canada's longest running summer gathering of Canadian writers and readers' (quote from their web site)

But where will I be? 

There lies the mystery.

I will be back:  Monday, August 20th