"The most demanding form after poetry..."*

(*the short story, according to William Faulkner.)

For the first time in a long while, I'm working on a new short story.

When I had my epiphany moment in 1996 and decided it was time to get real about this whole writing thing, I started with short stories. For a while I wrote a new one every week, as if the stories had piled up in my brain over the years and then burst forth in a rush when I finally took them seriously. They averaged 3,000 words, which still seems to me about right for a short story. They ranged over a whole list of topics, some genre and some literary. They helped me create recurring characters and taught me about pacing and editing (in a short story, you have to be ruthless: if something doesn't advance the plot, character or atmosphere, it has to go). And the very first short story I wrote, "The Chill in the Air Wakes the Ghosts Off the Ground," was also the very first one I sold, to a long-gone 'zine called Gaslight: Tales of the Unsane.

(I'll send a signed copy of your choice of my books to the first person to peg the band and song that inspired that story's title.)

The short stories tapered off once I started writing novels. The creative challenges are similar at first glance, much the same way tennis and raquetball look similar. But each game uses completely different muscles and reflexes, and I've found that to be true for novels and short stories. For example, characters in a novel can be established with more subtlety and detail; a short story's characters have to be pretty quickly sketched, which is why so many seem to be archetypes.

That said, when I do sit down to write a short story, it still tends to come quickly; I can produce a finished 3,000-word draft in about a week. This one is no exception: the first draft is 3,100 words according to the software counter. The final draft may be a bit longer or shorter, but probably by no more than 500 words either way. And since the deadline is April 15th, I have revision time, which believe me, I always need.

What's this one about? Ghost hunting. Beyond that, I can't really say. But I'll definitely let you know when and if it's available.

So how does my process compare to yours?

“I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces.” --Harold Ross

Are You William Faulkner? Check Yes or No

An article in the current issue of The New Shetlander made me recall a writing teacher in college who, when asked about composing in the vernacular, gave this response. "You should ask yourself one question: Am I William Faulkner? If the answer is 'no,' then you should never write in the vernacular."

I'm not sure where the contempt for writing in the phonetic language of the people you're depicting comes from, but it's definitely a deeply-ingrained idea. Any time a writer tries to accurately transcribe the dialect of a particular American subculture, he or she runs the risk of appearing deliberately amateurish (or, as Raymond Chandler said about James M. Cain, "faux naif"). It's assumed, I guess, that the writer simply doesn't know better and is writing the way he or she speaks and thinks. There are exceptions, I'm sure, but I can only think of one: Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

In contrast, poet Mark Ryan Smith, in the aforementioned New Shetlander article ("Shetland Poets, Learn Your Trade: The Kind of Poetry I Want"), says, "Poets and writers should try and find the best language for their own ideas and should be encouraged in their search . . . There is nothing inherent in any medium of speech or writing that makes it superior to any other medium."

In speaking to him about the article, he added, "We are lucky in Scotland that we have such a strong vernacular literature. This is probably due to the fact that our two greatest poets, and two of the world's greatest, Burns and MacDiarmid, both wrote extensively and brilliantly in the vernacular. Their work gave writing in the Scots languages validity and worldwide recognition. I don't know how many other countries have vernacular poets of such importance and I suppose all vernacular poets in Scotland are, in a very broad sense, following on from the beginnings these two poets made."

Here in the US, comparable claims could be made for the prose of not only Faulkner but of Mark Twain*, yet it seems to have had the opposite effect: instead of encouraging others to emulate them, it has set standards that most writers cannot achieve; therefore, the reasoning seems to be, it's a sign of presumption and immaturity to even try.

As a Southerner, elements of my native dialect creep into my writing, often times without conscious intent. And yet when I write a Southern character, I back away from truly reproducing the speech patterns and rhythms that are genetically as much a part of me as my blue eyes (for example, "I don't know" pronounced as one word, "iowntno," as well as one-syllable words ["damn"] turned into two-syllable ones ["dayum"]). Instead I try to suggest the dialect, which is like tasting the flavor of a steak without sinking your teeth into the meat.

Clearly, I'm not William Faulkner. Therefore, if that college professor was correct, his tools are essentially off limits to me unless I want to risk ridicule and being thought an amateur. Eventually, as our society fragments and each culture embraces its own artistic language, will we then see these vernacular expressions as legitimately sound as anything written in grammatically proper terms?

I don't know. That is, iowntno.

*Ironically, Faulkner had a low opinion of Twain, calling him, "a hack writer who would not have been considered fourth-rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven 'sure-fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy." (as quoted in Bad Press: The Worst Critical Reviews Ever.)