The Flash of Fireflies

Zoe on the power of the short story to inspire

‘The flash of fireflies’ is Nadine Gordimer’s phrase, and the title of an essay she wrote about the short form that features in an excellent book edited by Charles E May, The New Short Story Theories. (The book also includes essays by Elizabeth Bowen and Raymond Carver, among others). Gordimer wrote:

“The novelist may juggle about with chronology and throw narrative overboard; all the time his characters have the reader by the hand, there is a consistency of relationship throughout the experience that cannot and does not convey the quality of human life, where contact is more like the flash of fireflies, in and out, now here, now there, in darkness. Short-story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing one can be sure of – the present moment.”

There is something about the short story form that lends itself to transposition into other tightly constrained forms. Short stories make excellent films, for example (Don’t Look Now might be the ultimate example, but there are many more). It’s not just that they are short, and therefore easier to retell in a couple of hours even in a different medium; I think it’s also to do with that distillation of experience, a condensing of what it is to be human but given only in a brief flash. That flash relies on metaphor, and it is meaning delivered via metaphor that gets our brains firing up, and in many cases, imagining how we would try to express that same feeling, that same insight, ourselves, differently.

I was reminded this week by a fellow writer (thank you, Frances C) of the brilliant anthology of stories and essays published by Scratch Books, called Reverse Engineering. In this book, writers such as Sarah Hall, Jon McGregor and Irenosen Okojie discuss how they wrote particular stories (which are republished here), and dive into inspiration, craft, and the challenges and glories of the short form. It’s a fantastic read for writers, hungry as we always are to find the joins, or the nuts and bolts, of a piece of fiction. Writing short stories is the best way to hone your prose craft, and reading essays such as these can speed you towards reading as a writer.

The reminder of Reverse Engineering was timely, as there is a new anthology coming out from Scratch Book today, 17^th October – this one called Duets. There are some very exciting authors in there – such as Ruby Cowling, Eley Williams, and Jo Lloyd – half of whom were originally commissioned to find a fellow writer with whom to collaborate on a single short story. Jarred McGinnis invited me to work with him, which was a treat, and led to a story neither of us would ever have written alone, but which made us very happy. Jarred won’t mind me saying that it was hard to collaborate on a short story: we literally never do this, and there are lots of very good reasons why we don’t, so the learning curve was steep and gravelly. But it was a fantastic – if unusual – way to refresh my own ideas about what a short story might be, and perhaps even more importantly, a reminder that collaborating is incredibly fulfilling. We don’t get to do it very often as writers. I would say: if you get a chance, in whatever form, seize it. You are bound to grow as a writer.

I did get a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with a creator outside my own artform (as I have written about in a previous newsletter), the result being Folk the song cycle. That this whole process started with short stories, which became song lyrics, which became music, feels significant to me. The internal rhythm of the short story feels similar to that of a movement in a concerto, or symphony, or even the narrative rhythm of a ballad or folk song. Certainly, the compression of the stories in Folk made condensing them even further, only to be opened out again by music, an intense and satisfying process. The world premiere in September was recorded, and you can listen to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast for the next three weeks via BBC Sounds. The link for that, and for the Front Row discussion with the composer Helen Grime, soprano Claire Booth, and me, are all available here.

Finally, our Short Story Club returns later this month, for paying subscribers to The Writing Laboratory. We’ll be reading ‘Keeping Watch over the Sheep’ by Jon McGregor, and meeting on Zoom to talk about it 6-7pm on Tuesday 29^th October. Links to the story and the Zoom session will be shared with paying subscribers soon via email and in our constantly updated calendar.

In the spirit of collaboration, or at the very least mutual support, we’re going to be sharing some stories, publications and good news from subscribers to The Writing Laboratory in this newsletter in the coming months. If you’ve had a publication, or will be performing some of your work, or anything at all that feels like good news in writing world and which you’d like to share with us and all our subscribers, do get in touch.