Fictionaut Blog

Radiohead always makes me feel more creative. Shostakovich helps me access my dark side. Sometimes if I need a pick up, I listen to the Black Eyed Peas, which either gets me to write or gets me to dance around in my living room–both of which seem productive.

I go for the sentences and phrases which feel most alive and vital and “new”, and ask the writer to remove the rest, even if it changes the “meaning” of the work. Meaning doesn’t matter a great deal to me as an editor: a feel for language and imagery is what attracts me. The strongest writing is what I want, not a pre-ordained message which the writer is attempting to embody. I think writers generally need to divorce their writings from their personae.

Recently:
   Monday Chat with David Ackley

The story is an excerpt of a larger work that’s struggling in the no man’s land between novella and novel at present, and the emotional hunger that Alan feels is played out more in that work of course.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Andrew Roe
   Checking in with Thrice Fiction
   Front Page: December

I tend to edit and revise as I go (I’m a turtle), so when I get a first draft “done,” it’s more like a sixth or seventh draft. Then I’ll go back and take another pass (or two or three). I’m a constant tinkerer, and it’s difficult for me to consider a story ever being finished, even if I’m lucky enough to get it published.

Recently:
   Checking in with Thrice Fiction
   Front Page: December

We try to blend the traditional with the new. The traditional stuff like short stories or novellas, you have to have a voice and it has to read like it isn’t “writing.” I’m not saying it shouldn’t have beautiful language, but some people don’t know when to tone it down or just shut the hell up already.

Recently:
   Front Page: December
   Fictionaut Five: Shya Scanlon

This month’s reading includes two stamp stories by Kathy Fish, one in Wigleaf and the other in the MLP Stamp Stories Anthology. Susan Tepper has a story in Schuylkill Valley Journal. Matt Potter’s Pure Slush has a new print anthology, Slut, featuring many Fictionaut members.