Vanessa Gebbie (Ed.)

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Biographical note:  Vanessa Gebbie’s short fiction has won over forty awards, including prizes at Bridport, Fish (twice), Per Contra (USA), the Daily Telegraph and the Willesden Herald, from final judges such as Zadie Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Michael Collins and Colum McCann. She is a freelance writing teacher working with adult groups at literary festivals as well as school students. Many of her prize-winning stories are brought together for the first time in Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt, 2008). A second collection, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, is forthcoming.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844717248
ISBN:  9781844717248
Author:  Vanessa Gebbie
Title:  Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story
Series:  Salt Guides for Readers and Writers
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CGV
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Nov-09
Extent:  288pp
Height:  234 mm
Width:  156 mm
Thickness:  21 mm
Weight:  432 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 14.99
Price:  USD 26.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Short Circuit is the first textbook written by prize-winning writers for students and more experienced practitioners of the short story. The 288 page guide brings together twenty-four specially-commissioned essays from well-published short story writers who are also prize winners of the toughest short story competitions in the English language, including five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall — winner of The National Short Story Award — and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award.

Main description:  Short Circuit is a unique and indispensable guide to writing the short story. A collection of 24 specially commissioned essays from well-published short story writers, many of them prize winners in some of the toughest short story competitions in the English language. The writers are also experienced and successful teachers of their craft.

Each essay picks up on one or more craft or process issues and explores them in context, within the creative practice of the writer. Each writer has given of themselves very generously, exploring what it is that helps them produce strong short fiction, looking at their sources of inspiration, revealing more than a little of what goes on ‘behind the scenes’. They share favourite writing exercises, and suggest lists of published stories they find inspirational. Much of the guidance can equally be applied to writing longer fiction.

Contributions include five essays from winners of The Bridport Prize. There are interviews with Clare Wigfall — winner of The National Short Story Award — and with Tobias Hill whose short story collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Other prize-winning writers in this book include winners of The Asham Award for New Women Writers, The Fish Histories Prize, The Fish Short Story Prize, The BBC Short Story Prize, The Commonwealth Award, Writers Inc. Writer of the Year, The Willesden Herald Prize, NAWG Millennium Award for Radio Short Story and the Per Contra Prize.

Table of contents:
Vanessa Gebbie
Introduction
Graham Mort
Finding Form in Short Fiction
Clare Wigfall
‘I Hear Voices’— Narrative voice, creating a fictive world, characterisation, openings and leaving room for the reader: An interview
Alison Macleod
Writing and Risk-Taking
Nuala Ni Chonchuir
Language and Style for short story writers and poets
Chika Unigwe
Setting
Alex Keegan
‘24’: The Importance of Theme
Lane Ashfeldt
Building a world
Catherine Smith
Myth and magic: beyond ‘realism’ in the short story
Adam Marek
What my gland wants — originality in the short story
Tobias Hill
Character, characterisation, dialogue and language: An interview
Sarah Salway
Stealing Stories
Elizabeth Baines
True story — real story — good Fiction?
Tania Hershman
Art Breathes from Containment: The Delights of the Shortest Fiction or The Very Short Story That Could
David Gaffney
Get shorty: the micro-fiction of Etgar Keret
Marian Garvey
On Intuition: writing into the void
Elaine Chiew
Endings
Paul Magrs
Thoughts about writing fiction, at the end of term
Vanessa Gebbie
Leaving the door ajar on short story openings …
Vanessa Gebbie
Short story competitions: Hard work, persistence, luck and a bowl of fruit
Linda Cracknell
Balancing Act
Jay Merill
Supercharged Words
Carys Davies
‘… before it disappears …’
David Grubb
Dancing on glass
Zoe King
But what if your character won’t talk to you?
Matthew Licht
Iceberg Lettuce: Why I write, and a little bit of ‘how’
Contributors’ notes

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Excerpt from book:  

Introduction

Welcome to Short Circuit, a collection of essays and interviews from winners of some of the most challenging competitions for short fiction — the UK’s National Short Story Award, the Bridport Prize, the Fish Prize, the Fish Short Histories Prize, the Asham Award, the Commonwealth Prize and many more. Writers who also teach writing.

Short Circuit is either a very good title for this book or a very bad one. It depends how you look at it. I see surprising connections, sparks and flares — more than a modicum of the unexpected. However, those who know about electricity tell me it is a bad title. Because you only get short circuits if there has been a mistake in the wiring. Something unplanned.

I’ll stick with it and hope they don’t mind. And by the end of the book, I hope you’ll see why it works well. So many of the writers here will tell you of the elusive and magical ‘thing’ that happens when story takes off and all your planning and plotting and learning of craft fades into the background. When your characters take over and use your fingers to tell their stories.

Here, you have craft issues discussed in context by twenty three writers. If you are reading this book you are probably already writing short stories, and want to do it better. So do I. So do we all. We share with each other our love of the short story form, and talk about what it is that we find challenging. Sure, we talk craft — about opening and ending a story. About characterisation, voice, dialogue, and shaping a story. About theme. Creating a world, settings. But we also share with you our creative processes, the strategies we employ to unlock these little bits of magic that are stories. We share ideas for further exploration of the processes described, and give you lists of inspirational stories.

I will leave you with two thoughts. Firstly, from the chief shortlister of the Bridport prize, Jon Wyatt. When I asked him what he was looking for in stories that made the shortlist, he said he gave his team of readers a simple instruction. ‘I want to see those stories that make you forget you are reading.’

And secondly, this, from an interview with William Faulkner in The Paris Review, Issue 12, 1952.

‘Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.’

Unpublished endorsement:  An essential read. Short Circuit is a collection of essays from writers who are passionate (and successfully!) about short fiction. A real gold mine of insights and ideas for aspiring writers and for those seeking a refresher.

The Bridport Prize

Unpublished endorsement:  This is a generous book, rich in ideas. It’s a practical book, giving a kick start to the imagination with its suggestions for overcoming the tyranny of the blank page, and it’s also a realistic book. Short Circuit updates Chaucer’s advice about life being short and the craft long to learn, without ever losing sight of why it’s worth the effort.

As a teacher of creative writing, I recommend it to students. I believe in the apprenticeship system and this is an excellent manual. As a writer, it reminds me why I write, and why there’s nothing else I would rather do.

Bridget Whelan, Lecturer in Creative Writing, Goldsmith’s College, University of London

Unpublished endorsement:  At last!  The definitive guide to writing short stories, put together by a team of experts who are passionate about this most elusive, maddening, beguiling and ultimately satisfying of art forms. 

Cleverly constructed — a book which you will want to dip into for years to come.  And a book which will do much to raise the status of the short story in contemporary fiction.

Carole Bucham, The Asham Trust

Unpublished endorsement:  As full of inspiration as it is of sound advice. An invaluable tool kit of a book for practitioners and scholars of the short story.

Mike McCormack, lecturer, MA in Creative Writing, NUI Galway.

Unpublished endorsement:  This is rich book — full of insight and interest. ‘Short Circuit’ will be a essential addition to my undergraduate book list — it is written by those who have first hand understanding of the problems, as well as invaluable knowledge of the craft of writing short fiction.

Gill Lowe, Senior lecturer, University Campus Suffolk

Unpublished endorsement:  Once a lover of the short story opens ‘Short Circuit’, one quickly realises it is indispensable — to a degree that has one asking, why hasn't it been done before? Like all the best story anthologies, the essays and interviews are varied in style and structure and possess all the attractiveness and excitement of good gossip.

Patrick Cotter, Director, Munster Literature Centre, home of the Frank O’Connor Prize

Unpublished endorsement:  Here is a ‘How To’ book that is hard to put down. If there is anything you still need to know after reading the varied authors here, you probably haven’t read it properly. Read it again. Not that you’d need to, wisdom and insight hop off the page like light on water.
 
This book lacks the aridity of a textbook. The writers give of themselves and their experience, and information, advice and insight is fortified with example. Respect is given to the process and to the reader. In a scintillating and provocative series of chapters the art of writing is explored with excitement and passion. If Alex Keegan’s essay on ‘Theme’ doesn’t inspire you, check your pulse. You may be dead.
 
There is a mystery at the heart of writing. It’s the experience of characters and stories developing lives of their own; of characters arguing with their author and creator, of stories going places the writer did not know about. It is the marriage of this mystical, that a writer must learn to listen to, and the craft that a writer must learn, that makes fiction sing and dance on the page, and one of the joys of this book is the illumination given to this vital process.

Clem Cairns, Founder, The Fish Short Story Prize

Unpublished endorsement:  How refreshing to have a book on creative writing that is neither abstract theory nor banal ‘how to'. What we have instead are insights into the short story from a marvellous variety of accomplished writers; an invaluable resource for anyone tackling this tricky but highly rewarding literary form.

Paul Munden, Director, National Association of Writers in Education

Unpublished endorsement:  Vanessa Gebbie has compiled an indispensable guide to crafting the short story. The subjects represented here — all written by contemporary authors — will stimulate advanced writers and instruct newcomers. There's nothing like hearing from people who have learned a technique or a way of approaching a problem through experience. These authors are generous with what they know, to our benefit.

Alice Elliott Dark, Writer in Residence at Rutgers-Newark University author of ‘In the Gloaming’ and ‘Naked to the Waist’