christopher cocca

It’s a quiet Sunday, but I wanted to throw this up for those of you (like me) interested in the various forms of micro-writing and the unstoppable force known as Twitter.  Check out the good folks at JustSixWords.  I’m also rocking TweetDeck for the first time and so far I like it, though I understand it eats up a lot of resources on my system.  But it’s a brand-spanking-new MacBook, so I’m not too worried.

The freshman boys’ room is crashes and cologne-sweat and white-boy lucha libre. Army surplus beds are piled matting. Body checks that last year hurt into dry rot panel and broken chairs and complaining peace church Christian neighbors saying it kept them up or ruined their devotions. The Bible Camp director with your names on a clipboard confronts you in the morning and says he’ll send you home but you know they want you here too much to mean it. Your straight-faced promise to be better is stand-off penance. Vassal deference and authorities you tolerate. You laugh at him through breakfast.

A few months ago we talked about meaning nonfiction as fiction.  Now the Bloomsbury Review is going the other way with “imaginary nonfiction”, that is, fiction that’s meant to be read as nonfiction but (and here’s the key!) admits that it’s fiction. 

I’m not sure how imaginary nonfiction differs from fiction, since most fiction presents itself, within its fictive universe, as true.   Pitch call below:

The-Out-of Bounds Essay: Bloomsbury Review’s New Bi-Monthly Imaginary Nonfictions Feature

Editors: Reamy Jansen and Daniel Nester

We’re both looking for fresh, off-beat, non-fiction prose. No more than 300 words.
Send two copies of your entry to Reamy Jansen, 16 Homestead Ave., Highland Falls, NY 10928. Include SASE, brief bio, e-mail address, and phone number.

I just got the galley proof for next month’s issue of AdmitTwo which will feature a hundred-word piece by me that I combined with a creative commons licensed picture from Flickr (with appropriate credit and permissions from the photographer.  It’s the Dylan story some of you have read.

Now that that’s ready, I’ll be getting in touch with those of you that wanted to work on some pieces for future submission to this unique venue.  

Because we don’t have time.  I don’t mean this literally.  I mean we don’t have patience.  At least I don’t.  I don’t have patience for very long things unless they’re very good.  I don’t have patience for dying metaphors and rough drafts.  As a reader, I don’t need to invest very much patience into someone’s micro-fiction.  If something I read is bad, at least I didn’t have to spend too much patience on it.  If it’s good, everybody wins.

As a writer I have even less patience.  I write micro-fiction because, like I said the other day, it’s how people actually live. This isn’t a conscious choice I make.  I haven’t plotted to mimic the disconnected lives we lead with terse prose that rudely (an adverb!) refuses segue or transition or explanation.  It just feels honest as a matter of form. Honesty in terms of content is something that comes after much struggle most of the time.  How to say what I mean as succinctly as I feel or know it?  is the issue.  Sometimes it’s quick. Mostly, though, the stuff that comes quick needs a good deal of work.

Micro-fiction punches in the way things really happen and it’s popular because it’s moment to moment, like we are, and because it exalts the moments we cling to, love, hate, or fear.  In the end there’s nothing small about it.  Most things we carry happened in a moment and evoked something in us outside of the context of our narrated-backstory lives.   It’s the mind-numbing, cliched details of that narration that are more rightly called “micro,” the tired conversations around the same sets of issues and people by which we keep ourselves small.  Micro-fiction subverts that with its impatience for those parts of your story that aren’t yours only.  

Fromaroom asked a great question in the comments section a few posts down:

“What are your thoughts on micro-fiction as a genre? Quite apart from the ‘paring-down’ Hemingway tradition. Why do we do it? It’s obviously an internet phenomenon, and is becoming massivley popular. Is it popular because it’s quick and easy, or is there more to it?”

My answer is below. What’s yours?

I love micro-fiction. It’s quick but I don’t think it’s easy. I think we love it because it feels true. It doesn’t waste time on things that aren’t important and when it’s good it doesn’t use cliches or tired old phrases. Doesn’t have time to.

It also sort of mimics how we live. One thing to the next. How many of us epically narrate our lives? We do in retrospect, or when we’re writing novels, but we feel and think and react in moments. That’s what good micro-fiction does. it’s a heart beat.

I came across per contra via a post about The Best of The Web at emergingwriters.typepad.net.  so, check per contra’s guidelines for nano-fiction.  They take 55 fiction and 69s, but 55s must fit this exact form:

“Fifty-fivers must be exactly fifty-five-words long and must adhere to form. The first sentence must be exactly ten words long. The second must be nine words long. The third must be eight words long. The fourth must be seven words long. The fifth must be six words long. The sixth must be five words long. The seventh must be four words long. The eighth must be three words long. The ninth must be two words long. The tenth must contain only one word.

Paragraph breaks in fifty fivers may occur at the end of any sentence, and may not occur at all.”

Looks like I won the raincoatflashers.blogspot.com contest for flash fiction prompt 17.  They posted a new prompt on June 1. Check it out.

Rob McEvily might be the hardest working man in micro lit.  His Six Sentences project has taken off to some very cool levels, including a print anthology, art work based on various sixes and now a social network for 6s writers and their fans.  Check it out.

This 100-word story came from this prompt: “write about a magical pencil.” That’s pretty bad but overall I like what I came up with.  I don’t like that an adverb snuck its way in there but that’s one of the limits of the form. I do like the last phrase. And I do love sucking potato guts from french fries. And shooting them at people.

It sunk fast into his thigh like a wax straw through the flesh-pulp of a melon. The thick blood on the floor extended the comparison; he used to suck potato guts from french fries and fill the pockets in with ketchup like a sweet red tang epoxy. The pencil above his femoral artery rolled patiently ignored between the keyboard and the disk drive and he finished the last page of his section of the paper as its deep sting hit his flank. Every newsroom has its legends; that the old school is a jealous ghost became for him a fact.