I say this now in part because I have three short (nontraditional-ish) pieces in the December issue: two Craigslist stories and one 21st-century epistle (aka email). I originally thought these would appear in the January issue, so it’s a final 2009 surprise.

There is something I really like about these forms, but I have a hard time articulating it. Part of it is the familiar, almost casual “realness” of using a an everyday medium to tell a story. Another, more subtle quality is the sense of a narrative within the narrative: there is a story within the ad/email itself, but then the piece can also allude to a larger story concerning the writer (i.e. what kind of person wrote this? what can I tell about their life from what they have written?). Go on Craigslist, especially the personal ad sections, and just read. You’ll see what I mean.

Nonetheless, I think a lot of publications probably have very little interest in emails and personal ads as fiction, so thanks to Roxane Gay and the other fine folks at PANK for putting these up.

This month’s edition of Monkeybicycle‘s “One Sentence Stories” is up and includes quick fiction from yours truly + Nanoism contributors Ethel Rohan and Brendan O’Brien, among others.

Also, some bonus Thaumatrope bits from November:  Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, and (oh, I don’t know, let’s call it) 2012.

So Electric Literature just serialized a Rick Moody story on Twitter over three days and 150ish tweets. Unsurprisingly, people simultaneously applauded the “experiment” while poo-poo’ing all over it.  I don’t have the energy to treat the topic with the gusto it deserves, but—in short—I both applaud the effort and enjoyed the story. I do wonder though about serialization in the 21st century:

What is the impetus to serialize a story? After all, we don’t have the tangible, real-world constraints that necessitated the serialization of many early 20th-century stories in the first place. Do readers really digest serials bit by bit as they’re fed, or do they wait until the end to feast? My gut feeling is that the easy access to instant gratification in all forms of entertainment makes serialization (at least in terms of the storytelling itself) about as antiquated as watching live TV with commercials.

The question then becomes, what are reasons to serialize that can transcend the gimmick? I posed this question on Fictionaut.

November is a good time to share some itty-bitty poems that have been popping up here and there.

• I had a ‘stone’ in A Handful of Stones, a wonderful little site that asks us to “pay pay proper attention to one thing every day.”
• My fourth prose poem (“She Wakes…“) in Outshine (read the first three here).
• Three poems in Four and Twenty. Two (“Near Our Apartment” and “Footprint Trails”) are in the November 2009 issue, and a third (“Open Doors”) is a “Four and Twenty of the Week” for this month, which is an honor.

And that’s that. As an added bonus, I also have three pieces in Thaumatrope this month to keep an eye out for, including a very special Thanksgiving tale.

I’ve been fascinated recently by what I think of as authentic stories: writing that—while fictional—uses everyday forms to tell realistic, might-as-well-be-true stories. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the traditional narrative. It’s familiar and effective. But still, there are true stories everywhere, hidden within the innocuous interactions of the 21st century for anyone who cares to pause and consider. While many people familiar with Hemingway’s (apocryphal) famous six-word story (“For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn”) note its brevity, I focus on its form: the personal ad.

I’ve been calling these types of stories “Craigslist Fiction.” A story that uses an authentic form (personal ad, email, etc.) should 1) be read convincingly as an actual example of that medium (i.e. an actual Craigslist ad)  and 2) must still relate a story. Like “hint fiction,” some of the details are merely hinted at (i.e. omitted), but it’s my view that Hemingway (or the person who probably wrote these long before him) was on to something. Because how often do you read something on a site like Craigslist and think: what kind of person would write that?

My first published very short piece of Craigslist Fiction, “Iranian Food,” appears in this month’s elimae. There are more on the way, soon to be available from where fine writing is read.

I’ve written some new things. A subset of these will appear in Matchbook, PANK, Writers’ Bloc, Four and Twenty, A Handful of Stones, Outshine, and elimae. I now have a bunch of half-started things that I would like to finish but probably won’t. I have however ruled out urology and nephrology as future specialties.

Matchbook, PANK, and Writers’ Bloc won’t happen until 2010, which is probably a good thing as now I can already consider 2010 a creatively productive year. Matchbook in particular has a really unique take on publishing where they place stories side-by-side with critical pieces. A few sites (PANK among them) interview writers about their stories, but I can’t think of anyone who puts the nonfiction thoughts of their contributors in the forefront like Matchbook. It’s refreshing and exciting.

I also really wanted elimae, and it took me a while to land. Few places accept submissions of literally any size and fewer still consistently publish nano/hint length pieces. elimae has been in the super-short game longer than anyone.

In other news, my vision of the future appeared in Thaumatrope a few days back.

Outshine is a science-fiction “twitterzine” (there, I said it) notable for its focus on near-future optimistic SF prose poems or “flash-forwards” of 140 characters or less, this being Twitter after all. No nuclear apocalypses appear in Outshine’s twice-weekly pieces.

Outshine is awesome for many reasons (including paying $5 per poem, which is about a quarter per word, way above “pro-rates”) but most notably to me for how perfectly it handles short-form science fiction.

One of the shortcomings of the vast majority of super-short stories is that these dribbles are often not really stories or— even when they are—aren’t best suited for the nano-form. Some stories try to do too much to be effective when short.  One of the best parts about the genre of science fiction is the premise. The ensuing exploration is what makes the story, but an interesting premise is where a lot of the fun lies. By calling for prose poems instead of stories, Outshine sidesteps the nagging constraints of trying to shrink traditional storytelling elements down and instead focuses on premise and language. By promoting certain elements over others (and not trying to be everything to everyone), Outshine gets the job done more consistently.

As evidence for this claim, my third flash-forward, “No money, no problem,” appeared in Outshine yesterday. My first two pieces (“Surgeon airships…” and “Footfalls…“) were published in May and June.

Last week I was fortunate enough to be featured in PicFic; this week I find myself with five stories in Seven by Twenty, another twitter-based ‘zine for stories and poems and brief awesomeness. This five-part set includes a healthy mix of older Midnight Stories and some fresh material:

• On a breezy summer day…
• Once the machines started…
• Note to self
• I want to be…
• As a woman…

In other news, Folded Word nominated  my seven-tweet-sized short story “Moving On” for Best of the Net. So, thanks!

Lastly, the great and newly-public literary community Fictionaut just posted a short interview with me about Nanoism and Adam Robinson of the very cool Publishing Genius.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that my very first words published in print are in the form of a “tweet” I posted on Twitter on April Fool’s Day this year.

This particular savory morsel of bite-sized brilliance is in Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less, a brand new book from HarperCollins filled with several hundred very clever, witty, and pithy tweets. It is the very first Twitter-based book from a major publisher (of many to come, I’m sure). While my contribution (on page 73) only takes up roughly .15% of its content, its very inclusion proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I must be one of the most interesting people on Twitter.

My short piece “The Presentation of the Virgin” is now up at Thirty First Bird Review (scroll down a bit), a site with a focus on cultural/religious interplay. It’s an old piece, and I’ve always  had a bit of a soft spot for it—it’s based off this wonderful painting by the fifteenth-century Italian artist/monk/engineer Fra Carnevale.

As a boring, quiet tale about a man loitering around The Temple staring at the Virgin Mary, it’s not the kind of thing one tends to see published in the online literary scene, which more often feautres contemporary tales of relatively unhappy regular people (you know, people just like you and me) doing unhappy and probably damaging things to themselves either physically or mentally, usually told in first person with a forceful, energetic writing style.  But hey, it’s short—so read it anyway.