Fiction -- Literary vs. Genre (Popular)

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It's a contest! Short fiction. Deadline June 30. Glimmer Train, an American literary journal of outstanding repute. And they pay!

Yes, yes. I have been rejected by them before. But THIS TIME! This Time. this ti....

I forwarded the contest requirements to my daughter, Grace. She's an excellent writer and into "literary." She refrained and hurled the gauntlet back to me, saying "You should submit something."

This is her Poetry Period. Which, by-the-bye, she does exceedingly well and is on her way to recognition. (Fame and fortune do not exist in poetry. Fame, maybe. But certainly not fortune.)

"Okay. Which of my pieces, excepting the one they've already rejected, should I submit?" I asked.

"None. You should write something new. Something literary."

"The deadline is the end of this month," I pointed out.

"That's enough time. It's a short story."

"I don't do literary," I said.

"You could," she said and hung up.

We've talked again since. Several times. We cover the same ground.

"I don't even know what literary is," I argue.

"You read literary," she says.

According to Wikipedia -- "Literary fiction, also known as serious fiction, is a term principally used for fictional works that ... offer deliberate social commentary or political criticism, or focus on the individual to explore some part of the human condition."

Our beloved online free encyclopedia goes on to say "Some have described the difference between them in terms of analyzing reality (literary) rather than escaping reality [genre or popular.]

It goes on to say, "it is common for literary fiction to be taught and discussed in schools and universities." Which is, no doubt, how Mark Twain moved from popular fiction to literary.

And then Wikipedia goes on to give examples of literary fiction including "The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, The Lord of the Flies, 1984, Pride and Prejudice, Slaughterhouse Five, and Of Mice and Men."

And, yes. I've read all of them with the following results: didn't like, loved, loved, hated, liked, liked, loved, and loved.

Then the truth comes out -- "The contrasts between these two subsets of fiction is highly controversial among critics and scholars who study literature."

Yep. The experts don't know either. It's kind of like economics and economists, isn't it?

So here I go. It should be serious. It should leave the reader with something to think about. Maybe even change their perspective.

The main character will be an ordinary person with an extraordinary ethical dilemma on at least two levels. Lyrical language, optional.

Oh, my. I may be wading into deep waters. Not being the best of swimmers, I can only hope I'll float.

Writing Contest

They're gone! My entries for the annual Rose State Writer's Short Course competition are in the mail.

No more editing. No more rewrites. No more thinking and rethinking. Questioning, doubting, second-guessing.

"Heroes," my entry for Flash Fiction is my absolute favorite. It is my way of honoring all those mothers out there who allowed their children to do dangerous things because those things needed to be done. Like my friend Allegra's grandmother who let Allegra's mother take part in the lunch counter sit-ins in Oklahoma City in the late 50's and early 60's.

Flash Fiction is almost poetry. It must tell a whole story in two or fewer pages. That means the writer must use the absolutely, most evocative, right word -- Hemingway's mot juste. The writer must engage the reader's experiences, their sensory memories, their fears, their dreams, and their hopes. And, most importantly, the writer must trust the reader to be willing and able to participate as an involved reader.

"Dead Birds and Broken Bottles," is creative nonfiction -- a new field for me. The trick to creative nonfiction is that it has to be true. Somehow my personal experiences have just never seemed exciting enough or well-plotted without embellishment. Or they were too personal and I was not comfortable being a character in my own story. Or somebody would get their feelings hurt and get mad at me. It wouldn't be safe to accidentally meet them at the local Walmart.

Everyone, no matter where they live, has a weather or natural disaster story. And being from Oklahoma, tornadoes lend a certain excitement to my own memories. Living in a small town offers all kinds of interesting characters. So I had the excitement and the familiar characters for a nonfiction piece. Then the creative part was to turn the factual time-line into a plot.

This particular tornado happened more than half a century ago so most of the characters are dead now and not likely to show up at Walmart. I'm feeling relatively safe in that respect.

Then there's "The Girl in the Reeds." Those of you who know me, know that I am particularly fond of mysteries. Murder mysteries.

Because I am currently working on a follow-up novel to Murder on Ceres, a Science Fiction/Murder Mystery, I didn't want to take time away from it to spend days and weeks on a murder mystery for this competition. I decided to write a murder mystery short story.

Keeping in mind that Murder on Ceres started out as a short story, this was a dangerous undertaking. I didn't know if I could write a mystery in short story form. Short stories are generally 7,500 or fewer words. I'd written short stories before, but not murder mysteries. The question was could I construct an interesting puzzle and solve it within that number of words.

And, you know what? I did. (Here insert a vision of a white-haired sexagenarian doing a happy dance, whilst humming the Theme from Rocky.)

I am excited. I am pumped. Look out, Oklahoma. I'm on my way!