"I Always Worked Until I Had Something Done"

"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.'

"So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written." - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

When a Writer Leaves Stories Behind

My late husband, Robert H. Kneib, wrote fiction and nonfiction, and published two essays (one, "My Last Great Reading Binge" nominated for a Pushcart Prize) during his lifetime. But I always liked his short stories, was sorry they never found a publisher, believe he quit trying too soon. I thought Bob's fiction had vanished along with his computer, but in cobwebby boxes in the garage, I found hard copies; he had kept all manuscripts which had workshop comments on them. Re-reading for the first time in ten years, I see that two of the five extant stories are excellent, and one nearly so; for these, successive drafts exist, showing ever-higher levels of polish. Only now has it occurred to me that they ought to be published and shared.

First I thought to set up a blog. But considering there are two excellent stories of significant length, a fiction chapbook would be ideal. Fiction chapbook competitions exist. I will see if being a living author is always a requirement. Failing that, nothing stops me from publishing such a chapbook myself.

While I consider what to do, I'm typing up the stories, digitizing, so that his best work may survive him.

Simple Fixes

-First lines should create and hold tension.

-Find the point at which YOU become interested in what you have written, and chop off everything that goes before that.

-Axe "There are," "We were," "It has been," and other "to be" verb phrases. Usually the sentence holds another verb which can be activated. For example, "There is Mother's fur coat hanging in the closet," becomes "Mother's fur coat hangs in the closet."

-"A bad title is like a dunce-cap on a poem" - poet Adrian Matejka said it and I repeat it -- and it's true for prose pieces also.

-The final line had better be right, and if it takes three years to get it right, it takes three years.

-Fiction writers, for some reason you will always be advised to cut the last few sentences of your ending ("End it sooner"). Ignore this advice.

-If a work has a troublesome part, have other writers look at and comment on it.

-About 50 percent of the praise you get is mere politeness, so correct for that.

-If there's one line or paragraph that you cannot get right, try deleting it. Usually the work will be fine without it, perhaps even healthier.