I enjoyed this simple little piece of unique fiction. Like all good flash fiction it asks many more questions than it answers. Maybe I liked it because I feel like that all the time.
The Author’s Note is interesting too – he talks of writer’s block and bringing abandoned work back to life.
For one hundred days, I’m going to post a writing tip each day. I have a whole bookshelf full of writing books and I want to do some reading and increased studying of this valuable resource. This will help me keep track of anything I’ve learned, and help motivate me to keep going. If anyone has a favorite tip of their own to add, contact me. I’d love to put it up here.
“If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out.”
—-The Big Kill, Mickey Spillane
So let’s see where we are in the creative process. Promising ideas + hard work = good fiction. Well, not quite. Something is still missing.
To tell a story effectively, you will need some mastery of craft. By craft we mean the time-tested practices that have proven helpful to the construction of good fiction.
Good writing comes down to craft far more than most people realize. True, anyone can write a story without training, which separates fiction writing from such activities as performing heart surgery or piloting a helicopter. But a working knowledge of craft is almost always necessary to make a story really good, worthy of being read by all those strangers. You could build a chair without any knowledge of woodworking because you have a good idea of what a chair is like. You would cut the wood and hammer the pieces together, and sure enough you would have a chair. But it would probably be wobbly, unsightly, and destined to break. It certainly wouldn’t sell. The same is true of fiction.
You should learn craft because it works. The “rules” of fiction craft weren’t created by any one person in particular. They simply emerged over time as guiding principles that made fiction writing stronger, in much the same way the mortise-and-tenon joint emerged as a good way to join parts of a chair.
When I read of learning craft I think of Malcolm Gladwell and his ten thousand hours. The idea is that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to get really good at something… and, conversely, if you spend ten thousand hours at something, you will get good at it.
I wish I could go back in time to when I was a teenager. I would tell me, “Write for two hours a night, most nights; three hundred days a year. In seventeen years, you will be a writer.”
If I had started at, let’s say, thirteen – I would have been a real writer by thirty. I could live with that.
But I didn’t know that at thirteen. Nobody told me about the ten thousand hours. Shame. So many years wasted.
Decorative Knot, made by a blacksmith at Frisco Heritage Museum, Frisco, Texas
Last Sunday I made the long drive up north to Frisco. A friend of mine had told me about an open house at the Frisco Heritage Museum and Village. All the historical buildings would be open to the public. It sounded like a bit of fun, so I was there.
As I walked out of the Railroad Station I heard a series of loud metallic clangs. I turned toward the sound and there was a shower of orange sparks from a healthy flame sprouting up in the darkness of a metal shed. I recognized these as the telltale signs of a Blacksmith at work.
I walked down there and settled in, talking to the smithy at work. He was forging square nails by heating and pounding iron rods. He took special pride in his work, talking about how he had placed in some recent blacksmithing contests. Someone asked him about taking lessons and he said that Brookhaven college has a number of blacksmithing courses. After a couple of nails, he said he was done, and went over to sit down. A younger man came into the shop and began to set up his work.
“That’s one guy that learned at Brookhaven,” the original smithy said.
I walked out to see the rest of the buildings on display – the church was especially cool. Then I returned to see what the new guy was doing.
“I’m making decorative knots,” he said. He was heating rods, then bending them into a series of small loops. Finally he’d cut the knot off… and start on another. It was mostly practice in heating, forging, and bending metal – but it was pretty interesting.
He cooled one knot off in a wooden bucket of water and handed it to me. “Here’s a souvenir,” he said.
For some reason, I really like the thing.
Blacksmith fire from coal and coke. You can see a knot heating in the lower left.
Hammering a heated knot.
Hammering a heated knot.
The blacksmiths sitting around, talking shop.
Coal and coke fire, Frisco, Texas. They explained how if you put too many of those irons in there, you would lose the one you needed to work on – thus – “too many irons in the fire.”
Decorative Knot, made by a blacksmith at Frisco Heritage Museum, Frisco, Texas
Bill Chance 