Saturday, April 12. 2008
The Page Barrier
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I am intrigued that you’ve been trying to write longer works in the program; I have, too. When I started, I had, admittedly, two thirds of a novel tucked away somewhere, but I had mainly written a mass of microfictions and short shorts, and only a few things that broached the traditional lower bound of ‘short story’. I found most of my stories, once I started to write in the program, hovering around 3000 words, 4000…the lower bound of some authorities’ "short story" standard.
I wanted to write longer stories, but I had a hard time articulating to others, let alone to myself, why I cared about an arbitrary standard like length, until I found an interview with Ron Carlson. It’s in the online features of the fabulous mag Quick Fiction (which I heartily recommend in its paper body as well) and in it he says "I also think that if you write stories for years, you do develop or sense a rhythm, and when I sensed that my stories were all rounding the corner at about four thousand words, I changed that rhythm."
I didn’t want to write longer stories because I wasn’t proud of my short ones (which many of my friends and interlocutors assumed) or feared being judged against some imaginary standard of length or seriousness; I wanted to do it because it was a challenge, a way to stretch and develop my writing muscles. Because I’d have to have a different size of idea first.
And it is different; as different, almost, as the experience of writing those 4,000-worders was from my blythe little microfictions. As different as playing a concerto is from playing a little minuet. I feel stronger and bolder for having done it, and irrationally proud of my 28-page, 8,300-word story. I hope you find changing your rhythm and stretching your lines as rewarding as I did!
I wanted to write longer stories, but I had a hard time articulating to others, let alone to myself, why I cared about an arbitrary standard like length, until I found an interview with Ron Carlson. It’s in the online features of the fabulous mag Quick Fiction (which I heartily recommend in its paper body as well) and in it he says "I also think that if you write stories for years, you do develop or sense a rhythm, and when I sensed that my stories were all rounding the corner at about four thousand words, I changed that rhythm."
I didn’t want to write longer stories because I wasn’t proud of my short ones (which many of my friends and interlocutors assumed) or feared being judged against some imaginary standard of length or seriousness; I wanted to do it because it was a challenge, a way to stretch and develop my writing muscles. Because I’d have to have a different size of idea first.
And it is different; as different, almost, as the experience of writing those 4,000-worders was from my blythe little microfictions. As different as playing a concerto is from playing a little minuet. I feel stronger and bolder for having done it, and irrationally proud of my 28-page, 8,300-word story. I hope you find changing your rhythm and stretching your lines as rewarding as I did!
Thanks for your thoughtful encouragement, Felicity. As soon as I set this goal for myself, I immediately began procrastinating. Nobody inherently likes to exercise, but developing those "writing muscles" seems like a good next step.
Hi, Robert, it’s an interesting post. When I started writing poems, I was told to find the exact thing I wanted to say and say no more. My first poetry teacher was Paul Carroll who came out of the new critical tradition (wrote a terrific book of essays: Poem in its Skin), and that’s what he said.
We would bring our poems to the workshop, and he would look at them and point to a line or two and say, "That’s your poem. Cut out everything else!"
We all worked toward short and intense poems.
About ten years ago, I was writing a poem about my mom’s experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. She had been telling me all of these stories for the first time in her life, and I had pages of notes. I tried to get them all into one poem, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t get them there—not even one LONG poem.
That’s when I took the poem I had and choppped it up into 4 poems. It was a sort of mini-chapbook, and it worked.
I read the poem (My Mother Talks about the Slave Labor Camps) out loud at a reading and the way the poem built up really moved the audience. I never heard such nice things about my poems at a reading.
Since then, I’ve written 3 other long poetry sequences. The first two of these were nominated for Pushcarts, and the third was published as a chapbook and nominated by for a Pulitzer.
Now when I write, I get to the end of the poem, and I always ask myself, "What more can I say?"
We would bring our poems to the workshop, and he would look at them and point to a line or two and say, "That’s your poem. Cut out everything else!"
We all worked toward short and intense poems.
About ten years ago, I was writing a poem about my mom’s experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. She had been telling me all of these stories for the first time in her life, and I had pages of notes. I tried to get them all into one poem, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t get them there—not even one LONG poem.
That’s when I took the poem I had and choppped it up into 4 poems. It was a sort of mini-chapbook, and it worked.
I read the poem (My Mother Talks about the Slave Labor Camps) out loud at a reading and the way the poem built up really moved the audience. I never heard such nice things about my poems at a reading.
Since then, I’ve written 3 other long poetry sequences. The first two of these were nominated for Pushcarts, and the third was published as a chapbook and nominated by for a Pulitzer.
Now when I write, I get to the end of the poem, and I always ask myself, "What more can I say?"

I value concision. I have told myself this value is the reason that I often prefer shorter poems. And I have told myself this preference is the reason that I have tended to write poems under one page (~40 lines) in length. All that, however, is changing.
