A Collection

It’s been almost four years since my first short story was published which, even now, is a bit of a crazy thing to think about. The story, called ‘Shooting Arrows’, centred round a group of three sisters trying to recover from the death of the fourth. It was published in the 86^th Issue of Voiceworks.

I was one of those horrible clichés when it comes to writing in that once I started, I found it pretty difficult to stop. Stories uncurled in my mind sometimes faster than I could catch them, and I’ve been really lucky to have had a steady output of work since ‘Shooting Arrows’ was published.

I’ve circled similar themes in my work to that fledgling story – loss and grief, intimacy, sisterhood. They were all separate, original works, until they weren’t. Those sisters from that first story were suddenly banging on walls, knocking on the doors of other stories and asking to be let in. The Elk sisters, Beth and Audrey and Lily and Eve became bigger than their own story.

I wonder if this is the way novels start, or collections are made. If it’s a theme that lets itself in, fixes itself a cup of tea, or if, like me, it was these characters who stole in through closed windows.

As a result, I’ve been reading a lot of collections lately, fitting them together, and generally found four different types.

The Thematic is probably the most common type of collection. Stories that explore and unravel a certain idea or theme – from magic to family, rites of passage and womanhood. Thematic collections can be distinct or abstract, clear in their connection or sometimes not at all.

It’s probably my favourite type too. There’s something really appealing about strange stories with a loose thread – a candy necklace of a book. I recently read Laura Van Den Berg’s What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, a collection pointedly themed by known established myths – loch ness monsters, giant snakes, gods, and how they so easily infiltrate our real lives, whether real or imagined. It’s wonderfully languid, bellying poignancy and a whole lot of hurt. It reminded me of a similarly wonderful themed collection, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link.

It’s not just magic though. Cate Kennedy’s Like a House on Fire focuses on family’s at turning points, Josephine Rowe’s How a Moth Becomes a Boat is connected by wonderfully insular protagonists. Which leads pretty nicely into the character thread.

The Character Thread is something I love to, and is really what the biggest connection in my own collection has come down to. From Junot Diaz’s This is How You Leave Her to Melissa Banks’ The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, character threads can almost tease a novel, but by breaking it up into girlfriends as in Diaz’s collection or different moments in a character’s life as Banks’, you get a really compelling cross-section of narrative. A photo album of stories.  

Similar to character, place is becoming increasingly used as the common denominator of a collection. The most obvious example in recent years is Tim Winton’s moving book, The Turning, which unravels a small town through different stories, times and characters. It interweaves pretty seamlessly too – playing on the character thread that can do so many wonderful things for a collection. Similarly, all of Stephen King’s shorts are set in Maine, giving him a universe to continually refer back to and explore.

It doesn’t just have to be a specific place either. Tarcutta Wake by Josephine Rowe doesn’t have settings in common, but the influence of place weaves its way through every story, becoming a theme in and of itself. It’s pretty effective.

Roald Dahl’s collections could arguably be filed back under the thematic with his dark and chilling stories, but that’s really as close as they come. In a lot of ways, his work feels stitched together, making a weird sort of tapestry of stories, each as unique as a patchwork piece. A lot of older short fiction writers operated in this basis. Raymond Carver often themed his work, but it also came under stitches too, as did Flannery O’Connor. This sort of collection perhaps doesn’t work as well today. After all, there’s much less of a market for these short snapshots of narrative – pretty ironic given our culture’s collective attention span.

I like short story collections in every shape they come in, but it’s hard to deny my pull towards certain themes and ideas that unwind in short fiction. The reason Josephine Rowe, Kelly Link and Laura van den Berg appeal to me so totally is that they explore womanhood and loss, intimacy and responsibility. They explore themes that don’t usually make it to novels and shows but, for some reason or another, seem to be thriving currently in short stories.

It’s themes I want to write about. Themes I do write about. My collection, so close to completion, spends time with all of these ideas, and I hope that the Elk sisters are women that readers will connect with too.

What are you working on at the moment? And do any collections stand out for you?