First, Astrophil in all his glory, courtesy of Linden Pederson, who has built this incredible, metal version of him (you’ve seen a much foggier photo of him in a previous post):

Thank you, Linden!

And this is me reading at the Decatur Book Festival. Thanks to What We Read and What We Think for posting this picture.

I know I’ve been very remiss lately in posting to this blog. I’ve been keeping my nose to the grindstone. I finished the edits on The Jewel of the Kalderash (the third and final book in the Kronos Chronicles series) and worked on them very diligently during my first ever writing retreat.

That’s (l to r) David Levithan, Eliot Schrefer, and Donna Freitas on a gorgeous beach where we walked for hours. We saw a real live starfish in the clutches of two little girls (who seemed pretty gentle, but it took some willpower not to say, “Don’t kill it, please”), David found a sand dollar that crumbled, as they do, we saw a dead jellyfish (which the French call a “Medusa,” after the Greek mythological character), and Eliot wrote our initials in the sand:

Since then, I’ve been simmering and stirring ideas for my next novel, which shows all signs of being a high fantasy. Also, I’ve written a short story for adults, and have been tinkering with it, and thinking in general about what is important for a short story, and what writing one can teach me about writing novels, or vice versa. In rock climbing, for example, bouldering (which I dislike, and involves climbing rocks that are supposedly short enough that you won’t kill yourself if you fall, since you climb without a rope) demands short bursts of energy, powerful moves, and practicing being okay ten feet off the ground without a rope. Some of this is useful for climbing long routes. Short story writing isn’t unlike bouldering. It involves a lot of muscle, and I think it is riskier than novel writing; you are more exposed.

It seemed that one of the greatest compliments a writer can receive is one handed to Jane Smiley by Jonathan Franzen for her Greenlanders: that “every sentence of its 800 pages is clean and necessary.” My short story is only 22 MS word double-spaced pages, but it’s incredibly hard to make certain that everything in that space is clean and necessary.

My interest in short stories is recent in my reading life. It began with Alice Munro, about five years ago, and has recently escalated with writers like Ethan Canin and Jhumpa Lahiri (who, by the way, my son thinks is responsible for writing any book in the house. He saw her photograph on Unaccustomed Earth, and when I explained that it was Jhumpa, and this was her book, he eagerly agreed. Since then, he might point at any book and say, “That’s Jhumpa’s!”).

The book is brilliant. I especially loved the title story, “Only Goodness,” and “Hema and Kaushik,” I thought the the last, a series of three interconnected stories,  was a fascinating project. It almost seems like an alternate dimension’s prelude to “The Dead,” by Joyce (in the sense that Gabriel’s wife has a whole experience of love that will be forever inaccessible to him).

Lahiri’s short stories are so controlled. Gestures mean a lot. Descriptions are evocative and yet very simple. She might mention that a water glass left on a nightstand has “gathered bubbles.” She rarely uses metaphors (I love metaphors, and think they’re vital to fiction writing, but I’m starting to see why people sometimes caution against them. It’s a temptation to overuse them. It feels exciting to create one, but the truth is that it’s harder and better to just say what you mean). People speak and act and everything seems significant.

I just began Franzen’s Freedom, which is funny and mordant. I’m also slowly getting into The History of the Peloponnesian War, and trying not to read E. Lockhart’s new Ruby Oliver book before bedtime, or I’d never go to sleep.