Insights from a person of questionable sanity

A few words of Wisdom from a Master

‘V.S. Pritchett’s definition of a short story is “something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing”. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse given life, turned into something that will illuminate the moment and just maybe lock it indelibly into the readers consciousness. Make it a part of the reader’s own experience, as Hemmingway so nicely put it. Forever, the writer hopes. Forever.

If we’re lucky, writer and reader alike, we’ll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we’ll ponder what we’ve just written or read; maybe our hearts or our intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly, and steadily once more, we’ll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, “created of warm blood and nerves”, as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life.’

Raymond Carver
‘Foreword’ to his collection of short
stories Where I’m Calling From