Passion and Pathos

In writing, one maxim is true: all successful writers have “steel balls.” For every success story, there are hundreds of rejection slips, mostly impersonal. When I was trying my hand as a short story writer, I lived for the hand-written note from an editor that validated me as a writer. I received one such note that kept me going for almost a decade.

Many writers try their hands at writing short stories because, well, they are short. Short, maybe, but not easy. Short stories, at least in my opinion, are harder to master than writing a novel. You don’t have the luxury of four-hundred pages to develop your plot and characters. A good short story writer can do this in twenty pages. A great short story writer can do it in ten.

I began writing short stories many years ago in an attempt to hone my writing skills. Before I started, I read short stories written by Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Ian Fleming – yes, Ian Fleming – and many others. My all-time favorite short story is Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers. Every great short story elicits passion and pathos, and leaves you thinking about it for days, maybe even years later.

If you are an aficionado like me, a wonderful short story will make you cry and wring you dry. I have written more than sixty short stories and have received at least a few handwritten notes from editors, but none more important to me than the one I received from The New Yorker, the most influential short story market in the world.

My handwritten, unsigned two-sentence note said, “I liked your story and almost took it. Please send more.” The short story was A Talk with Henry, about an old black bartender at a bar near a southern campus. I don’t know if the passion and pathos are there, (I think they are) but the note from The New Yorker editor kept me writing.

Fiction South