May 2024 – Andrew Careaga

#1000WordsofSummer starts June 1

Thousands of writers the world over plan to take part in Jami Attenberg‘s two-week writing project, 1,000 Words of Summer (or, if hashtags are your thing, #1000WordsofSummer). The big write-a-thon starts this Saturday, June 1.

This marks the seventh year Jami has offered this project to the writing community, and this year, for the first time, I was planning to be one of those thousand-word-a-day scribblers. Alas, some life issues have interfered, so I won’t be able to join the mass writing event when it begins this Saturday, June 1. (As John Lennon put it, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”) I plan to join in spirit, and hope to make up for my absence with a two-week writing journey later this summer.

Thirteen Ways of Hearing a Cicada (a poem)

With apologies to Wallace Stevens.

Thirteen Ways of Hearing a Cicada

A rare dual brood emergence of cicadas is happening this spring, and it will not happen for another 221 years, according to entomologists. These insects can create sounds that often hit 90-100 decibels, which is louder than a hair dryer.

“The Year of the Periodical Cicadas,” The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture, March 26, 2024

The first parties emerge

Like scouts, inspecting the land.

You hear a whir, a hiss, the sound

Of one winding a mechanical clock

Or a music box.

A small intrusion

Into the noises of mid-spring:

the chirping robins, yodeling cardinals,

hammering woodpeckers.

Friday Five: fabulous flash

Five great stories I’ve read recently.

As I continue to work on my writing — as I try to learn how to make my writing more compact and forcible — I’ve been paying greater attention to flash fiction lately.

I love how flash fiction writer and editor Tommy Dean describes the genre in a recent Friday Five Q&A on this site. Flash, he says, is “the flash bulb and the reaction in the dark, the scene coming in and out of focus, before being lost.”

I think these five recent flash stories capture that sentiment well. Enjoy.

“Grief and Gravity,” by Barlow Adams (@BarlowAdams on Twitter/X) in The Molotov Cocktail.
“Baby,” by L Mari Harris in Ghost Parachute. She’s on Twitter/X as @LMariHarris. Also check her website for more of her writings.
“Side A: Violent Femmes,” by Sabrina Hicks in Roi Fainéant Press. Find her on Twitter/X at @desertdwellera3 or at her website.
Another from Roi Fainéant Press: “Bon Appétit” by Grace Black. Her nom de Twitter/X is @graceblackink, and she too has a website.
A bit of punk noir from Casey Stegman (@cstegman on Twitter/X): “Watch It All Burn,” in Punk Noir Magazine. Read more of his stuff on his website.

Have a good weekend.

AI-generated image.

Alice Munro’s enduring example

You don’t need to write a novel to be a literary success

I know a lot of readers love to absorb themselves in a thick, juicy novel. I’m not one of them. I do enjoy a good novel, but I’m partial to the short story. As a writer, I prefer to write short fiction. Thankfully, writers like Alice Munro have given us a stellar example of how a writer of fiction can achieve success without ever writing a novel.

A masterful storyteller and perhaps the greatest writer of fiction in the past 50 years, Alice Munro died Monday, May 13, 2024, at age 92.

A selection of clips from CBC interviews with Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who died May 13, 2024, at age 92.

Writing (by hand) to remember

New research suggests that writing by hand helps us remember.

These past couple of years, as I’ve begun to take the craft of writing more seriously, I’ve found that writing by hand tends to make me more thoughtful and more engaged in the writing process. Also, when I compose ideas for stories on paper, I tend to have better recall of those ideas than those I tap out on a computer, smartphone notes app, or tablet.

Now there’s some research that supports the idea that writing by hand helps us remember.