Tag: Flash fiction

Cover Letter for Short Literary Fiction

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I suppose “literary” is aspirational until someone publishes the story. Why does the word aspirational make me think of Yeti coolers?

Here’s a redacted cover letter I just sent out with a short piece I’m particularly fond/proud of. (Proud/fond of the story; the cover letter is functional, honest, and sincere, and I’m just sharing it here in case anyone finds it helpful OR if anyone has suggestions.)

Dear Editors,

Please consider my story, [Title]for publication in [Journal]. At just under [Word Count], it [Brief Description].

My work has appeared in Appalachian Review, The Shore, Hobart, Brevity, Belt Magazine, and VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School.

Thank you for considering this submission. I have long admired [Something Meaningful, and, most importantly, Something True].

[Salutation],

[Name]

Good luck, writers!

Two Pieces I Found Today

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I read two pieces I really liked today, one by bart plantenga and one by Sue Powers. I don’t know either of these writers (I don’t even know them on twitter) and had not read their work before, but I think these are both excellent. They’re short reads, but exactly enough.

bart plantenga: The Beer Coaster Haiku 1 at The Daily Drunk.

Sue Powers: Grace at Burningwood Literary Journal.

Dirty Realism and Very Short Fiction

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

Over the years, many people have ended up at this blog because of some posts on dirty realism.  A definition of the style from Wikipedia, circa 2009:

“Dirty Realism is a North American literary movement born in the 1970s-80s in which the narrative is stripped down to its fundamental features.

This movement is a derivation from minimalism. As minimalism, dirty realism is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description. Authors working within the genre tend to eschew adverbs and prefer allowing context to dictate meaning. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional.

Dirty realism authors include the movement “godfather” Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), as well as the short story writers Raymond Carver (1938-1988), Tobias Wolff (1945), Richard Ford (1944), Frederick Barthelme, and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (1950).”

My favorite line from this description is: “The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional.” 

When I was thinking about this a dozen years ago, flash fiction was not as well-established across the literary internet as it is today.  The flash fiction I was writing was almost exclusively in the dirty realist voice.  In my way of thinking, the stories weren’t really about what happens in them as much as what the actions (or lack of) and the urgency of shorter forms evoke.  Compulsions of style and length dovetailed by default.  For me, realism was (and maybe is) the natural voice of very short fiction, and very short fiction is a natural expression of the realist voice.

These days, I think there’s much more to it.  But there’s still a kernel of truth to these connections, at least for me and for my shorter work.  The trick is not to be too clever or too pithy, and sometimes that’s much harder than it sounds.