I write far more short fiction than I publish. And what I publish often takes a few years of fermentation before it reaches final form. Writing, for me, starts not with a character or a plot but with something far more elemental–a feeling juxapositioned against an image or moment. Unfortunately, it takes awhile to discover the landscape of these places that my imagination throws out.
“City Magic” is my shortest published piece. It started in the regular fashion, as a moment in the woods and two characters I didn’t yet know, but as I kept trying to form that moment into something longer the results were…unfortunate. The damn thing just wouldn’t work–until that is I decided to play with micro shorts this summer and found a way to express everything I was trying to say by revising the draft, taking the parts that I felt had heat, and whittling those sections down to the least possible number of words. You can read the piece or listen to my narration online.