“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. ”

—Lemony Snicket

“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.”

—Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“Take a day to heal from the lies you've told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.”

—Maya Angelou

“The poem is what has neither name, nor rest, nor place, nor home: fissure moving towards the work.”

—Jacques Garelli, from “Excess of Poetry”, trans. Mary Ann Caws

“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”

—Virginia Woolf, from Selected Essays

“a very strange but emtional short story about for one another. this novella may not appeal to everyone due to it’s unorthodox sexual content but if you can look past that the story may be worth the read.”

 

From a How to Shake the Other Man Goodreads review. In addition to the novella’s brilliance, it also has a special knack for identifying homophobia.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

—Kahlil Gibran

“Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

—Aristotle

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

—William Saroyen
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Jules Archer for #shortstorymonth

To celebrate Short Story Month, we’ve asked some awesome writers, editors, and other literary types to weigh in on their favourite stories and collections, and what makes a piece of short lit great. Today, writer Jules Archer.

What makes a short story great?

For me, a great short story has an instant hook. Whether it’s a character, a sentence, or a plot, something always hooks and draws me in. Usually, if the first sentence makes me keep reading, I know I have a keeper. From there, I just want a well-told story. Killer language. Sparsity. Twisted tales. Humor. Nothing normal is always good. I admire the short story form for getting so much into a cramped space. If you can do it right and freakishly, you have my attention. 

I really am in love with The Paper Bag Princess by Rebecca Jones-Howe at Manarchy.  

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Jules Archer has been published in Metazen, Monkeybicycle, and PANK, among others. And we’re happy to say she has a story forthcoming at Little Fiction. You can follow Jules on twitter here.

A Workout For Book Nerds

All you need for this workout is a stack of hardcovers and some yarn or rope to tie them together!

Workout #1: The Book Curl

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Workout #2: The Book Up

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Workout #3: The Brunch (Book Crunch) - Just like brunch this can be done alone or with a friend!

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Cool Down

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“Indeed, there is nothing more vexing, for instance, than to be rich, of respectable family, of decent appearance, of rather good education, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time to have no talent, no particularity, no oddity even, not a single idea of one's own, to be decidedly 'like everybody else.'”

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot; p. 462, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage).

“A lot of people proclaim a need for independence, for space. And while I could attest to that, more than anything, I was a tiger dying amongst the sprawling jungle. I longed for a cage of my own. My apartment, a two bedroom overlooking the gentrification of Philadelphia, had a décor of my design. I picked out the furniture, including the Ikea futon I dubbed “death trap,” and gave every trinket and knick-knack their designated spots: high school diploma and Bachelor’s degree over my black computer desk, novelty shot-glasses along the top of my bookcase and various Buddha figurines, from flea markets in South Jersey, on my dresser and nightstands. And of course, my vinyl collection, a two hundred piece of my heart that took me to the dustiest, most allergenic music stores on the East Coast.”

—Longform Fiction is featuring my short story (and first ever publication) “Saturn Return,” originally published in 2008 by Up The Staircase.

“You only demand clarity because you're too comfortable within your vagueness; You only feel insufficient because you're extremely fearful of unconditionally caring.”

—Albert Camus, from Notebooks, 1951-1959

“What you really have to know is one: yourself. And the only way you can know that one is in the mirror of the others. And the only way you can see into the mirror of the others is by love or its opposite—by profound emotion. Certainly not by curiosity—by dancing around asking, looking, making notes. You have to live relationships to know.” ”

—Archibald MacLeish
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