Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the beauty of short fiction, blending poetic elements with narrative storytelling.
Ron Rash highlights the unique qualities of short fiction, stating that it combines the brevity and vividness of poetry with the narrative depth expected in storytelling. Despite its shorter format compared to novels, short fiction can still deliver a rich and fulfilling experience to readers, making it a cherished medium for the author.
In practice
A writer might use this quote while discussing their approach to authoring short stories.
She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)
The woman doesn't look up. It's as if she's deaf. Maybe she is. Maybe she's like the Cambodian women I've read about, the ones who witnessed so many atrocities that they have willed themselves blind. Maybe that's what you have to do sometimes to survive. You kill off part of yourself, your hearing or eyesight, your capacity for hope.
It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)
Too much of what passes for design now is theater. It's one thing to be eccentric- and by the way, most eccentrics tend to be rather well-educated people - and quite another to be a faddist, by which I mean someone who tries to conjure a totally foreign aesthetic in a misplaced environment.
Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.
I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.
Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.
There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.
You think I'm going to ask these sweet 14 year olds to ask their parents to buy a $100 ticket then run around in latex and lip sync? No way.
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