How a Collection of Stories Comes Together

photo by Peter Yoon

In the latest Glimmer Train bulletin, Laura van den Berg discusses the evolution of how her stories get written and shaped into a collection, or a book. She begins:

In my early days of writing stories, I somehow came to operate under the following assumption: whenever you amassed 200 pages worth of fiction, your work would undergo a miraculous transformation into a book. I took my first stab at writing a story collection in college. The result was a 210 page manuscript entitled Hush, an ungainly mishmash of domestic realism, ill-conceived Beckett homages, and flash fictions about trees with real human feelings (true story!). While I can think of many excellent collections that demonstrate great stylistic and technical range, the “eclectic” approach was not working for me.

She goes on to discuss the difference between a “group” of stories and a collection. Read the entire piece.

Other pieces in this month’s bulletin:

Reading Before Writing by Roxana Robinson
Habits by Samsun Knight
Empathy by Ming Holden
The Writer-Traveler by Lisa Gornick

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