One Year of Story Press!
A reflection, compendium and celebration of one year in this corner of the internet
Guten Morgen,
Today marks the first birthday of Story Press!
To celebrate, I come to you with something a bit different this week. The majority of you have not been here since my very first story was published. In fact, more than half of you have only been reading Story Press since June, which means you’ve missed out on 7 months worth of stories.
Fear not, however, as I have your back. Today I share with you - in no particular order - my top 5 stories that I’ve posted on Story Press, and a brief description of each, with some thoughts in accompaniment. This will help you all catch up, and join in the journey.
Buckle up!
Though not my favourite story in and of itself, Wolfgang’s Revolver, was a really enjoyable story to write because it encouraged me to spend some time reading about and engaging with the work of Wolfgang Lettl. He was an absurdist painter who worked for the Nazis during WW2 and his ideas are really interesting. I do encourage you to have a gander at his work - it’s thoroughly bizarre and intriguing. This story is inspired by his painting Das Duell.
What I enjoy about writing stories like this is that it gives you the freedom to write something totally mad and nonsensical purely based on the inspiration that the painting affords. A friend of mine encouraged me to use paintings as inspiration for short stories many years ago and it’s proved endlessly fruitful.
Fresh Air, Long Run was the first serialised story I published on Story Press (spread over three parts, found here, here and here). It was a real experiment spreading the stories out and it forced me to think about cadence, the energy of a story and about ending chapters or parts of a series (cliff-hangers etc.) Getting a sense of this sort of energy, and knowing how to use it, is probably one of the important things that separates good writers from great writers. Not that I would judge myself in either camp, but it seems to me like a good exercise.
The story itself is about Michael, who loves to run. During a run one morning, someone is murdered in the park. Afterwards, Michael convinces himself he might have done it, based on no evidence other than paranoia and the fact that he does not remember the run. I heard a similar, true story a long time ago and always thought it absolutely hilarious that someone could talk themselves into such a fright. It seemed to me like top tier short story fodder. I hope you think so too.
The Distraction is a ridiculous story. On the face of it there’s nothing really in it. I did ask myself why on earth I was writing it when I was, and in that also seemed to be the answer - somehow.
The Distraction is a short, eventless story about procrastination and the lengths we go to distract ourselves from things - from work, from writing, from getting things done. It’s nothing new but I hope a fun read. If nothing else I hope it makes you smile a little.
For the book nerds, it was inspired to a small degree by Katherine Mansfield’s The Fly, which I had saved on my Safari reading list for about 10 years, and found again recently before writing this story.
You can read Mansfield’s short here.
A recent story I very much enjoyed writing was I Saw My Wife Walking Down The Road. One of the common themes of my stories is nostalgia, of memory and of the impact of time passing. The first full novel I wrote was about this topic as, for me, it provides no end of inspiration and emotional charge which feels like gold dust for writing.
This story is about an old man who - while at lunch with his son and daughter-in-law - sees his wife walking down the road. The only issue, for him, is that his wife passed away a long time ago. He follows her on a labyrinthine journey, which only takes him back to where he began. And we ask the question: how has this transformed him?
It’s an interesting concept and I think encourages lots of questions for those reading: about the fallibility of memory, about nostalgia, about how perceptions change over time.
Many of the stories I enjoyed the most to write involve some fantastical, dream-like elements to them. Not that I am into fantasy or absurdism for the sake of it, but I do believe there is something in the fact that it is one benefit of writing fiction is that you have the freedom to make happen whatever you want. In many senses this is daunting, because you can make things happen that are so abstract and random that they lose all meaning. On the other hand, you can convey a message, ask a question or share a thought in infinitely more ways than you can by being bound by the laws of reality. I think this story is a good example of that, and follows the many examples of existentialist and doppelganger stories over the centuries, from Dostoyevsky’s The Double to Kafka to Murakami. But I’m no philosopher. I just thought it was a fun write and found the imagery and jeopardy for the character to be powerful.
Anyway, that’s it folks! Next time out, I’m going to invite you all to write some stories with me, if you’ll humour it. I’m going to ask you for your craziest, weirdest and funniest ideas for stories - and I’ll take some away and write them.
So get your thinking caps on - should be a fun ride.
Roll on year two!
On the contrary, he was sent to war immediately after leaving school. Because of his disrespectful behaviour, he did not make it further than sergeant.
Here is an example:
"It should be noted that in the war, after six years of service, I actually made it to sergeant, but only shortly before the end, in March 45, when the snow was melting in Norway. Before that, in fact, I could not be promoted, although I strictly obeyed an order, but the others did not. It was like this:
On the way from my billet to the canteen, I used to beat my water off into the snow, as we all did, but I did it in the form of my name, which is particularly suited to this because of its brevity and unbroken lines. I was taken to task for this, but I insisted on my right to do so, because there was no regulation to that effect. Then my superiors drew up an order in which I was expressly forbidden to do the above because it was likely to damage the reputation of the German Wehrmacht. I always obeyed orders, at least this time, and I could do so with a clear conscience, because my comrades made sure that my name was still in the snow. It really was the most suitable. But I could only be promoted after the snow had melted, and by then it was too late to save the Fatherland."
Greetings
Florian Lettl