After publishing The Land in Winter last October, I started writing short pieces. Short stories, I suppose, though I'm slightly reluctant to call them such, part of my continuing unease with the word 'story', which I think carries with it the danger of all manner of assumptions. For me it's a word that gives rise to a slight sense of claustrophobia. I seem hungry for qualities not usually considered those of the well-made/well-told story. I want digression, a thematic slipperiness, a structure that has more to do with leaf-fall than architecture, endings like the punchlines of completely different jokes. Those staples of the creative writing class, story arcs, character arcs, I treat with great suspicion. If somebody (an editor for example) thinks it should be there, then I want to consider how it would be if it wasn't. It is, perhaps, as much as anything, a suspicion of lucidity. In psycho-analysis, an analysand's coherence is likely to be seen as anxiety, a defence mechanism. A different sort of flow is looked for. Einfall! In literature that might translate into something tediously self-referential, something that failed to communicate. Alternatively, it might be very interesting. 

So, I have written some short pieces - between 4000 and 10000 words. My models are Kleist, Walser, Kafka. Maybe Chekov, maybe Cheever. Kawabata, Calvino. Fables and fairy tales, particularly those like broken vases, where you are aware pieces are missing, lost. I adore the form's potential for lightness. No back-story! No real need to explain. The reader has signed a different contract (to the one they sign when opening a novel). There will be more white space, a lot more. We can proceed by hint and dint, in the way of poetry and songs. And of course, in the writing, I'm free to take big risks. If a story doesn't work out I've lost a couple of weeks, at most a couple of months. It's not a disaster. If a novel folds - turns, at a late stage, to dust in my hands - that's not a disaster either, but it can feel like one. It might be the loss of a year's work, possibly more. That shakes you. 

What are they about, these little sorties into the short form? Solitude is a fairly obvious theme. Parents and children (more of my ambiguous fathers stuff). Re-workings (doubtless heretical) of gospel stories. Rural life (it still goes on). Weather. 

Am I trying to work my way towards poetry? Am I just a little tired of the organisational struggle that novel writing requires? 

One of these new little pieces I've sent into the National BBC short story competition. I haven't entered a competition in years. Feels exciting. Skin in the game! And it's all done anonymously. No favours from old friends (though that doesn't really happen). Announcements some time in September. 

[Little update on the competition: my story, Rain, a history, was shortlisted for the prize but the prize itself went elsewhere. Not unhappy. A decent first attempt, I think.]