Tobias Wolff On Short Stories
“(T)he only real people left who write short stories now are people who write literary short stories, if you will. And they are a little more demanding than the average novel; they don’t tend to have neat tied-up endings, which most people tend to gravitate toward. And I think a lot of people, even the ones with those famously shortened attention spans, kind of like the idea of entering a world and staying in it for a week or so, and not having to get used to a new set of characters every time they finish 15 pages.”
— Tobias Wolff in an excellent interview over at The Morning News in which he also discusses how writers face “a certain marginality,” George Pelicanos and lots more.
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Seth Fischer's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in
Swink,
Pank,
Guernica,
Monkeybicycle,
Gertrude, and elsewhere. He's working on a novel about a girl who accidentally raises an army and destroys the world, and he's founding editor of
The Splinter Generation. He also teaches and tutors and administrates and does copyediting and copywriting so that he can pay bills, but that only works sometimes. If you could help him make that work all the time, he would probably give you a hug, but only if you wanted one. Reach him at seth.fischer (at) gmail.com or
@sethfischer.
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