With nominations for the 2006 Million Writers Award soon to open, I’ll be noting a story a day from 2005 that I think might deserve a nod. Remember that anyone can nominate a story for this annual award for web-published fiction; all you need to do is read the instructions and send in a link to a story you think deserves to be recognized.
For this first week of February, I’m going to be magnanimous and list stories by other writers that have stuck with me over the last year. Then I’ll give a rundown of my own stories that are eligible. Of course, you can completely ignore my recomendations and nominate something else entirely; just so long as you nominate something, and something good.
So my first suggestion: The Tyranny of the Middle-Aged Short Story Writers by Andrew Day, from Eyeshot.
They reminded us we had our friends, our health, and bookstores filled with high-quality short fiction, in beautifully bound editions, at subsidized prices. And we had love, dammit–the love between writers and readers. The only true love there is.
This is a clever little bit of metafiction, imagining a world in which short story writers of a particular cast–I imagine students of Dubus and Carver, realist/minimalist types–have taken over and begin to deliver edicts: read O’Hara, do writing exercises, use good grammar. It’s a reader’s and writer’s story, one that hinges on knowing a bit about current fiction, but it’s told with good-natured tongue-in-cheek ribbing and lingers after the reading as a good story should.
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