Beer And Flash Fiction

Ever since I enlisted in the army in 1964 I’ve been a beer drinker.  I’ve spent a lot of time in bars.  I still do although I do less drinking because too much beer will bring on an attack of the gout.  (I’m not on any medications for anything and I want to keep from taking medicine for the gout for as long as possible.)  So, why do people drink?  Why do they spend so much time in bars?

I think I drink for two reasons.  I have too much time on my hands and I enjoy the camaraderie of a friendly bar.  As I get older and drink less I find I suffer more from boredom and I’m more isolated.  All my friends drink.  I move in a circle of drinkers.  Being unemployed doesn’t help.  If I had a job I’d have less time on my hands and would have a different social circle.  So I continue to improve my computer office skills at the employment and training center and I continue to go on job interviews not only because I need a job (money) but because I need to fill my time with productive work in a non-drinking environment.

When I was in grad school at Pitt between 2003-2006 there was one class where all of us new fiction writing students were asked to say a few words about our writing.  When my turn came I said that I had noticed about fifteen years before, when I was still struggling to find my voice and subject matter, how much drinking my characters did and how much time they spent in bars.  This got a knowledgeable laugh from the class.  I went on to say that although a writer’s stories will often reflect his or her life I realized all the drinking (mainly beer) had to mean something.  In fiction people don’t drink just to drink.  And so the drinking in my stories had become a metaphor for something else. 

My characters drank to kill loneliness, boredom and emotional pain.  They drank in the hopes of bonding with someone or to be a part of a community even if it was for only a few fleeting hours.  They drank to remember and they definitely drank to forget.  A lot of them drank in order to bare the pain.  Beer allowed them to have a good time.

Which brings us back to why I drink.  I drink beer because it allows me to have a good time even if I’m alone.

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Still Down And Out In Pittsburgh

I did stop at Nico’s.  V was behind the bar.  It was good to see her.  A few of the regulars were there.  It was great to be able to forget my problems for awhile.  I really have no other network of friends besides the ones I see at the places where I stop in for a beer.  I had two beers.  Then I went to the supermarket and picked up a bunch of bananas for lunch next week at the employment and training center.  I picked up a loaf of Pumpernickel and several Milky Way candy bars to eat on the bus while I read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on my way to the center next week.  And I picked up a bottle of hot sauce, floss and a Sunday newspaper.  Then at the tavern across from my bus stop I picked up a six pack and then caught my bus home.

GHH

Am I An Alcoholic?

It’s 2:15 in the afternoon, time for me to go do my weekly shopping in Bloomfield.  I’ll probably stop by Nico’s to see if V is on duty.  She works every other Saturday.  And since I don’t go there like I use to I lose track of which Saturday she’s there; but I probably shouldn’t go there at all.  This morning I awoke with an uncomfortable tenderness in my right foot–the sign of a possible gout attack.  I’ve had several beers over the past few days because of the holidays.  Too much beer (too much uric acid in my system) is what causes the attacks.  And they are painful.  I can’t walk.  I can’t leave the apartment.

Well, it’s a fact now that I won’t be able to send in a rent payment until next month when I get my first social security check.  I don’t even know how far behind I am in my rent.  It’s got to be four months.  Being unemployed and behind in your rent is a bad feeling.  Even though I’m looking for work, going on interviews and I’m at the employment and training center five days a week, five hours a day I still have too much time on my hands.  I need a job.

Am I an alcoholic?

GHH

Flash Fiction And The Internet

Let the good times roll!

Some pundits blame MTV for the short attention span of viewers.  Everywhere we go we are bombarded by information.  Multi-tasking is a buzz word for the zip-zip world we live in.  There is never enough time.  We want and need our data right now.  Through the Internet we can connect almost immediately to nearly anyone anywhere in the world.  If flash fiction did not already exist it would have to be invented.

There’s something mystical about an entire story with a setup, a buildup and a payoff all being contained within, oh, 300 to 1,200 words.  The computer screen was made for flash fiction and flash fiction was made for the computer screen.

What should be the ultimate goal of flash fiction writers?  To produce work that revitalizes the language; to produce work read by the many and studied in our halls of higher learning; to ultimately have the very short story take its rightful place alongside the poem, short story and novel as one of the great forms of literature.

My Creative Process

Several days ago I bought four notebooks and a box of #2 medium point pencils.  My creative process for writing a flash fiction story has begun.

I actually try to “see” the typography of a story on the page.  Will it begin with two or three paragraphs of solid description?  Will it begin with four sentences of exposition and then dialogue?  Or will the story be made up mostly of exposition and description with little dialogue?  And how long will the story be?  500 words?  750 words?  1,000 words?  And all of this is done even before I have a storyline or characters.

I try to think of a real situation that I’ve seen or been a part of and where it took place and the people that were involved.

Then I try to give the situation a beginning, a middle and a resolution.

I leave one of the notebooks open on my cluttered writing desk with several of the #2 pencils sharpen in a skinny jar, the points upward.  An old tin astry with a small metal pencil sharpener sits on the desk.

Finally, I simply go about my life and I “think” about the story, from time to time jotting down ideas in the notebook.  This may go on for days until bingo, I have a storyline and the two or three main characters; I also have the locale and a beginning, middle and resolution.

Then with all these notes I sit down to write the story.  The actual writing of the story may take two or three days.  I never work more than two or three hours at a time.

Finally, I’ll set the story aside for a couple of days and then go back to it and revise it several times until it begins to read the way I know a finished story should read.  Then I stop.  Everyone’s creative process is different.  That’s my creative process.  And I’m happy to report that this creative process for a new flash fiction story has begun.

In the mean time I still have several stories stockpiled.  The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette is not going to run out of stories any time soon.

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