Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression - Falling into Stories (Again)

Falling into Stories (Again)

Written by Stacy Barton

Friday, 03 October 2008

Last Friday, Stacy Barton presented the first part in a series about the wonderful short story. Since that day was surrounded by server chaos, we're choosing to repost the first part today and run the second and third installments over the next two weeks (on Fridays, of course). So, for those of you who didn't catch Stacy's blog last week, enjoy! For those of you wondering what's going on around Relief, we'll be posting a full update next week on Relief News Tuesday :-} Thanks for your patience and your prayers.

So without further ado,

Falling into Short Stories

When I told Relief Journal in an interview last week that, “short stories chose me,” they were curious about what I meant. They know me as a two-time Relief contributor and the author of the short story collection, Surviving Nashville (WordFarm 2007). In short, they only know me as a short story writer. But if you read my bio you’ll see that although I have published short stories, I’ve also published picture books, plays, poetry, an animated short film, and currently work as a free-lance scriptwriter for Disney. So how did I come to the genre of the short story?

I’ve always been a storyteller. At an early age I arranged blankets on the sofa and did shows with my friends. I also wrote stories. There’s one about a watermelon named Wally that my grandmother kept for years. You know the kind: school-grey paper, turquoise lines, Crayola illustrations. But the road I took to writing short stories is littered with other art forms like acting and directing; improvisation and comedy; poetry and motherhood.

I remember writing poetry in the tree of my parents’ front yard when I was twelve – newly discovering my passions and ideals. I remember writing stories about fairies when I was nine, curled up in the fort I had made of my grandmother’s closet. When I was sixteen I was told my free verse was not a valid form of poetry and so I stopped showing my writing to anyone. I became an actress instead.

But I didn’t stop writing. As a new mother, I wrote poetry on the back of envelopes and receipts and crumpled napkins I found on the floor of my minivan. In those days my life allowed just so much time to write things down. Somehow, out of those scraps of paper grew the courage to save my words, then the courage to let others read them and finally from those words came a few published poems, several scripts and awards, and a book for mothers called Mamma Dance that was never published. It was a collection of thoughts and poems on the sacred quality of motherhood. Back then, Shaw Books wanted it, but a New York City industry insider told them it was too risky, that it was “too sacred for the secular and too secular for the sacred.” But by then I had landed a free-lance job writing scripts for Disney and a contract with two other publishing houses. So I wrote a children’s book about cancer for Kregel Publishing and poems and liturgical dramas for Concordia Publishing House as well as a stage play for the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center – all while scripting theme park shows for Disney.

Then one day I was sitting on the beach – writing on a scrap of paper retrieved from the bottom of my tote bag – when I wrote a poem that was really more like a paragraph. The next day I wrote some more, finishing what the beach had inspired. A week or so later I took fifteen hundred words to a group of writers to find out what to do with them.

Turns out those fifteen hundred words formed a “literary short story.” But I had no idea what I was doing. My format was all wrong. I didn’t know where the commas went or how to punctuate the dialogue. I had only written poetry and scripts, not fiction, and nobody cares about a semicolon in a play. On top of that, I hadn’t gone to college and I had certainly never heard of a literary magazine. So I enrolled in a fiction workshop at an upcoming writers’ conference and sent in the story in as my writing sample. The instructor loved it so much that I wrote another. Immediately. I started when the children went to school and I didn’t get up from the computer until they came home eight hours later. Not even to pee. I sent it in to the man who would later become my mentor, and he said, “I think you’ve found your voice.”

He was right.

Next Week: The Top Ten Reasons Why We Love the Short Story

These days Stacy Barton is primarily a short story author and playwright. Her debut collection of short stories, Surviving Nashville, was released in 2007. Her stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary magazines including Potomac Review, Relief, Ruminate and Stonework and her fifth stage play, an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, premiered in Orlando, Florida last year. In addition to short stories, plays, and poetry, Stacy is the author of a children's picture book and an animated short film. She is currently a free-lance scriptwriter for the Disney Company. Visit her at www.stacybarton.com

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