Accretion

Transitions are usually not that interesting. I use space breaks instead, and a lot of them. A space break makes a clean segue whereas some segues you try to write sound convenient, contrived. The white space sets off, underscores, the writing presented, and you have to be sure it deserves to be highlighted this way. If used honestly and not as a gimmick, these spaces can signify the way the mind really works, noting moments and assembling them in such a way that a kind of logic or pattern comes forward, until the accretion of moments forms a whole experience, observation, state of being.

-Amy Hempel, The Art of Fiction No. 176, Paris Review 

This idea of accretion through short sections and spaces is something I'm working with right now. Early sections seemed to come easy, later ones more difficult. Maybe it's because early sections felt freer, seem to snap more, but in later sections I think I'm forcing this accretion rather than going forth more, well, freely, allowing the sections and patterns to build, and later going back to twerk and tweak. 

I'm struggling with similar ideas in the collection as a whole. How linear does a linked collection need to be? Some stories fall right in line in terms of characters and a building narrative. Others are there more because of setting and theme (and I hope not simply because I wrote them and feel the need to cram them in). Important readers have told me to trust readers, to worry less about making everything fall in line. Still, I worry I need to make a choice: zig or zag. Make the collection entirely linearly linked or make it a collection bound only by theme and place. 

Anyway, accretion. I like this idea. It requires a certain amount of faith, faith in your work and your readers. If grounded in honest work and thoughtfulness and more work, this type of faith can never be a bad thing, I think. 

Here's more from Hempel on leaving readers space: 

The connective tissue of a story is often the white space, which is not empty. There’s nothing new here, but what you don’t say can be as important as what you do say. I think my favorite compliment that I got from a writer early on was someone saying to me, You leave out all the right things. That was wonderful to hear. To know you’ve given your reader credit for being able to understand without you having to say it.

-The Art of Fiction No. 176, Paris Review 

I haven't read that much of Hempel's work, but this interview makes me want to. Check it out if you can. Also, if you happened to take Alan Cheuse's Scene-Making class at Mason, do you remember the story we read early in the semester? I swear it was an Amy Hempel story. There was a man and a young girl, a teenager perhaps, and they were in a truck in the desert (I think?) for the duration of the story. Can't remember where they were going or what the conflict was. But I want to find out and read it again. I picked up reasons to live a while back but it's not in there. Anyone?