I’ve been writing some short stories since I published THE INVAS10N. They’re not all connected stories like THE INVAS10N, but some of the stories are. I took a different approach to writing them where I waited until after I finished all the stories before editing them. Usually, I edit a story right away when the ideas are still fresh in my mind. But I had so many ideas stirring in my mind that I wanted to get them out first.
I’ve been reading Shirley Jackson’s Just an Ordinary Day, a collection of her unpublished and published short stories. Many of the short stories are like vignettes: a story of a scene or what happens in a day or so. I’m halfway through the book, having finished her unpublished stories (the first section of the book). They’re a mix of dark psychological tales with comedic ones.
In the short story Come to the Fair, a woman is invited to a fair and is unwittingly asked to partake as a fortune teller at one of the stands. Since she knows the people in the community, she actually pulls it off with surprising success. In The Story We Used to Tell, a woman disappears, and later, her friend finds out that she had been pulled inside the world of a painting.
In the introduction of the book, Shirley’s children write how they landed upon their mother’s unpublished short stories, which Shirley had filed away. Many of her other stories were found in the archives of the San Fransisco Public Library. She was a voluminous writer and it’s great that her body of work is seeing the light of day since she last published.
Reading the short stories in the collection, I’m inspired by the creativity and imagination that went into them. I had read her other stories years back, but it’s great to read her unpublished works and see the range and scope of her work.
Fallton Havenstonne 