Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn ‘Feeding the Cat’ realls Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’. All three of Stanberry-Flynn’s stories are brilliantly observed, rooted in an understanding of the way people’s internal lives surface in their behaviour. (ed.Rowan Fortune)
My stories have been successful in a number of competitions including:
2011: The title story Feeding the Cat and two others, The Young Man and the Nose Ring and Gloria, and Garden of Antipathy published in the Cinnamon Press anthology.
2009: The Magic of Stories published by Cinnamon Press in anthology ‘Storm at Galesburg and other stories’.
2009: The Magic of Stories also longlisted for Fish Publishing short story competition
2007: Turnip Soup shortlisted Fish Publishing short story competition
2006: The Young Man with the Nose Ring and Gloria shortlisted Asham Award for Women Writers
2005: The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done regional winner Real Writers short story competition
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I love the form and discipline of the short story. In its focus, its compression, the weight attached to every word, the story shares many elements with poetry.
A few thoughts on the short story:
- ‘Something glimpsed from the corner of the eye in passing.‘ V. S. Pritchett
- ‘Art of the glimpse.’ Willian Trevor
- ‘You take a point in time and develop it from there: no room for development backwards.‘ Frank O’Connor
- ‘As in film, you must be conscious in a story of dead air. Twenty mediocre pages won’t hurt a novel, but such slackness would kill a story.‘ Thomas McGuane
And my favourite:
- ‘A shory story is bony and cannot wander.‘ William Trevor
I love that use of the word bony in this context.
