Discussion → OPEN TO PUBLISHED STORIES: PROS AND CONS
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Pro: Greater variety of contributers of stories, lessons that can be learned from places that publish microfiction, opens up another level of conversation from diverse areas of the community.
Con: More contributions means unpublished stories won't stay on front page as long. Still, this feels a bit like a Gulag to me. It's a Cafe after all. What do you all think?
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Staying with unpublished may assist editors in seeking stories, as has happened with the Flash longer length group.
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I just find it hard to believe that editors really come combing for stories when they have these huge slush piles in their offices (having worked in book publishing). Is there actually a specific instance of an editor seeing the story in the group and saying, Hey, that's unpublished? I'm going to grab it. It sounds like a fairy tale, an urban myth, wishful thinking. What makes you think this can happen? It's like going to LA to be discovered as an actress. I'm a cynic. Convince me otherwise. Show me a "discovered" published story. I'd like to believe it's possible too.
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Two examples of work posted here / accepted at Blue Fifth Review:
"Cahiers du Cinéma" by Marcus Speh
http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/marcus-speh/cahiers-du-cinema&
"Son of Goya" by Bill Yarrow
http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/bill-yarrow/son-of-goya
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Were they "discovered" here, or just submitted and accepted despite being on the website? Because if the latter, there's no point in having a group just for unpublished microfiction. We may as well open it to everyone and get more of a mix. What do you think, Sam?
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I read them first here, and I asked for the pieces. Also, asked Marcus Speh if he'd be interested in expanding his piece - which he did brilliantly. He also added a note about publication in BFR.
At the BFR site, I added a note indicating that the shorter version of the piece was published at Fictionaut.
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OK. So there is a logic to keeping this an unpublished only group. I needed a reason and you provided it. There will have to be another group for the published ones, where these stories can go when they graduate. Thanks, Sam, for your patient enlightening of the ignorant. I hope I wasn't overly obnoxious.
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Marcus Speh's story, Cahiers du Cinema, is among his most important, regardless of publishing semantics and mechanics, and Sam relates that he found it that way and asked to publish it at BFR.
Scott Garson did the same with me when he found my story "Inaccrochable" in the Flash (unpub'd available) group and asked to publish it at Wigleaf.
(Off-topic): I list publications "at" Internet journals but "in" printed journals. It seems others are going with "in" in both media.
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This is extremely helpful to me as I have been living under the impression that posting a story on your personal blog can be death to its chances of publication in any journal, online or print, and have therefore blogged anonymously for several years, quickly removing the material within a few months of trying for publication. It has seemed very oppressive, since the exposure to readers on the blog was miniscule. Most of the stories I've written started as blog posts long ago. So the deal is sealed as far as I'm concerned: keep this an unpublished group, give unpublished pieces some space and exposure so they aren't crowded out by published pieces. It seems to have a real purpose to serve. Look at this amazing story Twedes you just wrote. I am humbled and corrected. Thanks so much.
Group Description
ALL MICROFICTION ALL THE TIME.
Here's a place to post both published and unpublished Microfiction and a place to discuss and debate the special aesthetics of the genre.
Some sources claim word count under 100, others under 200, others under 400 and still others under 500. Your guess is as good as mine, but 500 is the absolute limit. The shorter the better. Poetry welcome.
Joseph Young in FRIGG, Spring 2009, wrote,
"To be its own genre, microfiction needs to do something that other forms won’t. It needs to use language, description, dialogue, character to tell a story that can’t be told any other way. It’s not just compression, and it’s not just leaving things out, background info on characters or such. Microfiction needs to carve out whole worlds in a space small enough to fit the eye. You look, just once, and there the whole story is, on the page...
"If fiction (e.g., narrative) is time, then microfiction is microtime. But let me caveat. A microfiction can describe the entire life of a character. It can illustrate birth, marriage, death, 80 years of experience. But the amount from that 80 years that actually occurs in microfiction, in microtime, is nearly nothing, a tenth of a second."
Me? I think of microfiction as the miniature galaxy inside the marble hung from the cat's collar in Men in Black.
To keep this group vibrant and alive, don't just post and run. Take the time to comment and especially engage in the discussion threads. It will make for a richer group experience.
--Gloria Garfunkel, Micro Cafe Barista
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Anyone can see it and join.