Glenn Shaheen is the Arab Canadian author of four books, most recently the flash fiction collection Carnivalia (Gold Wake Press, 2018).
His stories, “Disfigurement” and “Historical Society” appeared in Issue Eighty-Five of The Rupture.
Here, he speaks with interviewer Dana Diehl about book tours, revising flash fiction, and how it's okay if only one person shows up to your reading.
Please tell us how your two stories, “Disfigurement” and “Historical Society” began. What inspired these two pieces?
“Historical Society” began as part of a 20 page story that was divided into brief, flash fiction-like sections that ranged from 65 million years ago to 250 million years into the future. It didn’t really work as a “cohesive narrative,” according to most of the people I showed it to, so I salvaged and rewrote a couple sections. I’ve always been interested in the idea of numerical dates—all those troubled times in history and yet they’ve still been able to keep track of what year it is. There is no going back, but if we could we’d probably just waste our chances. “Disfigurement” is about how one’s own awkwardness can cause harm to others—I once made a guy furious because I thought he was somebody I knew so I kept trying to get a look at him, but every time I kept trying to sneak a better look at him he happened to look up at me at that exact moment, and so he thought I was just being a creep, which I suppose I was.
You write both flash fiction and poetry. How is your writing process different for these two genres? How long does it typically take you to finish (“finish,” meaning it feels ready for publication) a flash piece?
I’m not particularly interested in “cohesive narratives,” even in my flash fiction – I’m more interested in emotional and tonal manipulation. However, whenever I have a character or scene idea, I will almost always write it as a flash fiction piece. Poetry begins with seeds of images or sentence fragments. For drafts of poetry and fiction, I write a draft in a couple days, then set aside the draft for a few months before looking at it again. Then I’ll go back into it with at least some ability to approach it as a new reader—If I can’t tell what I was going for, or if it’s just plain trash, I’ll cannibalize it for lines for future pieces. If I still think it’s a bit decent, I’ll work on revising it. I’d say it’s probably six months or so typically before I send a piece out for publication—of course, I often change my mind after sending out a piece I thought I liked, too.
In your story, “Historical Society,” the year is turned back to 2012 and people get a second chance. If you had the chance to roll back time to 2017, what would you do? How would you take advantage of the extra years?
If it’s just a numerical thing, like they change the number of the year, it wouldn’t matter personally to me, or most of us. I guess the piece is a bit fanciful with regards to the effect of these recovered years. If there was actual time travel involved, I’d spend more time with the friends I’ve lost.
You published an incredible short story collection titled Carnivalia with Gold Wake Press in 2018. What advice do you have for short story writers publishing with indie presses?
When setting up readings outside your hometown to promote your book (which unless you’re on some big house press you will be doing for yourself) always try to get in touch with a local writer to read with you, especially if you don’t know many people in the area. It’ll help with your audience, and they may have a better idea of good venues in that area. Don’t be sad if nobody shows up still. I mean, I can’t tell people not to be sad, but reading to one or two people every now and then is just the writer’s life.
The Rupture published your work in 2016. How do you think your work has changed since then? Have your focuses or obsessions as a writer transformed?
It’s always changing—I try to write work that is enmeshed with our social and political world. When writing non-commercial literature there is a duty to frustrate the systems of oppression that surround us. White supremacists are (have been) running the country, people don’t feel ashamed of their hatred, capitalism is killing the planet—we have to make art that is venomous to these structures. Why else do it?