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INTERVIEW: TANIA HERSHMAN

How and when did you first start writing short stories?
I started making stuff up when I was in Junior school, seven or eight I guess, that's when I got my first gold star for a story about breaking into a park at night. My mother saved it, she trains English teachers and I believe she shows them that story as an example... of something! (It's a bit embarassing to admit that. Hmm.) I didn't think of it as a career path til more than twenty years later, when I'd been working as a science journalist for a few years, but the little voice became more insistent, demanding I get back to fiction. So I did. That little voice still chatters on though, it's always demanding something!

Have short stories always been a passion?
Oh yes, absolutely, beginning with Roald Dahl when I was a kid. They really showed me the power and possibility in a piece only a few pages long. I wonder how many kids were inspired by his tales of the unexpected? Gruesome, yes, but that was part of the delight! That led me on to writers such as Ali Smith, who demonstrated other shapes for the short story, more intimate, quieter but nevertheless just as shatteringly poignant and affecting. I have always loved reading anything and everything, as long as it's a good story, no matter if it fills a whole book or just one page.

What do you think makes a great short story?
Ah well, so many things, and I'm finding new answers to this question all the time as I read more and more and more. I read 2,000 stories last year, judging several short story competitions, and what astounded me was just how many of them were great, and great in so many different ways! It's a personal thing, I am pulled into a story by a strong voice, the main character or the narrator, something that brings the character alive in my head as I read, so I can see, hear, smell, taste and almost touch the scenes. But I am pulled into other great stories in other ways – I love stories that give me a sense that anything might happen, whether this is magical realism, science fiction, speculative fiction, I don't go in for labels. Who wouldn't want to read on to find out where those kinds of stories go? And experimental fiction, writing that plays with language, that invents and messes around – deliberately, not because the writer can't distinguish 'your' from 'you're', something that will immediately throw me out of a story because I'm quite a stickler for that kind of thing.
    That said, I prefer a 'messy' story that may not be perfect but takes risks to a carefully written and 'safe' story that never strays into dangerous territory – and 'danger' can mean something incredibly small, but something risky nonetheless. I'd rather be slightly confused for lack of information than given far too much information and know exactly what's going on, what's happened and what's going to happen. For me, a great story is one where the writer has left out enough for me, the reader, to insert myself into the story, for me to play an active role in reading it. That's what I love. Don't give me everything; trust my ability to read between the lines, fill in the gaps.

What are your top tips for approaching writing a short story?
Don't worry at all about who might read it when you are getting down that 'first draft', just let the story tell you where it is going and be open to it going in different directions from the ones you may have imagined in your head. I believe that we all have a 'story sense' that is something subconscious that does a lot of the work for us, that helps shape what makes something a story rather than a random assortment of scenes and paragraphs. I don't believe there are any rules when it comes to the writing process itself, I have been exploring this on my blog recently. There are some 'conventions' which I had always imagined everyone else did and had been beating myself up about not doing – the main one was to revise with your 'analytical' head on, not in that creative 'zone' where the writing takes place – and by asking around and reading author interviews I discovered that this most certainly is not the case! Every writer does it differently, find what works for you, don't feel you must follow someone else's 'rules'.
    It may seem odd that I haven't found my writing groove even several years after publishing a short story collection, but it's true. I recently interviewed an amazing 90-year-old author, Carol Emshwiller, whose Collected Stories, spanning over fifty years, has just been released. She said to me, Oh, don't read my early stories, I hadn't found my voice yet! And in her introduction to the book she talks about how she can see now the five different periods in her writing career. That helped me a lot, letting me accept that I might have another fifty years to try new things, experiment. That's a long time! My main tip is: write the kind of story you want to read. I write for myself, to amuse myself, make myself cry, explore ideas from within someone else's skin, their mind. If I don't write stories that I find compelling, why on earth should anyone else? Although I am still amazed that anyone else gets my stories, which in some ways, although not  autobiographical, are sometimes very personal.

And how about approaching reading a short story?
With delight and anticipation! Every time I start reading a story, the first thing I do is see how long it is, to pace myself. Then I say to the story – wherever it is, whether in a collection, a lit mag, as an entry for a competition - 'Wow me!' I want a story to be great, I give it as much chance as possible,  but really you can tell within about a paragraph if this is your kind of story. And because stories rarely appear in isolation, if it hasn't gripped me quite quickly, I will move on in search of another. But when I am gripped, the rest of the world fades, I read with utter concentration for those few minutes, completely absorbed. Then, generally, I have to stop, put down the book or the magazine, do something else while I recover. Because a fantastic story is something that you need to recover from after reading it. In the best way. And you never fully recover, there is always a tiny echo of it, lingering. That's why I love short stories. 

Can you tell us a bit about how you write - are mornings best? Or late at night? Do you get out and about for inspiration? Or do you need to have complete silence and isolation?
There's no set time for me at all. A story generally starts in my head with something that catches on my imagination and, if it settles there, then a first line will come. And that first line will rattle around for a while until I know the time is right to write it down. Last year, for the first time, I carrried a notebook and pen around with me, writing down observations, ideas. I filled this small notebook and I am not sure whether stories came directly from that, but the act of observing honed my skills at noticing things other people probably don't as they are rushing from one place to another. I then bought a new notebook but what I am finding now is that I am not writing observations but actual stories that come to me when I am out, especially on trains, they are fertile places for stimulating my writing!
    That said, I have always yearned for that room-of-my-own with a door I can shut, my own small writing space, which I hadn't had – until now. Because now I have my Writing Shed at the end of the garden! Oh joy! I've only had it for a few months, but it's just blissful. At first I didn't have Internet access down there, but I found that I was hardly going into the shed because I had other things to do that required being online. So I moved the router so the wifi reached the shed again and now I spend a lot of time in there, doing all sorts of things. It has a single bed in it, I have found from writing retreats that being horizontal inspires stories – I get some of my best ideas just as I am dropping off to sleep. Also, it has a shelf where I can put the laptop and work while standing. I don't like to sit too much.
    I find cafes great places to work in, I like white noise. And I like food. A lot.

And when you're not writing and reading short stories, how do you like to relax?
I have to say that reading is my main relaxation activity – not just short stories but novels, poetry, non-fiction, newspapers. Every Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, we switch off the TV, phone, computer, and just read and eat. I can easily read a whole book in a few hours. I swim. I have been known to hula-hoop in the privacy of our garden. I talk to cats. I love to sit in a dark room with strangers and watch a film. And food. Cake. And other things. But a lot of cake.

Finally, can you recommend some great short stories to our readers?
Oh, where to start? I read a lot of collections so I will recommend some of those: Roy Kesey's 'All Over' (which I am giving away on my blog in honour of Short Story Month!), Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud's A Life on Paper, which is the first English translation of this French master's fabulous and fabulist stories, Stefanie Freele's wonderful collection of flash fiction, Feeding Strays (I particularly love the story 'She Doesn't Ask Where He Goes'), Janice Galloway's searing Collected Stories, minimalist and deeply unsettling. As for individual stories, there are so so many! 'Foster' by Clare Keegan knocked my socks off recently. 'The Wig Maker' by my great friend Vanessa Gebbie is an astonishing flash story. 'Underskirts' by Kirsty Logan is a fantastic story, as is the short story I chose as the winner of the Sean O'Faolain short story competition last year, 'Eddie', by Nikita Neilin. And 'Mum's the Word' by Valerie O'Riordan, which the panel of judges I was part of chose as last year's winner of the Bristol Short Story prize, only 350 words long and just phenomenal.

Thanks for having me!

Tania Hershman's first collection of short stories, The White Road, was commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers. She edits The Short Review, which is one of the best places to get great reviews of new short stories. You can read her blog here.

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