Sheila McClarty’s first collection of short stories is High Speed Crow (Oberon Press). A Manitoba-based writer, McClarty’s stories feature a diverse cast of characters, from a woman riding the bronze statue of a bull to a man contemplating his last day of work at a garbage dump.
Sheila McClarty speaks to Open Book about her debut collection, postmen who want to be cowboys and the elusive perfect short story.
Open Book:
Tell us about your new book, High Speed Crow.
Sheila McClarty:
High Speed Crow is my first collection of short stories. It was published by Oberon Press and edited by Mark Anthony Jarman. The ten stories in this collection are told through the voices of men, women and children. High Speed Crow focuses on relationships in a state of flux and explores themes of loss, desire, truth, love and the pursuit of happiness. The settings vary and range from a horse stable to a psychiatrist’s office. High Speed Crow won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Author.
OB:
What was most challenging about writing or publishing this collection?
SM:
Discipline, I think is always the first challenge, the self-control to keep yourself on the chair and ignore the sun coming through the window and the tantalizing stack of unread books sitting on your desk. When I started to write short stories, my goal was to write a story worthy of publication, and then as time went on, a period of almost eight years, I had a group of stories. Several of these stories were published in literary magazines. Once I started to put together a collection, I faced the challenge of rewriting some of the stories. I have a bad habit of rewriting the entire story until it is nearly unrecognizable to the preceding draft. The editing process of a collection was a learning curve, and forced me to look at what really needed to be changed to improve the story, a stepping back and objective view of my own stories.
OB:
How do you know when the germ of an idea will be the right fit for a short story?
SM:
Only through trial and error does it become apparent to me whether the idea will survive and become a story. Many times an idea, which sounded wonderful inside my head, failed miserably on paper. Some of my favorite openings never grew into completed stories. However, certain factors increase the probability that an idea will make a story. I find if an idea overtakes and consumes me then it tends to transform into a story. I also find setting to have a predictive element, if a setting has tight boundaries like a dinner party, then it seems conducive to a short story. If a germ of an idea comes with a story ending than I am all smiles because endings are so difficult to write.
OB:
What do you enjoy most about the process of writing a short story?
SM:
There are several things. One of my favorite parts of short story writing is what I refer to as the pre-draft; this comes before the first draft of a story. At this point, a character has come into my imagination and I sit down and write directly from my thoughts, avoiding the backspace key, forging forward and trying hard not to think of how the story is shaping up or sounding. The more stories I write the harder it becomes to stay true to this draft.
Discovering things about my characters during the re-writing of a story gives me tremendous satisfaction. When I was writing one story, Mel, the main character kept indicating that he wanted to be a cowboy. At first this annoyed me, because his destiny was to be a postal worker. Finally after numerous drafts, I gave in and allowed the character to be both a gunslinger and a postal worker. Although character development is never wholly magical, there are those occasional times when you reach into the hat and discover a rabbit.
At any stage in the writing of a story, I enjoy the time when I am so immersed into the process the intrusions of the real world vanish, the state athletes describe as the zone.
OB:
How do you make a character vibrant and realistic in just a few pages?
SM:
This is a constant challenge. At first I thought what to include about characters was the task in short stories. Now, I realize inclusion is a double-edged sword, equally important is what to exclude from a story. Everything in a short story is enhanced, the setting, the characters, the dialogue, and the plot. Characters in short stories have neither time nor space for spurious information. However, as the writer, I need to know my characters inside and out and carefully choose what to divulge onto the paper. Throughout numerous drafts, I repeatedly ask myself, Whose story is it? By this, I mean which character or units of characters own the story. I try then to make the details in the story, the setting, the pace, the tone, the dialogue reveal some information about the character. How the character perceives the world around him or her, consciously or subconsciously, reveals a truth about them. Still, there are many misses before a hit in the process of character development.
OB:
What recurring themes or obsessions do you notice turning up in your short stories?
SM:
I try not to think too much about theme in the beginning drafts of my stories. Right or wrong, I wait for theme to expose itself down the road. Once I have conceptualized the main idea of a story, I write it in a single sentence and place it under the title. I find this helps with the direction of the story and in particular the ending scene.
Loss, desire, happiness, love or its absence, regret and truth seem to be the predominate themes in my stories. I obsess over the underlying dynamics that control my characters’ lives and am just as fascinated with what isn’t said as what is spoken out loud. Relationships pushed to a defining moment make appearances in many of my stories. Secrets remain both hidden and revealed and I attempt to capture the grayness in my characters’ personalities as opposed to the black and white.
OB:
Is there such a thing as a perfect short story? What story have you read that's come closest?
SM:
I have a cache of short stories that I hold very close to my heart. These are well-crafted stories by brilliant writers. These stories haunt me with their themes, amaze me with their beautiful prose and provide me with hours of contemplation. But are they perfect stories? I would have to say stories with this much force are perfect to me. I have narrowed it down to three stories, “The Scarf” by Carol Shields, “After the Denim” by Raymond Carver and “The Bishop” by Anton Chekhov.
OB:
What would you say to convince someone who is "more into novels" to give short fiction a try?
SM:
I would compare the novel to a marriage and the short story to a guest at a wedding reception, a drunken ex-girlfriend of the groom guest. As such, short stories are often about extenuating circumstances, pivotal scenes that expose a defining moment in the character’s life. A collection of short stories offers the reader a diverse menu of characters and situations, a chance to sample likes and dislikes.
Recently I read that because of our rushed society short stories might experience a resurgence of popularity. I don’t know if this is true, but I have been encouraged by hearing from members of several local book clubs that a short story collection (not mine!) was on their respective book lists.
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Sheila McClarty graduated from the University of Toronto with a Master of Social Work degree. Her short stories have appeared in various magazines, including Grain, The Antigonish Review and The Fiddlehead. She lives outside Oakbank, Manitoba with her husband, two teenage children and a herd of horses.
For more information about High Speed Crow please visit the Oberon Press website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
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