Tania Hershman

One of short story's biggest supporters and its chief lobbyist, Tania Hershman is also an excellent writer of short 'fictions'. She combines the funny with the sad, the macabre with the dramatic, ensuring that her short stories run the gauntlet of human experience in as concise a way as possible.

Newly Bristolian-ised Nikesh caught up with Bristol expert Tania to talk about her favourite short story writers, the true meaning of 'short' and how and where she writes.

Hi Tania, how are you?

I'm fine, thank you. I like these crisp, sunny winter days.

What is it about short stories that makes you keep coming back to the form?

As a reader, there's really nothing that does it for me like the short story. I read everything. EVERYTHING. As a kid I read the backs of cereal packs during breakfast, I couldn't stop reading. If it is well-written, I'll read it (okay, cereal boxes not so much): fiction, poetry, non-fiction, whatever. But for me only the short story is actually capable of perfection, and I know that because I have read many stories I consider perfect. They cause me physical pain when I read them, and that's what I want from great writing. To be shaken up, to be a different person, when I finish reading a story, even if that story is half a page long. And the best short stories do that, again and again and again. Who wouldn't be addicted to that kind of experience? I tell anyone who says that short stories leave them unsatisfied, wanting more, that they clearly have never read a really great story, because they wouldn't feel like that. No way.

And each fantastic short story writer writes, in my opinion, only the stories they could write, each great short story is unique and wonderful in its own way. Perhaps because you don't have to reach a certain length, or fit into a form, anything goes. What I find, as I read upwards of 800 short stories a year, what always surprises me, is how many of them are fantastic. So many. And I guess that's why I write them, because I write for me, I write what I love to read, and I try and have that same effect on myself. I've got a long way to go til I get to perfect, but it's good to have a goal!

Tell us about My Mother was an Upright Piano...

Well, My Mother was an Upright Piano is a kind of collected works - none of the 56 short fictions were written with a book in mind, they are selected from around 150 that I wrote between getting the amazing news in June 2007 that Salt wanted to publish my first book (The White Road and Other Stories) and Dec 2011, when I got more amazing news, that Tangent Books wanted to publish my second book. I found it hard to focus during a lot of that period - the excitement of the book deal, the time spent promoting The White Road, and found that I loved the writing of very short stories, which I also write in very short bursts of time. It is for me a different process from writing longer stories, anything over about 1000 words. That is slower, I get to a certain point and have to stop and wait until I know what happens next. I don't plot, not consciously anyway. I have learned over the 15 years I have been writing that we all have a "story sense", that if I trust my inner narrative architect, it will fuse even the weirdest story together into some kind of whole. Which is rather nice!

I decided to call what's in the book 'fictions' because I have run into a lot of strangeness over the years - people telling me they 'should' be called poems, hostility to flash fiction, all sorts of things. I figured the only description I can give is that they are fictional, whatever that means. I wrote the majority of them inspired by prompts in various online writing groups I belonged to, which set weekly challenges. I find that immensely helpful for creating new work. As for themes - I didn't really know what was going on until I saw the finished book. I don't consciously write to a theme, I only know afterwards what seems to have been preoccupying me at a particular time. And also, which is wonderful, other people, readers, tell me what the stories are about, they show me things I haven't seen. And this is why, although the 56 fictions are divided into sections, there are no section headings, no declared 'themes', because with short stories, and especially very short pieces, different people read different things into them. So my publisher wisely suggested we didn't try and tell people how to read them. 56 is a lot of stories, so I hope we did the right thing. We actually tried to mix them up as much as possible - separate certain 'types' of story, create variety.

The White Road and My Mother was an Upright Piano are striking for their injections of humour into quite sad or difficult circumstances, how do you balance the humour and drama in your stories?

Once again, it's not conscious, it's just the kind of thing I like to read, I guess. I often find that a story I have written will really shake me up, will move me, and that's good. But humour is something I really prize, a blackish humour but one which does imply a glimmer of hope in stories which are mostly not particularly cheerful. I am drawn to 'sad or difficult circumstances', as you so beautifully put it, because these are the kinds of situations I find fascinating, they are the bits of life that are not so easily unpicked, explained, perhaps the events that form us, more than the joyful ones. I write to get into the heads of Others, to take myself to places I have never been to. I guess humour is how I try and deal with these sorts of challenges in my own life. You gotta laugh.

What makes a perfect short story?

Ah, well, as I said above, I've read many perfect stories and each is unique, so there is no formula, and, luckily, readers want different things. I would say, for me, it's economy of words, not too many but not too few, and the freedom to take risks, whether that's with the content or with the language or style of the story. I appreciate boldness, I would rather be slightly confused but gripped than have everything explained to me and be bored. I could say I like the surreal and absurd (am currently adoring Donald Barthelme's 40 Stories) but then again I am also loving very realist stories (Daniel Woodrell's The Outlaw Album, not recommended for just before bed). A perfect story is one that leaves me feeling as if I've been punched in the gut, and not a lot has to happen in it for it to have that effect, it can be the smallest of events.

You've recently branched out into poetry. What influenced that decision?

It's been coming on for a long time, but what really gave it impetus was taking an Arvon course in radio drama tutored by Simon Armitage and his wife, Sue Roberts, a BBC Radio producer, in August 2011. I went because I adore radio, and because I wanted to meet Simon and whisper that I maybe think that perhaps some of what I had been writing was, maybe, poetry. Even just thinking that scared me! I have no background in English Lit (yes, O'level, but didn't get on with poetry at all then), I am frightened of line breaks, I want to know how they work. How could I have been writing poems? Well, Simon was amazing, he began the demystification of it for me, and he told me he thought that many of my fictions were poems. He gave me a reading list, including American Pulitzer-prize-winning poet James Tate - and when I saw his "poems" I couldn't believe it, they look just like flash stories! So the process of releasing my fears began there, and slowly slowly, it's evolving. I took 2 poetry courses here in Bristol last year, one which involved reading poetry, and one which was more of a workshop, with the excellent poet Rachel Boast. I was absolutely terrified to share work at first, to declare that something actually was a poem.

It seems to be going well, though - I was over the moon that a poem of mine was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and I also took it to mean that it is actually a poem! In some ways, writing poetry reminds me of my childhood, when I always had rhymes going on in my head, in some ways it feels like coming home. It's still scary, but I am enjoying the process of working on a poem, again utterly different from prose, quite mathematical, or like a crossword, finding the write word to fit, playing with layout on the page. I am reading loads of poetry, much of it prose poems or experimental stuff, often from the USA. I have several poems coming out in two UK poetry journals, Tears in the Fence and Obsessed with Pipework, so am hoping that 2013 might be my Year of the Poem! We will see.

Who are your favourite short story writers writing now?

Oh dear, so many, so many. Where do I start? I think it's best to avoid mentioning friends, because there will be people I'll forget. So I'll go with: Anthony Doerr, Aimee Bender, George Saunders, Ali Smith, Janice Galloway, Carole Emshwiller... Will that do?

Where do you write?

Hmm, everywhere and nowhere. For a while I wrote in my bedroom, then I had a study at home above my partner's study, we shouted to each other, that didn't work. I have a writing shed but don't find it so conducive to write in, noisy neighbours etc... I love writing in cafes, but then I eat a lot of cake. So... in January I take possession of a very small office, which will finally be the Room of My Own where I can shut out the world. We will see how that goes! But a lot of my writing does go on in my head, especially fertile times being last thing at night as I'm dropping off to sleep or in the morning as I wake up, sometimes whole stories appear. So - everywhere, really.

What is the best piece of advice you've received as a writer?

I took a workshop in 2007 with Aimee Bender and she told me, about a story I was struggling with, that I should let go of needing to know what made my character do the very strange things he was doing. She said, How often do we know the motivations for our own actions? There is rarely a direct cause-and-effect relationship, so let it go. That liberated me completely - and now I feel free not to have the faintest clue why a character is doing what they're doing. Makes life much easier!

Visit Tania's website

Check out Tania's short story magazine, The Short Review
My Mother Was An Upright Piano