Micro Fiction
by Tao Lin
When I look at something that is short and doesn’t have line breaks I think, “Short. Oh.” Then because of all the sites and places and journalists and people who have created these terms, “flash fiction,” “microfiction,” “short-short,” or whatever, I automatically and sarcastically think, “oh, this is what is called a short-short, microfiction, or sometimes flash fiction,” then I get an idea of what the story is going to be like. The idea mostly is that I just keep thinking, “microfiction...flash fiction...short-short...” and it distracts me from the story. When people create something without rhetoric, something that isn’t telling you how to act, in concrete reality, (or maybe anything, when people create anything) then the most accurate way of describing that thing, maybe, is to just read the entire thing (or show the art itself) to whoever wants it described. To group it with other things, or call it something based on its size, or to describe it with other words that aren’t the thing itself, is not accurate, unless you are a scientist that wants to know the size of things for some kind of study on the size of things (or some other exceptions). Therefore I feel uncomfortable talking about “microfiction.” Though I do recognize the function of terms. One function is that if there are two groups of writers or musicians, or something, the group with a term will get more famous than the group without a term. Remember, that sentence I typed does not say what is good or bad, it just says what a function of a term is. I use terms sometimes also. I talk about the professional 20-page short story with themes on the language level. I try to be sarcastic when I talk about that. I also talk about “emo music” a lot. But I think I also try to be sarcastic with that, so people know it’s inaccurate to group a lot of bands together and “dismissive,” to some extent, of each individual band. I’m not sure how that relates to “microfiction.” I have nothing against “microfiction.” I do try not to think the term “microfiction” in my head though because I do not have a sarcastic use for it yet (or a context to use the term sarcastically in), like I do with “emo music.”
Tao Lin is the author of 6 books and blogs frequently at reader of depressing books, his weblog, which receives many visitors daily. A seventh book, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, is due in May 2008.
Among other things, Tao likes The Fish by Lydia Davis, A Gorgeous Hotel, In A Grand City by Michael Earl Craig, In the Centre of That Red Chaos and Compassionate Moose by Mazie Louise Montgomery
Tao Lin lives and works in New York City.