Writing Advice

A few days ago, I ran into a supposed quotation from Franz Kafka: "If you introduce a shark in the first chapter, it has to eat someone by the end of the book." After a wonderful time-wasting search of the web, I could find no evidence Kafka said that. I don't really see him talking about sharks anyway. Cockroaches, yes. Sharks, no. But apparently Anton Checkov gave a piece of writing advice that was similar: "One must not put a loaded rifle on stage if no one is thinking of firing it."

Since I am in the editing stage of my manuscript, it is a nice adage to keep in mind in my effort to pare down the excesses that naturally flow in the first draft, at least for me.

Speaking of guns, I wrote a short story two years ago that introduces a gun on the first page. It's called "Fallout Shelter." Here are the first few paragraphs:

If I were taller, it might have worked. I knew the head and the heart were the only acceptable targets, but my arms just weren’t long enough to point the barrel squarely at either one and still be able to reach the trigger. I thought about sawing off the barrel, but not for long. I’m not even sure we have a saw. I guess I could have tried harder to jury-rig a set up. My one effort was to sit on the floor and put my right big toe on the trigger, aiming and steadying the barrel with my knees and hands. It was a disaster. The barrel was pointing at my left shoulder. I tried to nudge it closer to my chest which made the gun slip out of my awkward embrace. As we toppled, it or I knocked the lamp and the thrash can over and ripped off part of my toenail. Our fat tabby cat screeched and ran for her life from the noise.
I don’t care what people say, suicide is not the easy way out. Even attempted suicide is damn hard. If it wasn’t going to be easy, I wasn’t going to do it. That realization made me laugh, since refusing to take the easy path is what got me here. But I gave up on the idea of suicide anyway.
I put the gun down lengthwise on the desk. It served nicely as a giant paperweight, even though it teetered a little. My desk was cluttered with files and papers that came home with me when I was fired last week. The mounded white pile looked like frosting, and transforming my walnut desk into a chocolate cupcake. The bay window was open letting in a breeze that stirred the leaves of the ficus and would have made hay with the papers but for the gun. I pondered the photos along the back edge of my desk. They were the same as those that graced offices everywhere, except now in duplicate. Two photos of me and Mary, Mary and the kids, and each child separately.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” I said, scanning all the images of her before settling on the driftwood framed photo of us on the beach in Maine. It was taken five years ago, I think. That was the last time we took a vacation together. Not for lack of money or time, but rather lack of desire. Neither of us seemed to want a break from the safe routine of life, until now. “But I did what I had to do.”
Mary and I bought this gun soon after we moved into our first house a whole lifetime ago.