I’ve always loved endnotes for short fiction. I would guess that most writers do. We have a fascination with the process of creation that goes above and beyond that of most readers, the same way guitarists ask Keith Richards, “How’d you come up with that riff?” and photographers obsessively analyze the lighting in an Ansel Adams shot.
I think I first encountered story notes in the classic books of Harlan Ellison — although Ellison nearly always employed them as prefaces — and the bug bit hard and permanently.
It’s instructive, or sometimes just benignly voyeuristic, to see where the raw idea for a work came from, and how it mutated along the way. To observe the concerns and obsessions that went into something, or how the author was working through a particular personal issue. To glimpse the challenges and the moments of grace. It’s all fair game.
My fourth short fiction collection, Picking The Bones, started shipping this week. But while in my previous three collections I’d tucked the endnotes into the book itself, like normal, this time I decided to do it differently, by offering them separately, as a downloadable, 29-page PDF booklet. Two reasons:
- Not everybody has the same interest in looking behind the curtain, so why waste trees on a section that doesn’t get read by everyone.
- For those who are interested, why not make something that’s more visual than just plain text, and shows as well as tells where the pieces came from.
And maybe a third reason: to hybridize the physical and digital realms of content. Plus it finally gave me an excuse to use the South Park mock-up of myself as an author photo.
Will it mean anything if you haven’t read the stories? Maybe. I’d like to think it can. Here are some of the things that figure in:
- How particular stories were inspired by cultural touchstones and current or historical events, including the Columbine shootings and the World War II firebombing of Dresden
- The personal fascinations that found their way in
- How I sometimes go out empty-handed and bring an idea back alive
- The liberating effect of working within thematic guidelines
- Various influences, good and bad, of movies on publishing
- How to squeeze a story out of a movie you really really hated
- Playing with other writers’ toys
- How archaic words and obscure concepts can generate story ideas
So if this exercise sounds like it could be of interest, then this download is for you. You know the drill: Right-click and save it to your desktop, or open in a browser window and save from there.
And whether it’s dessert after the main meal, or ala carte, I hope there’s a little nourishment in it for you.
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Of course Stephen King used endnotes to great effect in his short story collections. And interestingly he touched on this subject for his third short story collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes, where he writes of a reader who wrote in and said she never read the endnotes for fear that he give up the magic of how it’s done.
Of course his answer was there *is no* magic but said he would advise people not to read the endnotes first.
I’d have to say, I prefer endnotes at the end of the book, makes it very easy to flick past and read what the author has to say about it, I remember reading “Mostly Cloudy, Chance of Kurt” from The Convulsion Factory and reading how you felt you’d cathartically put something to rest whilst writing it, which came across in the story itself and immediately re-read it.
On the other hand, releasing the endnotes as a PDF would not restrict you to any kind of word limit so I suppose there is the benefit there.
Who knows, with the next collection, whenever that may be, I may well decide to tuck ‘em back inside. I just like to try different things.
Gotta say, though, I’m now wondering if there’s a difference in the lingering impression it leaves, even if subliminally, by going out on a strong anchor story versus going out on the chatty informality of endnotes.
This occurs to me only because in this week’s Publishers Weekly, the book received not only a great review, but a starred review, my first there. It’s like an extra stamp of approval … only ~15% of their reviewed books get them.
At any rate, look for the workplace tour next Monday or Tuesday.
I’ve always enjoyed end notes–after the fact–they deepen the story by giving a sense of what the writer’s stake in it was. I didn’t realize so much thought goes into them…duh! thanks for causing me to take notice.
Oh, a lot of thought goes into pretty much everything … sometimes TOO much: “Would the graphic on this page look better 5mm higher, or where it is now? Or maybe 4mm lower…? Aaauggh!”