A kind correspondent sent me this in response to this post:
"Years ago, on the phone with Bill Buford, then fiction editor of The New Yorker, enduring a series of painful edits, feeling a little insecure, I went fishing for a compliment: “But what do you like about the story?” I whined. There was a long pause at the other end. And Bill said this: “Well, I read a line. And I like it . . . enough to read the next.”
And that was it: his entire short story aesthetic and presumably that of the magazine. And it’s perfect. A story is a linear-temporal phenomenon. It proceeds, and charms us (or doesn’t), a line at a time. We have to keep being pulled into a story in order for it to do anything to us.
I’ve taken a lot of comfort in this idea over the years. I don’t need a big theory about fiction to write it. I don’t have to worry about anything but: Would a reasonable person, reading line four, get enough of a jolt to go on to line five?"
It's from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. It's a lovely thought. Just go one sentence at a time. And arguably (with my relentlessly PowerPoint centric hat on) a good way to think about presentations. Just deliver a slide that makes you want to stay for the next one.
(Also BTW, I'm enjoying the cadence and chorus of blogging like this. I write a bunch of posts when I have a moment to do so, I queue them up to post once a day and then, mostly I forget about them happening. So, then, when someone pulls one from the muddy stream and says 'that was interesting' or 'that made me think of this' it's a real treat.)