“Zimmer Land” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

1.10.12

Yesterday I spent the day working and catching up on a bunch of short stories, reading the next several stories so that I could read them again on their respective days. As a writer I feel like I can’t really get a short story until I’ve read it twice, maybe three times. The first read is for the aura. In this way short stories are kind of like poems. You know when you read a good poem and you feel like you’ve entered another universe? Reading a good short story feels the same way to me. Reading it twice helps my writer-self figure out how the story works. Three times, and the structure embeds itself into my subconscious, where it’s reduced. Not made smaller. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is it’s combined with all the other stories and books I’ve read and reduced over a hot flame until it’s a sticky syrup. That syrup is what keeps me alive? Or it’s what keeps me inspired. I wouldn’t be alive without inspiration.

Way way back when I would have never called myself a writer I used t…