1910: What AM I writing?

     I'm this close to typing The End on the last page of 1910.

      THIS close. 

     I have a stack of note scraps and index cards on the right side of the desk. They say things like "salt water Natatorium" and "lullabye boy" and "piano in a mineshaft." My job is to look at them, decide where they go, if they go, and move them to a stack on the left side of the desk. 

     I'm plagued by questions as I go about this task. The biggest one is WHAT IS THIS?*

1910 began as a short story last summer while I was at Clarion West, so it is fitting that I should desperately examine this flowchart created by Stephen Graham Jones, an instructor at same.

     Now one reading leads me right to magic realism. That's a comfortable spot. 

     I can say, "It is magic realism" and "No, I don't think being from South America is absolutely required. There is a generous immigration policy. I've applied for Magical Realist citizenship."

     But there is another reading. Here I offer one of my most treasured artifacts of last summer, an Indrapramit Das** comment on the story...

I hope that's what I'm writing.

* Yes. I'm aware that I'm screaming on the Internet.

** I also have a PlunderPuss response, but that one let one too many tentacles out of the bag.