Writing influenced
by Woolf.

Woolf made interiority a landscape. The mind became as mappable as a city.

Interior life as subject · The city walk · Consciousness in motion

Virginia Woolf is an unexpected influence in a tradition associated with Carver and Hemingway — but the Tumbleweed Words city walking pieces owe more to Woolf than to either of them. Her Clarissa Dalloway walks through London and the city becomes interior, the interior becomes external. The boundary between the mind and the world is exactly where Woolf's fiction lives. This is also where the best nomadic writing lives: in the specific quality of consciousness that a specific place, at a specific hour, produces.

"Walking through Edinburgh at six in the morning, before anyone else was there, the city became interior. Not metaphorically. The streets were thoughts. This is the Woolf condition."

David — Tumbleweed Words — Edinburgh

Woolf's lesson for flash fiction writers: the interior and exterior are not separate. A character's response to a city — the specific quality of their attention, what they notice and what they don't — is character. You do not need to describe how the character feels. Describe what the character sees and you have described how they feel.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry in the minimalist tradition. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine. Pushcart-nominated. Read the newsletter.