Work-in-Progress

Work in Progress: Truman Capote's "La Cote Basque 1965"

2012-01-26T11:10:00.000-05:00

As a guilty pleasure, I enjoy reading Vanity Fair, especially the inevitable article about super-rich people living their super-rich lives. Various Kennedys are often involved in these articles. There’s usually a New York City component, which I also love.

This month’s issue hit a real homerun as far as my narrow interests are concerned, a long piece about “ladies who lunch,” looking at the golden era of fancy New York society women—like Babe Paley and Slim Keith—lunching in the 1960s at fancy New York restaurants like La Grenouille (where I’ve been! Though, now, thanks to this article, I know that I didn’t get a very good table, even though it seemed fine enough at the time…and the people at the table next to us were talking about their yacht—poor things, forced to sit at that even worse table!). (Here’s a link to some pictures from the article, which can be found in the February issue.) And, yes, Jacqueline Kennedy made her appearance in the piece.

Also making an appearance: Truman Capote, famous for his immense betrayal of these ladies who had befriended him and confided in him:

“This sheltered, hoity-toity world was torn apart in 1976 by the one writer who had been admitted to its inner sanctums: Truman Capote. The publication of ‘La Cote Basque 1965,’ a chapter of his long-awaited and never-to-be-completed Proustian novel Answered Prayers, in Esquire magazine, was seen as a betrayal of the confidences he had extracted from so many ladies over so many lunches. Set in the restaurant of the same name, Capote’s semi-fictionalized account of some of international society’s major scandals mixed real names—Gloria Vanderbilt, Oona Chaplin, Jackie Kennedy, Lee Radizwill—with barely disguised portrayals of his closest friends, most outrageously Slim Keith and Babe Paley. Much to his chagrin, they banished him from their society forever. But when all is said and done, no one did more to immortalize the ladies who lunched….”

Of course I had to go reread Capote’s story. It’s not a traditional story, mostly a series of stories in dialogue as told to and eavesdropped by Jonesy, who is lunching and gossiping with Ina Coolbirth (nice name!). She has a big secret to tell but has to rip through a bunch of other people’s secrets and drink too much champagne before she can spill it. It’s a wicked, angry, bitter story, and quite compelling, especially in the context of the Vanity Fair article. (Here’s an interesting post about Capote and a short excerpt from the story.)

After the story’s publication, after Capote was cut entirely from this society, he famously tried to explain himself: “I’m a writer! What did they think I was doing all that time at their parties? I was observing them, taking note – I’m a writer!” But actually, this loss of social status and loss of these friendships seem to have led to a deep personal and professional decline. (Here’s his obituary from the New York Times; it paints quite a sad picture.)

It’s the big question many writers struggle with: can—and should—you write about people you care about? Can a writer get to the deep truth without ruffling any feathers? Can true art emerge when a writer fears ramifications?

William Faulkner said, “If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” What would Capote say now? Is “La Cote Basque 1965” an “Ode on a Grecian Urn”? What if it isn’t?

Excellent Classes Coming up at Politics & Prose

2012-01-25T10:13:00.000-05:00

A report from Susan Coll on the exciting new classes offered at Politics & Prose bookstore:

Now open for enrollment is Coming of Age in the Columbine Era, a study of Jim Shepard’s novel, Project X, led by short story writer Paula Whyman.

Other new classes include a study of contemporary poetry and the cultural revolution; a papier mâché workshop taught by French sculptor Constance Chabrières, and an in-depth analysis of the classic Indian novel, A Fine Balance, taught by screenwriter Alexandra Viets.

We are also excited to be offering another installment of the popular Close Reading series by Dylan Landis, a class on literary Washington led by Christopher Griffin, and a variety of memoir classes, including Reading a Life.

Knit Lit returns, and we are also offering a class on Eugene O’Neill pegged to three local productions. Acclaimed novelist James Grady will lead a discussion on Dashiell Hammett’s classic noir trilogy, and there is still space available in a Paris Literary Adventure, one session of which will meet in the evenings.

For a full list of, offerings, please visit http://www.politics-prose.com/classes/2012-classes. You can register for these classes online or call the store at 202-364-1919. Keep an eye out: much more to come!

Iowa Review's Interview with Chris Offutt

2012-01-24T10:22:00.003-05:00

Here’s a good interview in The Iowa Review with writer/TV writer Chris Offutt (in particular, I’m a fan of “Weeds,” a show he wrote for).

Despite an intrusive interviewer, there’s a ton of smart stuff:

“Writing is an uphill battle, and it’s impossible to recognize progress because the progress occurs without you being aware of it, and the only way for you to be aware of it is to do it and then look back. It’s not like math, where you learn to add, then you learn to subtract, then you move on to long division and geometry. With writing, it always feels as if I don’t have much skill to begin with, I’ve lost what little I had, and everything sucks [laughs]. I think it’s the writer’s lot.”

And I know I shouldn’t quote at such length, but I thought this was such helpful advice about revision:

"AD: What are some of the things you teach your students about revision?

"CO: The first one is to write about what you care about. Write about something that hurt you. Write about something that you’re scared of. If you choose a subject with those three attributes, regardless of the quality of the first draft, you will have an emotional involvement in it. That’s the first part. The next one is to really step away from the manuscript. It’s hard for young writers—and for me—to realize you have a lifetime ahead of you. This thing’s not going to be perfect in two weeks or two months. I step away from manuscripts for several months, sometimes years.

"To revise adequately, you have to be objective, and therein lies the tricky part: if you generate a first draft that you have an emotional relationship with and that you’ve staked your identity on, you’re heavily invested in that. Well, that means it’s subjective. You put everything in. You cut your veins and bled on the page. It’s impossible to be objective very soon after.

"I believe that if you both embrace and surrender to the writing process, something’s going to happen there on the page that’s very separate from what you anticipated and what you thought you were doing—separate from what you had set out to do, and even separate from what you wanted to be doing. If you give it some time, you can look at the work and learn what it really is. That’s when you cut everything out that doesn’t support it. That may be huge chunks and huge scenes. It could be the first twenty pages, because on page twenty-one, this thing took off. No one in their right mind is going to cut the first twenty pages of a manuscript within the first few days of writing it.

"On a smaller scale, what I tend to do with my own work is cut the first few pages and cut the last few pages. In the first few pages, there’s that terrible self-consciousness, the blank page, trying to write something on it, knowing you’re setting out to write a short story, wondering if your idea is sufficient enough. Will it be as good as any other story I’ve written? Eventually, that fades and the story begins. The same thing happens when you approach the ending. When you know the story is approaching the ending, that selfconsciousness kicks in again. And there’s a reluctance to leave that imaginary
world. It starts out difficult to access, then it’s a fucking pleasure to inhabit, and then you have to leave these people and this world alone. For me, there’s a tendency to prolong it a little bit and stay with them. And then there’s also the self-consciousness about ending a story. Endings are important, and they’re difficult. There’s this tendency to write this big, glittering, wonderful ending that reads like someone tacked on this big ending to a short story. It hangs there like a chandelier in a shack."

And there’s more! Read the rest here.

Two-Day Writing Retreat and Healing Poetry in Alexandria

2012-01-23T10:13:00.002-05:00

Two interesting events in two different parts of Virginia, one co-organized by the fabulous and fabulously smart Angela Winter (who shared with us her yummy, not-to-be-missed vegan chutneys here):

A Winter Writing Retreat with Pat MacEnulty and Angela Winter
February 18-19, 2012
Saturday 10 am to Sunday 3 pm

Join us for a Winter Writing Retreat at the beautiful Sevenoaks Retreat Center in the foothills of Virginia: Rejuvenate your writing process, relax with other writers, and explore the process and craft of transformative writing.

You will come away from this two-day retreat with tools to help you commit to your writing and continue to develop your writing process. To enhance our writing, we will also explore mind-body practices to help us settle into our physical bodies, tap into the fullness of the present moment, and open our hearts and voices to the flow of words.

This retreat is appropriate for all levels of writers, and this is also a great professional development opportunity for teachers.

Registration and more information are here: http://sevenoakspathwork.org/programs/workshopdetail/workshopdetail.php?content_id=47

Pat MacEnulty is the author of six books, including four novels, a memoir, and a short story collection, as well as a self-help book, and numerous interviews and essays. She has facilitated retreats in New York City, San Miguel de Allende, Tallahassee, Fort Lauderdale, Charlotte, and at Sevenoaks Retreat Center.

Angela Winter is a singer, writer, consultant, and former associate publisher of The Sun Magazine. In this retreat, she will blend her experience as a wellness educator with her unique background in voice, sound, and transformational energy work to help participants open their expressive voice and replenish their whole being.

*****

Morrison House Presents: Mary Azoy, Licensed Professional Counselor & Poetry Therapist: “Poetry and Creative Play: Writing as an Expressive Coping Strategy”

~Part of a Salon-Style Series Celebrating Culture through Arts, Literature, and History Discussions

DESCRIPTION: Mary Azoy, Certified Poetry Therapist, will explore the value of poetry therapy as a powerful tool for coping with life’s challenges and enhancing your creative potential. The evening’s presentation will incorporate experiential exercises (both fun and low risk!) as well as plenty of time for discussion and sharing among all those who attend. Bring your favorite pen and writing pad!

WHEN: Tuesday, February 7, 6 to 8pm

WHERE: Morrison House, 116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria, VA 22314

INFO/SPONSORS: Morrison House: www.morrisonhouse.com / Phone: 703-838-8000 & Torpedo Factory Art Center Website: www.torpedofactory.org

ADMISSION: Free admission (Food and drink available for purchase)

Old Town Alexandria, VA – "Morrison House Presents" is a salon-style discussion series exploring Alexandria’s heritage and culture through talks with artists, authors, and archaeologists from Alexandria and the nationally acclaimed Torpedo Factory Art Center. The stylish yet comfortable setting of the Morrison House salon provides an ideal backdrop for members of the public to participate in an open and lively conversation with artists and other experts.

“Poetry and Creative Play: Writing as an Expressive Coping Strategy”: Discovering or renewing your creative energy can make the difference between thriving and burnout, especially during these stressful times. Through participation in poetry exercises that are both low-risk and eye-opening you’ll have fun – and gain powerful tools that can help you cope more effectively with life’s challenges in your professional or personal life .Just bring something to write on and with – and a playful attitude!

Mary is a Licensed Professional Counselor (VA) and Certified Poetry Therapist who has been active in the mental health field for more than 20 years. She currently is a clinician in private practice and with Granato Counseling Services in Vienna, Virginia. Mary also works as a presenter and workshop facilitator with the DOD’s Yellow Ribbon Program that assists military families in coping with deployments and reintegration. As former Director of Community Education and Crisis Response at CrisisLink, Mary developed an expertise in crisis response, suicide prevention, and grief and trauma, working directly with victims of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and others impacted by sudden and traumatic loss. She has also served as an adjunct professor at George Mason University. Mary graduated from Princeton University and has advanced degrees in psychological services from Marymount University and anthropology from University of Virginia. As a Certified Poetry Therapist, she has conducted expressive therapy workshops both domestically and abroad. Mary is a former writer for National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian, and is a published poet.

More about the Series

This series of monthly talks is sponsored by the Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association, the Alexandria Archaeological Commission, and the Morrison House Hotel. The talks take place on the first Tuesday of each month. Cocktails will be available for purchase through The Grille at Morrison House Hotel, and dinner reservations can be made for guests who would like to continue their experience following the event.

About Morrison House

The Morrison House, a Kimpton Hotel, is an elegant boutique hotel located in the heart of Old Town, Alexandria. Named an outstanding hotel on Condé Nast Traveler’s 2008 Gold List, the hotel exhibits the romance of Europe and the charm of Early America through its decorative federalist-style reproductions. The architecture blends into the historic surrounding of Alexandria, while its warmly lit rooms, soft music, and outstanding cuisine define an experience that is graceful and effortless. The AAA Four Diamond property also features The Grille, an intimate restaurant that serves a menu of relaxed American fine dining.

Work in Progress: The Luxury of Time and Space

2012-01-19T09:54:00.000-05:00

This is my last week before my novel-writing workshop starts up at Johns Hopkins, soon to be followed by packets from my Converse College MFA students, so I’ve been trying to make the most of this tiny lull by focusing on my writing—on one rather challenging story in particular. If I get a working draft, I’ll be able to work from that during the more hectic times when my attention is torn between my work and my students’ work.

During this week, I’ve had no social obligations, which was more coincidence than design (and yes, which is pathetic to admit). However, I’ve definitely noticed a smoother flow to my writing and time management: errands/misc. in the mornings, writing in the afternoon, cooking a healthy dinner (by design, thanks to all that yummy holiday food), catching up on New Yorkers and writing magazines at night. A few select TV shows. Kind of a quiet, dull life, and I’m not sure I could maintain it for too long…and yet, it seems to be good for my writing.

I’m never far from my story draft. When I cook, my subconscious is processing the work of the day. The magazines are inspiring, reinforcing my choice of the writing life with their artfulness, advice, and community. At night before going to sleep, I think about the characters of my story; when I wake up at 4AM, I think about the story and why it isn’t working and what I’m missing and where it could go. After I fall asleep and wake up again for real, I try to sort through whatever my subconscious might have figured out while I was asleep.

It’s all very peaceful and very obsessive.

And it’s working. This morning I had the breakthrough I was hoping for. I see what the story is about, and I understand how I can get it to that point. I still have today and tomorrow to work. My scribbled notes still look smart, a few hours later. Anything can happen between here and there, of course, but, honestly, I’m not all that worried. Not that I know what I’m doing, just that I trust that some tiny part of my self knows what it’s doing, and for now, I feel lucky that I can be fine with simply trusting in it.

Wait for it, wait for it. And if you have the luxury of time and space—even for a brief time—it will come.

P.S. This article by Frank Bures in the recent Poets & Writers magazine about the importance of finding ways to create space for your writing self was mentally helpful to me (i.e. the dangers of Facebook and being constantly wired in). Alas, it’s in print only, but the whole issue is worth seeking out.

Link Corral: Lit Journal Copy Editor Internship; Converse Low-Res MFA App Deadline; New on Redux

2012-01-18T09:45:00.000-05:00

Palooka seeks a Copy Editor to fill a literary journal internship opportunity.

The chosen candidate will work remotely, checking facts, proofreading, and line editing all journal content as needed. We produce one to two issues per year (approximately 50 pages each), and the position will begin immediately with work on Palooka #3. Though the internship is unpaid, the candidate will not only gain experience and credibility, but will also have the opportunity to learn how to run a successful literary magazine by working directly with the founder and editor.

The ideal candidate has editing experience, aspires to a career in publishing, is computer literate, Microsoft Word savvy, and demonstrates accuracy and efficiency in completing tasks. Strong communication skills and timely responses via e-mail and telephone are also required.

To apply, please attach a letter of interest tailored to Palooka and this position, along with a resume with at least three references and phone numbers (preferably two are able to attest to your editing experience and abilities) addressed to Jonathan Starke, Editor at <palooka(at)palookajournal.com> (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail). Include the position title (Copy Editor) in the subject line of your e-mail.

The position will remain open until filled. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

*****

Are you ready to take the next step in your writing life? Do you want to work with acclaimed teachers like Denise Duhamel, Robert Olmstead, and Albert Goldbarth (and me!) Do you want to see what the Chili Cheese A’Plenty at the Beacon Drive-In in Spartanburg is all about?

Think about joining us at the Converse College Low-Residency MFA Program this summer. It’s not too late—the deadline for applications in February 15, 2012.

You can read all the juicy details here.

*****

There’s a beautiful new short-short posted on Redux: “Shelf Life of Love” by Virginia Pye:

“My brother calls from his rental car on the way home from the hospital while I consider lunch meats at the Stop ‘n Shop. He rarely calls, not until recently. My mother used to call all the time. She can’t get the hang of cell phones and besides, they don’t let you use them from in there, where you need them most. The walkie talkies we gave her and Dad a year ago spoon like lovers in a box under their bed. They were supposed to give her peace of mind when she shuffled out on errands and left him alone. But now she is the one in the hospital and there’s no one at the apartment. Still, the double bed, I imagine, is neatly made, the bedspread faded but clean. She would have wanted it nice for my brother when he got back from visiting her at the end of the day. So far, though, he insists on staying with her, sleeping in a recliner chair like the ones we sat in at the end with Dad. The report from my brother is brief, inconclusive. He’ll get back to me when he has more news. We hang up without saying good bye.”

Read the rest here.

Split This Rock: DC Poetry Festival Set for March 22-25

2012-01-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

Has the Occupy movement stirred your soul? Check out this year's Split This Rock Poetry Festival, here in DC. Registration is now open:

Poems of Provocation and Witness

Split This Rock is a nonprofit organization that calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Every two years, Split This Rock hosts a 4-day poetry festival in Washington, DC that draws poets, activists and artists from around the country. The festival includes readings from nationally known poets, workshops, panel discussions, youth programs, open mics and activism.

This March, Split This Rock will host its festival March 22-25, 2012. The festival, titled Poems of Provocation and Witness, will explore economic inequality, political repression, and environmental degradation, among other topics. It will feature some of the most visionary and powerful voices of our time, including Alice Walker, Homero Aridjis, Sonia Sanchez and other featured poets. It will also bring together environmental activists, youth organizers, slam champions, poets of all ethnicities, DC-area poets, publishers, and emerging poets.

To learn more about the festival and to register, click here.

Work in Progress: Commitment

2012-01-12T10:25:00.000-05:00

I’ve been between “big projects” lately: no novel-in-progress that I’m actively pursuing. No grand plan for the short stories I’ve been writing, though they could be shaped into a “grand plan.” I’ve got some old work that I’ve figured out how to revise but I’m not revising any of it.

For some reason, this situation has made me feel lazy and aimless. (Thank you, Life in America and Catholic Guilt.) So I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what project to commit to, while also driving others crazy. Why can’t I figure out that “What are you working on right now?” is just a polite, conversation-starting question, not an invitation for a long rambling discussion of how I feel I must commit to something but I can’t figure out what I’m going to commit to though I’ve given myself a deadline of January to get my act together and I have three ideas that I could…by this time, the questioner has fled to the bar or the bathroom.

I guess what’s interesting is that I know what I want to work on: these stories. I have been inspired this fall, working on a series of stories that might end up linked but might not. I’ve been challenged, uncomfortable, afraid, intrigued by my writing all fall. I think of ideas and insights at all hours of the day, at any number of various locations. There are scraps of scribbled paper on my desk, in my nightstand; ideas scrawled on the backs of receipts in my purse. I can’t get this work out of my head.

Why would I mess with that? The thought of trying to push myself into something Big because I “should” be working on something Big is insane. Run the hot streak, right? Go with the flow. Trust the muse, have faith in the process.

So here’s my commitment, since the drive home from the MFA residency at Converse was my Official Decision Deadline: I commit to continue writing these stories that are challenging, uncomfortable, and difficult, and that make me feel happy and fulfilled as a writer. I commit to not worrying about the Big Picture and the Big Project…until I drive home from the summer residency at Converse. (I mean, I can’t actually go totally without a Plan, can I? That would really be insane!)

Writing Prompts & Residency Opportunity for Young Writers

2012-01-11T12:47:00.000-05:00

My fabulous neighborhood writing prompt group met this morning, and we found a lot to say about these two prompts:

1. Saturday

2. “It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.” ~Alfred Adler

***

Young writers--be check out this great opportunity to live and write in Spartanburg, SC, as the Hub-Bub Artists in Residence Program. Application deadline: February 15, 2012.

From the website:

LIVE FREE AND WRITE

IF YOU ARE a writer between the ages of 20 and 35,

IF YOU LONG to live free and create for 11 months in a huge, beautiful studio apartment,

IF YOU WOULD LOVE to be a part of over 100 nights of art, literature, and entertainment in a historic downtown,

and IF YOU WANT to spearhead community-based projects while collaborating with other creative people and organizations, learn from an award-winning independent small press, and engage your passion for creating new work and making a difference in the community,

YOU SHOULD APPLY for the writer-in-residence position through the Hub City Writers Project and HUB-BUB in Spartanburg, South Carolina, as part of the HUB-BUB Artists-in-Residence Program. More info.

Residency: Wrap-Up

2012-01-10T10:31:00.000-05:00

Another excellent residency with the Converse low-res MFA program. So wonderful to see our graduates read their work and lecture on an array of craft topics…surely it won’t be long before I’m off to the bookstore to buy one of their books (I promise always to buy hardcover!).

As for me, I’m still trying to organize my real world life, which I totally forgot about while I was away (not to worry; Steve came along for several days, so it’s not as though I forgot about him).

Before my mind gets too foggy, and I totally forget about the magic of the residency, here are some quick (paraphrased!) highlights from my notebook:

Small Press Panel

Betsy Teter, Hub City Press

--Be discriminating in your search for a small press; always ask if the press has active distribution. Do they send out galleys and review copies?

--Your best chance at a small press is usually when you have some sort of connection; do you know the people who run the press? Do you know someone who can recommend your work to the press?

--“I’m looking for writers whose books will sell.” She considers underwriting possibilities as she evaluates work and opportunities for an extended book tour based on places where a writer has lived and has connections.

--She suggested www.newpages.com as the best site to learn more about small press publishers.

Guest lecture on characters by Cary Holladay

--“All of my stores are written because one person loves someone else”: an aching heart is at the core

--A character’s desires create suspense. These desires my change direction, so ask yourself frequently, what do your characters want?

--“A secret is a useful thing for a character to have or discover.”

--A rule of thumb: avoid letting your character be alone too long because they ruminate and brood instead of act.

--Readers can tell how deeply you go into your own heart. “Write until it hurts.”

Oh, seriously, there are PAGES more of great stuff from Cary. This was an amazing lecture, and I feel fortunate that I was in attendance. If you ever get the chance to see Cary Holladay read and/or teach, GO! In fact, drive through a snowstorm to get there. She’s terrific! I’ve never met a more generous writer: in her lecture, she included work by each member of the fiction faculty and discussed it with such love and detail that we all felt blessed. (And that's NOT a word I tend to use.) To get a sense of how wonderful she is, check out this interview.

Agent talk by Jeff Kleinman, Folio Literary Management

--He tends to look for two things: First, a good premise and an ability to come up with ideas. Second, he looks for a book that is voice-driven.

--Learning to write well is simply the bottom line, he said. The next step is to figure out what makes you and your story special.

--In the query process, he suggests always sending along a first page even if not requested in the guidelines, telling the agent you’re doing so “just to give you a sense of the writing.”

--Your cover letter and synopsis should have a voice that reflects the book. If your book is funny, your letter/synopsis should also be funny.

***

Like all that? There’s SO MUCH more, including heated discussion about Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” the annual fiction writers dinner, a night of hilariously bad break-up stories, wine and beer and Jack Daniels & ginger ale, the same Mexican restaurant twice in one day, and the creamiest grits ever!

So….join us. The application deadline for summer 2012 is February 15! More info here.

Post-Residency: Exhaustion

2012-01-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

SO much to say about the fabulous time at Converse's MFA residency...but I'm waaaay too tired and overwhelmed with chores to say it now. More later!

Instead, check out today's Doonesbury comic strip in which local DC bookstore Politics & Prose is mentioned! Yay! http://www.doonesbury.com/strip (Check fast...it looks as though this is not a dedicated link to this exact strip.)

Residency: Day I-Have-No-Idea

2012-01-03T11:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was dubbed The Day of Me. I was the one who dubbed it this, of course, because in a scheduling glitch, I gave my craft lecture in the morning and then gave my reading at night. So, a long, somewhat nerve-wracking day…but as far as a Day of Me goes, I couldn’t ask for anything better.

My craft lecture was about creating characters who are alive, and Rick Mulkey, our fearless Converse leader, got to offer his rendition of the famous “It’s Alive!” scene from the 1931 movie, Frankenstein, and I got to read passages from some of my favorite fiction: Moby-Dick, The Catcher in the Rye, We Need to Talk About Kevin, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and (of course) The Great Gatsby.

I’m always nervous to read brand-new work, but my rant-ish story about female aging went well and was beautifully enhanced by my reading partner, visiting guest Keith Lee Morris, who read from his new collection of stories Call It What You Want a hilarious story about male midlife crisis. The unplanned she said-he said effect was perfect!

And then the poker game.

I sat in just to show a woman could sit in on a poker game, the only one brave (or stupid) enough to do so…and immediately won two very large hands. (Might I add that I was playing with men who brought their own cards and chips, who spoke a language I didn’t understand (high-low stud, iron cross, guts poker), and even one who was a professional ball player, savvy from years of card games on team buses and locker rooms.) I quit while I was ahead—entrusting my chips to a trustworthy student, who managed not to lose the entire pot over the next several hours, which is surely more than I would have accomplished had I stayed in the game.

And, to cap the Day of Me, the Stanford-OK game was a thriller. I was rooting for Stanford, but alas…the game spilled beyond midnight, beyond the Day of Me, and consequently, Stanford lost. Such is my power on the Day of Me….

Converse Residency: Day 1

2011-12-31T12:11:00.000-05:00

Well…I accessed the internet here at the Convers low-res MFA residency in the mountains of North Carolina, but sloooow, so I’ll be brief. We started our first full day in fine style, with a craft lecture by my fiction colleague, Marlin Barton, about rejection and criticism. Ahhh…the writing life!

Yet amidst the despair, there was hope, as Bart reminded us that the reason rejection and criticism hurt so much on a bad day is that we believe our worst and most secret fears are confirmed: we’re not talented enough, we’re frauds, everyone can see it.

BUT—those feelings—as difficult as they may be—are also good because they force us to keep pushing against the limits of our talents, and that’s what being an artist is all about.

With that in mind, it’s off to workshop!

(Eggs Benedict for breakfast—yum! And amazingly creamy grits! My clothes still fit, but if this keeps up, I’ll be heading home in a gunnysack, albeit a stylish, black one.)

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

2011-12-22T22:49:00.000-05:00

Given that I am writing this about 12 hours after the time I usually blog, I would have to say that the holiday season has officially won, and I’m succumbing to it: UNCLE! Oh, there may be a responsible thing or two accomplished in the next few days, but that seems unlikely. I may poke in next week—or I may not.

And then I’m off to teach at the Converse College low-residency MFA program, and I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to blog there. Depends on the wireless situation at the Pine Crest Inn in the mountains of North Carolina, where we’ll be meeting. Also depends on how fun the after-parties are.

So, until we meet again, happy holidays and happy new year! I have a good feeling about 2012….

John Waters Loves Lionel Shriver, Too!

2011-12-21T10:17:00.001-05:00

We saw John Waters perform his one-man Christmas monologue on Sunday night, and he was fabulous and funny. Famous for, well, I’m not sure how to describe him if you don’t know the wide and vast body of his work, but he’s a Baltimore legend, an actor/writer/filmmaker (you’ve probably heard of Hairspray). The man is fearless and will say anything, and the range of cultural references in his talk was breath-taking, ranging from Warhol to obscure gay porn film titles to Ivy Compton-Burnett to Justin Bieber. He’s definitely someone I could listen to for hours, soaking in the stories and his intellect (there’s no other way to say it; he simply has an original and fascinating mind). A secret fantasy of mine is to somehow get invited to his famous Christmas party in Baltimore, or, since that’s a bit unrealistic, to run into him some day in Baltimore.

I bought a copy of his most recent book, Role Models, about the various people who inspired him (again, a very wide and eclectic range), and while I haven’t read all of it yet, of course I jumped to the chapter called “Bookworm,” in which he narrows down his collection of 8,425 books to select “John Waters’s Five Books You Should Read to Live a Happy Life If Something Is Basically the Matter with You.”

He had me at this paragraph:

“You should never read for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’s insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Once you have to concentrate on while reading. And for God’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid.”

And then he really, really, REALLY had me when one of his five books—out of 8,425, remember—was Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. !!! He writes, “Here’s a page-turner from the Devil’s Reading List about a child all parents pray they never have….We Need to Talk About Kevin could bring any parent sobbing to his (or her) knees, yet somehow this book is easy to like.”

Yes, yes, yes, and YES! Now I know what John and I can chat about when I’m sipping eggnog at his art-filled house in Baltimore.

(He’s wrapping up his tour tonight in Baltimore at the Lyric…worth whatever you might have to pay for tix!)

My Novel Chapter Is Published in The Drum, an Audio Journal!

2011-12-20T10:17:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from my historical Chicago novel is now up on The Drum Literary Magazine. Here’s the Very Cool thing…The Drum is an audio journal, so I’m reading my piece! This is a moment where I absolutely love technology.

The story will be up for free for three months, and after that, it will be behind a pay wall (I’ve always wanted to exist behind a pay wall, so this is kind of exciting, too). You can listen directly on your computer or you can easily download stories and essays (why stop with my work—there’s lots of great work available).

And just so you know before settling in, my chapter is about 45 minutes long. To enhance your listening experience, I suggest an accompaniment of toast, excellent marmalade, and tea or coffee—a late breakfast vibe (you’ll see why)…just, please, whatever you do, don’t burn the toast!!

Here are the FAQs, if you’d like more information about the process of how to listen to the stories, and here are the submission guidelines if you’re interested in submitting your own work. (On paper—if your work is accepted, then you will be instructed on putting together an audio file of proper quality. The magazine is also looking for performers to read stories.)

You can get info on the email newsletter and podcasts on the home page, which—if you’ve forgotten—is where you can also find my chapter for the next three months! (Can you tell I’m excited?)

New Lionel Shriver Book Coming in March!

2011-12-19T07:23:00.002-05:00

I was delighted to learn that my literary idol, Lionel Shriver, will be coming out with a new novel in March, 2012: The New Republic. I will buy anything she writes, of course (as you know if I’ve ever cornered you to rave about We Need to Talk About Kevin…and when will that movie get here already??). This one is not a book that might initially appeal to me, but Lionel Shriver can do no wrong IMHO, and the book’s backstory is certainly interesting:

“…a novel she wrote in 1998 will finally see the light of day on March 27, 2012. Seems that publishing three bestsellers in a row gives you a little more leeway when it comes to choosing difficult material as your subject.

“As Shriver told the website Culture, The New Republic deals with terrorism “on a peninsula in Portugal which doesn’t exist—I drew it onto the map. I wrote it in 1998 and at that time I had trouble getting American publishers interested in the manuscript—none of them were interested in terrorism until after 9/11. . . . Now in some ways the US cares too much about terrorism and for a long time I felt it would be wrong to publish something that has a sense of humour about the issue. Enough time has gone by for a droll novel to be well received.” Read the rest.

This Daily Beast interview with Shriver is titled: “The Oracle of the Uncomfortable”:

“When asked about the subject of her next novel, American author Lionel Shriver replies simply, “fat.” This will be her “obesity book.” The proposed plot: a woman risks her marriage to help her morbidly overweight brother. [NOTE: This is the book that will follow The New Republic.] Not a comfortable theme, perhaps, but that should come as no surprise to Shriver’s admirers. After all, her previous tomes have dealt with terrorism, death, and the failings of the U.S. health-care system, and—in her 2003 bestseller, We Need To Talk About Kevin—the nightmare perils of parenthood. Some writers might hesitate to upset the public with truths usually left unspoken; for Shriver, that’s her business. “There is no point writing book after book about what other people have already addressed ad nauseam. I am always working toward what we have all been avoiding.”

And for some writerly inspiration, here’s the backstory of We Need to Talk About Kevin:

“Kevin, her seventh book, was rejected by 30 publishers. Her own agent advised a wholesale revision to lighten the darkness and add “a lot more humor.” The failure forced her to consider abandoning fiction altogether. Only the faith of an editor at a small London publishing firm saved the book from oblivion. (Shriver parted company with the agent, whom she now describes, with a suggestion of understatement, as “quite annoyed.”) A slow-burn success, the book’s popularity grew by word of mouth. Even before Kevin won the Orange Prize in 2005, one of Britain’s top literary awards, the book already featured on the Times of London’s bestseller list. Early pre-fame admirers included Lynne Ramsay, director of the Kevin movie, who bid for the film rights.”

Read on. And mark your calendars for the book release!

Work in Progress: My Favorite Christmas Reading

2011-12-16T10:34:00.000-05:00

Since I didn’t blog yesterday, my penance is to write about something horrifying and embarrassing, specifically the books and stories that I love to read and reread whenever Christmas rolls around. Yes, there are highly sophisticated books, poems, and stories about Christmas, but I don’t read those. Instead, here are my favorites:

Four Midwestern Sisters’ Christmas Book by Holly J. Burkhalter. Out of print, I bought this in hardcover—back when buying a hardcover was a Very Big Deal for my financial status—and I’ve never regretted it. It’s about four sisters who grew up in Iowa who think back on their Christmas traditions and memories. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to love this book as much as I do, but I do love it dearly! There's an adorable photo--probably also now on the Awkward Photos site--of the sisters and their mother wearing matching homemade, red plaid jumpers over white blouses.

Martha Stewart’s Christmas, 1989 version. This edition is also out of print, though Lord knows there are more than enough books out there about what Martha thinks we should do for Christmas. This was the first, though, and there’s something fascinating about looking at the picture of a young Martha mixing up dough for 10 Christmas puddings (i.e. 30 eggs), contemplating laying gold leaf on a gingerbread mansion that has real lights inside, and staring at the dozens of cream puffs in the glorious croquembouche. Also, the very last photo shows Martha’s daughter Alexis kissing her boyfriend, Sam Waksal, who would later be the source of Martha’s downfall in her stock market escapades.

Treasury of Christmas Stories, edited by Ann McGovern. It only counts if you have this 1971 edition, which is the edition you bought from the school book sale way back when for the princely sum of sixty cents. The best selections are the chapter from Little House on the Prairie in which Mr. Edwards meets Santa Claus and brings gifts to Laura and Mary during a blizzard, and, of course, “The Fir Tree” by Hans Christian Anderson. Every year, even knowing exactly what’s coming, I read this story and sob. What a writer who can move a reader to tears over the fate of a tree!

I don’t own a separate copy (and why not, I’m wondering right now?) of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, but that is another absolute favorite, as he and his friend (i.e. crazy aunt) make special fruitcakes together that they give only to the people they like. Here’s a beautiful first edition from 1956 that looks like the one to buy, if I happened to have a spare $300-$1000.

Crazy Daisy vs. Ms. Grind

2011-12-14T10:14:00.000-05:00

I love this blog post by Karin Gillespie, one of the fiction students in the Converse College Low-Res MFA program. She writes about the dueling nature of the writer’s brain and the writing process:

“Have you ever read the work of a young, uncorrupted writer? It’s like venturing into a jungle: Fresh. Green. Wild. Monkeys beating their furry chests. Parrots shrieking. Anacondas curling around trees. A chaos of creativity.

“Such a writer is ruled almost entirely by her subconscious. The subconscious—let’s call her Crazy Daisy -- doesn’t know the difference between a gerund and a dangling participle; she only cares about expressing herself. Writing is play, not work.

“Unfortunately Crazy Daisy, charming as she is, has a problem: Her work meanders like a toddler strewing petals at a wedding: she needs to be reined in. Enter Ms. Grind.

“ Ms. Grind cares about the rules.”

How to resolve this tension and use it to our advantage? Who wins, Crazy Daisy or Ms. Grind? Read on to see!

Link Corral: $$, To Self-Publish or Not, and New on Redux

2011-12-13T09:08:00.000-05:00

No one should go into writing to get rich, but a little money along the way is nice. Here’s a list of literary journals that pay when they publish your work:

http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/show-me-literary-magazines-pay

****

Pondering self-publication? Here’s a good piece on why one writer decided not to go that direction:

“Many of the writers who have found success in self-publishing are writers of straightforward genre fiction. Amanda Hocking writes young adult fantasy, dwarfs and all. Valerie Forster, who published traditionally before setting out on her own, writes legal thrillers. Romance, too, often does just fine without a publisher. Aside from Anthropology of An American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann, I can’t think of another literary novel that enjoyed critical praise and healthy sales when self-published. That’s not to say that it can’t — and shouldn’t — happen, it’s only to point out that it’s a tougher road for writers of certain sorts of stories. Readers like me aren’t seeking out self-published books. Why not? That’s for another essay. (Please, can someone else write that one?) Until the likes of Jeffrey Eugenides and Alice Munro begin publishing their work via CreateSpace, I don’t see the landscape for literary fiction changing anytime soon.”

Read on: http://www.themillions.com/2011/11/reasons-not-to-self-publish-in-2011-2012-a-list.html

You may not agree with every point, but they are points worth considering.

*****

You’ll love Paula Whyman’s story now on Redux; it’s that best combination of funny and poignant. "The Rose Garden" previously appeared in North Dakota Quarterly.

“…Elizabeth rode through the patter of rain, safely dry in the back seat of the cab, and imagined her hosts. “Tim”—the only name the travel agent had provided—would be a tall yet small-boned man in his early sixties with a reddish-gray beard. Nearsighted, he would wear those magnifying half-glasses you could buy in the drug store, because he just didn’t care about fashion. His wife (Mrs. Tim?) would be a heavy-set woman as tall as her husband who spoke only to ask pointed questions. She would dislike women who wore perfume to breakfast. The wife had an eye for artful clutter, but Tim was the better cook.

“The parlor would smell like cinnamon, which Elizabeth liked, or apple spice tea, which she did not. There would be two cats who kept out of sight, except to appear out of nowhere and rub suddenly across the ankles, and she would have to stop herself from shoving them gently away with her instep, instead smiling at her host, commiserating about the foibles of cats.

“The saddest words, what might have been. Who wrote that? She and Cleve had always preferred to sit at their own table for breakfast. But this time was different because she was alone….”

Read on: http://reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com/2011/12/13-rose-garden-by-paula-whyman.html

Free Fiction Workshop at G.W. in DC; Apps Due 1/9

2011-12-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

The Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Workshop is one of the best deals in the DC writing world. Each year, a writer comes to DC to be in residence at George Washington University, and part of their obligation includes teaching a FREE, semester-long writing class. Yes, FREE. All you have to do is follow the application directions and keep your fingers crossed that your manuscript will be accepted. That’s right, even the application process is FREE! (Thank you, Jenny McKean Moore.)

The visiting writer this year, Tim Johnston, will be focusing on the short story.

As per usual, GWU seems not to recognize that a website with this information would be helpful, so these are the directions in their entirety:

The George Washington University Jenny McKean Moore Free Community Workshop

Fall 2011-Art of the Story

Tuesdays, 7 – 9 p.m., January 24, 2012 – May 1, 2012

Led by Tim Johnston

Come and take part in a semester-long fiction workshop! To apply you do NOT need academic qualifications or publications. The class will include some readings, writing exercises, and inducements to revise, but will mainly be a roundtable critique of work submitted by class members. There are no fees to participate in the class, but you will be responsible for making enough copies of your stories for all 15 participants. Students at Consortium schools (including GWU) are not eligible.

To apply, please submit a letter of interest and a sample of your writing no more than 7 pages in length. Make sure you include your name, address, home and work telephone numbers, and email address. Application materials will not be returned. Applications must be received at the following address by close of business on Monday, January 9, 2012:

JMM Fiction Workshop

Department of English

The George Washington University

801 22^nd Street, NW (Suite 760)

Washington, DC 20052

Tim Johnston is the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Washington for 2011 –2012. He is the author of the prize-winning story collection Irish Girl, and the novel Never So Green.

The GWU is an equal opportunity institution.

Work in Progress: My Favorite Books of 2011

2011-12-08T10:43:00.000-05:00

Luckily, I don’t have to be as rigid as other “best of” lists that must restrict themselves to books that were published during a particular year. Also, I don’t have to fill out the list to make a round and tidy ten or winnow down to five. These are simply the books I most enjoyed reading this year and, also, less simply, books that changed my writing life in a profound way. Flipping through the pages of my book journal, it was immediately evident which books would end up on this list. In chronological order of when I read them:

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell: the tense, insular world of the proud and poverty-stricken Ozarks

Normal People Don’t Live Like This by Dylan Landis: mother and daughter navigating their relationship and growing up in 1970s New York City

If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black: short stories about the desperate, private griefs of everyday people

The Dry Well by Marlin Barton: lightly linked short stories set in rural Alabama

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James: vibrant, young Isabel Archer leaves America to find herself in Europe

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge: Scott’s doomed expedition to Antarctica, as narrated by several members of the travel party

Atonement by Ian McEwan: a young girl misinterprets an action and lives are changed forever

How are these books similar? An emphasis on setting that puts me into a world I’m unfamiliar with, a focus on precise and interesting language, and a whole, whole lot of sorrow. I guess that’s my formula!

Writing Prompts for a Rainy, Dreary Day

2011-12-07T14:23:00.000-05:00

These two writing prompts worked very well this morning in my neighborhood prompt group:

1. “Someone lied.”

2. “Unless you believe, you won’t understand.” ~St. Augustine

Fifteen minutes on each…now go!

New on Redux

2011-12-06T08:09:00.000-05:00

Check out “Hot Coffee, Summer,” a short story by Christine Grillo that previously appeared in the Southern Review:

“Saturday, and Franco woke up all vinegar. He didn’t want the kids climbing into our bed. He didn’t want the kids getting lippy. He wanted only the paper and some hot coffee, so he made the coffee, but the percolator’s dying, so the coffee was bad, like tea. It was so light, he couldn’t even put milk in it.

“Already, this early, the kitchen was summer hot. I made eggs and dealt with the children. Franco drank his disappointing coffee and read the papers, the Sun and yesterday’s Il Giornale, and he huffed at their pages. He grumbled in English, and he cursed in Italian.

“Joseph, my little Joseph, our little Joseph, padded over and asked him, “What’s the bad news, Daddy?”

Read on.

Also, Redux will have an open reading period in January 2012. Go here for more details.

Interview with The Sun Magazine's Managing Editor

2011-12-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows I love The Sun magazine! Here’s a recent interview with managing editor Tim McKee that illuminates some of the many reasons I continue to subscribe to and recommend this beautiful, thought-provoking, occasionally uncomfortable magazine:

Tegan Swanson: A reader characterizes The Sun as showing “the beauty, the wonder & the dirty truth of the human spirit” – why do you think this is representative of your artistic aesthetic?

Tim McKee: The dirty truth is pretty key – beauty and wonder is important, but we don’t want to leave out the hard part. We don’t shy away from occupying the messy parts of life. A Sun reader is someone at a party, if you ask them how they are, they’d much prefer to stand in the corner with you and have a conversation for 45 minutes, rather than the superficial social moment. There are a lot of party conversations in the media – we’re not interested in furthering small talk, or illusions that life is easy or simple. That’s the writing that we gravitate towards….

Read on.

Work in Progress: Gimmicks vs. Innovation

2011-12-01T10:34:00.000-05:00

Here’s a question that’s been on my mind: When is a variation on traditional form a gimmick and when is it a true innovation, a necessary element to the work?

A couple of weeks ago, I was skipping around in the latest edition of The Best American Short Stories and happened to come across two stories that eschewed quotation marks. I’ve seen this before, of course, and it’s not as though it’s a big deal to drop quotation marks. I could (mostly) follow the dialogue. And yet…why? I suppose there are valid reasons to drop those oh-so-intrusive tiny marks: to express a feeling that characters are speaking out of bounds, perhaps, or to evoke the sense of a vast landscape where nothing is hemmed in. But—it seems to me—that there really should be a purposeful reason to drop something that’s such standard usage, and I wasn’t convinced that was the case in these particular stories. And sometimes writers use dashes instead of quotation marks. How are a bunch of dashes less intrusive? Either way, the dashes or lack of standard quotation marks draws attention, and is that where the writer wants the reader’s attention going, to pondering punctuation?

I’ve also been working on a story with footnotes. I suppose everyone imagines that footnotes in fiction started with David Foster Wallace, but Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine is an excellent example of footnotes gone wild in fiction, published in 1986, and I seem to remember a footnoted short story in Harper’s magazine by Jennifer Egan that may have been published before DFW came to prominence. In any event, now that our computers make producing footnotes SO easy, it’s a tempting form to try, and I admit that I greatly enjoyed my foray into footnotes. Yet—being naturally suspicious of anything that feels good—I kept wondering if my footnotes were “necessary” or if they were “gimmicky.” I’m not sure I can answer definitively, but the tension inherent in using the form helped inform the story (I hope) and made me think about writing in a different way. That is, I mentally had to keep proving to myself that the footnotes—and therefore the story—were necessary; I had to ensure that the story could not be told another way, and I think (hope) that rigor was to the story’s benefit.

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney is one of my favorite books, for a variety of reason (not all are artistic reasons…who doesn’t enjoy good New Yorker insider gossip?). Of course one of the artistic reasons is that the book successfully uses the second person point of view (“you”). McInerney makes it look easy as pie, but it’s not. I’ve played around with the second person—I seem to be very drawn to it—and what I’ve noticed is that, again, this device has to be used very purposefully or it turns immediately into a gimmick. Why must the story be told this way; why can’t the writer replace “I” for every “you”? If it’s possible to do that, then do. I’m drawn to the dissociation of the second person, and my second person stories play off that theme, as does Bright Lights, Big City. Still, I can’t imagine pulling off an entire book. (Here’s one of my second person stories, published in The Sun magazine.)

Ultimately, one of the problems with trying these little tricks is that you run the risk of looking merely derivative of those who have gone before:

Second person = McInerney

Footnotes = DFW

Spanglish = Junot Diaz

Power Point presentation = Jennifer Egan

(It shouldn’t have to be said that the work of these writers is much more expansive than these easy equations imply. But the reality is that if you use any of these forms, you’re up against these [perceived] originators.)

How can you make your story or book move beyond what those writers have accomplished? And, more importantly, what innovative technique can you try—in a purposeful way—that no one else has tried yet? That, it seems to me, is the real question to ask when experimenting with form.

Pierogi on the Brain

2011-11-30T10:37:00.000-05:00

I loved this essay by Elizabeth McNamara in the Washington Post food section today, in which the author lovingly remembers her Polish great-grandfather making pierogis. My grandmother made the best pierogi in the family—as she and others told me, once I was old enough to be interested in such things—and she, too, usually worked alone, just as this great-grandfather did. Once she found out I liked pierogi, she never failed to serve them for dinner when I visited her in my adult years. Prune was her favorite flavor, and cheese is my favorite, or maybe sauerkraut is my favorite. I would love a plate right now to see, because you know, prune are pretty good, too.

From the Washington Post essay:

“I think of my great-grandfather most at Christmas. He was born to Polish immigrants on the Feast of the Epiphany. He was named Caspar after one of the three Magi, though he went by his middle name, Anthony (and I knew him simply as Pappy). Many of his flannel shirts were a Christmasy red plaid. But more than that, more than the accordion on his knee and the polka in his whistle, I remember him for pierogi.

“Pierogi are really potato ravioli. They were designed not to delight the sophisticated senses but to ensure survival in the very poor, overpopulated areas of Eastern Europe. If Pappy was not leaning over the crest of the living room chair watching the Yankees, it seemed, he was in the kitchen stuffing pockets of unleavened dough, pinching their edges before gently placing them in a large pot of rolling salted water.” (Read on.)

Recipe from The Washington Post (my grandmother admitted to adding sour cream to her dough)

I’ll assume you’ve read my novel Pears on a Willow Tree (!!), but if not, here’s the first chapter, which is about four generations of women making pierogi together. (Scroll down, to the headline “Shortcuts.”)

Finally, here are some places I know in the Fells Point neighborhood in Baltimore where you can get good pierogi:

Ze Mean Bean Cafe—restaurant

Broadway Market—frozen handmade pierogi to take home (the beautiful picture of borscht on this site may distract you….)

Carolina Wren Press Contest for Women Writers

2011-11-29T09:46:00.000-05:00

Here’s a short fiction/CNF/novel contest for women writers run by Carolina Wren Press, an excellent small press. (Read the guidelines carefully; the requirements are slightly different from the usual contest rules.)

The next Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman will take entries with a postmark deadline of 3/15/2012.

Final Judge is Moira Crone

Guidelines:

1) Submit the first 50-60 pages of fiction manuscript (stories or a novel) or non-fiction (memoir, not academic work), by a single author identifying as a woman. Use two title pages: one with title and author name and address, email, etc., and one with just the manuscript title. The entire manuscript may not have been previously published, self-published, in print or online, although individual parts of the manuscript (e.g. stories or chapters) may have been printed in journals or published online. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please let us know if your manuscript has been accepted elsewhere.

In addition, please include the following:

2) CD or thumbdrive containing the entire manuscript in Word or as a PDF.

3) Self-addressed stamped envelope for contest results (manuscripts will not be returned).

4) Reading fee of $20: we accept checks or money orders.

5) Page of acknowledgments, e.g. a list of previous publications, if any, of the work submitted.

6) Author bio is optional.

Note: do not waste your money on expensive shipping (UPS, Fedex, etc) or shipping materials. A simple envelope mailed First Class or Priority is fine. The deadline is a postmark deadline, not a received-by deadline.

More information: http://carolinawrenpress.org/submissions/contests

Stories by Ron Rash & Julia Glass

2011-11-28T09:44:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Washington Post Magazine, for going against all conventional wisdom and publishing short stories a couple of times a year. Sunday’s issue featured stories by Ron Rash, Yiyun Li, and Julia Glass. I especially recommend Rash’s and Glass’s stories:

Ron Rash’s “26 Days” is about a married couple anxiously waiting for their daughter to return home from her overseas deployment, and this topical story is never far from class issues. It’s taut, well-observed, and the author shows his generous heart.

“I walk out of Cromer Hall and into a November day warmer and sunnier than you usually get in these mountains. The clock tower bell rings. In my mind I move the heavy metal hands ahead to 8:30 p.m. Kerrie has already finished supper and is getting ready to go to sleep. Over at the ATM, students pull out bank cards like winning lottery tickets. I wonder if there’s a single student here because of the Army college fund. The nice cars and SUVs, like the tuition, argue it unlikely. Probably not one of them ever thinks that, while they’re sitting in a classroom or watching a basketball game, kids their own age are getting blown up by IEDs. I think again about how we wouldn’t be in Iraq if there was still a draft. You can bet it’d be a lot different if everyone’s kids could end up over there. Just a bunch of stupid hillbillies fighting a stupid war, that’s what some jerk on TV said, making a joke of it. There are times I want to grab a student by the collar and tell them how good they got it. Other times I tell myself I’ve given Kerrie more than my parents gave me. But I also think how if I’d had more ambition years back and gotten a welding certificate or a two-year degree at Tech, maybe Kerrie wouldn’t be in Iraq.”

Read on.

Julia Glass’s “Attainable Felicity” takes place in a whaling museum in New Bedford, Connecticut, during the annual read-a-thon of Moby-Dick (so how could I not love this story?). A mother and her son struggle—quietly—with the pain of loss and survival. It’s a sneaky story, with a wallop of an ending.

“A man in a plaid shirt with a shaggy, ashen beard is reading about one more high-seas encounter between the Pequod and another ship. He looks as if he’s taking a break from splitting wood. He reads well enough until he gets to the dialogue between the sailors, which he performs in ludicrous accents. His misplaced conceit is embarrassing.

“Lucinda chides herself for being so judgmental. She doesn’t go for confession too much anymore; if she did, she’d already be composing her recitation for Father Jess. She’d have to confess, as well, her inability to feel thoroughly proud of Jonathan and the life he’s made. He and Cyril are professors at Berkeley: Jonathan in gender studies, Cyril in American literature. (Jonathan’s “Sexual Identity in Firstborn Children” and Cyril’s “The Fine Hammered Steel of Woe: Ecclesiastes and Melville’s Ambivalent Soul” sit on her bedside table, beneath other books she is far more likely to read.) They were married the previous summer. At 50, Jonathan is almost 10 years older than Cyril. When Lucinda found herself giving advice about the wedding, what disoriented her was not that her son would be marrying a man but that, after so many years alone, he would be settling down in any conventional sense.”

Read on.

Menu for Two

2011-11-24T12:50:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving Day

November 24, 2011

Crudités

Selection of Cheeses

Bourbon Pecans That Should Be Peanuts

Monte Carlo

Roast Turkey

Cornbread Stuffing

Classic Cranberry Sauce

Whipped Potatoes & Gravy

Roasted Carrots

Brussels Sprouts Cockaigne

Pinot Noir, Elizabeth Spencer, Sonoma Coast, 2008

Pumpkin Pie

Coffee & Tea

My Recipe for Great Stuffing

2011-11-16T09:07:00.002-05:00

I’m going for a low-key, E-Z Thanksgiving this year, but even so, there’s no way this stuffing won’t be on the menu. In fact, if my Thanksgiving menu were a reality show, with various components voted off one by one, I’m certain this stuffing would be the last one standing. (Pie would be second to last; mashed potatoes would be third to last, sweet potatoes fourth to last...but I digress.)

All this to say…here’s my recipe for what is still the best stuffing in the world. I’ll be (mostly) on blog vacation until November 28, so happy Thanksgiving!

Cornbread & Scallion Stuffing
Adapted from the beloved, still-missed Gourmet magazine, November 1992
(It’s actually called Cornbread, Sausage & Scallion Stuffing, but in an uncharacteristic nod to heart-health, I don’t put in the sausage. See the note below if you’d like to add the sausage.)

For the cornbread:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk
1 large egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

¾ stick unsalted butter plus an additional 2 tablespoons if baking the stuffing separately
2 cups finely chopped onion
1 ½ cups finely chopped celery
2 teaspoons crumbed dried sage
1 teaspoon dried marjoram, crumbled
1 teaspoon crumbled dried rosemary
½ cup thinly sliced scallions
1 ½ cups chicken broth if baking the stuffing separately

Make the cornbread: In a bowl stir together the flour, the cornmeal, the baking powder, and the salt. In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, the egg, and the butter, and add the milk mixture to the cornmeal mixture, and stir the batter until it is just combined. Pour the batter into a greased 8-inch-square baking pan (I actually use a cast iron skillet) and bake the cornbread in the middle of a preheated 425 F oven for 20-25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. (The corn bread may be made 2 days in advance and kept wrapped tightly in foil at room temperature.)

Into a jellyroll pan, crumble the corn bread coarse, bake it in the middle of a preheated 325 F oven, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes, or until it is dry and golden, and let it cool.

In a large skillet, melt 6 tablespoons of butter and cook the onion and the celery over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened. Add the sage, marjoram, rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste and cook the mixture, stirring, for 3 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, add the corn bread, the scallion, and salt and pepper to taste, and combine the stuffing gently but thoroughly. Let the stuffing cool completely before using it to stuff a 12-14 pound turkey.

The stuffing can be baked separately: Spoon the stuffing into a buttered 3- to 4-quart casserole, drizzle it with the broth, and dot the top with the additional 2 tablespoons of butter, cut into bits. Bake the stuffing, covered, in the middle of a preheated 325 F degree oven for 30 minutes and bake it, uncovered, for 30 minutes more.

Serves 8-10; fewer if I am one of the dinner guests!

Note: Here are the instructions if you want to add the sausage: The recipe calls for “3/4 lb bulk pork sausage” that you brown in a skillet. Remove it from the pan—leaving the fat—and proceed with cooking the onions, etc. Add the sausage at the end, when you combine the cornbread and scallion with the onion mixture.

New Fiction Chapbook Contest at The Florida Review

2011-11-15T09:26:00.000-05:00

As someone who writes loooong “short” stories, I’m always interested in markets that are open to pieces longer than5000 words. Here’s a new fiction chapbook contest, sponsored by The Florida Review, named in honor of Jeanne Leiby, the Southern Review editor who recently died. There’s a $25 fee, but you get a subscription of The Florida Review. And move quickly…the deadline is December 1, 2011.

Prizes:

First Place: $500 and chapbook publication (letter press and hand-bound by Hoopsnake Press)
Second Place: Tuition at Sanibel Island Writers Conference
Third Place: Registration for The Florida Writers Conference

Guidelines:

Submit up to 35 pages (double spaced and in MS Word or pdf if prose fiction)
This is a blind-read contest. The manuscript should not have your name or other identifying information on any page
Submit a cover letter with your name and the title (or titles) of the submitted writing
Any combination of long or short stories or flash fiction will be considered
Graphic Narrative must be black and white and in jpeg format, up to 35 pages
Entry fee of $25 includes a subscription to The Florida Review
All submissions will be considered for publication in The Florida Review
Simultaneous submissions are OK as long as they are withdrawn immediately upon acceptance elsewhere
Submissions accepted until midnight on December 1, 2011
Notification of results will be posted on The Florida Review website by February 2012
In the unlikely event that no submitted manuscript is selected by the judge as fitting chapbook publication, only the second and third prizes will be awarded
Submit here to The Florida Review

More information: http://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu/chapbook.php

Link Corral: "The Private Heart" & Twitter Obsession & New on Redux

2011-11-14T10:02:00.001-05:00

Please read this important reminder by writer Dani Shapiro about spending time with “the private heart”…and then step away from Facebook and Twitter and the internet for a little while (I mean after reading the rest of this post):

“The secret contemplative self. The private heart. The very phrases bring tears to my eyes. I don't know about you, but for most of us, our daily lives take us farther and farther away from that secret self, that private heart. A paradox central to most writers lives is that so often we spend our days not writing, not reading, not in the silence in which the secret contemplative self thrives, but rather, speaking, tweeting, traveling, facebooking, trolling the internet...doing, rather than being.”

Read on.

***
If you’re unconvinced by Dani Shapiro’s piece, read this short piece from the New York Times Magazine, by Larry Carlat, who became obsessed with Twitter, letting his obsession Twitter run his life:

“Soon my entire life revolved around tweeting. I stopped reading, rarely listened to music or watched TV. When I was out with friends, I would duck into the bathroom with my iPhone. I tweeted while driving, between sets of tennis, even at the movies. (“I love holding your hand in the dark.”) When I wasn’t on Twitter, I would compose faux aphorisms that I might use later. I began to talk that way too. I sounded like a cross between a Barbara Kruger installation and a fortune cookie. I posted every hour on the hour, day and night, using a Web site that enabled me to tweet while asleep.”

Read on.

***

Finally, read something to restore your faith in art and language: New on Redux today: “Driving in Snow” by Joseph M. Schuster, a story that previously appeared in New Virginia Review.

“When Byrne's brother arrives, Byrne doesn't recognize him. At first, watching the passengers emerge from the gate, he wonders if Thomas missed the bus, or decided not to get on board. But not even Thomas is that irresponsible. Byrne must have overlooked him. Thomas is, after all, not a large man, and the station is in turmoil. An early spring blizzard has moved in, making buses late. Byrne has been waiting for an hour and a half in the midst of the lines of angry passengers, the masses of people planted on upturned luggage because there aren't enough benches.

“He is shoving toward the ticket counter to ask if a second bus is due from St. Louis when he spots Thomas, standing a few feet inside the gate. He was one of the first passengers off the bus, Byrne realizes, but it's no wonder he didn't recognize him. In his uniform, Thomas looks like a different person, with the starched creases in his trousers and the black necktie just visible at the collar of his coat. Byrne is amazed at the transformation. His brother seems innocent and young, like someone playing soldier. It's the short hair, he realizes. The long hair Thomas had before he enlisted hid his face, as did the blond wisps of the beard he tried to grow. Now that face seems exposed, naked. Byrne is reminded of the schoolboy in the pictures his mother had on her bureau at the nursing home. Thomas in the second and third grades; Thomas before he turned bad.

Byrne raises his hand to wave but sees that his brother isn't alone. A woman cradling an infant is talking to him, her mouth close to Thomas's ear. Byrne lets his hand fall. Thomas hasn't said anything about a woman, and the circumstance of the visit -- their mother's funeral -- is hardly social.”

Read on.

(Okay, it’s now safe to disable your internet connection.)

Work in Progress: Tips for a Great Pitch Session with an Agent

2011-11-10T10:08:00.000-05:00

The Converse College low-res MFA program (where I teach) will be offering students the opportunity to have a pitch session with an agent in January, so I feel compelled to offer advice on how to make the most of a pitch session. No, I’ve never technically participated in this sort of thing, in which an agent sits at a table and writers parade by in 5-15 minute meeting slots—but I’m offering advice anyway.

My first bit of advice feels obvious to me, but here it is anyway: research the agent you’re meeting with. There’s no excuse for not knowing some basic facts about the agency—type of books they’re looking for, some clients. And please go beyond the obvious: yes, the agency probably has a website, but is there also a blog to scour? Interviews for industry pubs? Find out as much as you can so you can ask informed questions.

Next, prepare your “elevator speech.”* This is the 1-2 sentence description of your book. Reread that: 1 to 2 SENTENCES. That’s really short, because I’m not talking Faulkner sentences. So write it out, say it front of an honest friend who will tell you the truth, and practice saying it. This sounds easy, but it really isn’t. There’s an art to it. In my novel-writing workshops, I ask people to practice by writing a 1-2 sentence description of The Great Gatsby. Try that. *The business world calls it an elevator speech because it should take only as long as riding with someone for a couple of floors in an elevator.

Know what you can expect. Do NOT expect that the agent will say, “My God, I must have a copy of that book RIGHT NOW—please give me a 400-page pile of paper that I can lug home on the airplane.” What you might get instead is an offer to read some chapters and/or the book which you will send to the agent at a later time.

Speaking of “a later time”: Generally, agents want to read novels that are already done. Still, if your novel isn’t finished, you don’t have to pass up the chance to meet an agent through a pitch session. Tell the agent you’re still working on the book, but that you expect to be done within the next year* or so. This is your chance to make a connection; when the book is done, you can contact the agent with a charming letter along the lines of “I met you last year at XYZ.” *Say a year even if you fear it might take longer; the agent isn’t turning on a stopwatch.

What if you don’t have a novel yet? Think of the bigger picture. Maybe you will someday, right? So use this as an opportunity to get more information about the agent, the agency, the publishing/marketing process in general. Ask questions. Again, years later, when you have your book ready, you can write to this agent. (This is what to do if it’s suddenly clear that the agent is not right for your book—i.e. you’re writing a mystery, and the agent doesn’t rep mysteries.)

I’ll repeat that again: ask questions. Try to find a point of connection with the agent, and remember that a person blabbing endlessly about themselves will not be someone anyone wants to connect with. And take notes: these are the notes you can refer to next year when you finish your novel (“I remember that you are especially fond of books about….”).

Do I have to mention basic politeness? Don’t overstay your time limit; don’t sit there like a lump and expect the (tired) agent to do all the work of carrying the conversation; smile and seem enthused and passionate about your work and interested in the business. If you’re nervous, simply say so in a charming way; the agent will understand. Be yourself (unless you’re a slob, in which case, clean yourself up a little).

If you have a card, leave one behind. Ask the agent for a card. I suppose that if my novel was done, I’d bring along a few sample chapters and a synopsis, just in case, but don’t expect the agent to ask to see them. Try not to have them in a big, obvious folder so it looks as though you’re expecting to hand them over; ideally, the pages would be hidden in a briefcase/totebag/portfolio that you can pull out if asked—because the agent probably will not ask.

Follow-up with a thank you note/email. Honestly, this is very easy to do and very impressive (as long as you’re not asking for anything in this follow-up).

Don’t harass the agent about your book at other points of the conference—i.e. if you’re eating breakfast with him/her. Be professional. You can chat and ask general questions away from the pitch session—but no one wants to be pestered. Leave a charming impression!

Here’s a funny piece about some more don’ts written by agent Janet Reid based on some actual experiences at pitch sessions.

Here’s a good, basic piece of how to prepare for a pitch session at a conference.

Here’s former agent Nathan Bransford’s excellent tips on pitch sessions.

The Writing Life = A Game of Chutes and Ladders

2011-11-09T12:04:00.000-05:00

Writer Gae Polisner has a great blog post today about how our writing careers are like a long (cruel?) game of Chutes and Ladders. It’s funny because it’s true, and it’s heartbreaking also because it’s true:

“Imagine my first attempt at writing a manuscript in 1998 as the Start Space, and the completion of the first rough draft of THE JETTY (4+ years) as Space #4.

“Up, I go to Space #14 where there's a yummy cake waiting for me. Yay, cake! You know how I love a good cake.

“Perhaps at space #15, I submit to my first round of agents, which all come back rejections. Space #16, down I go! But at Space #9, I get a bite, my first agent request for a look at a partial or full.

“Woohoo, I'm off and running on Space #31!

“At Space #36, THE JETTY makes it to the Semi-finals of the first-ever Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, but at Space #47, I'm eliminated (luckily, I land in water).”

Read on. The visuals of the game board will help you see exactly what she means.

ISO Funny Stories About Tech Support

2011-11-08T11:37:00.000-05:00

Since I’m having weird computer problems at the moment, this call for submissions seems appropriate. Pass it along to your favorite tech support guy or gal—

Sometimes, tech support requires more patience than what’s in the job description. For an anthology of humorous tech support stories, the editors seek quality non-fiction accounts of bizarre requests, inane questions, and pitiful pleas for help untangling technology.

Entries should be between 500 and 1500 words. The anthology will be published in e-book format, and authors may appear anonymously if so desired. Preference will be given to stories involving face-to-face tech support rather than support given over the phone.

To submit a story for consideration, email your entry as a MS Word, RTF, or Open Office document to usererror@nicomachus.net Please include your name and contact information (phone number and preferred email address) as well as a brief description of your job responsibilities (e.g. network administration for a large health insurance provider; end-user support for a major research university) in the body of the email. Submission deadline January 31, 2012.

"Autumn Harvest" on Redux

2011-11-07T11:57:00.000-05:00

Jane Delury's wonderful story "Autumn Harvest" will make you hungry!

Jacques crouches in his father’s garden, coaxing leeks from the hard November ground. Six rows of cabbages away, the old man is digging up bouquets of mâche with a grit-encrusted knife. Jacques grabs a shoot of leaves and pulls out a stem, slick with saliva-like bubbles. The leek slaps into the basket and his father looks over, his glasses steamed by plant breath into two opaque circles.

“Getting them all? And the roots?”

“Fine, Father,” Jacques says, “I’m doing just fine.”

He waits for the slice of the knife to resume, and then clutches another cold jumble of leaves. The earth buckles and splits, belching a sweet, rotten smell. With the leek in one hand, he uses the other to pull up the socks that have bunched around his ankles, exposing his heels to the bite of the air. A hollow eye stares up at him from the plank where his loafers balance, precious and inappropriate against the warped wood. “For your city shoes,” his father said when he handed him the plank at the gate. Jacques wonders again what is really being protected— his shoes from the soil or the soil from his shoes.
Read on.

And remember that the open reading period for Redux ends on November 19. See the submission guidelines at http://www.reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com/

Work in Progress: How to Give an Excellent Reading

2011-11-03T09:39:00.001-04:00

I’ve been working with yet another fabulous Converse College low-res MFA thesis student this semester, and she’s preparing for her graduating student reading in January. What advice do I have for her…and, really, for all writers who read from their work? (All of this is IMHO, of course.)

1. The main thing is to stay within the time limit. Everyone assumes that they’re the writer who is soooo good they can go an extra five or twenty minutes, but believe me, hardly anyone is that writer. I can remember three specific writers I could sit and listen to forever…and that’s three out of how many hundreds of readings I’ve attended? Stay in your time limit—and be responsible about it, too. I hate when someone claims not to have a watch or a phone with a clock feature, or when they clearly haven’t timed their reading, and so they look up and say to the audience, “I’m not sure how much time is left. Should I keep going?” Who’s going to say, “No,” to that…besides me, I mean? Know your time limit and know how much you can comfortably read—including the patter and/or intro—in that time.

2. Easing into the reading with a charmingly amusing remark is nice, though I once saw a poet get to the mike, announce the title of her poem them immediately read it, and because it was a thrilling poem and because she was an excellent reader, that was memorable. But after that opening, she went into some between-poem patter. People like to have a sense of the person behind the words. Also, it’s hard to absorb so much “literature” in one swoop. I saw a different poet read, and she took absolutely no breaks between the poems she read except to say the title, and that was overwhelming and difficult to listen to.

3. I don’t know how poets choose poems to read, but it seems as though there may be common themes, or there may be a variety of styles and subject matter. Frankly, I don’t know how poets do a lot of what they do…they amaze me! For fiction writers, though, if you have something funny, that’s good. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. I like to try to have a scene that feels complete (or as complete as possible) within the time limit, with a beginning-middle-end and where something concrete happens. Think “narrative”: try to find a story, even if it’s just a small part of your larger novel. If possible, I also like to choose something that doesn’t require very much set-up.

4. Some writers advise avoiding reading scenes with too much dialogue. It can be hard to sort out which character says what. But I write a lot of dialogue, and I survive reading it at my readings. Don’t do funny voices when you read dialogue unless you’re one of the three writers who can carry that off, and I’m betting you’re not.

5. For God’s sake, dress up! Or dress in a way that makes you feel confident and yet is comfortable. Be respectful of the audience. Be mindful that even if you wear a ratty T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, the audience will have an image of you selecting that exact ratty T-shirt and will know that for whatever reason, you’ve decided to present yourself as a ragamuffin. Can’t you simply look presentable for this one time?

6. No jangly jewelry. I take off my bracelet because it can knock against the podium.

7. The requisite water bottle. Always bring your own, in case the organizers aren’t organized (which they often aren’t). I try not to drink from it while reading, but if you must, go ahead and do so confidently. If you can, try to drink during a natural break in the story or between poems. Situate the bottle in a safe place so the audience won’t become mesmerized, wondering when it will spill.

8. Stand still. Stop swaying behind the podium. Don’t shift your weight from side to side. Don’t cling to the sides of the podium as if it’s the only thing holding you up unless it is.

9. I do my drinking after, not before (or during), but this is a matter of personal preference. Just remember that red wine can stain your teeth and tongue purple.

10. Can you please-please-please-please-please not flip through a thousand pages, poets? Can you please buy these things called “stickies”? Can you stick them on the pages of the poems you want to read? Can you even write a number on them, so you know the order of the poems you will be reading? If we wanted to watch people flip through pages, we’d stare at the cheapskates standing around the magazine section at Barnes & Noble.

11. Practice your reading exactly enough times so that you feel comfortable with it (and the timing of it) but not so many times that you’re totally bored with it. Remember that listening to something is different than encountering it on the page. Prose writers: it’s okay to make adjustments and/or deletions to lines, words, and/or paragraphs for clarity.

12. Make eye contact. Speak slowly. You are probably talking faster than you think, especially if you live on the East Coast, so speak more slowly than you think you need to speak. Practice in front of an honest friend who can tell you if you’re talking too fast. On the other hand, if you live in the south, you may be speaking more slowly than you think. Where’s that honest friend?

13. Speaking of your honest friend…you might ask someone you know in the audience to signal you if you’re too quiet/too fast/too something you’re worried about. You might also ask this friend to be ready to ask the first question—an easy one!—in the Q&A if no one else speaks up.

14. I hate microphones, mostly because I’m sort of afraid of them. If I can, I try to stand at it before the event to see how it works. (An advantage to arriving early.) Also, I loudly announce, “I’m afraid of microphones,” and someone always volunteers to assist and take charge of it for me.

15. I like 14-point fonts. Easy to read if there’s not enough light. Not so big that I’m flipping the page every two seconds. Of course, I’m old, with fading eyesight. If 8-point works for you, go for it. Binder clips or paper clips are better than staples because you can remove them. And I often follow along with my finger running along the page. I hope I’m doing that subtly, but maybe not. Oh, well.

16. Thank everyone for coming. They all have better things to do, but they’re at this reading instead. They deserve thanks and maybe cake afterwards, also.

17. Take a deep breath right before you start. Hold it a moment longer than you think, then let it out slowly. Pause. The audience will now be riveted, their attention focused on you. Begin.

18. Have fun.

What I'm Thinking about Today

2011-11-02T12:21:00.001-04:00

“All the knowledge I possess anyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.” ~Goethe

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ~Andrew Wyeth

“Writing is both mask and unveiling.” ~ E.B. White

“Only describe what you have seen and look hard at the things that please you, even longer at what causes you pain.” ~ Colette

DC Map of the (Literary) Stars!

2011-11-01T10:01:00.000-04:00

An announcement from DC poet/editor/literary impresario Kim Roberts:

A new online resource for lovers of literature and history has been launched in the nation's capital. DC Writers' Homes, at www.dcwriters.org, celebrates the rich literary heritage of Washington by mapping former homes of novelists, poets, playwrights and memoirists. Some authors remain famous, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Zora Neale Hurston, Sinclair Lewis, and Katherine Anne Porter. Others are rediscoveries.

Over 115 homes included on the website represent every major period of Washington's history and span the range of urban architectural styles. The earliest documented writers' homes include those once occupied by: Francis Scott Key, the lawyer-poet who wrote the lyrics to the US National Anthem; Horatio King, who served as Postmaster General during the Civil War and hosted a popular literary salon in his home; and Frederick Douglass, whose remarkable autobiographies remain deservedly beloved. The most recent include authors who passed away in the last few years.

The project was conceived, researched, and created by DC writers Kim Roberts and Dan Vera, who spent more than five years tracking down and photo-documenting house locations. Only authors who have passed away, and whose houses are still standing, are included. Most houses are privately owned and not marked by historic plaques. "We wanted to claim our literary forebears," Roberts states. "We don't want our history to be lost or forgotten."

The project is a collaboration among five groups that support or present the literary arts in the city. Split This Rock, whose festivals of "poets of provocation and witness" bring nationally-acclaimed authors to the city, is the sponsor. The Humanities Council of Washington, DC, provided funding. And three other organizations signed on as partners: The American Poetry Museum, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Poetry Mutual. Sarah Browning, Director of Split This Rock, calls DC Writers' Homes "an extraordinary gift to DC."

Authors are sorted by the geographical location of their houses, as well as by affiliations. Users can easily find authors, for example, who taught at or attended Howard University, served as US Poets Laureate at the Library of Congress, wrote on environmental themes, or were Latino. Every author is cross-referenced into at least two categories.

Check out the new site online (www.dcwriters.org), and mark your calendar for a special event:

Friday, December 9 at 6:30 pm

Kim Roberts and Dan Vera will present a slide/lecture on the making of DC Writers' Homes on Friday, December 9 at 6:30 pm. This event, at the Institute for Policy Studies, 1112 16th St. NW, Suite 600, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the presentation.

The Story of a First Novel & A New Poem on Redux

2011-10-31T09:44:00.000-04:00

I wrote a short piece for VCU’s blog about writing that first novel. The bottom line as I see it is that the path to that “first novel” can be long and winding, and is rarely straightforward:

“After much querying, I found a great agent for that book, and she sent it out to everyone and then some. In exchange, I received a lot of nice rejection letters from editors. That book was never published, and probably rightfully so.”

Read on.

****

Be sure to check out “Grammar School,” a poem by Brandel France de Bravo, just posted on Redux:

America the Beautiful was our soundtrack, each of the twenty-four

frames per second as bottomless, open as the holes in our desks

where the ink bottles weren’t, like the cloakroom without cloaks—just

parkas and yellow raincoats. Hands perpetually raised, the smell

of mimeographs redolent as our mothers’ perfume, violet fingers

quivering in the air....

Read on.

Work in Progress: Thinking about Warhol

2011-10-27T10:15:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my visiting parents and I went to two Andy Warhol exhibits in Washington, one a series of works that dealt with Warhol’s fascination with tabloid headlines: “Warhol: Headlines” at the National Gallery, East Wing. The other exhibit was at the Hirshhorn (which is fast becoming one of my favorite art museums): “Shadows,” which was a stunning use of space to display a provocative series of canvases that brought to mind many questions about the nature (and purpose) of art. I highly recommend it. (Read more here, and see a picture of the installation.)

The Hirshhorn is a round building with a courtyard (think doughnut shape) and they have devoted virtually the entire length and curve of the second floor to this series of large panels that are the same silkscreened image of photograph of a shadow from (I believe) Warhol’s study floor. The images were then finished off with mop-strokes of bright paint. There are 102 canvases, and this is the first time they’ve all been displayed together.

From the brochure:

“…the Shadows series was conceived as one painting in multiple parts, the final number of canvases determined by the dimensions of an exhibition space. The canvases were installed edge to edge, a foot from the floor, in the order that Warhol’s assistants, Ronnie Cutrone and Stephen Miller hung them.”

The effect is remarkable, endless color and variations that force the mind to try to organize and find logic (my mind, anyway). And yet, Warhol himself did not set the order. And since all of the canvases were not displayed in the orginial opening, we were told that that the last 19 canvases in the series in this display were determined by the curator, who hung them based on the order that she pulled them out of the boxes. (Warhol would approve of that, I bet.) Even knowing that, I tried to find reason and logic for quite a long while, before just giving in. The guide in the gallery suggested that we think about movement and view it the way one would view a sculpture. And what about “one” painting that can’t be seen in one single moment? Anyway—so much to ponder!

And then this, from the museum website: “When questioned whether the paintings were art, Warhol answered ambiguously, in his characteristically self-deprecating tone: “No. You see, the opening party had disco. I guess that makes them disco décor.””

Oh, perhaps. And who am I to say anything even semi-definitive about the visual arts? But the reason I preferred this to the other exhibit (which you can read about and see here), is that I felt as though I got the gist of the headline paintings quickly*; it was like a joke, and once you understood it, sure, there was the pleasure of being an “insider,” but that pleasure is fleeting. What I’ll probably remember most from that exhibit is that Warhol and Keith Haring cooperated on some headline paintings, including one from 1985 about Madonna’s recently revealed sex photos, and they gave one to Madonna as a wedding gift when she married Sean Penn, and we wondered which of them ended up with it after the divorce.

On the other hand, that, too, might please Warhol. In any event, the man was a genius. Since he was always a dozen steps ahead of the culture, I’d love to know what he’d be doing now, if he were alive.

Here’s the review of both shows from the smart Washington Post art critic, Philip Kennicott.

And in the gift shop, I read this utterly charming picture book about Andy Warhol’s dozens of cats, a fun and true(ish) tale told by Warhol’s nephew, James Warhola. (There’s a drawing of a cat sleeping in Uncle Andy’s wig drawer!)

*Disclaimer: I’m not saying I’m an art critic—!!!—just that this exhibit did not capture my mind and imagination. Philip Kennicott (above) found much to admire and study in the Headlines exhibit.

"Black Hole" at Redux

2011-10-26T08:00:00.001-04:00

New at Redux: “Black Hole” by Walter Cummins, a short story:

The cloud cover thickened just as the cable car began its ascent, lifting off from the wooden boarding shed and skimming the tall spruces on the mountainside. Paul knew they had lost the sun for the day; only a small circle of blue sky remained far in the distance. When they reached the peak, even the nearby ranges would be swallowed in grey.

"We won't see a goddamn thing." Paul kicked a boot at the side of the car.

"Stop pouting," Leslie told him.

"I came here for mountains."

Their eyes locked, and Paul quivered with resentment. An hour before, maids clattering outside their hotel room, they had thrashed in lovemaking, not caring that their cries could be heard in the hallway. Now he found her lips thin and mean as she clenched her jaw. We're only good in the dark, he wanted to tell her but instead turned away from her face.

Read on.

Moby-Dick in the News

2011-10-25T10:07:00.000-04:00

Thar she blows…Nathaniel Philbrick has a new book out called Why Read Moby-Dick?, and I’m immediately putting it on my list. He’s the author of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which is an amazing true tale about the sinking of a whaling ship, the basis for Moby-Dick is based on.

So here are some excellent Moby-Dick related links:

From NPR, a discussion with Philbrick about his new book: “As he tells Robert Siegel, he thinks you should read it not only because "the level of the language is like no other," but because "it's as close to being our American Bible as we have." “ (Read on.)

And from the New York Times, this display of Moby-Dick book covers from various eras and countries (what’s up with the cover showing guys standing on the steps?):

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/22/books/review/moby-dick-slideshow.html

The New York Times review of Philbrick’s book: “His voice is that of a beloved professor lecturing with such infectious enthusiasm that one can almost, for a moment, believe in the possibility of a popular renaissance for Melville.” (Read on.)

Here’s the book trailer, which includes some lovely scenery of Nantucket: http://youtu.be/I-Pz7YtJCco

(sorry--I don't know why this video isn't showing up directly...grr.)

Redux is Open and ISO the Best Previously Published Work!

2011-10-24T08:20:00.001-04:00

Redux’s first open submission period starts today, and lasts through November 19. Redux is an online journal focused exclusively on previously published fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. To be considered for the journal, your piece must be:

--previously published in a literary journal (not a student-only publication)

--not elsewhere online

--not part of a book

--a piece for which you retain publication rights

--accessible in a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file

There’s no payment for publication, but your work will find a new audience and live a long, happy life on the internet. If your work is accepted, you will be asked to provide a short piece discussing the story of writing your piece (a la Best American Short Stories) and a bio with as many links as you’d like.

You can read the full submission guidelines here: http://reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html

Guest in Progress: Richard Goodman on Finding "Richard Goodman"

2011-10-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

Google myself? Why, never! How self-absorbed!

Okay, maybe once or twice, and if I’m confessing that, I also have to confess that I literally have no idea what Richard Goodman is talking about below. Why not? Two words: Leslie, and, especially, Pietrzyk.

FINDING RICHARD GOODMAN

By Richard Goodman

[Note: These are all real people named Richard Goodman.]

So, what has Richard Goodman been up to lately? I went to the Web to find out.

Who knew I was so versatile.

It seems that I’m a wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers. (Oh, I also see that I’m black.) I’m not having such a good year. Any advice on that front?

I’m also the Executive Vice President, Operations at Pepsi. Before that, I was the Chief Financial Officer at PepsiCo. I appear to be good with money. I don’t even like Pepsi, which makes this all the more impressive. This is great, because I have a car loan to pay off. (By the way, is becoming Executive Vice President a promotion or a demotion? Isn’t CFO more prestigious? How do I feel about this?)

I notice, too, I’m also a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Oregon Health and Science University. And I’m Director of the Vollum Institute, whatever that is. Odd, because I got a D in Biology in high school.

I see, too, that I, Richard Goodman, have been building custom homes and remodeling existing property since 1971 in Laguna Beach, California. Just look at some of those places! They must cost a bundle. Whoa, that one looks like it’s about to fall off a cliff. Why do I take so many chances?

I notice that I’m dead, as well. Yes, I died on April 3, 1676 in Hadley, Massachusetts. I was a deacon. You know, I always thought I was basically a spiritual person. Apparently, I had a son named John. News to me. I’m ok with that, though.

I guess I’m still alive, because I’m a teacher at Horace Greely School in Chappaqua. (I wonder if I know Bill Clinton.) Uh-oh—on RateMyTeachers.com, one student wrote, “Good for advanced students but for those struggling- he can be a real d-ck.” Luckily, I’m also a surveyor, head of Richard Goodman Rural Surveyors and Land Agents in Compton on the Berkshire Downs, England. So I have a career to fall back on in case I get too many d-ck reviews for my teaching.

And I’m a lawyer! I practice in Southfield, Michigan. What kind of lawyer am I? I’ll tell you: “When it comes to matters of the law, you need hard-hitting representation from experienced attorneys who know the many ins, outs and subtle nuances of the law.” Mr. Nuance, that’s me.

And if you have problems of the heart, I can help, too. I’m a therapist. Do you know what I believe? “I believe that all people yearn for a deep human connection, including those people who have had great difficulties in relationships.” Call me. I’m in Somerville, MA. Remember, “The therapist is a guide, or a soulmate if you will, for an in-depth journey into the self.” Are you ready to journey? I am!

About: Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. The San Francisco Chronicle called French Dirt “one of the most charming, perceptive and subtle books ever written about the French by an American.” He is also the author of The Soul of Creative Writing and A New York Memoir. Richard’s most recent book, The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker’s Journey Through 9-11, was published in a fine press, limited edition form, with original color wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec. The New York Times said that “it has the weight of a small thing done with great care to honor a huge loss.” He is Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of New Orleans. Website: www.richardgoodman.org

Link to French Dirt: http://www.amazon.com/French-Dirt-Story-Garden-France/dp/1565123522/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210169543&sr=8-3

Link to The Soul of Creative Writing: http://www.amazon.com/Soul-Creative-Writing-Richard-Goodman/dp/1412810515/ref=ed_oe_p

Link to A New York Memoir: http://www.amazon.com/New-York-Memoir-Richard-Goodman/dp/1412814928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316865708&sr=1-1

Link to The Bicycle Diaries: http://www.midnightpapersales.com/pages/bicycle_diaries.html

Link Corral: My Creative Muscle Class & Gatsby Ballet & the Etiquette of Letters of Rec

2011-10-19T10:18:00.000-04:00

I discuss the benefits of writing exercises (and shamelessly shill for Saturday’s class at the Writer’s Center):

“I can’t say that writing exercises will burn calories (if only!), but writing exercises definitely will develop and stretch and build your writing muscles. That’s why I put together a one-day class composed entirely of guided writing exercises: Flex Your Creative Muscles.

“The idea is that these exercises will challenge your mind in a new and exciting way, pushing you to come up with a forgotten memory, perhaps, or an insight into the characters in the novel you’ve been working on, or the opening of a story that you can’t wait to finish at home, or a new way of viewing the familiar.”

Read on. And register for the class here.

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The Gatsby ballet returns to the Kennedy Center November 2-6! Learn more and get tickets here.

*****

Do you need a letter of recommendation, say, for grad school apps, colonies, fellowships, grants, job apps, and so on? (I hope you’re getting my point that if you’re a modern-day writer, there will come a point where you WILL need a letter of rec!)

Then you must read writer Cathy Day’s FAQ about the etiquette of asking for a letter of recommendation and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what all goes into these letters:

“Don’t you just use a boilerplate letter?

“No, absolutely not. I spend at least 1-2 hours writing each of these letters. Remember: I’ve been on admission committees. I know my letters will be read by people in my profession. Unless they know me personally or by reputation, the only way my letter can truly help you is if I write it in such a way that I make a good case on your behalf. Of course, you have to make that case too—with your writing sample and statement of purpose. Seriously, these letters are not just some formality, some hoop I’m helping you jump through. When I vouch for you, I’m staking my reputation on you as a writer, scholar, and teacher (if it’s a program where you’ll be given the opportunity to teach). I’m saying to Schools A, B, and C that they won’t be sorry if they accept you. I’m saying you’re smart, talented, sane, mature. If you turn out not to be those things, then the next letter School A gets from me will matter just a little bit less.”

Read on.

Philip Levine at the Library of Congress

2011-10-18T10:08:00.000-04:00

Last night I attended a reading given by our new Poet Laureate, Philip Levine. I had never been to the Library of Congress for a poetry reading (shame on me!), so I’d like to give a shout-out for a great event.

Just on a logistical level, I appreciated that there were many pleasant people guiding and directing those of us (ahem) unfamiliar with where the auditorium was, where the post-party was, where the bathrooms and exits were. The book sale table moved with surprising efficiency. The LOC poobahs hung around afterwards, chatting with the crowd (and yes, there was a crowd; the auditorium was virtually full). And, as Mr. Levine noted partway through this reading as he glanced at his watch, “It’s a no-no to go over the time,” and this was a well-organized and time-conscious event. And the setting of the party afterwards—the Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building—was spectacular. (Here’s a picture.)

Of course, any reading is only as good as its reader, and Mr. Levine was also spectacular. His “between poem patter” (there should be an official word for this specialized skill) was excellent and amusing, illuminating background to the poem, offering a few laughs, and alluding to a long life deeply lived. (Never once did he say anything like, “In this poem, there’s a reference to a word from ancient Greek that means….”) His selection of work ranged widely—no surprise when you’ve got 20 books to choose from. Dare I say that this man knows how to please an audience? It seems such a scandalous thing to say of a poet, but I mean it as a high compliment. It’s hard to imagine that anyone left the event feeling less than fulfilled and enriched and happy and yet thoughtful.

Below are links to two of my favorite poems that Mr. Levine read last night. And there was another I loved that I couldn’t quickly find online, but that I also loved called (I believe) “The Escape,” in which there was a line that resonated with me (though I’m probably garbling it somewhat…sorry!): “We were Midwestern, so someone had to pay.” I will definitely track it down.

“What Work Is” by Philip Levine

“Theory of Prosody” by Philip Levine

Here’s more info on Philip Levine, including a link to a previous reading given at the Library of Congress.

And here’s a schedule of the fall literary events forthcoming at the Library of Congress, including a birthday celebration for John Berryman (one of Levine’s great teachers, as he noted last night) on October 25, and a birthday celebration for Louisa May Alcott on November 29.

Open Reading Period for Redux & Mark Lewandowski's Essay, "Tourist Season at Auschwitz"

2011-10-17T09:50:00.000-04:00

I’m pleased to announce that Redux will be holding an open submission period from October 24 to November 19.

Redux is an online journal focused exclusively on previously published fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. To be considered for the journal, your piece must be:

--previously published in a literary journal (not a student-only publication)

--not elsewhere online

--not part of a book

--a piece for which you retain publication rights

--accessible in a .doc, .docx, or .rtf file

You can read the full submission guidelines here: http://reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html

And be sure to check out today’s new post on Redux, “Tourist Season at Auschwitz,” a moving piece of creative nonfiction by Mark Lewandowski that originally appeared in The Gettysburg Review:

“At Birkenau stands a mound unlike those dotting the countryside that Poles have built in remembrance of past generals and statesmen. You will not see picknickers lay out blankets on it or watch their children roll down the slopes. The Birkenau mound is a mass grave for Soviet soldiers killed by the Nazis. The bodies were packed so tightly together that they are still decomposing, and when it rains now, almost fifty years later, human grease rises to the surface and fans out through the grass in a brilliant rainbow of color.

“Not far from the mound lies what looks like an ordinary pond. Bend over and peer into its depths and you might be surprised not to see a minnow or two, at least, in the water. Take a stick. Dip it into the water and movie it in circles. Soon, a whirlpool of gray ash will funnel to the surface. This pond is only one repository for the remains of the Jews.

“A Polish actor told me that these were just a couple of the sights in the Auschwitz complex most tourists miss. I was with two American women I had met in a youth hostel in Kraków. This was the summer of 1990.”

Read on.

Work in Progress: A Rant on Rejection

2011-10-13T10:12:00.000-04:00

We know that there are many factors that go into the decision of which story/poem/essay gets published and which gets returned, and that many of these factors are beyond the writer’s control: the editor’s bad mood, what else has been accepted for the journal, someone friend’s story getting the nod instead, a screener who hates the second person, and so on. In fact, the only factors in our control are to write well and to research journals as best we can. Even though we know these things—and preach them to our students and friends and family—it remains an inescapable fact: rejection sucks. There’s no way around it.

This is not a post that will make you try to feel better. This is a post to just rant and whine and complain about the unfairness of it all and how sending work out again and again and again can be soul-sucking, making Sisyphus’s life look like a walk in the park. Rejection is the worst part of the writing life.

How to cope?

I’ve tried blasé: Oh, well, whatever. Lots of other great journals.

I’ve tried revenge: They’ll be sorry when this gets published and is picked up by Best American Short Stories.

I’ve tried anger: Mother-fucking mother-fuckers, fuck them.

I’ve tried nice: Okay, I was just rejected, but sure, I’ll subscribe to their journal and use this five dollar discount they so kindly offered.

I’ve tried practical: Send it out again before the day’s over.

I’ve saved rejection slips/email printouts, and I’ve ripped them into tiny pieces.

I’ve sent the same rejected story that I knew was perfect for that journal back to that journal, essentially rejecting their rejection.

I’ve laughed at editors’ dumb jokes at AWP and complimented their hideous necklaces.

I’ve tried not submitting work at all, and I’ve tried submitting to a dozen places at once.

I’ve sent only to university journals, or never to university journals, or never to student-run journals, or only to student-run journals, or never to new journals, or only to new journals.

I’ve revised and tightened and expanded and re-revised and re-re-revised.

I’ve abandoned and resurrected and re-abandoned work.

I’ve written off certain journals entirely.

I’ve prayed.

What I have NOT done (yet):

--Binder-clipped a twenty-dollar bill to my story.

--Lied.

--Offered blood sacrifices.

Nothing works. There is no way to cope with constantly getting the metaphorical door slammed in your face.

(Usually, this is where I would insert a paragraph about the importance of perseverance and patience and so forth. How writing is its own reward. I’d throw in an inspirational quote. And I do sincerely believe all that on many days, but not today.)

In the end, I DO NOT believe that, like cream, all good work rises to the top. I’m convinced that a lot of good work simply gets lost or set aside or overlooked or forgotten; many good writers simply give up. I don’t have an answer or a better system or a way to fix this problem or a suggestion about how we can all truly feel better about it.

I just have to call it like I see it: REJECTION SUCKS.

TV Script Contest: Deadline 10/28

2011-10-12T09:40:00.000-04:00

Scriptwriters—this call for submissions is for you. (Be sure to carefully read all the fine-print rules on the website listed below. And also check out #6 in the FAQ….someone has a sense of humor!) Good luck, and when you win, please throw around your newfound power to find a tiny little walk-on part for me:

The ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE) is sponsoring a new national writing contest to find the next great story featuring the modern family. From October 5th – 28th, aspiring writers can submit an original half-hour comedy format script into the Search for America’s Newest Comedy Writer Contest for the opportunity to win $5,000.00 and receive creative guidance and direct input from American film and television producer, John Wells, best known for his role as executive producer of the television series ER, Third Watch and The West Wing among others.

The AFE is a group of leading national advertisers whose goal is to provide consumers with entertainment options the entire family can watch. In the past, the AFE has put their support behind shows such as Gilmore Girls, Everybody Hates Chris, and Friday Night Lights, and awarded more than 50 scholarships to young screenwriters at leading universities across the country.

Here’s the website for more information: http://comedywritercontest.com/

Link Corral: Life as a Converse Student; Finding Time for Creative Work; New Story on Redux

2011-10-11T10:06:00.000-04:00

While I’ve written about life at the Converse College Low-Res MFA program, of course my perspective is not that of a student. So it was nice to read Rhonda Browning White’s take on the program…glad to hear we’re getting it right!

“I had no idea what to expect when I arrived on the idyllic campus of Converse College for my first semester in their MFA in Creative Writing Program. I was nervous about meeting my dorm-mate (Me? Staying in a dorm? With a total stranger? At my age?), who turned out to be a spectacular poet, mother and now my sweet friend. I wondered if I’d be accepted among a group of sixty students, forty-five of whom already had a history together, or if the professors and visiting authors would look down from their lofty positions as they berate my writing. After all, these people were real writers—authors whose names I recognized, whose novels and poetry collections sit on my bookshelves even now.

“I needn’t have worried.”

Read on.

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And speaking of Converse, thanks to Converse student Cheryl Russell for an interesting post by Cal Newport about how to find ways to get your creative work done in a busy, modern life:

“I identified two justifications for the importance of long stretches of uninterrupted work:

Shifting Mental Modes: When the mind knows it has no interruptions looming, it can shift into the flow state required to produce high-quality output.
Providing Freedom to Explore: Real creative work is non-linear, often requiring long, unexpected detours to uncover the contours of the problem at hand. Long stretches of time provide the freedom needed to feel comfortable indulging in these detours.

"As mentioned, the problem faced by to-do list creatives is that we cannot afford to integrate Graham's long stretches of uninterrupted work into our schedules. (Though we might want to dedicate a full day to one project, our bosses might disagree.) With this in mind, the GCTD [Getting Creative Things Done] system attempts to replicate the two benefits of uninterrupted work, as described above, in a more realistic, logistics-respecting workday structure.”

Read on.

*****

Check out the new story up on Redux, “Little Sinners” by Thomas E. Kennedy:

“My ninth summer, in 1952, I ran with a kid named Billy Reichert, a classmate from The Christian Brothers Boys School. We were thieves. We used foul language. We smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes purchased with stolen quarters. We pored over the dirty pictures on a pack of Tijuana playing cards Billy had secreted in his basement. It was a lovely summer.”

Read on.

Steve's Birthday Dinner

2011-10-10T17:17:00.001-04:00

Selection of Cheeses from Cheesetique

Vegetable Tray

Martinis

The Famous Birthday Meat Loaf

Mashed Potatoes

Creamed Onions Gratinee

Brussels Sprouts Cockaigne

Robert Sinskey Cabernet

German Chocolate Cake (with coconut!) from Cake Love

Work in Progress: Discipline

2011-10-07T10:09:00.000-04:00

I didn’t feel like writing a blog post yesterday, so I didn’t. Right now, I don’t feel like writing a blog post, but I’m forcing myself to do so anyway. I expect its content will suffer as a reflection of my ambivalence (so maybe you should stop reading now?), but I’m forging ahead despite my low expectations.

Discipline is one of the “secrets to success” that they don’t officially teach you in MFA programs, though if you listen to a good teacher, that single word infuses everything he or she says.

The way to get your book written? Sit and write it, even when you don’t feel like writing. The way to get your book published? Send it out, even when you feel discouraged. The way to get through those tough times of hard writing and too many rejections? Make yourself trudge forward, even if in baby steps.

When I’m in the mood for writing and things are going well, nothing is finer. When I’m not in the mood for writing, and the writing sucks (which is why I’m not in the mood for it), almost anything would be finer (cleaning out a closet, anyone?). But I try to sit down and work anyway—because whatever I come up with will be better than nothing. Whatever I come up with may lead to something good, or may end up better than I imagine it will be, or may be later revised into something useful, or may, simply, just keep me in the habit of writing.

Don’t let up—and the best way I know to keep yourself at it to have a plan and a schedule and a way of being that makes you feel slightly guilty if you aren’t working when you’re supposed to be (Catholic upbringing, anyone?).

From the beginning, my blog plan was to post four days a week, with a longer piece on Thursdays. Sometimes I cheat and run a recipe, say, or something very short. But when I skip a day, I feel guilty (as I did yesterday) even though I know that in the grand scheme of the world, it doesn’t matter. No one seems to care. But, perversely, that may be the most compelling reason discipline matters so much in the writing life: No one else cares, so the one person who does care—the one person who has to care, always—that one person is you.

My Writer's Center Classes & Katharine Weber to Teach Unreliable Narrators at Politics & Prose

2011-10-05T06:08:00.002-04:00

Classes I am teaching this fall…come join me!

Flex Your Creative Muscles: A One-Day Workshop The Writer’s Center / www.writer.org

4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815
Time: 10:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M.
Date: 10/22/2011

Spend the afternoon doing a series of intensive, guided exercises designed to shake up your brain and get your creative subconscious working for you. You can come with a project already in mind and focus your work toward a deeper understanding of that—or you can come as a blank slate (that will quickly fill up!). Fiction writers and memoirists of all levels are welcome. Please bring lots of paper and pen/pencil or a computer with a fully charged battery. (1 hour lunch break)

Registration here.

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The First Pages: What Makes a Good Beginning

The Writer’s Center / www.writer.org

4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815

Time: 7:00-10:00 P.M.

Date: 11/1/2011

Most writers know that they have to “hook” their reader from the start of the story or novel, but how exactly do we do this? What are the elements that make a great beginning to a story or novel? You’ll find out in this workshop, as we explore ways to strengthen your opening pages. Everyone is invited to bring 15 copies of the first two pages of one of their stories/novels/essays/memoirs for some hands-on advice.

Registration here.

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This class at Politics & Prose looks awesome:

Reading and Writing the Unreliable Narrator
Katharine Weber
Tuesday, December 6
Morning session 10 a.m. - noon
Afternoon session 2 - 4 p.m.

Many readers have become intolerant of the unreliable narrator. Why? Is it because the less we trust politicians and the veracity of the news of the world around us, the more we demand reliability from the characters whose points of view inform our fiction?
Many writers have come to believe that writing the unreliable narrator is risky business. Book groups can prefer novels featuring main characters they would like to have as friends and members of the group, while turning away from stories told by characters they dislike because they "can't trust" them. Has unreliability become another word for unlikeable, and are we the poorer for it?

In this two-part, day-long workshop, novelist Katharine Weber (and creator of Alice Ziplinsky, unreliable narrator extraordinaire of True Confections) will lead a discussion in the morning on enhancing the reader's appreciation of the unreliable narrator, and teach a workshop in the afternoon session on strategies for writing the effective unreliable narrator.

Morning (10 a.m. - noon) Reading the Unreliable Narrator
The discussion will explore a variety of unreliable narrators, with consideration of the tellers of Zoe Heller's novel Notes on a Scandal, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. What makes a narrator unreliable, what are the varieties of unreliability, how do we recognize the "truth" of the story, and how does the authorial voice differ from the narrator's voice?

Afternoon (2 - 4 p.m.) Writing the Unreliable Narrator
The advantages and limits of telling the story through different sorts of unreliable narrators will be examined. What succeeds? What fails? Why? Participants will experiment with brief exercises in narrative voice while considering a range of narrative unreliabilities, from the deliberate liar to the misinformed or deluded narrator, both of whom mislead the reader (how far can the writer go without cheating the reader?), to the deluded or compromised narrator who believes his own version of reality while the reader has growing awareness of the actual truths of the story.

Katharine Weber is the author of five novels, most recently True Confections (Broadway, $14), which features the unreliable Alice Ziplinsky as narrator. Her newest book is a memoir, The Memory Of All That: George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities (Crown, $24.99). She has taught fiction writing at Connecticut College, Yale, the Paris Writers Workshop, and Goucher College, and is a thesis advisor in the MFA program at Columbia University.

Books:
Zoe Heller, Notes on a Scandal: What Was She Thinking? (Picador, $14)
Ian McEwan, Atonement (Anchor, $15)
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (Vintage, $15)
Available at P&P at a 20% discount to registrants

Price: $40 per session ($35 for members); $70 for both sessions ($65 for members)
Click here to enroll.

Link Corral: Living the Writing Life, How To Write Great Physical Descriptions, Thinking about Form, Poems Posted on Redux

2011-10-04T09:47:00.002-04:00

How to be a wandering writer, living on $20,000 a year:

“I am a perpetual stranger, moving to a new city every year. I’m not a businessman, or an international superstar for that matter. I’m a writer. My average yearly income hovers just north of $20,000 and comes from waiting tables and manning the till at bookstores. I live on little. I plan and I save.

“When my itinerary was loosely designed six years ago, my main motivation was to gain greater life experience to inform my fiction. Much like people who save money to buy a house or to pay for their children’s education, I budget to live a writer’s life.

“Seattle will be my seventh city in seven years. I have never before set foot in this bastion of coffee and computers. I arrive with only a few contacts in my phone and a roommate whom I’ve met through e-mail and Facebook. There is no work lined up for me, and my bank account holds just enough money to last me a couple of months before paying rent becomes a crisis.

“This is where you panic. This is where I get started.”

Read on in The Washington Post.

******

“I hate describing characters. I hate having to find artful, subtle ways to describe the same old things: hair, face, hands, legs, eyes. Everybody has them, and they only come in so many colors, so many shapes or sizes. Why do I have to make them seem unique? Why do I have to find ways to describe my characters without sounding like I’m describing them?”

I agree. That’s why I thought Chris Abouzeid’s "Gettin’ Physical: The Dos and Don’ts of Character Description," on Beyond the Margins, was so helpful, offering concrete tips to aid in this dreaded writer’s task.

******

Five ways of thinking about form, by K.L Cook, in the Glimmer Train bulletin:

“Form is, I think, the most difficult element of craft for any writer, especially the fiction writer, to understand and master. It can, and probably should, take a lifetime. That's certainly been the case for me. In all of my stories and books, both the published and unpublished ones, I strive to understand not only my subject but also how to give my narratives the most effective shape and focus. That has sometimes been a painfully long process, but in most cases it's been a source of aesthetic pleasure and an integral part of my apprenticeship and ongoing development as a writer. Helping my students figure out their subject matter and discover the traditions and forms that give their stories meaning has been and continues to be one of my most important goals as teacher. Form, in fact, is the element of craft that most shapes the design and organization of my creative writing courses—such as Sudden Fiction, Short Story Cycle, and Forms of Fiction. The primary thing I've learned is that there is no magic recipe, no special secret. There are, instead, many different ways to think about form….”

Read the rest.

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Be sure to check out Hailey Leithauser's poetry, just posted on Redux: http://reduxlitjournal.blogspot.com/2011/10/3-four-poems-by-hailey-leithauser.html

The Power of Literary Citizenship, via Kore Press

2011-10-03T10:57:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry to so shamelessly steal this, but it’s so good that I must be shared widely, so I hope I’m forgiven. I read it on the Kore Press newsletter; Kore Press is a small publisher focusing on work by women. Learn more about them here. (And go here to get the information on their short fiction chapbook contest for women writers, deadline October 31…the contest will open soon.)

The Power of Literary Citizenship

Shannon Cain

Advice to an Aspiring Author on How to Publish Your Book.

Write well. Pursue this goal for about 10 or 20 years.

Tend to your literary citizenship:

Read. A lot.
Subscribe to literary magazines.
Buy books. Review them, and publish the reviews.
Teach.
Celebrate the achievements of your colleagues. Champion their work.
Share your power.
Donate to small presses. Volunteer. Join a governing board.
Practice humility.
In workshop, be patient and kind and truthful.
Attend talks and conferences. Listen hard.
Mentor a new writer. Be mentored.
Be a good friend to other writers. Keep generosity in your heart.

3. Realize that literary citizenship makes you a better writer. Know that the more you give, the more you get back. Forget about publishing. Just write. And give.

Shannon Cain is the volunteer fiction editor and co-chair of the board of directors at Kore Press. Her first book, The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, is forthcoming next week from the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Work in Progress: Is Writing "Fun"?

2011-09-29T09:52:00.000-04:00

I remember the first day of a workshop when we were going around the table getting to know each other, and several people had recently taken up writing, noting that they were bored with their present careers and that they enjoyed writing. “Writing is fun,” several of them said.

I kept my smile in place, but inside, something recoiled in horror. “Fun”—it seemed such a curious word for the constant, endless, soul-sucking struggles with the muse, with the marketplace, with the self. It struck me that no matter how long the list I was asked to give to describe writing, “fun” would never be a word I would choose.

For months I worried this over. What did it mean that I didn’t think writing was fun? What was wrong with me? Why was I doing something that I didn’t consider fun? I even stuck into a short story a moment mocking a character who calls everything “fun.” I remembered an old episode of This American Life that stuck with me, something exploring romantic relationships and a Russian woman saying something along the lines of this: “All you American women, you want a man who ‘makes you laugh.’ What’s so funny all the time about life? Nothing.” (Imagine a very scornful Russian accent.)

This is not to say that there aren’t things that I love about writing and the writing life: the thrill of nailing the exact right word, the moment where you see what should happen next and it’s good, the SASE in your mailbox that’s a contract instead of a rejection, the life I have where it’s perfectly normal to take a walk and think weird thoughts about imaginary people, hearing a bit of unusual dialogue and sticking it in a novel, the odd scrap of research falling into exact place to perfect the story’s metaphor, knowing that reading books and stories is part of my job, seeing my novels on a library shelf.

But when I think of “fun,” I guess I think of pleasant mindlessness, and writing is anything but mindless.

I’m probably making more than I should of one simple, nervous moment at the beginning of class with an inscrutable teacher sitting in the front of the room. But even so, why did these comments shake me so much? Why am I thinking about that one word all this time later? I don’t doubt my choice to devote my life to writing (I mean, I don’t doubt it more than a thousand times a day, which seems average).

Am I missing something? Is everyone else having fun? It wouldn’t seem so, given the conversations I tend to have with other writers in which we bitch about agents, publishers, never enough time to work, and our “stupid novels.”

Or was it apprehension I felt, seeing these students standing at the sunny edge of a field, about to plunge into the beginning of a scary, dark path, knowing that I was about to lead them deep into the tangled woods and then simply leave them there at the end of the semester?

I guess I don’t think roller coasters are “fun” either. But I remember vividly every single one I’ve ridden.

Sun Magazine Giveaway

2011-09-29T09:47:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Susan S. of Silver Spring, Maryland, who will soon be enjoying a year of The Sun magazine in honor of Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday! Thank you all for entering the contest.

Crab Orchard Review Reading for "Due North" Issue

2011-09-28T13:23:00.004-04:00

A call for submissions from the fabulous Crab Orchard Review (and I would say that even if they hadn’t recently published my story “The Chicago Brother”!):

Special Issue: Due North
http://craborchardreview.siuc.edu/special.html

Crab Orchard Review is seeking work for our Summer/Fall 2012 issue focusing on writing exploring the people, places, history, and changes shaping the states (and *District of Columbia) in the U.S. that make up the northern mid-Atlantic and Northeast (*Maryland, *Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) and the northern Midwest east of the Mississippi River (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and *Minnesota).

*We know we’re stretching boundaries and regions with the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, and Minnesota, but we would like to see what those places bring to this exploration. We’ll head a little farther west next time around.

All submissions should be original, unpublished poetry, fiction, or literary nonfiction in English or unpublished translations in English (we do run bilingual, facing-page translations whenever possible). Please query before submitting any interview. For general information about submissions, click the following link for our regular submission guidelines and subscription and single copy orders.

The submission period for this issue is August 17 through November 5, 2011. We will be reading submissions throughout this period and hope to complete the editorial work on the issue by the end of April 2012. Writers whose work is selected will receive $25 (US) per magazine page ($50 minimum for poetry; $100 minimum for prose) and two copies of the issue.

Mail submissions to:

CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW
Due North issue
Faner 2380, Mail Code 4503
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
1000 Faner Drive
Carbondale, IL 62901
United States of America

Include SASE for reply or return of work.

Address correspondence to:

Allison Joseph, Editor & Poetry Editor
Carolyn Alessio, Prose Editor
Jon Tribble, Managing Editor

Link Corral: New Story on Redux; Short Novel Contest; Win a Year of The Sun

2011-09-27T09:35:00.000-04:00

Be sure to check out Dana Cann’s great story “Clockwise” on Redux: A Literary Journal. (Secret insider info: I first met Dana when he was in one of my workshops at the Writer’s Center.)

“On the night they died, the Wynn family, each in his or her bed on the second floor of their house on Maiden Lane, dreamed of the children—of Tina Wynn, the girl, and Brandon Wynn, the boy—flying, clockwise, through the rooms and hallways that formed a loop on the first floor. It was the same loop the children had run when they were small, chasing one another or being chased by their father or their mother or, on occasion, both. But tonight they did so in their dreams, and they did so in the air, without touching the ground. And all the while the gas from the cracked furnace seeped up the stairwells and through the floorboards and vents, which brought the heat from the furnace’s flame to the rest of the house.”

Read the rest here.

*****

Grassic Short Novel Prize from Evening Street Press

Our idea is to emphasize the power, skill and enduring value of the short novel form: limit 90-150 pages.

For example:

(pages given vary with edition)

Conrad, Heart of Darkness (90)
O’Connor, Wise Blood   (140)
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground   (96)
West, Miss Lonelyhearts   (95)
Chopin, The Awakening (150)
Camus, The Stranger   (150)
Hesse, Siddartha   (145)
Twain, The Mysterious Stranger   (100)
James, The Aspern Papers (100)

[Editor's note: Quite an intimidating list!]
$500 and publication by the Evening Street Press will be awarded for the best short novel manuscript. The contest is open to writers who have already published books as well as those for whom this is a first book. The winning writer will receive 25 copies from a press run of 250. Submissions accepted May 1, 2011 to December 1, 2011.

Manuscript Requirements
--ms. must contain between 90 and 150 pages (45,000-75,000 words)
--ms. must be typed (single spaced)
--ms. pages must be numbered and a table of contents included
--include an acknowledgements page
--include one cover page that contains the title, your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address
--include a second cover page that contains the title only
--your name must not appear anywhere else on the ms.
--SASE for results--manuscripts will not be returned

Reading Fee
The $25 reading fee includes a one-issue subscription to the Evening Street Review. Make check or money order payable to Evening Street Press. We reserve the right not to name a winner.

You may submit more than one manuscript. Send multiple submissions in the same envelope, marked “Multiple.” Each manuscript must include a $25 reading fee. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but we must be informed immediately if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

Mail entries (no email submissions, please) to:

Evening Street Press

7652 Sawmill Road #352

Dublin, OH 43016-9296.

More info: http://www.eveningstreetpress.com/id57.html

*****

Don’t forget to enter the drawing for a free subscription to The Sun magazine, in honor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday. Details here.

Link Corral: Oops & Finding Literary DC

2011-09-26T10:30:00.000-04:00

I can’t believe I made a mistake…rather, I can’t believe I made this mistake: In my post last week about the stages of a writer, I totally forgot the last one, so please imagine that you also read this last week:

--Art: the perfect marriage of creative ambition and skill; the moment of supreme and beautiful confidence in which the words on the page match the vision in the brain; the magic. Think: virtually unachievable, but for some writers, the only thing worth striving for.

All I can say in my defense is that this mental lapse shows me that clearly I’m waaaay too mired in the worries of Stage 3: Career.

*****

D.C. is a soulless company town with the only company being Government. Not so! There’s a vibrant and unique literary community here if you know where to look , and the first place you should look is this excellent “Guide to Literary DC” that novelist Carolyn Parkhurst wrote for the Poets & Writers website:

“I never expected to end up in Washington, D.C. My feelings about politics and government are a lot like my feelings about photosynthesis or the circulatory system: I acknowledge their importance without wanting to spend any real time dwelling on them. When I moved here as a recent college graduate in 1992, it was because my boyfriend was attending grad school in College Park, and because I figured that as a writer (a title that was more hopeful than descriptive at that point), I could live anywhere. But the city worked its charm on me in the usual ways—an unexpected glimpse of the Washington Monument in the middle of a humdrum day, a rain of petals in my hair after a springtime walk—and somehow, all these years later, it’s the only place that feels like home.

“For me, the city is full of the kind of literary landmarks that no one else really cares about, the personal ones, my own life becoming a transparency laid over the larger map: the group house on R Street, through whose mail slot slipped hundreds of manila SASEs holding rejection letters from publications big and small. The food court in the Old Post Office Pavilion, where I ate lunch nearly every day the summer I interned at the National Endowment for the Arts. The strange little wedge-shaped Starbucks that seems to inhabit a traffic island in nearby Rosslyn, Virginia, where I wrote the last pages of all three of my novels. The bench at the National Zoo where I went to write a few times during a summer when I was on the run from the temptations of Wi-Fi. The house in Glover Park where I learned, on an ordinary day at home with my five-month-old son, that I’d sold my first novel. The Thai restaurant we ordered a celebratory dinner from that night. The nearby Whole Foods that was offering a special on irises, prompting my husband—the same guy I moved here to be with—to bring home eleven separate bouquets of them.

“But if I can manage to drag myself out of my own story for a moment, I can identify some of the other important places as well, the ones that have relevance to a larger group of writers and readers. It’s a beautiful, vibrant, creative city, whether or not you’re interested in learning more about the circulatory system.”

Read the rest here: http://www.pw.org/content/washingtondc

Happy Birthday, Scott!

2011-09-24T09:35:00.001-04:00

Only one man could get me blogging on a Saturday…of course I’m talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald! Happy birthday, Scott!

Since I’m always gabbing about The Great Gatsby, here are a few quotes from elsewhere:

“‘You know, you’re a little complicated after all.’ ‘Oh no,’ she assured him hastily. ‘No, I’m not really — I’m just a — I’m just a whole lot of different simple people.” – Tender Is the Night

AND

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” – The Crack Up

AND

“Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.” – The Beautiful and Damned

There are more here, on Flavorwire’s piece, “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Guide to the Good Life,” which also has some great photos, including the most AWESOME Christmas photo of Scott, Zelda, and little Scottie. (You must check it out; scroll down.)

I really should celebrate by giving away a bottle of gin, but the shipping issues seem rather complicated and possibly illegal, so instead, I’ll give away to one blog reader a year-long subscription to The Sun magazine, one of my faves.

The usual rules: Email me your name and address—be sure to put Scott in the subject line—by Wednesday, September 28, at 5PM EST (cocktail hour!). One lucky winner will be selected at random to receive the subscription; your emails will be deleted, and I won’t use the addresses for anything else. Yes, it’s okay to enter if you know me. Yes, it’s okay to enter if you don’t. Email address: Lpietr@aol.com

Work in Progress: Life Stages of a Writer

2011-09-22T11:39:00.000-04:00

There is taking your writing career seriously and there is writing. Both are important for a writer hoping to make a mark on the world, to get published. I have a friend who asserted the continuum of how one approaches writing goes something like this:

--self-therapy: We write for ourselves, for an audience of one, because it feels “good” and we have “something to say”; we’re bleeding out words (think journaling and Anne Lamott’s shitty first drafts)

--craft: We see that there are techniques and skills that will make our work better; we begin to study and learn and think about HOW we’re telling our stories, not just WHY (think classes, writing groups, MFAs)

--career: We are striving to be a Writer, to make money, to get published, to keep getting published; we meet lots of other writers and remember their names, not always because we admire their work but because they direct a reading series and might be looking for someone to read next fall (think AWP, conferences, Facebook, agents & editors)

While it may seem as though some of these stages are preferable to other stages, that isn’t necessarily the case. A writer with larger ambition probably needs to be able to move fluidly through all three stages; a writer who is content to write a memoir of his/her life and self-publish it for family members may never leave the self-therapy stage, and that’s fine.

What I’ve been thinking about is how easy it is to get trapped in the third stage and think that you’ve already fulfilled the first two and therefore you need to focus only on getting published, to think of your career. On paper, we know the dangers of that strategy. On paper (or in class) I’m the first to say, “Write the story you want to write,” and, “Worry about the marketplace later.”

In practice, the marketplace is always in our face, whether because we’re on Facebook with a lot of writers who are all getting published left and right or because our family asks every two minutes, “When will your novel be published?” or because we’re asking that same question in our heads even more frequently than the family members.

Right now I’ve decided to spend some time in stage one for a little while. I am writing the story I want to write. I don’t know where this work is going, or what the larger goal is. These stories are hard to face, challenging for me to think about, and yet feel somehow necessary. As a result, I’ve written not one but TWO short stories that are 35 pages long. (We all know what the marketplace thinks of that!) As a result, I alternate between utmost confidence and utter terror at over all this time I’m “wasting.” As a result, well…I’m trying not to care about results; I’m trying to care simply about the writing, about the story I “have to tell.”

“Quit worrying about whether or not it’s good and worry about whether or not it’s true.” ~~Carolyn Forche

The Nature of Art: "Trouble in Mind" by Alice Childress

2011-09-21T10:03:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, I went to the play Trouble in Mind at the Arena Stage theatre in DC. The play was originally written in 1955 by Alice Childress, an African-American playwright/actress (who later went on to write novels). In 1955, the play was produced Off-Broadway and won an Obie Award for best Off-Broadway new play of the season. Of course producers wanted to move the show to Broadway.

Tiny “problem”: the play was about race relations, and the ending was seen as too bleak. Childress struggled for two years to find a way to end the play that would satisfy the producers and still feel true to her experience. She couldn’t do it, and the play never made it to Broadway, and in 1959, Lorraine Hansbury and A Raisin in the Sun became the first Broadway play written by a female African-American playwright. (Trouble in Mind wasn’t even published until 1971.)

On Sunday, Trouble in Mind was produced in its original 1955 version, and it was fantastic. The storyline revolves around a play within a play and, on the surface, explores the issue of the demeaning, stereotypical roles that black actors are forced to play if they wish to make a living in the theatre. Of course, the deeper level plunges us right into race relations in American culture …both in 1955 and, still, today.

The play met my (very high) expectations of what good theatre should be: sharp, smart, and uncomfortable. I was laughing and squirming in my seat at the same time. I was so mesmerized that I never once checked my watch. I cried during one riveting monologue (and I wasn’t the only teary audience member). The actors were perfectly cast, each of them—even the non-speaking stagehand was memorable. Days later, I’m still thinking about the production.

And even with all of that, what really stood out to me was just how excellent the play was itself, the writing. So many illusions delved into, ripped out and laid bare, in two hours. Not one character gets off easy. I would have believed this was a contemporary play, set in an earlier time period to make certain, hard truths more palatable for a modern audience. (By the way, it’s impossible for me to imagine a better ending.)

You have to ask, why was this play virtually forgotten?

Or, you could say instead: Art follows its own path and always prevails.

Here’s the review from today’s Washington Post: “It is, I think, one of the best plays about racism ever written.”

And here’s how to get tickets if you’re in the DC area.

And here’s more information about Alice Childress.

A Dose of Anne Lamott

2011-09-20T06:50:00.000-04:00

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle that you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words—not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

AND

“Thus, good dialogue encompasses both what is said and what is not said. What is not said will sit patiently outside that stuck elevator door, or it will dart around the characters’ feet inside the elevator, like rats. So let these characters hold back some thoughts, and at the same time, let them detonate little bombs.”

AND

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people…Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California). Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground—you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.”

AND

“My students assume that when well-respected writers sit down to write their books, they know pretty much what is going to happen because they’ve outlined most of the plot, and this is why their books turn out so beautifully and why their lives are so easy and joyful, their self-esteem so great, their childlike senses of trust and wonder so intact. Well. I do not know anyone fitting this description at all. Everyone I know flails around, kvetching and growing despondent, on the way to finding a plot and structure that work. You are welcome to join the club.”

Of course, this is all from Anne Lamott’s fabulous book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It makes me so happy when I get to be the one assigning this book to a student who hasn’t read it before…they always love it!