My AWP: Lessons Learned

I was in the middle of writing up a rather longish convention report for AWP, covering the panels I attended, who I heard reading (and what they read), tucking in my lessons learned for the benefit of future attendees, when I realized that most of you really don't want to hear about any of that. Really. You're just saying you do to be nice.

So instead, I've broken the story. Edited it down to a few snippets of text, key lessons learned, photos found and photos taken, random beverages consumed. I present it to you here in a mosaic or chiaroscuro structure, if you would like a label for it. (Writers like labels.)

It might not give you a true picture of what AWP is all about, but it does bring you a little closer to my rather blurry state of mind during and after that recent event. And maybe that's something.

Wednesday, March 6th.

Lesson Learned: Pre-register, and show up on the first day of registration if you can. (Bonus lesson. The fee for a replacement badge is $50. Do not lose your badge.)

Sonsie Boston in their Wine Room. Because, you know, wine and cocktails.

I look up and see another introverted male standing not far from my corner, glancing up from his own smartphone. We quickly look away after that terrifying moment of recognition.

He is wearing a porkpie hat.

Lessons Learned: Don't go to parties where you don't know anybody if you're not willing to make the effort to get to know people. Don't wear porkpie hats.

Beverages Consumed: One glass cabernet sauvignon.

Thursday, March 7th.

Lessons Learned: Use the Coat Check. Have Second and Third Choices on Your Schedule.

Looks like 80% of all AWP attendees are female. Why does the VIDA report continue to be so bad?

Lesson Learned: Take Better Notes. Go to Lunch with Sally Bunch. Don't Grow a Beard.

Seventeen pounds. Here's most of it.

Lesson Learned: Don't Go Crazy in the Bookfair. At Least, Not on the First Day.

Thursday Night, Grub Street's Get Lit party at Storyville in Boston.

Lesson Learned: People You Know Will Introduce You to People They Know That You Don't. Cathy Elcik is a Trusting Soul.

Beverages Consumed: Two Dunkin' Donuts regular coffees, one medium, one large. Two vodka collins's, two vodka gimlets.

Friday, March 8.

Another eight pounds.

Craft panels in small rooms with large audiences.

I win a Sundog Lit mug.

Back to Storyville, readings sponsored by The Drum.

Was Chris Castellani wearing orange pants?

Ask a roomful of fiction writers to tell you their greatest transgression. What are the odds they're making it up?

Beverages Consumed: Two Dunkin' Donuts regular coffees, one medium, one large. Three bottles of random German white beer.

Always stay awake for Richard Russo. Buy Amy Bloom's book.

Is this Saturday? Rise and shine, Sunshine. 

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Stuck in the Middle of the Story.

Handouts! Much sage advice.

Sex writers like reading their own work.

Sex scenes structure themselves. Desire, rising action, climax, afterglow.

Book Purchases On-Site and in my Amazon Cart:


DEVANGELICAL, Erika Rae
WHERE THE GOD OF LOVE HANGS OUT, Amy Bloom
DELICATE EDIBLE BIRDS: AND OTHER STORIES, Lauren Groff
NEWS FROM HEAVEN: THE BAKERTON STORIES, Jennifer Haigh
PRACTICAL MAGIC, Alice Hoffman
HOLY GHOST GIRL: A MEMOIR, Donna Johnson
CHARITY GIRL, Michael Lowenthal
THIS IS NOT YOUR CITY, Caitlin Horrocks
ANGELS: A NOVEL, Denis Johnson
NARRATIVE DESIGN, Madison Smartt Bell
THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER, Tom Perrotta


Final Beverage Consumed: Mudslide in a Red Solo Cup.

The End.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

No Excuses

Thanks to Painted Bride Quarterly, I have no excuses:

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

New Year Musings, and a Best Books List

Well, the first month of 2013 is almost over. But between being set back two weeks with a case of whatever plague virus is burning through the Northeast, and various delays pushing off the meetings of my two different writing groups, my personal writing year has barely begun.

Despite the slow start (which means I've once again fallen out of the habit of regular writing), I'm still hopeful that it will be a good one. I've got my Nano Nano file of story beginnings to flesh out, two stories currently making the submission rounds and two more stories that are almost there, and I'll be going to both the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference and Grub Street's own The Muse & the Marketplace conference in the first half of this year.

Maybe a summer writer's retreat or conference, too. And a trip to Vegas. And a family trip or two... hmmm. How many days off do I get? (Don't forget to subtract the two sick days that I already took in January.)

Of course, you can't have writing without reading. (Really. You can't. And please, don't even try.) There were a lot of Best Of lists being circulated at the end of the year, but one kind of list that I enjoyed seeing is rather timeless – writers' lists of their 25 or 50 best reads. Not necessarily "great" or "important" works, but books that were a joy to discover, to read, and to reread. 

And so, in the list below are 25 of mine (As of today. Subject to change. Your mileage may vary. Book series considered for one listing only. Void where prohibited by law.) 

A lot of these books are in the SF/F genre, and over half of them are books I read as a very young man. Some I remember well from where they lived on my mother's bookshelf, home of the first grown-up books I ever read. (Little Women, Tarzan, the Swiss Family Robinson, and Sherlock Holmes were all on that bookcase, under the stairs leading up to my room.)  It's not a list that is necessarily reflective of what I'm reading today – but I'll still defend any one of them as a great read.

Enjoy. I did.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

Pilgrimage, Zenna Henderson

Jesus Son, Denis Johnson

Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft

The Complete Works of Saki, H. H. Munro

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

Straight Man, Richard Russo

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White

Thank You, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss

Nine Princes of Amber, Roger Zelanzy

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

Nano Nano

Erm. I see it's been a while since my last post – tempus fugit, as the old dead dudes would say, although I think it's more relevant to quote the whole passage from Virgil's Georgics (thanks, Wikipedia!): Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore, or in the King's English “But meanwhile it flees: time flees irretrievably, while we wander around, prisoners of our love of detail.”

"Prisoners of our love of detail." Not a bad description for more than a few writers of my acquaintance.

Writing, I'm happy to say, has continued despite my blogging absence. I've gone from blank screen to the nearly-final-draft version of a new, and, for me, rather longish short story (another one that is almost there), and received a couple of new rejections of stories that I thought actually were there (“We appreciate the chance to review your work and wish you the best in finding the right home for this piece,” and the somewhat more encouraging “Unfortunately, it's not quite right for XXXXX so we're going to pass. Do feel free to send us more of your work though.”)

That was in September and October.

November has been all about Nano Nano 30 30. Which, by the way, has (almost) nothing to do with Mork & Mindy, nor the .30-30 Winchester cartridge. Inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month movement, Nano Nano 30 30 is my own bizarrely named and quite possibly misguided attempt at making November a productive writing month.

I've set myself the goal to write the openings of thirty short stories this month; a different story every day. Starting from scratch each session, and leaving any continuation or editing for the future.

How's it going? Well, twenty-four beginnings later, I'm still at it, although I'm not sure how many of them will be worth revisiting come December and beyond. They're short snippets of stories, in the 200 to 400 word range, and typically consist of little more than a place, a situation (hopefully with some elements of conflict and/or desire), a working title (a few examples: "Goths and Goblins," "After the Funeral," "Scars"), and a small number of named characters. Not a lot of hardwood fuel to sustain future writing sessions, but all in all a nice stack of tinder and kindling. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Nano Nano 30 30 to anybody else, and I doubt very much that I'll be doing it again next year, but I am writing something every day, and I do have quite the ferment of new characters bubbling around in my brain. I'm sure at least a few will survive.

They said I should feel free to send them more of my work. 

Well, I'm working. And I do feel free.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen.

Almost the Hardest Thing About Writing

The past couple of weeks have not been particularly productive writing days. And I refuse to trot out any of my over-worked excuses, because I know exactly what's going on. I'm avoiding writing because every story that I'm currently working on, stories that I want to be working on, is in more or less the exact same state.

It's Almost There.

An Almost There story has already been through multiple drafts. It's definitely been workshopped, often more than once. It starts more-or-less where it's supposed to start, it has an end with elements of 'surprising inevitability.' The scenes in the middle work, moving the story forward with gathering speed. It has a sense of place and a point of view that both fit the piece.

But it's not quite There. And that's one of the hardest things about writing.

You can tell you're Almost There when you get these kind of comments, and you agree with them:

"The final struggle, which echoes the flashback, is so important. Can we sit there longer?"

"Love the premise and the character. I think this just needs some thematic focus to pull the details together."

"Great stuff. Now set the moment to garner greater tension."

But you've already honed the tension, fleshed out the final struggle, focused on theme and character until your eyes started to cross.

How do you get There?

I don't know the answer, although I think I know where to look for it.

Tear things apart, and build them back up again. Put the story down, come back to it. Test out new sentences, new scenes, new dialogue. Save each version separately, because some of new drafts will be worse than the previous one, not better. Highlight and cut up your printouts. Read sections out loud, and listen. The better words are out there, somewhere, but it will take yeoman's work to find them.

Don't give up, even if you take a week off.

After all, these stories are Almost There.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

Jotting, Not Journaling

I buy a lot of blank journals. And I should be filling them up by writing in them every day. You know, Journaling. It's what writers are supposed to do. Everyone says so.

Janet Burroway, in her excellent text WRITING FICTION: "... a writer's journal is an essential, likely to be the source of originality, ideas, experimentation, and growth."

Aine Greaney in another useful book, WRITER WITH A DAY JOB, says "I strongly advocate for daily journaling as a way to build your daily writing practice and your writing voice."

The first chapter of Susan Tiberghien's ONE YEAR TO A WRITING LIFE? "Journal Writing." The opening sentence of that chapter? "The first step toward a writing life--and its foundation--is journal writing."

(I also happen to buy a lot of books about writing. Why does this not surprise anyone?)

But I don't "journal." Certainly not daily, and not anything resembling how the above advice-givers, and plenty of others, would have me journal.

This is not to say that I haven't tried it their way. Believe me, I've tried. And I've failed. So I do something else. Yes, I carry a notebook with me, and I scribble in it now and then. But I don't journal. What I do instead is Jot.

Jots aren't anything close to complete thoughts, or even complete sentences. Jots are potential story sparks, evanescent images I need to capture before they vanish, funny names, dream scenes, word combinations. Fictitious band names, lots of band names. And every so often, particularly when I'm fumbling around for a new story start, I page through last week's, or last month's, or last year's, jottings, looking for something that might ignite a blank page.

The top row in the picture is a sampling of my untouched notebook and journal collection. The bottom row, mostly smaller Moleskine notebooks or quad ruled Steno books, is filled with Jots.

I also have a Word document (laughingly named "Working Journal.doc") in the computer full of Jots, and an Easy Note file for my iPhone, too.

Here's half a dozen examples of what can be found inside those notebooks and docs, chosen more-or-less at random and taken verbatim:

1. Woman on subway - "I have taught myself how to sing every Michael Bolton song in sign language."

2. Liquor cabinet contents for list story.

3. I was nineteen and Jewish then.

4. Convention crasher.

5. Does Amber smile?

6. Two squirrels working their way through razor/barbed wire/chain link fence as if any other thorny vines.

And although I still feel bad at not being able to 'build my daily writing practice and my writing life' like every else does, this is what works for me. I wrote this blog entry instead of working on fiction because I wanted to start on something new, but didn't have a beginning. But now, looking at my Jots, I'm wondering about Amber, and why she never smiles. Maybe the nineteen year old Jewish boy can find that out.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

Bet the Over

Last month, I blogged about how long it takes to write a story (Four Hours, Forty Days, or Forever).

If you're a betting type, and the line was 40 days, I hope you took the Over.

Two different writing groups have now seen two different versions of the Batman story in question, and there is definitely going to be at least one more substantial rewrite before it's ready to be viewed by anyone else.

Ron MacLean has described the process of writing as following a spiral, where in each draft you circle in a little closer to your story's core, your speed increasing with every rotation.

Stay on target, and eventually you'll get there. Or so I keep telling myself.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen