For the second time this month, I’m having some serious self doubt about who I am and what I’m all about (what can I say, my convictions are weak).  My mind is making flippy floppy, and I think it has to do with the literary community’s conflicting reports about the general state of writing and publishing.

For example:  Ted Genoway says fiction is dead, but the Atlantic Monthly recently recommitted itself to publishing fiction. Then there’s the whole “reading on screens is the future of reading” vs. the print is not dead debate (the difference, apparently, is akin to “looking at a woman and having sex with her.”).

So what’s a body to do? I’d like to pick a side, preferably before AWP (just in case I find myself at one of Lewis “The Lap” Lapham’s parties, I’ll want to be able to start berating “Chuckles” Rushdie with my opinions immediately). Also, if this is the death knoll of writing and reading, I’d like to know so that I can quit writing and reading–that shit is hard. Other possible life paths include running away to my grandmother’s house and/or opening up a Pinkberry.

As I contemplate this serious life changing decision, I am reminded of the something Andy Dick’s character on NewsRadio once said: “You got to know when to fold them. You got to know how to hold them.” Too true!

I’m sure I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, here’s a song by Ron and Russel Mael of Sparks that perfectly captures my befuddlement: Your Call’s Very Important To Us, Please Hold.

From the long list of amazing and surprising experiences I had last week—far from Spokane and my computer screen—the one I’d like to share is my visit to the Marina Abramovic retrospective, “The Artist is Present,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Admittedly, my first priority was seeing the Tim Burton exhibit (which didn’t disappoint), but I left feeling more impressed by Marina Abramovic—the woman and the art; which in her case, are one in the same.

To those not familiar with her, Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist who began her solo performances in Croatia in the mid Seventies before moving on to Amsterdam—where she collaborated for years with her partner, Ulay—and then New York. I’d first come into contact with her several years ago at an exhibit somewhere on the west side (Chelsea or the Meatpacking district; all I remember was it was very windy) where she had a sparse apartment built high into the wall of the gallery. It consisted of three open-walled rooms, one with a table and chair and pitcher of water, one with a shower and toilet, the other with a wooden bench that served as a bed. Ladders that went up to these room/ledges had large knives in place of rungs. She “lived” and fasted in this space for the duration of the exhibition; viewers came to watch her exist in the space. Read more »

What do you remember about reading poetry as a kid? I’ll tell you, I don’t remember much besides the poems my mother read to me: Nikki Giovanni, William Blake, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson…she skipped right over the kid stuff and shared the grown-up poetry, even when I was as young as five. In school, my fourth grade teacher read Shel Silverstein to the class, and of course, everyone knew Dr. Seuss. But somehow I never had the idea that poetry had to rhyme or that it had to do anything in particular to be a poem (except maybe have line breaks). That’s what I liked about poetry; there were no rules. I came to believe that it could do everything: if a story couldn’t do it, a poem could. That was my thinking. Who knows where this idea came from. But when I went home to Louisiana a few days ago to visit my family and had some time to talk with my niece who loves to read, I shared with her a Tod Marshall poem from the latest Willow Springs, the one about ferrets. I thought she’d get a kick out of it, but all she said was, “That doesn’t sound like a poem to me.” I asked her why not. “My teacher says that poems have to rhyme,” she said. What?! “Poems do NOT have to rhyme,” I told her in the calmest voice I could manage while trying to hold back the vitriol I wanted to spew out about her teacher. Read more »

In 2000, Bill Fitzhugh published Cross Dressing, a satiric/comic novel about advertising and hyper-consumerism. When he realized that the book (his third) wasn’t going to get much attention, he started wondering how to change that, and decided that it would be handy to get corporate sponsorship. According to his story, he’d already written most of the book and there were several scenes involving cocktails. So he simply wrote in the name “Seagrams” and, voila, product placement in contemporary fiction was on the move. (Imagine how much money Carver could’ve made off all that whiskey in his stories.) Fitzhugh claims that he used the already-existing element of the cocktails because he didn’t want to interfere with the structure and integrity of the book, and also because he’s lazy. Makes sense to me. Read more »

Since I’m jet lagged, still mentally slugging pints with pals in Muncie bars, and getting used to this insufferable new acquaintance of mine – the quarter system – I’m keeping this short, so I can wake up early and read manuscripts detailing bougainvillea. Maybe I’ll get to read about bougainvillea jutting from a hillside, punctuating something or other. (Two more overused words – I’m just sneaking in comments intended for Kathryn’s post, in an effort to lengthen my own. See what I did there? I’m like Rub Squeers from Nobody’s Fool, productively ignoring the task at hand.)

Anyway, we kicked off nonfiction form and theory 3 tonight,  Natalie Kusz at the helm. Around the middle of class, Natalie handed out a rather curious worksheet, detailing information theory and its Read more »

You may find what I’m about to share with you disgusting. It’s not exactly that I revel in your discomfort, but I generally have a greater interest in sensitive information than most people I know. Often sensitive information is useful and meaningful. It is under that premise that I am about to over share.

I’ve gotten a few nice rejections and a mother lode of form rejections, but until last week I had never received a personalized mean rejection before. Here is what one journal emailed me:

The streamlined form and the play with language in “Snoqualmie” make it a more intriguing poem than the other two. The language of both “Seattle 275″ and “I Can’t Reduce…” seems too casual to me, even flat. Consider, in all of these poems, the human/more-than-human relationship more carefully. Reach for a more sophisticated articulation of the “I”‘s awareness of the place of the human in the world–whether wild or civilized.

At first when I read it, I thought it was very interesting. It was nice to have some of my weaknesses as a writer laid out for me. Read more »

In the past few days, I’ve read around thirty short story manuscripts, and I’ve noticed a horrible overuse of the term bougainvillea. It’s come up in at least four of the stories I read, and I can’t help wondering why. It could be that I just got a weird bunch of manuscripts, but I’m thinking not. Instead, I think it’s writers trying to be original, and poet-y, but instead of thinking it’s a nice detail, seeing that word makes me want to rip my hair out in frustration. I’m sick of it.

But I’m also wondering if (when?) I’ve been guilty of such things. I recently used a simile in my novel (two, actually), and ever since I’ve been wondering if I added it solely for the language; I usually prefer to write prose that’s as clean and unadorned as possible. But still, I’m sure I’ve done a few things. And that doesn’t even touch the idea of verbal ticks (my recent one has been the word even).

So what annoys you when critiquing manuscripts? What trends have you spotted? And what language sins have you committed?

If ever a novel deserved to be made into a better movie, it’s True Grit.

Maybe you’re familiar with the 1969 film, in which John Wayne swags around and wears an eyepatch and outshoots a gang of roughnecks and generally Dukes it up. It was hugely popular, spawned a sequel, and was an utter disappointment — at least to me — when I watched it again a couple years back, a film that simply missed the spirit of the wonderful novel on which it was based. (Robert Ebert disagrees here, calling it a masterpiece.)

So I’m all jazzed about the fact that the Coen brothers are going to give True Grit, which written by Charles Portis, another shot. And that Jeff Bridges will be playing Rooster Cogburn, the Wayne role.

The Coen brothers. Jeff Bridges. And Charles Portis. For me, it’s a fanboy trifecta.

You’re surely familiar with Bridges and the Coens, but maybe not with Portis. A longtime Southern newspaperman turned novelist (and I do love a journalist turned novelist), Portis wrote a handful of books, and at least two knockouts: True Grit (1968) and my favorite, The Dog of the South (1979).

True Grit is a dry little gem, short, funny and, ultimately, poignant. The main character — a plucky young frontier girl who shrewdly outfoxes the men around her — somehow manages not to sink to the level of awfulness that the words “plucky young frontier girl who shrewdly outfoxes the men around her” might suggest.

Read more »

This week the best episode of South Park ever aired.  It starts out with the boys reading The Catcher in the Rye. Their teacher warns them about all of the controversy surrounding that book and of course that just makes the kids super-excited to read it.  “Whoa you are telling me this book is filthy and inappropriate and made the guy kill the king of hippies? Can we please read this now!?!” They go home and tear through the book and decide it wasn’t worth the controversy and write their own raunchy book which becomes a national phenomenon leading up to the assassinations of Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Kardashian.

It got me thinking about this book I read that I was really psyched about and it was flat out boring.  It was one of those books that I’ve heard all kinds of good things about it and how exciting it is supposed to be. It just did nothing for me for whatever reason.  I won’t go into details about which book it is because it really doesn’t matter.  People enjoy it and that’s great and I don’t see much reason to rain on their parade about it but it got me thinking about how sometimes the legends behind books and authors become just as intriguing (or sometimes more intriguing) than the writing.  We all love a crazy author story.  This book that I read was kind of like that.  I heard all of these crazy rumors about the author and while it got me to purchase a copy of the book, I felt kind of betrayed.  And I wonder if the book would have been more successful if I hadn’t come in with expectations and been able to take the book on its own terms.  Anyways while I won’t recommend the book to you I do suggest taking a look at this episode.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/267108

My tenure at Willow Springs will be up in June, when issue 66 hits the stands, and then I’ll have to pass the reins to my awesome assistant and find a new job. So, I’ve been looking into opportunities that involve writing. Going across different media involves various challenges. For example, how does one write for news? We all know that you keep it in iambic pentameter, and use human interest stories to get the viewer’s attention. I’ve been looking at structure lately, and found a couple excellent examples:

Of course, my fifth grade teacher always said, “You’ve got to answer the five W’s.” Where is the bullshit and who’s dealing with it? When the bullshit happen? Is the bullshit actually breaking news? Keep it current. Why is the bullshit happening and how are we dealing with the bullshit? What do authorities think of the bullshit?

That all sounds simple enough. And remember to write the bullshit in the old inverted pyramid: start with the most important facts about the bullshit and expand from there. Keep the bullshit objective. Don’t get flowery when talking about bullshit. Give your bullshit an angle.

If you’re writing bullshit for the television, images are super important. And yes, there’s a formula for selecting and filling in the video: