1. “In Scenic Pigs, Arizona”

2. “The Pool Boy Sends His Regards”

3. “Here’s to You, ‘Typhoid Mary’”

4. “Forty Pounds of Tallow and Thou”

5. “Nude, Manning a Leaf-Blower”

6. “Indiana, We Hardly Knew Ye”

7. “The Prolapsed Trumpeter”

8. “Beulah’s Boil Gets a Name”

9. “Twenty-Eight Stitches Later”

10. “All You Need is Gin”

11. “A Boy Named ‘Escanaba’”

12. “Skokie Delenda Est”

13. “My Love Affair With Thames Valley Business Solutions”

14. “The Romance of Burning Tires”

15. “There’s No ‘I’ in Blancmange”

16. “Ailurophony”

17. “She Doesn’t Even Like Sturgeon”

18. “Twelve Angry Accountants”

19. “Last Year’s Night-Train Blend”

20. “The Passion of Rupert Gumm”

With a spirograph, everyone's an artist!

I was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on my kazoo yesterday when I got to thinking about what a truly democratic instrument the kazoo is. I say this not just because it’s ideal for playing our national anthem (as well as other patriotic tunes like “God Bless America” and “The Fifty Nifty States”), but because no one is ever better at playing the kazoo than anyone else.

It is impossible to be bad at the kazoo. It is also impossible to be good at the kazoo.

To test this theory, I looked online for kazooing videos. All of them sound exactly the way you expect them to sound – like someone playing a kazoo. There are no professional kazoo players. No one attends school on a kazoo scholarship. No one is writing academic articles on the cultural impact of the kazoo.

So, it’s a gratifying little instrument. The bar for success is very low. Most people can play the kazoo perfectly the very first time they pick one up. All you have to do is hum into it and it makes a somewhat musical sound. It can be played loud or soft, fast or slow. If you are playing it for your friends, and if those friends have a sense of humor, they can dance to it. But the pitch and range of the kazoo are limited. The kazoo lacks complexity. The kazoo is actually rather annoying for anyone who has to listen to it being played for more than a few minutes at a time.

The kazoo of sports is the wiffle ball. It is easy to hit a wiffle ball. But it is hard to hit a wiffle ball very far.

The kazoo of visual arts is the spirograph. Every pattern you make with the spriograph looks kinda cool. But not super cool.

The kazoo of gardening is the Chia Pet. It is easy to grow those little clover things on a ceramic head. But it is not actually all that interesting to have a ceramic head covered in little clover things.

There is no such thing as the kazoo of writing.

There is no style or genre or formula for writing with which someone can just sit down and create something they find immediately satisfying.

I guess an argument can be made for haikus as the kazoos of writing because they are so short; it’s easy to write one pretty quickly. But it’s hard to write a good haiku. Writing a good haiku takes just as long as writing any other kind of poem – longer, for those who are not so syllabically inclined.

I guess an argument could be made for Mad Libs as the kazoos of writing. But as a writer, I would find the suggestion that one could fill out a Mad Libs sheet and call it “writing” insulting.

Of course, actual athletes probably find the suggestion that one could hit a wiffle ball and call it “playing a sport” insulting.

Actual musicians probably find the suggestion that I can hum into a kazoo and call it “music” insulting.

Actual musicians probably say there’s no such thing as the kazoo of music.

On a related note, this is the internet’s best kazoo video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Peace–

Rule #11: I am Kanye West

I’ll be honest: I know nothing about writing fiction. Which is why I decided to take a fiction workshop this quarter. It’s interesting (and slightly appalling) to me that I am in a graduate school creative writing program and still didn’t understand the term “objective third” until recently, simply because my focus is in poetry. I think we should all know a little bit more about each other’s crafts.

In the interest of learning everything I can about fiction, I’ve been diligently copying down rules and proclamations that my classmates and my professor, the esteemed Sam Ligon, have handed down during class, and that is what I plan to teach my SAC students. Listed below are some examples of rules I’ve learned, followed by the way I, as a newcomer to the genre, have come to understand them:

Rule #1: Never use adverbs.
What I learned from this: Fiction writers don’t like description.

Rule #2: Don’t use the word “towards.” Only British people say “towards.”
What I learned from this: Fiction writers are jealous of British people, probably because their words automatically sound pretty when they speak.

Rule #3: A story cannot be a metaphor nor can it be made of metaphor.
What I learned from this: Fiction writers don’t believe in allegory or Animal Farm.

Rule #4: A relationship should always be treated as a conspiracy.
What I learned from this: Fiction writers generally end up alone.

Rule #5: “The pool boy never sends his regards.” –Sam Ligon
What I learned from this: Sam Ligon has a sordid past involving a pool boy.

Rule #6: Whatever you’re good at will kill you.
What I learned from this: Fiction writers are wary of being good at anything. And/or they are frequently afraid their characters might come to life and kill them.

Rule #7: If there’s going to be a dead body, put it on the first page.
What I learned from this: Fiction writers don’t like surprises.

Rule #8: “All you’re ever gonna need is polio.” –Sam Ligon
What I learned from this: FDR is Sam Ligon’s favorite president.

Rule #9: Dreams are dream-like and crazy people act crazy.
What I learned from this: Fiction writers discourage thinking outside the box.

Rule #10: “Always feel what Oprah would berate you for.” –Sam Ligon
What I learned from this: Sam Ligon has a strained relationship with Oprah.

Rule #11: You can believe anything.
What I learned from this: If I write from the point of view of Kanye West, people will have to believe that I am Kanye West.

Rule #12: There’s no single definition of good writing, but we know it when we see it.
What I learned from this: Good writing is to fiction writers what miracles are to Catholics.

In mad excitement for my guests, I spilled coffee on my computer. Then in a series of stupid acts, I erased all the pictures of their visit except for this--saved by Facebook.

After a delightful and stressful month or so that included:

• two weeks of teaching Russian students English online
• losing that job due to my sporadic internet connection (I signed my first contract for DSL in early February and am still waiting for it to be connected)
• a two-week training that qualifies me to teach for Berlitz
• an eight-day visit from my parents (which included eating lots of cake, drinking lots of beer, seeing a couple castles, learning European history, visiting several cities, taking lots of walks, and having meaningful conversations over many a delicious meal)

I suddenly found myself alone with several days in a row of unstructured time. You know what that means. I had no excuse not to write.

Except that I’d spilled coffee on my computer and it wasn’t working. But, after backing up all my files and erasing the entire hard drive, the computer began to work again (except for the keyboard, which explains the auxiliary one stationed in front of my laptop).

It’s just that instead of copying some of my folders I copied “shortcuts” to them. My “novel” happened to be in one of these.

But that was okay because I needed to rethink it, anyway.

We all know that real writers don’t wait for inspiration. We know better than to believe in writer’s block. I held up my thumb in search of a lift, and I got picked up by the comments section of “Why Write Novels At All?” in the New York Times.

[Novels] occur in the mind of the reader most of all and give people the space to consider people and situations in ways that even direct experience does not. (N123, Boston, MA)

I had been contemplating turning my “novel” idea into a play, but N123 reminded me how much I value the intimacy of the writing/reading exchange. I love the way reading a novel relies so heavily on the collaboration of the reader, and I love the care a good writer takes in order to guide the reader’s imagination just so.

I love how reading authentic representations of life allows us to mull over events, motivations, and results slowly, with the depth and care we can’t always offer experiences we witness first-hand. And I love how writing prose allows us to engage with the most interesting thing in the world: layered, intricate, and oftentimes inconsistent human thought.

For all of us who are ill-equipped to offer much to the world in the way of practical knowledge or skill, at least we can keep trying to offer alternate ways of thinking about this nutty world. And even if we utterly fail in that, we can live countless lives—meaningful and tragic—through reading (between stints of washing the world’s cars, floors, and toilets).

Degas would have kicked me out of his painting

.

For ten weeks of my life I took ballet lessons. I wore tights, a leotard, a tutu, and I was twenty-two.
I have never felt graceful so when I signed up for the course at the community college, I did so with determination to “learn grace.” Growing up with serious anxiety I always felt like a potatobug skittering around in life stuttering, sweating, and cursing way too often.
I ended up getting a C in the class.

Sample comment from my teacher:
Catherine, soften your hands! You’re dancing with monster hands!

There is a similar trend with my writing. Any time I take a stab at beauty, I mean classic-beauty, I fail. I’m talking about the kind of beauty you see in enviably breathtaking poetry. Lines that, when spoken, melt like dark chocolate on your tongue. The kind of beauty sung by a mermaid, spun out of angel wings, I mean beauty.

It hurts when I try and write beautifully. It’s a struggle. And readers always call me out on it.
Sample comments from readers:
Feels forced.
I don’t know what is going on here.
Why does it feel like you’re trying to impress me?

The tiny ballerina twirling inside my soul gets crushed by these comments.
I believe true poets supply beauty like they’re giving CPR to humanity. True poets know how to be taken seriously. This is why I keep trying to write like someone I’m not. This is why I want, so deeply, to be graceful.  But damnhole, fuckbuckets full of crapmonkeys, it’s not my style. As someone who has shit their pants twice as an adult, I don’t feel it’s honest to walk around writing poems like I’m a goddamn Botticelli painting.
(Sample comment from my mother: And you wonder why you’re still single?)

This weekend I attended a college dance show for one of my students. She was wonderful and the music and outfits were awesome. But one thing stood out very clearly: each girl had a style more comfortable to them. By the end of the show it was obvious which girls excelled at ballet, hip-hop, or jazz. They were fine in the other styles, but glowed in others. Some girls looked a little unsure of themselves when attempting hip-hop, while others looked out of place during ballet routines.

The discomfort I sometimes felt as an audience member soon gave way to a sense of reassurance.
Obviously not all dancers can excel at every style. Sure, anyone can train hard enough and learn to master any art form. But if your body pulls you towards one thing — if it wants you to pop & lock or pirouette or write in a “talky” manner — listen to your body. It will probably be a lot more enjoyable for everyone involved.

I’ve decided my writing is more of a tap-dance.  Sometimes it looks like I’m simply goofing off, jumping on tables ‘n chairs, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t take practice and hard work.
My poems scamper around, with purpose and control, like Gene Kelly in this scene.  Skip to 1:35 to see my poetry in trousers and tap shoes. Hot damn, does my poetry know how to wear a sweater or what?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sample comment on this post:
Stop writing about your bowels!

Many of you may have seen the video of John Irving’s comments about Hemingway, or at least you saw the headline and probably rolled your eyes. It was part of a promotional series on You Tube in which Irving discussed various aspects of his fiction and talked about the writing life, except that two of the videos inexplicably centered on Irving talking about how much he’s always disliked the writing of Hemingway and Twain.  (Sidebar: who at Simon & Schuster thought to themselves: You know what the best way to promote this bestselling author’s new novel is? Ask him to shred some literary giants. Doesn’t this just give more ammunition to the literary snobs who are bored by Irving’s work? When did publicly declaring that Hemingway was “macho crap” become a good way to promote your own novel? I don’t understand. However, they’ve now realized what terrible publicity it was and pulled it from the interwebs, but I was still able to find them. Here’s the Hemingway roast and here’s the Twain one.)

Now, I really like a couple of Irving’s novels, and I tend to push back when people give flippant reasons for why they don’t like his work. Often I find that they don’t have a good reason– they’re just annoyed that his work comes straight out of Dickens and it’s cool to hate Dickens. Fine. (I’m not asserting that Irving is the second coming, by the way. Novels are subjective and therefore can never be perfect, and enjoying a novel is different than thinking it’s perfect. But it bothers me when people seem to like or dislike any author just because they feel like they’re supposed to, because their literary brethren view author X or Y that way.) But in this video, Irving rails about how Hemingway’s dictum to “write what you know” is a horrible, terrible, awful, no-good thing because it limits the imagination, and confines the writer to a narrow scope of what he or she has seen or experienced. Well, I think many of you would agree that’s not really the takeaway from the “write what you know” advice. Hemingway wasn’t saying “don’t be imaginative.” I’d argue he was advising writers to incorporate things into your fiction that you know intimately, that you understand, that you can be authoritative about, and then take imaginative leaps from there. Which is exactly what Irving does in his fiction.

You’ve probably seen this (admittedly funny) chart , which creates a visual of the obvious: Irving often writes about male protagonists who live in New England, who grow up at an all-male boarding school because a parent teaches there; who have a parent who is involved with the theater; feature a protagonist who falls in love with the sport of wrestling; involve a mysteriously absent father whose role is partially filled by an amazing stepfather; feature a child who experiences a trauma that changes the trajectory of their life; and a sexual relationship between an older woman and a much younger man. I hate to be a jerk here, but what part of this is not writing what you know? Every item I’ve listed here is part of Irving’s personal history. Did I know that before Garp and Owen Meany and Cider House? Nope. Does it change how I read them now? Nope. I enjoy those novels. Judge your heart out. I find myself suspended in the world of each one and I want to stay there. The writer is drawing on his personal experience but it doesn’t matter. My experience of the book is not changed one iota knowing that Irving knows physical details about Vienna because he also spent time there, or that he had a positive relationship with his stepfather, or that wrestling is a huge part of his life. I could care less.

Now, picking Irving for this example feels a little cheap, because the super-literary audience is already inclined to dislike his work or his popularity or his affinity for Dickens. But Irving seems to be a good example of an author who tends to draw on a lot of personal experiences for his fiction, and for my money, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

One of the books that’s been called his most directly autobiographical, the one that Irving himself has said was the most difficult to write (“I have not written a novel that disturbed me so much“), was not exactly well-received. A reviewer at The New York Times called it “an immensely protracted story devoid of any conflict” and noted that he didn’t want to give away the ending because any reader who had the patience to stay with the protagonist through the “gargantuan” book deserved to not have it spoiled for them. Slate and others had some pretty harsh things to say about the book. I’d agree with most of the criticisms- I didn’t think that book worked. But can we really blame that on the fact that the book was deeply autobiographical? I don’t think so.

As the previous post posited, it seems as if sometimes drawing off personal material works and sometimes it doesn’t, which is a somewhat unsatisfying non-conclusion to draw. But it still seems interesting to me how some writers embrace it and can make it work for their fiction, while some will do anything in their power to avoid anything even remotely related to their background in their fiction. But despite all the cliches about how adorably cliche beginning writers are, writing totally obvious versions of themselves with better teeth, I wonder how much y’all consider this as you’re writing fiction. Do you worry about this, too, or is it a non-issue for you? Do you look back with amusement at previous work where you did use personal material, with disastrous results? Or do you know in the back of your mind that at some point you’re going to have to address X in your fiction, because of something in your past that makes you care about it?

Read more about it here.

Visit the artist’s website here.

Can you guess the relationship between this butterfly and my post?

So I haven’t barked in a while because I’ve been obsessing over this thesis thing, but I’m back with an earth-shattering post. Except not really. My brain is still recovering from writing that thesis thing, so I thought I’d offer you a bit of Saturday randomness.

When I go out in public, I like to play a little game called Guess the Relationship. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. I sit unobtrusively somewhere and watch for pairs of people and try to decide what their relation is, how healthy it is, and, if they’re a romantic couple, how they’re going to break up. It’s sweet, I know. Lately, I’ve also added another game called Pick Out the Serial Killer. But that’s another story/post.

I was recently at a fast food restaurant and found myself in the unique situation of having two people at the table behind me who I didn’t notice when I sat down (and therefore I had no idea what they looked like). So here’s my attempt to relive how the game played out:

Voice #1: They’re not real vampires. I mean, they sparkle in the sun and I think that’s just embarrassing. Real vampires should be scary, you know?

Voice #1 is male and anywhere from 18 to an immature 35. I’m guessing early twenties based on the timbre of whininess and a need to prove himself.

Voice #2: Oh I don’t know about all this Twilight stuff, but when I think of a real vampire I think of Brad Pitt. Have you seen Interview with the Vampire? Back in my day, that was the movie to watch.

Voice #2 is a woman, older, at least 50 based on that “back in my day” comment. I’m going with mother and son. (At this point, I get distracted by thinking about Gary Oldman as Dracula and eating the rest of my burger, but I pick up the conversation again when I hear this:)

Boy voice: So you like watching movies. What else do you do for fun?

Uh-oh. That’s a weird thing to ask your mom. Maybe a relative like an aunt that he’s never met before? And he’s trying to connect with because he just moved to Spokane?

Old lady voice: Oh I love to read. Most days it’s just me and my cat and a book. Which is why I decided I should get out more often.

Ok eww gross. Is this a date? Am I eavesdropping on a weird old lady date?

Boy voice: What area of town do you live in?

My Pick Out the Serial Killer light comes on and I’m suddenly concerned for this old lady who just likes to read at home with her cat. She was finally brave enough to try online dating and her first date out is at a mediocre fast food joint with a possible predator.

Old lady voice: I’ve got a little place up on South Hill. It’s not too far away.

Good job, old lady. Be vague. Don’t let him follow you home. And what the heck is wrong with this kid, even if he’s not a predator? He’s not after her for her money or her fortune of cheap paperback novels. He’s probably got unresolved mother issues.

At this point I start thinking about my own unresolved mother issues, but I catch myself and realize I need to focus. I’m done with my meal and I carefully mosey over to the trash bin behind me and turn around so I can get a good view of the pair. And here’s what I see:

The guy is about 28 and is wearing a uniform and nameplate for the fast food restaurant that we’re in. The woman is somewhere between 45 and 55 and is wearing a rather hideous floral blouse. And she has what is most definitely a job application on the table in front of her.

So that’s it folks. The answer was job interview. Because that’s not weird at all.

The purpose of The First Line is to jump start the imagination–to help writers break through the block that is the blank page…. The First Line is an exercise in creativity for writers and a chance for readers to see how many different directions we can take when we start from the same place.

Sounded good.  The nearest deadline was May 1st.  The line: “Rachel’s first trip to England did not go as planned.”  Sounded like chick-lit women’s fiction to me, but I started to hear the voice of a sassy, sophomoric, caring, but immature girl named Rachel telling about her misadventures in England and got interested in seeing where it woud lead.  I started writing, and stealing borrowed my structure from DFW and Jennifer Egan, I used direct address and had Rachel speaking to her therapist.  The first draft was mostly about her brief time in England.  She got caught by Immigration for planning on working in England, got sent to a detention center over night, and then flown back to America.  She has a complicated relationship with her overbearing Jewish mother (Rachel does not identify as Jewish) and as the middle-child, resents her sisters, who have been achieving worldly success.

Not a bad start, but like any first draft, a lot more needed to happen.  I got some suggestions and went back to work.  I added family-tragedy, a suicide attempt by the seemingly perfect older sister, and instead of directly addressing a therapist (cliched) Rachel speaks to the sister in question.

Better, but something was still missing.  One astute reader picked up on a theme, largely unintentional, of loneliness throughout the story and suggested I do more with that.  I agreed.  And added more details of the sister’s childhood, how they reacted differently to an absent father and pressure from their mother.  By the end of the story, both have seen their lives take a turn for the worse, and for a brief moment, are linked again.

As the deadline arrived, I started to see real potential for the story.  I read it over one last time and sent it in. It may have been one or two drafts away, maybe four or five or ten.  It was good, but not quite there.  And it was frustrating not have finished.

It was also freeing to have been forced to submit it.  Like a journalist, I worked hard on my story and handed it in by my deadline.  If it gets in the magazine, great. If not, I can take all the time I want to revise it and send it to any magazine I want.  Win, win.