I will not be the first person to smuggle discussion of video games onto Bark, but I will be the first to ask its readers to make them.

At first this suggestion will seem crazy. “But Andrew,” you say, “not only am I unable to program a computer, I also lack millions of dollars and furthermore, if I had that kind of scratch, I would pay off my student loans and buy a macbook made out of solid gold before creating a video game, because most of those are a simulation of man pointing a gun at a face and shooting it, over and over, until the end of time.”

The video game literati will be happy to inform you that there are plenty of games not about face shooting or about bird flinging, that are about more sophisticated things or at least slightly less embarrassing ones. These games are good, but these games also cost millions of dollars to make.  But what I’m actually here to talk about is how it is now possible to make a video game with no programing skill and no money, and how, because of that, people are now starting to make games for and about people who would otherwise have no interest in video games. There are very few of them, and they are hard to find, but they exist, and they are doing wonderful things. They tend to have names like  “Space Marine Pet Shop” in which you guide a hulking video game protagonist on a journey to buy a kitten without dying on too many spikes, or “A Soul-Crushing Drive Through the Bowels of Kotzebue, Alaska” which is the most accurate portrayal of a soul-crushing drive through the bowels of Kotzebue, Alaska ever created. Read more »

It’s that time of year when the literary writers of America converge upon one (cold) city to drink beer, socialize (aka drink beer), network (aka drink beer), etc. I think it’s a rule that every Bark post in the coming two weeks or so must include a reference to the conference. I thought I’d get the ball rolling.

But really, I’m just wondering—pre-conference—about who I’ll be seeing this year, and what events/tables/panels/readings my fellow attendees are planning on, well, attending.

Myself, I’ll be trying to snag a signed copy of Cataclysm Baby (by Matt Bell), listening to Sam Ligon and Jason Sommer (and a host of others) at the Propaganda reading, and attending Gregory Spatz’s signing. I’ll also be on a panel Friday afternoon. What are your AWP plans?

The depressed writer is perhaps one of the most pervasive writerly stereotypes. There are debates about whether it helps or hinders work, whether for some people genius is linked to addiction, depression, thoughts of Suicide. Last year, I reviewed a book by a French author in which the narrator’s friend had committed suicide, then, shortly after delivering the manuscript to his publisher, the writer, Edouard Leve, committed suicide. I was out to dinner with my parents and, after telling them about the book I’d selected, they both gave me long looks. “Is there something you want to tell us?” my dad asked.

We’ve all had those moments, I’m sure. The moment after someone else reads your work, or reads a story you love, and he looks up, hesitates, and you can just see him searching for the best way to pose his question, can see him wondering. When you write a depressing story, some people wonder what you’re trying to tell them—not about life, but about yourself.

To be fair to my family and friends however, I am someone who has suffered from depression and other related problems in the past. This, combined with some readers’ habit to project, is one reason I’ve developed a strong resistance against letting those close to me read my work. They can’t see the art and the artist as separate, and after twenty-some-odd years of hearing the depressed writer stereotype, sometimes I wonder myself. Read more »

Because seven is a cooler number than eight.

Some people would have you believe there are no new stories to tell. Christopher Booker would have you believe there are only seven plots in all of existence (though he does allow for subplots under his comedy and tragedy headings, because (I can only assume) most people with a brain could tell you that “tragedy” is not, in and of itself, a plot). I admit I’ve never read his book, and I know better than to let TV Tropes suck me in while I’m trying to get anything done, so I’ll take a stab at those seven plots and say they’re something like this: Lord of the Rings, Oedipus (marrying your mom—is that comedy or tragedy?), Cinderella, Twilight (though I’ve never read it), Star Wars, Inception, and To the Lighthouse, though I still can’t tell you what happened in Inception, and something tells me Booker hasn’t read much Woolf if he thinks her plots would fall under a heading such as “The Monster.”

In grad school, we sometimes talked about someone (and, forgive me, I forget who, because I was almost completely uninterested in simplifying plot this far) who had said there were two: someone comes to town, someone leaves town (or, perhaps I’m mis-remembering because I just looked at Cory Doctorow’s page on Wikipedia; have you tried the random article feature? It’s as much of a time sink as TV Tropes). Read more »

As an early Christmas gift to myself, I ordered a copy of Of a Monstrous Child. It’s self-described as an anthology of writing relationships, with mentors* introducing the work of their mentees and vice versa (and it features Bark’s own Sam Ligon).

Three days ago, I finally started reading it.

I’m not very far yet—only through the first duo of introductions and stories, but this is largely because I spend most of my time with this book flipping through it. I glance through the introductions, looking for connections and observations, but then, when I start to read—really read—I let the book fall, let the pages close. Anthologies can be explored in any order, of course, but for this first read, I want to experience it in the way the editors thought best.

I met with a fellow faculty member yesterday to discuss a freelance writing course we may end up teaching together this summer, and our discussion eventually turned to the idea of mentorship. We talked about our experiences in our MFA programs (and before, in undergrad), talked about the ways the faculty helped us over stumbling blocks, the ways they saw and encouraged our strengths. We talked about times we hadn’t been challenged enough. Read more »

It’s recently come to my attention that many (?) writers have writing superstitions. According to a very quick and unscientific poll, that site found that 82% of their writers admit to having a writing superstition or ritual.

First, I think it should be mentioned that superstition and ritual are two very different things. It’s one thing to write at 6:30 every morning after having two pieces of toast (with grape jelly, of course), and something else entirely to, say, believe that your book will never sell if one of the chapters has 13 pages. In the first, I’m thinking that if said writer didn’t start writing until 7:15 one morning, all would still be right with the world (or if the grape jelly ran out and all that was left was strawberry preserves). In the second, I’m thinking that the odds are, in fact, against you even if your book has 12-page chapters, because hey, the number of people writing books far outweighs the number of those selling books.

Personally, I don’t have any writing-type quirks, either of the superstitious or ritual variety. I found that ritual kills my writing by giving me an excuse to say, “It’s 6:31, I guess that means I have to skip my writing today.” And superstition…well, I have enough other things to worry about. But I still think this merits an unofficial and highly unscientific Bark poll. Please click through and answer a quick four questions or leave your answers in the comments below. I’ll check in with the answers next week!

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Lansing-area NaNoWriMo kickoff party. I wasn’t sure I was going to go—mostly I just wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon relaxing on the couch—but this is the group I started back in 2005 and ran for two years.

Okay. I’ll be honest for a second. There’s another reason I wasn’t sure I wanted to go: I think of myself as more advanced than these other writers. I’ve got an MFA, I’m published, and I’m well networked in the literary world. I’m presenting at AWP, for heaven’s sake!

I’m a little ashamed to admit these feelings—especially since I blog regularly about making the writing world more inclusive, about not turning one’s nose up at non-literary work. These two thoughts don’t really go together. Read more »

I heard about this growing controversy while surfing various blogs over the weekend. Some people in Britain are pushing to have a Literature Prize, since they argue that the Man Booker Prize rewards sub-par works of art. Two quotes from the article:

And yet there’s a consortium of people, headed by literary agent Andrew Kidd and supported by a host of literary types, who last week announced they were putting together a prize, to be known as The Literature Prize, for “writers who aspire to something finer.”

The Literature Prize is looking to do the literary equivalent of applauding houses built with staircases that require mountaineering gear to climb them.

If you read this blog often, you probably already know which side of the debate I fall on, but I’ll say it again anyway, mostly because I feel so strongly about this issue. Readable books are good books. The sense of inflated ego that comes from getting through a difficult book does not make that book more worth than one that is accessible. And books and literature should be accessible, on the whole. Isn’t that why we create art? To be read and enjoyed?

It’s September again, which means journals all over the country are opening submissions. A few (like Hayden’s Ferry Review and PANK) stay open year-round, but they’re becoming more and more rare, and so for most writers, this is really the beginning of another submission season.

I tend to send things out in clusters, doing it rigorously for a few weeks/months then waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting to hear back, waiting to get those edits just right on that other piece, waiting until I after finish my lesson planning, etc.  This year, though, is going to be different. I swear.

One of my office mates on campus has an MFA from IWW, and, like me, has yet to have her fiction published. Together, we’ve decided to encourage/heckle/challenge/etc. each other to send out more work, to let go of our stories and send them out into the world with their  new lunch boxes in hand and their bus numbers pinned to their jackets. Or at least cover letters.

And as for me, I’m going to once again move my writing back to a place of priority in my life. I’m finally done sending out job applications, I’ve got a good feel for how my semester will go, I’m comfortable enough financially that I’m not worried about not being able to pay my bills, so it’s time once again (though I suppose one could argue that it never should have stopped being time). This submission season I’m going to finalize the edits and resubmit the three pieces I had rejected in the spring, I’m going to finish the latest drafts and begin submitting the three pieces that are almost to the point of being ready for their first foray into submission land. Maybe I’ll even write something new.

As the elder of two sisters, I lost a fair few possessions when I went away to college nine years ago. My desk, my bike, and my bedroom were all given to my sister. I’m sure I said, at some point, that I wouldn’t need these things while I was gone, maybe even that I didn’t want them. Maybe I thought these kind-of-mine possessions would be treated the same way my VHS tapes were: they were family possessions that I didn’t have full ownership over, and never mind that some had been presents over the years.

The VHS tapes, obviously, quickly became obsolete. My bike I really didn’t miss during my college or graduate school years, though there were times, but it would be fairly old now, and I’d probably be looking to replace it anyway. My room doesn’t even belong to my family anymore, since we’ve moved. But my desk. I miss my desk.

I’ve been using a folding table for the past six or so years with some cheap plastic drawers for storage. Even the desk lamp I’ve been using doesn’t work quite right, what with its buzzing and flickering.

I’ve finally decided it’s time, and so I’ve started making a list of what characteristics and features my desk must have and what features is it that I just want. Some examples: it has to have ample under-desk space for my chair and legs, it has to have a good balance of storage (I need enough space to spread papers out, but I need at least some places to put stuff). My wants are a sleek design, an easy place to put a printer, and something that’s not too difficult to move.

What do you look for in a writing/computer desk? And does anyone have any recommendations?