WRITING on NARROW ROADS to a FESTIVAL

By El Ochiis

A college friend, Droad, decided to make a film that we’d enter into a festival to win some prize money. I’d write the story in route – it didn’t matter where, specifically. Droad owned a Paillard-Bolex H16 Deluxe Cinema Camera that he inherited from his grandfather, who once worked on the set of a famous movie.

Our group consisted of five of college students: two with two part-time jobs; one was from a filthy rich family, one from a middle-income family and I had driving and map reading skills.

“I can ask ‘grams’ to loan us the chauffer, it’s a university project,” Bonn volunteered, gazing out into the crowd, with vague interest.

His grandmother, the matriarch with the cash, told him he would have to have a normal life with ordinary friends if he wanted to inherit any of her money; we were his social experiment.

“The whole point was for us to make a film, a story about doing college kids’ stuff,” lamented Seville, who had a crush on Bonn so big, it hurt to watch.

We all knew Bonn was going to marry a society chick from the Upper East Side. Seville was a vegan from the Lower East Side who played the saxophone. Bonn only knew she was alive when she would lug her horn to his dorm room and insist he listen to real music, like Coltrane instead of rock. I think they made out a couple of times.

“We should go to Park City Utah, my grandpa might be able to hook us up at an independent festival called Sundance,” Droad piped.

“What, no way, Bonn protested. “Too far, I can’t ride in some rented car, for, like a million miles across the whole country.”

“Seville wants to blow her sax in a national park, Droad has a real movie camera, I can write while someone helps with driving and you can go skiing.” I affirmed.

“But, I want to relax, on plush leather,” whined Bonn

“It would impress your grams, think about it,” I inveigled.

It was settled, we would hit the road for fourteen days, and, roughly 5,300 miles.

Bonn bailed on us for an airplane to Salt Lake City before we reached Cleveland, leaving one of gram’s credit cards for road expenses.

Seville’s first music score was for a film whose final scenes ended in Zion National Park, entitled: Narrow Roads. I wrote the script, Droad shot the footage and Bonn was the leading man. It was about relationships that were hard to navigate, like the many two-lane highways we’d trekked across Cleveland, to Nebraska, through Wyoming, into Utah – more of a metaphor for Seville and Bonn – Bonn and us. Bonn moved to Budapest; Seville shacked up with a punk rocker; I left for Paris and Droad took an apprenticeship on a movie set in Stockholm - it was our last road trip together. Our film didn’t make it into the festival – which had to be submitted months in advance – an official at the event said Droad was a natural born filmmaker and I had real writing talent – that counted towards widening the roads, a bit.

A VALEDICTION

By Sharon May

Kentucky author, Ed McClanahan died November 27, 2021. Known for his bawdy sense of humor, he was a character in his own right. After meeting Ken Kesey at Stanford, he became a “Merry Prankster,” which was depicted in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He was considered one of the Commonwealth’s best writers, but I knew him better as my first and only creative writing professor, in 1978, my junior year of college. It was dumb luck that I met Ed.

During that first class, I knew he was different from us common folk. He stood at least six feet tall, and his curly shock of blondish/brown hair made him seem even taller. His bushy mustache could not hide his perpetual grin, as if planning his next joke. I can still hear his explosive voice, ricocheting around the small seminar room and blasting its way into the hall. He claimed his volume was the result of dropping a lot of acid.

Usually he read stories aloud, primarily Flannery O’Connor and occasionally Raymond Carver, saying that reading informs writing, and I learned how to listen for the rhythm of the words on the page.

I’m not the first person to have praised him for his ability to create community and inspire other writers. The first words Ed spoke to me beyond roll call were very motivating – “Your writing reminds me of Larry McMurtry. Have you read The Last Picture Show?” In the 1970s, we could hang out with professors at one of the many bars that surrounded campus without a ruckus. Ed had a favorite, and would invite students to continue our discussions about writing over a beer and a bite to eat.

Fellow Kentucky writer and “Merry Prankster,” Gurney Norman came to class for a visit. Much to my surprise, Ed asked him to read aloud my first attempt at a short story. I received high praise for my attempt as well as discussion of strengths and weaknesses, mainly pointing out that I needed to “slow down and let the story tell itself.”

Ed also shared his own writing in class, starting with the short story, “Ennis the Penis,” published in Playboy. He also read parts of his work-in-progress, which would become the novel The Natural Man, a coming of age story of a high school basketball player where the game reigns supreme. That novel took 20 years from inception to publication, driving home for me that sometimes good writing takes more time and effort than we can imagine and that we shouldn’t give up on the stories we are driven to tell.

He didn’t put much stock in evaluations by students, saying we wouldn’t know for years how the course impacted us. I knew then the class provided me with fabulous learning opportunities, but it was quite a while before I realized how he inspired me to keep writing and helped me accept my Kentucky voice.

WRITING MY WAY OUT of a CARDBOARD BOX

By Kasie Whitener

When I was in undergrad, the structure for a fiction workshop class at university was to read a dozen short stories and talk through them and then to try our hand at writing one. We would bring our own stories in, two students per class, and they’d be read aloud and torn apart by people who couldn’t write their way out of a cardboard box.

I hated it. I’ve been an educator for 17 years and tried to figure out if it was me, 20-year-old kid with a wide-eyed dream of becoming an author, or the class itself.

The flaw in this course design is that we began by reading Richard Ford, Margaret Atwood, and other fiction masters. Their stories were far-and-away better than what we were capable of. We didn’t really have any stories to tell. We were too young. Nothing had happened to us yet.

Short fiction was used in the fiction workshop for two reasons: 1) it’s an exercise in writing discipline to reduce a story to 3500 words or less, and 2) our professors didn’t want to read our poorly conceived novel-length tragedies.

There’s a wide gap between the MFA definition of good work and the commercially appealing fiction we consume like candy. A well-written, well-told story is tremendously satisfying.

One of our SCWA friends, crime novelist Raegan Teller, has recently turned to short fiction to work on her craft. She shared with my class that she finds the form challenging as she’s not allowed to include all the narrative that bloats a novel. She must be more selective with the details she includes.

Scarcity is the draw of flash fiction: can one write a complete story in less than 1000 words? They must be the right words. Their selectivity makes them special. And yet, often we find flash fiction simply omits important development or leaves too much to the reader that its meaning is difficult to discern.

Amazon’s foray into serialization is an indication that consumers are looking for bite-sized stories, something they can easily cram into a subway ride or a Starbucks queue. Short fiction has the draw of being easily digested by wordcount and economy. But the best short fiction stays with you long after you’ve finished the story. Haunts you like a memory that doesn’t really belong to you.

I write short fiction because I have ideas to metabolize. Thoughts and memories that need to be examined. Unlike that undergraduate workshop, I have time and distance on some of these events and can evaluate them without the sting of hurt feelings or the risk of open wounds.

The problem with that class was that we didn’t know what mattered, what to keep and what to edit out. We only knew we wanted to write and were hoping someone would teach us how. After many years of practice and polish, I now feel confident I can write my way out of a cardboard box. The real question is, how’d I get in there?

REAL MAGIC

By Lis Anna-Langston

Before I could write full-time, I worked at a greeting card company. Christmas started in May when catalogs and holiday material went to design. The novelty of snowflakes in summer was fun. Just when I thought holiday demand would disappear with the heat, it ramped up again. By October, my holiday cheer thinned out.

My family never celebrated holidays together, so a week before Christmas, I got in my Honda and drove. Asheville to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. My dog and I stopped at roadside motels and drive thru coffee places. I jotted poems and stories on paper bags with stray fries hanging out in the bottom.

I was exhausted.

I remember sitting in a diner in Shreveport, eating French fries and realizing I didn’t know what day it was.

I kept going.

I plowed on across Texas, convinced somewhere in the world, meaning and miracles intersected. Charmed by the desert, that massive, waterless expanse of shrub and sand lit up my imagination. The further I drove, the more I started to form an idea for a story. Like, a real holiday story. A story about a little boy who finds something in the forest. It was right there. Pieces of a story, floating around inside the car. I swept through El Paso, passed the border and drove out to Deming, White Sands, to where Billy the Kid was jailed. I ate way too many avocados. I drove to old Indian sites and hiked up cliffs and down into caverns. I blazed my way through barrels of fresh salsa, red and green. I started to get the feeling that I was closer to Christmas than I’d ever been.

I bought a telescope and took it out into the desert. It wasn’t sophisticated, but it was portable. From a dirt road in the middle of New Mexico, I could see the moons of Jupiter. Seeing those moons locked in the pull of a planet so far away created a shift in me. A shift that pushed me closer to a magic I’d never been able to define. Not hocus-pocus magic. Real magic. The kind that exists when flowers turn to face the sun. Beyond science and stars and moons, out into the subatomic world of sheer possibility. I could feel it; like it was just around the corner, watching me.

I put my dog in the car and headed out towards Tucson. It was beautiful but not my destination. I headed north, towards Flagstaff.

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon was at 3AM, under the light of a full moon. It had just snowed. The streets were clear, but a white blanket covered the ground. Enormous elk stood under the moonlight, so huge their bellies came up to the top of my car. Coyotes roamed the wide-open spaces. The world was aglow and alive in that strange canyon. Cold and clear and perfect. I drove to a hotel and prayed they had a vacancy. While my dog sat in a chair staring out at that new world, I sat awake in bed and wrote down the beginning of this story, shaped by my winter in the desert. A story inspired by moons of Jupiter, life in other star systems, strange findings in the forest.

LIFE EXPECTANCY OF BOOKS

By Bonnie Stanard

I've been looking for a second copy of a Christmas music book I've owned for years. Recently, I went online as usual and typed in "Christmas music book," and once again, the search engine didn't find the one I'm after. In the past I've bought substitutes but have been disappointed. The music is never quite so simple or the arrangements don't accommodate vocal ranges or there's more obscure than well-known songs.

This year I went a step further and typed in the exact title of the book—Frosty the Snowman and Other Christmas Songs. To my surprise, the search found a match. A couple of companies offered used copies, and I snatched up one.

This has me thinking. Frosty the Snowman and Other Christmas Songs  is still a great buy, but it has been abandoned by publishers, presumably because it is "old." After all, advertisers make use of power words (going-fast, bargain, fresh). Old is not on the list.

ENDURING INSTEAD OF OLD

But is it possible that the internet may convince us shoppers that old is not necessarily bad? For example, when you order a blanket on the internet, do you know whether it's a recently offered item or a dated entry? If you like the blanket, you may be able to buy the same one again in the future. Online vendors don't put time limits on their listings, and many of them are not the "latest" or "newest."

CRAFTY BUYING

I have in my pocket as I write, the sales tag from one of two skirts I ordered online from Amazon. It is the tag from the best one. Because it is online, I may buy the same skirt again in the future, something I couldn't do if I had bought from a nearby shopping mall.

So what does this have to do with the lifespan of books? Consider the route taken by way of a brick and mortar bookstore and traditional publisher. If your book can get shelf space in a bookstore, that story is often short and sweet (or sour, as many of us discover). Unless sales are significant, it's on its way out before it can settle in. This is particularly true if $$$ isn't invested in promotionals. And then it is buried in the cemetery of out-of-print or backlisted books.

A LONGER LIFE

On the other hand, your book can be found online long after you publish it. (We won't go into how difficult it is to be found online, but bear with me.) Think of it this way, the clock isn't ticking. Our books have the chance to gain momentum over time.

Of course this doesn't apply to time-sensitive merchandise such as fashions and technology. But when it comes to books, let's hope that publishers will realize the value of investing with a view to selling long term.

DISAGREEING WITH MY NARRATORS

By El Ochiis

My internal monologue plays out as heterosexual males; they are never one ethnic group. Sometimes he is European with pale skin and other times he is an indigenous brown man of African descent. None of them have names, the only time he has one is when I give it to him. Frequently, a number of them will argue over point of view.

These men have compelling stories that they urge me to tell. The problem begins when I disagree with their point of view; the conflict; the drama and/or the plot twist. It is, at this time, when I must face the task of re-working the piece from a different perspective, that my friendly confidantes become unfriendly.

Their suggestions and stories can be misogynistic or steeped in prejudice, preferring one ethnicity over the other – may or may not yield retribution for the protagonist. Each man, can be, surprisingly, quite altruistic and, rather fair - seeing the other’s side of life – and, other times, not viewing the other’s side – and highly prejudiced - which makes my part of the storytelling process harder and, subject to confrontation.

When I veer from the original idea, my narrator can become recalcitrant, and, for days, weeks and months, refuse to talk to me. I am like a jilted lover needing a social call, I wander about aimlessly, waiting for my suitor to ring – waiting for those inner monologues that fill my brain while the engine stands idling.

I had assumed I was bordering on insanity, or sounded completely mad, until I read a story about the last great mystery of the mind – people who have unusual – or non-existent – inner voices.

One woman, who is not Italian, has an Italian couple who argue: “They were chatting non-stop before I handed in my notice,” she stated, with a hard sigh. “I’d wake up and they’d be arguing. I’d be driving to work and they’d be arguing. It was exhausting, to be honest.”

I know from whence she speaks because my narrators, when speaking to me, sometimes, can be like a TV screen, or a slide projector, that are continuously playing inside an attic, inside my head, with so many ideas that I can’t possibly keep up – it becomes overwhelming - I don’t have enough time to produce all the interesting stories they want me to write.

A neuroscientist, who studies this phenomenon, has also found people for whom there isn’t a voice at all, just silence – an emptiness - a still, warm air before a rustling breeze.

I wish I could download mine onto some sort of hard drive, so the people without any monologues in their heads, could look at it - it’s a shame no one gets to meet my guys but me.

Wait, should I be worried that they’ll be mad at me for exposing our little spats? Nah, it was their suggestion that I write about my inner voices – them – see, now that’s a tad narcissistic I argue.

SIMPLE MACHINES or MAGIC FAIRY DUST?

By Kasie Whitener

There were 250 Wattys winners, and I wasn’t one of them. Over the summer, I’d won the Broad River Prize for Prose and the 2021 Fresh Voices in the Humanities Awards. My unpublished novel took a 3^rd place finish in a writers’ contest in August. I was on a roll.

I really thought my serialized YA story about two kids getting kicked out of Neverland and joining the American Revolution would be a shoo-in for this online fan fiction website contest. Except it wasn’t. I wrote about the serialization project in this post. It’s a former NaNoWriMo effort that just wanted a little revision and to see the light of day.

It’s easy to add my Wattys failure to low turnout at book signings, poor attendance at speaking engagements, anemic growth on my social channels and email list, and the decision to forego NaNoWriMo this year and say my writing career is stalling.

But on October 27, I gave a well-received reading of an unpublished story to a packed bar during “Noir at the Bar.” Yesterday I delivered a keynote speech at the Aiken Book Fair. And that 3^rd-place-winning- vampire novel is in the hands of an agent who loves it.

In this writing life there are milestone events like winning awards and getting representation that seem to be critical to climbing the peak. And then there are low points like showing up to see three people in the audience and cuing up your slide deck anyway while feeling engulfed in the valley of shame.

Last week I discovered this video wherein creative coach Jessica Abel reminds us that our vision of the process for building a writing career looks like this:

1) get good at my craft,

2) get an agent and sell my book,

3) magic fairy dust,

4) retire a famous, rich, world-renowned author.

Except Step 3 (according to Jessica) isn’t “magic fairy dust.” It’s a machine. And anyone can work the machine. You just have to know how. This is a critical conversation for me because I’m using the machine to hoist, elevate, and raise my work for career sustainability, and personal fulfillment.

• Pulley: Attending conferences and festivals (makes heavy lifting easier)

• Lever: Critique groups and beta readers (gets things unstuck, lessens workload)

• Wheel and Axle: Presenting, Sharing, & Teaching (connects me with others, improves craft)

• Wedge: Awards and Recognition (separates my work from others’)

• Inclined Plane (or ramp): Associations (opportunities to lead, create, and shine)

• Screw: Volunteer (embed myself in the work, become deeply engrained in the industry)

When I think of the activities in my writing life as simple machines to move me from where I am toward where I want to be, I appreciate even the low-turnout events, even the no-win contests, and even the rejections and declines.

I am gaining ground not by waiting for someone else to sprinkle luck upon me, but by churning the gears and driving my own success. Pedal down. Roll on.

RATIONALITY AND THE WRITING WORLD

By Sharon Ewing

“Writing is not a rational act.” I had just tuned to NPR in the car, and that statement surprised me into yelling at the radio, “What the …?” As I listened, the host referred to the person speaking as a psychologist. Here I must admit my skepticism of relying heavily on psychological thought, despite a long relationship with friends in the profession. This is the result of raising children and dealing, as a teacher, with students and their parents who were psychologists.

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve come to accept the label of writer for myself. Before that, even the thought made me feel like a phony. I’ve had just one accepted submission, and that one being rather pedestrian. I wasn’t a Hemingway, a Conway, a Bronte. I believed these famous people and others would turn over in their graves should I label myself a writer. But a friend gave me Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and that book, along with encouragement I’ve received from so many published and non-published writers, has allowed me to feel more comfortable with the description. Was this psychologist calling all these wonderful people irrational? I was offended for myself and them. Surely a rational being cannot be happy pursuing an irrational career.

I thought I knew the definition of the word ‘rational’ but maybe there was something I missed. I consulted with an expert on the matter. Pulling into the driveway, I grabbed my phone. Yep, Webster still defined rational as “having the ability to reason.” I checked the thesaurus for related words and found: intelligent, thinking, analytical, logical, cognitive. It sounded like me, someone with degrees, someone who analyzed everything to death, and knew she’d never live long enough to know all the things that she wanted to know. I also had proof that I was a rational being. One year my kids bought me a blue nightshirt. On the front was a huge picture of that famous orange cat and underneath were the words, Virgo (my astrological sign), an analytical, picky, worrywart. Both Webster and Garfield couldn’t be wrong.

Stepping into the house I turned on the radio to continue listening to the program. By the time I tuned back in, the host was speaking with an artist about how he accessed the creativity apparent in his work. I began to realize the show wasn’t specifically about writing, but about creative thought. It was not the person (the writer, the artist, etc.), but the process that was the topic. By the time I realized my mistake, the host had returned to the writer once again. He mentioned how every writer must allow freedom for ideas to flow, because many stories and characters are amalgams of people and memories storied in our subconscious.

My claws retracted; my metaphorical balustrade tumbled. And embarrassingly, I had to admit. I, a writer and a rational being had jumped the gun, acted hastily and sorry to say, acted irrationally.

VIRTUE AND VICE OF HISTORICAL FICTION

By Bonnie Stanard

Let's face it. The dead don't own anything, least of all their own story. And even if they wrote thousands of words when alive to describe their own life, it guarantees them no voice in history, at least not to those of us who believe only one truth—our own. But there are those of us who credit those voices from the past with truth, or more precisely, with relative truth (yes, that's an oxymoron, but you get the idea).

Historical fiction is controversial, and I look forward to participating in a panel discussion on the topic at the Aiken Book Fair on Saturday, November 13.

There are basically two camps of writers: (#1) those who do and (#2) those who don't try to stick to the historical record.

What Historical Record?

Writers # 2 jumble events, use purposeful anachronisms, disregard dates and places, and change personalities of historical characters. The Underground Railroad (set in the antebellum South) by Colson Whitehead is a prominent example with numerous historical inaccuracies (forced sterilizations, the 1930s Tuskegee syphilis experiment, a building with an elevator). Whitehead has been quoted as saying he was after "the truth of things, not the facts." Mmmm...whose truth? 

Is the historical record fiction?

One argument we make is to question the veracity of the historical record. Historians, who have studied this question longer that fiction writers, continue to revise the record as more data are discovered. An example is the revisionist view of post-colonial history. In the past, countries that owned colonies were lauded for bringing civilization to primitive cultures. Today the cheering has turned to criticism about the treatment of indigenous peoples. Do revisions suggest the record isn't true or to the contrary, does it indicate a honing toward the truth?

"History is but a fable agreed upon"

This is a quote that is ironically attributable to several sources, most often Napoleon. The point is that the historic record is one that is agreed upon by educated, knowledgeable people. We can argue that the truth depends on who is telling the story (the history of wars is written by the winners), but the stories are vetted by enlightened historians. Our age is one of uncertainty and doubt. Everything goes gray, but should we throw up our hands and say no historic truth exists?

To take a more jaded look

By flinging dirt at famous personalities, we attract an audience, not least of which are publishers and literary critics. We've been making money off of the imaginary weaknesses and/or faults of celebrated characters such as Marilyn Monroe, Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Frank Sinatra. As Guy Kay wrote in TheGuardian, "These works can be ethically troubling but some are superbly imaginative." 

Free Expression

Does sticking to the historical record suppress free expression? What about the First Amendment? Should our courts decide what we can or can't write about? When our imagination conflicts with what is accepted as historical fact, which is more important? To stick to facts or go with our imagination and forget about the record?

When I'm writing historical fiction, I study documents, books, diaries, etc. about the place and time and use what I learn to write events, characters, manners, whatever pertains to a given scene. As I write, I feel as if I am time-traveling into a different era, and I try for an authentic experience.

The same is true when I read. I want to be entertained, but I want to learn about our past at the same time. Don't give me jumbled history. I want to think of the characters as my predecessors, and even if the history we study is shot-through with questions, it's better than one author's concept of it.

BEYOND REVISION

By Lis Anna-Langston

Sharon May wrote a great piece about revision last month. Revision is more than changing a word here and there was her point, and I agree. Great writing is rewriting. It also made me think about the rewriting after the rewriting. What about the piece that’s been hanging in limbo for months or, worse, the piece that’s been continually declined? Does it warrant a full rewrite? What if it’s even more nuanced? A lot of rewriting is intuition, craft, objectivity.

I had this piece of flash fiction titled: “afternoons. with kerouac.” For six months I sent the piece out. Nothing. Every editor passed. After half a year I pulled it from the submission queue. Taking an objective look, I analyzed every facet. Plot, pacing, tone, characterization. Is there desire, momentum, goal? Yes. Can I tighten the story? Um, no. At 405 words it was the most well-crafted flash fiction I’d ever written. A love letter to Jack, conceived and honed to perfection after a long cold winter listening to On the Road. Something was wrong, and I couldn’t figure out what. That bugged me. Unable to figure out the missing piece, I kept it out of rotation. Days later, I returned to the story. I sat down at my desk and reread it.

“What is this piece really about? What is really going on in this scene?” I asked myself aloud.

I made some quick notes. A girl and Jack and Neil in a small apartment. The narrator liked Jack, but she didn’t love him. I reduced the entire story to three lines, then to two lines, from two to one. Then I distilled the entire piece to a single phrase. Except I was back to zero. The piece really was about afternoons with Kerouac. I must have sat there for half an hour deconstructing every word. Finally, I did what every writer does: I went to get a cup of coffee. Driving down the winding road, the answer came. I drove back to my office and distilled it to one word. Sex. The narrator was having sex with Kerouac, even though it is never mentioned. I changed the title, sex. with kerouac, saved, and submitted the piece to literary journals with open calls. It was accepted for publication nine days later. So, what’s the takeaway? Well, clearly sex sells.

But that’s just snark. Even after all the line edits, plot changes, grammar, and punctuation, revision may extend beyond the rewrite. A simple revision can complete an entire piece and bring the story full circle. Elevating the mechanics of a complete rewrite to a single meaningful change can very often be the difference between a good piece and a great piece. You can make a change, but what you really need at that point is an elegant change. Sometimes that comes long after the original rewrite. Sometimes changing one word changes the entire substance of the piece. One meaningful change can shorten the distance from where you are to where you want to be.

AFRAID TO ASK

By Kasie Whitener

Last spring, I met an agent with whom I had immediate rapport. In our conversation, I mentioned that I was about to start shopping a vampire novel. Since her preferred genre is adult fantasy, she asked me to send it to her.

Ten days later, I got an email saying, “OK I’ve read enough of this to know that I want to read more. I wanted you to know that I’ve gotten through the first 30 pages or so and I would love to read the rest of it.”

The rest of the email went on to explain she was super busy and would need about a month to finish it. I agreed. My initial email had told her the manuscript was still with beta readers and I had a developmental editor on the job.

I didn’t hear from her again and I was afraid to ask her about it. I’ve been rejected before.

Last Tuesday we hosted Amy Collins as part of the SCWA’s Become an Author series. In the reminder email I sent her the week before, I told her the upcoming radio show I host would be talking about vampires (a topic she and I both enjoy).

When we logged in to the Zoom meeting, Amy said, “I’ve got a great vampire manuscript right now I’ll share with you. It’s not published but it’s great.”

Part of me thought she was teasing me. So, I replied, “Is it mine?”

Amy sat, stunned, on the other side of the Zoom. Within a couple of minutes, we worked out that I’d sent her my manuscript via email, she’d forgotten about it, and maybe thought because it wasn’t done, she’d come back to it? Or I would resubmit a more finalized version? Who knows?

In any case, we’d miscommunicated. And I was relieved.

Relieved because she’s the first agent who had been excited about the manuscript. Relieved because I like Amy and want to work with her. Relieved because she hadn’t ghosted me or rejected me. We’d just miscommunicated.

Amy delivered one of the best SCWA Become an Author sessions we’ve had. She was forthright about what an agent does and does not do. She was honest about what annoys agents and what gets them excited. We had more than 80 people show up. One person messaged me that it was the most valuable session they’d ever attended, and they would be joining SCWA right away.

What I learned from Amy was something I think I already knew: following-up is not pestering.

I should I have messaged her, “Hey! You have my vampire novel. What did you think?”

Instead of assuming that she hadn’t liked it at all. Rejection is a bad teacher.

In fact, Amy told our story to the group on Zoom and said, “Kasie and the rest of you should know that if an agent asks for your manuscript, the ghosting part of your relationship is over. Now it’s about follow-up.

Don’t be afraid to ask.

WRITING GENDER

By Sharon May

There must be numerous badly developed characters written by the opposite gender, considering there are lots of posts online of examples and spoofs of them. Both are comical. What I hope are beginning writers ask in writing forums how they can/should write characters of the opposite sex. All mean well, as they only ask so they can avoid stereotyping. But it makes me wonder what they think characterization is all about.

A few weeks ago when discussing this topic, a writer friend told me she liked Steven King’s works, noting the novel Gerald’s Game showed he could “write women well.” We didn’t discuss particulars, but the comment bugged me just a little. Why wouldn’t he? I really expect writers to be able to write any type of character as we are supposed to be observant. Of course, it is difficult to understand the opposite gender if we don’t spend time with them so we can listen and learn. If that’s not possible, we can learn through reading.

I think I write both male and female characters well. I don’t believe it’s because I’m a lesbian, though that does provide interesting opportunities to learn from both genders. I have no secret knowledge of either. Rather, my ability comes from my belief that we are all humans first. In fact, gender is not even the second defining trait of my characters. They are not interchangeable, but I wouldn’t have to change everything about a character to transform one from male to female.

Honestly, men and women worry about the same issues, have the same troubles, and pretty much want the same things. Yes, our languages may be different, and we may view the world differently because of biology and differing cultural expectations. We should be able to recognize gender in a character, especially if the writer understands society’s expectations in a particular time and place and the characters’ responses to them. (Unless of course, we are bending genders in our work.)

Recently, I heard that the actor currently playing James Bond in the soon-to-be-released version believes there should not be a female Bond because (and I paraphrase) “it would water down the character.” Is he really saying Bond would be less if a woman? I would have thought a female would become Bond. I supposed the actor thinks that Lady Bond would be having a shootout with the bad guys and gals, but have stop to take cookies out of the oven. Actually, I might find it more amazing if she carried out Bond’s feats while cooking, cleaning, and rearing children.

Let’s definitely not fall prey to stereotypes when writing characters who differ from us for any reason, not only gender. We should use common sense about character development. The gender may be different, but the writer’s task is the same: explore the character and their purpose for existing in your work, and then let him or her speak their truths.

CAN’T HURRY THAT NOVEL

By El Ochiis

Some novels take time to write. Just as one shouldn’t pan-fry brisket, sometimes one can’t hurry a novel that needs to be slow-cooked. Karl Marlantes, a Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar, slow-cooked his powerful novel, Matterhorn, for 33 years. Published in 2009, it was set during the Vietnam war – he was also a decorated soldier of that war.

I mention this because, lately, I’ve been dreading the days on the calendar due to a hopeful decision, well, promise, to complete a piece that I had been working on before the end of 2021. That deadline will not be met. There is a professional colleague, editor/coach, who will ring me up and make me feel even more guilty than I already am by admonishing me in the manner one does with a two-year old:

“Turn off the internet, make a writing schedule, stay inside for a month and just work on your piece, meditate procrastination away, work less hours,” she will cajole, as if I had not tried all of the suggestions she has texted, emailed and left so many messages, my voice mail on both phones are full.

But, the one criticism that she uses to break my soul is:

“Not getting any younger, time, there is no time,” she warns, in her seventh voice message.

Ouch, that one so hurts my feeling, not because I have any deep-rooted issues with getting older, rather because I haven’t been able to commission some entity, Julius Caesar, maybe, that I need more hours added to the day, more days added to the week, more weeks added to the month and, finally, more months added to the year – Caesar’s solar year was already miscalculated by eleven minutes:

Listen to me, miss ‘Negative Nancy’, Harriet Doerr was 74 when her debut novel, Stones for Ibarra, was published; It went on to win the National Book Award. Eudora Welty was 75 when One Writer’s Beginnings was published; Edith Wharton, 75, when The Buccaneers was published (after her death), still counts; Herman Wouk, at 100 years old, published: Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author. – And, he was still alive past April 2019.” I will rattle off, in my head, too ashamed to pick up the phone and confront the deadline demon.

Did I forget Stan Lee, creator of Marvel Comics, who died in 2018 at the age of 95, he kept going till the very end. Margaret Atwood redefined herself and her work in her mid-70’s when The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, reached the small but powerful screen in 2017.

May Sarton—who wrote dozens of books, including poetry, fiction, children’s books and nonfiction into her early 80’s—quotes Humphry Trevelyan on Goethe: “It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life: he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life, he must never grow complacent...”

I’ll just keep writing, and, moving up that deadline, because, you see, it’s my humble opinion that writers and artists tend to go until they can’t go on any longer – brisket anyone?

I WANT MEANINGFUL QUESTIONS, NOT JUST ANSWERS

By Raegan Teller

If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you know I’ve refocused my attention on writing and studying short fiction for the next year or so. Making the transition from writing five novels to penning short fiction has been nearly as challenging as it was to move from business writing to murder mysteries nearly eight years ago.

Part of my developmental plan is to read a short story a day. I’ll admit, I sometimes miss my goal. I’m also trying to read as much variety as possible: Hemingway, Stephen King, Alice Munro, the New Yorker’s contemporary stories—and everything in between. Some of the stories have been enjoyable but not memorable. Conversely, some stories some I didn’t particularly like have stayed on my mind. What makes a story memorable for me isn’t whether I like it but whether I engage with it. For example, I’ve read hundreds of well-written novels I enjoyed but then soon forgot. In a novel, loose ends are generally tied up at the end and because it’s typically spread over 300 or so pages, the impact is diluted. My conclusion: short fiction’s magic lies in what’s not said and its concentration of meaning.

When I read a story, I want to use my imagination. Since every word counts in short fiction, the writer must ration each word and sentence, which leaves a lot for readers to create for themselves. I believe this co-creation between writer and reader is critical. What is this story really about? How does it make me look at the world differently? And I love stories with ambiguous endings that engage my imagination. Of course, I’ve read some stories where too much is left unsaid, causing confusion. But when this delicate balance is achieved, I engage with the story at a deeper level—and it stays with me a long time.

Two examples of engaging stories different in length, structure, and tone are “The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository” by John Connolly and “Sticks” by George Saunders. Both are award-winning stories I encourage you to read if you haven’t already. Connolly’s delightful short tale created so many enticing questions for me. I wanted to know more about these odd characters who came to the bookstore, so my imagination worked full tilt and continued long after I finished. On the other hand, Saunders’ flash fiction is a paradox because it tells us so much, and yet so little, about this father and his family.

At this point, I would be remiss if I didn’t state the obvious: not everyone reacts to short fiction in the same way. A friend of mind read “Sticks” and felt it lacked a tidy ending. Yes, of course it did. That’s why it was memorable. If it had been tied up neatly with a bow, I would have forgotten it long ago instead of reading it several times a year. You see, as a reader, I want meaningful questions, not just answers.

CUE THE CONFETTI

By Kasie Whitener

I don’t get nervous for Zoom events even when I’m hosting them. I pour a glass of wine and tuck my pajama’d legs underneath me and tune in like the meeting is a television program.

But last Monday night I was nervous. The Southeastern Writers Association was holding their awards event on Zoom and my novel, Being Blue, was a finalist. The entry was an unpublished manuscript and this one, up until now, had only been read by my critique group and a developmental editor.

In contrast, my first novel, After December, has been out since 2019 and has over 50 ratings on Amazon. My second novel, Before Pittsburgh, released last month and earned a dozen 5-star reviews from the vast world of #bookstagram. My short story “For the Win” was in the summer issue of The Showbear Family Circus and my story “The Shower” is set to be printed in Fall Lines. I blog weekly across multiple platforms. I have authored two textbooks at use in my classrooms.

I’m being read on the regular and not just by people who know me.

Entering the Hal Bernard Memorial Award for Novel with the Southeastern Writers Association also meant I’d joined the organization. Logging into the Zoom, I saw strangers’ faces, not my usual SCWA crowd. The nerves had begun much earlier in the day, though, when I thought about what it meant to be a finalist and what it would feel like to have to show one of those fake-Oscar smiles when they didn’t name me the winner.

Any other acceptance or win has come as an email or phone call notification. Congratulations, your book is a finalist in the Indie Excellence Awards. Congratulations, you’ve won the Broad River Prize for Prose.

I’ve applied and submitted and been refused and rejected. We’re sorry but your work does not fit our needs at this time.

I’ve queried and entered and been ignored and ghosted. My novel After December was in a first-novel contest for female authors and lost to a book about the experience of a young Latina immigrant. So, yeah, my white-privileged male protagonist never stood a chance.

Never have I minded the rejection. Putting my work out there means accepting defeat. And Monday night I wasn’t rehearsing my, “Good for you!” expression because I’ve been spoiled by the wins.

Buzz Bernard, who sponsored the award selected five entries to honor. Two received honorable mention and three took prizes.

The screen said, “Third Place – Being Blue by Kasie Whitener,” and I smiled and unmuted and said, “Thank you.” I thought of our bronze-medal winning athletes and the looks on their faces knowing they’ve come so close and come up just short. Then I finished my wine.

Bronze is hard because it’s not a win exactly, but it’s not a loss, either. It’s somewhere in between. Congratulations, your work is above average.

So, thank you. I might just stick with this writing thing. I have some work to do.

MAKING MAGIC BELIEVABLE

By Bonnie Stanard

Magical realism (MR) incorporates the unbelievable into the world as we know it. In other words, we writers convince readers that magic is as ordinary as life. After recently reading The Erasers by AlainRobbe-Grillet, known for his ability to mix fact and fantasy, I took notes on how he did it.

TheErasers is a mystery novel about a murder. Descriptions wander with the perambulations of the protagonist—a police inspector named Wallas who has been called in to solve a murder. As he walks from the post office to the police station to what may or may-not be a murder scene, his gets lost, goes in circles, or in one case, ends where he began, which I admit, tests your patience. These geographic twists and turns are accompanied by a vague time line, though the entire story takes place in 24 hours.

Signals crop up suggesting there never was a murder. Witnesses provide vague answers to questions. The description of the murder suspect fits that of Wallas, the investigator. A clock stops at the beginning and starts up at the moment of a murder, which may or may not be the one being investigated. Ambiguity requires us readers to supply our own facts along with what is given. We think we know what's going on, but do we?

WRITING TECHNIQUES TO NORMALIZE THE FANTASTIC

Ideas I've taken from The Eraser that blur the lines of reality.

—Suppositions. As the inspector summarizes the situation to a police officer, we realize that his facts are actually presumptions. Nonetheless, the inspector takes action based on presumptions, though the question persists about what is real.
— Conditional verbs, e.g., could, may, might. In most fiction, these words are dead-weights that slow down the action, but in this instance, they add an element of unreliability.
—Recurring adjectives. To describe different people and/or places using similar adjectives allows a range of uncertainty. Doppelgangers are good.
— Unemotional narrative voice. In other words, when the tone is cool, calm, and collected, the reader tends to believe... even magic.
— Point of View. Without bending the rules too far, a careless approach to free indirect discourse POV allows different characters to provide biased views, deconstructing reality. The POV may blink, but not so much as to dislocate the narrative point of reference.
— Unclear antecedents. This is annoying, but I can see the point of it. There are times when I underlined the word “he” because it could reference either of two different persons. Lack of clarity sidetracks authority.
— Character ID. A close relative to the previous point is to delay referring to characters by their names in describing a given situation. Grillet uses terms like the man, character, customer, pedestrian. This adds fog to the scene, which launches doubt about the identity and/or nature of the character.

My favorite magical realism book is Life of Pi. Yann Martel's masterful writing will have you believing a boy on a raft after a shipwreck can survive with a tiger on board. (The book is better than the movie, which is also good.) Other MR books I've enjoyed are Love in the Time of Cholera; The House of Spirits; and Like Water for Chocolate.

An informative definition of magical realism can be found on Neil Gaiman's Master Class notes.

REVISION: A NECESSARY EVIL

By Sharon May

“I’ve just finished my novel. Do I need to revise it?” asks one more person on an online writing forum. I know where the inquiry is coming from. You’ve written for weeks, months, or years to produce a first draft, sweating over each carefully chosen word, which could be confused with revising. You’re dead dog tired, and a little bored with the project. You think you’ve given everything you have in your mind and soul. What more can be done?

Actually, more than we can imagine after we first complete a draft. Revising is as necessary as drafting in its requirement to step back from the manuscript and out of ourselves so we can re-visit our work objectively. Revision is decorating the room we just built because without paint and furniture, it won’t be a finished nor enjoyable space.

It is not editing, which should be a final pass for grammar, mechanics, and punctuation at the sentence level. Revising entails some work with sentences, but good writers reconsider plot and sub-plots, character development, organization, structure, themes, voice, coherence, cohesiveness, continuity, etc. The list is endless, meaning that revising is a lot of work and could take as long, if not longer, than drafting took. Who wouldn’t prefer to skip this step?

Proud of our brilliant moments, we really don’t want to take a hard look at our less than brilliant writing. We carry around enough doubt and want to avoid more. Instead of doubting ourselves, we should be proud that we recognized our weaker words and ideas, and yes, even mistakes. Not everyone can objectify their own writing and grasp it from the reader’s perspective.

I don’t consider myself good at revision. A few years ago, I finished my first draft of a novel in progress, and was at a loss. I knew I wasn’t done writing but I just didn’t know what to do. So, I found a professional editor who had worked for a company I’d be proud to have publish my work and hired her to do a developmental edit. It was not cheap, but the help has been priceless like the MasterCard ad says.

The editor asked questions and made comments that piqued my creativity. My reactions to her reading made it possible for me to see what the work in progress could become, which is the point of revision.

With that experience as well as joining Cola II Writers Workshop, I am learning how to see my writing from outside myself, without all the emotional attachment to the words. They really are just words. They may create a wonderful and beautiful mosaic, but they can be tinkered with and improved.

Don’t sell your work short. Revise to discover the best of what you have to offer the reader.

HERE ARE FOUR OF LITERATURE’S MOST POWERFUL INVENTIONS THAT YOU PROBABLY USE TO TELL STORIES, BUT DIDN’T REALIZE THE ACTUAL NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND THEM

By El Ochiis

I had an English professor who was considered an eccentric by New York standards; he collected shopping bags. His position was that each bag told a story about the store and the patrons who shopped there – that these containers for capitalism were a most interesting invention. Now this wouldn’t have been such an oddball thing save for the fact that he was as spendthrift as he was inimitable; he never shopped in these stores – merely using them to hold books he had checked out of The New York Public Library.

We waited each week for the bag and its contents therein. He never let us down with each introduction of something new in literature and writing. One week the professor brought a few books in his arms, sans a bag, and announced that he would be introducing us to literary inventions, through the ages, showing how writers have created technical breakthroughs—rivaling any scientific inventions—and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind

1. Plot Twist - This literary invention is now so well-known that we often learn to identify it as children. But it thrilled Aristotle when he first discovered it, and for two reasons. First, it supported his hunch that literature’s inventions were constructed from story. And second, it confirmed that literary inventions could have potent psychological effects. Who hasn’t felt a burst of wonder—or as Aristotle called it, thaumazein—when a story pivots unexpectedly? That’s why holy scriptures brim with plot twists: David beating Goliath, parting the Sea of Reeds to escape an evil Pharaoh …

2. The Hurt Delay - this invention’s blueprint is a plot that discloses to the audience that a character is going to get hurt—prior to the hurt actually arriving. The classic example is Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, where we learn before Oedipus that he’s about to undergo the horror of discovering that he’s killed his father and married his mother. But it occurs in a range of later literature, from Shakespeare’s Macbeth to paperback bestsellers such as John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.

3. The Tale Told From Our Future - This invention was created simultaneously by many different global authors, among them the 13th-century West African griot poet who composed the Epic of Sundiata. Basically, a narrator uses a future-tense voice to address us in our present. As it goes in the Epic: “Listen to my words, you who want to know; by my mouth you will learn the history of Mali. By my mouth you will get to know the story. . .”

4. The Almighty Heart - This invention is an anthropomorphic omniscient narrator—or, to be more colloquial, a story told by someone with a human heart and a god’s all-seeing eye. It was first devised by the ancient Greek poet Homer in The Iliad, but you can find it throughout more recent fiction. The invention works by tricking your brain into feeling like you’re chanting along with a greater human voice.

THE LATEST ADDITION

Meet a New Columbia II Writer

LIS ANNA-LANGSTON 

Lis Anna-Langston was raised along the winding current of the Mississippi River on a steady diet of dog-eared books. She attended a Creative and Performing Arts School from middle school until graduation and went on to study Literature at Webster University. Her two novels, Gobbledy and Tupelo Honey have won the Parents’ Choice Gold, Moonbeam Book Award, Independent Press Award, Benjamin Franklin Book Award and NYC Big Book Awards. Twice nominated for the Pushcart award and Finalist in the Brighthorse Book Prize, William Faulkner Fiction Contest and Thomas Wolfe Fiction Award, her work has been published in The Literary Review, Emerson Review, The Merrimack Review, Emrys Journal, The MacGuffin, Sand Hill Review, and dozens of other literary journals.

 She draws badly, sings loudly, loves ketchup, starry skies, and stories with happy aliens.

You can find her in the wilds of South Carolina plucking stories out of thin air.  

 www.lisannalangston.com

Lis's first post follows.

TRUST THE PROCESS

By Lis Anna-Langston

My third year at a Creative and Performing Arts School, I came to a crossroads. Home was chaotic and I took up study at a Buddhist Temple. It wasn’t a decision of faith but a simple response to my environment. With a fine combination of new athletic shoes, city buses, and catching rides, I set out to learn a lesson in commitment. It was a lot of work for anyone, especially a Sophomore in high school to get up at 4:30AM to catch a bus but I took up the reigns of my new choice with profound enthusiasm.

At the library I devoured ancient texts. I meditated on the meaning of nothingness, because, unlike the existential nothingness at home, I found something unique. I studied on buses and weekends, keeping up my pace. Making choices cleared my mind, gave me focus. In time I noticed my studies overlapped into my artistic work. What I learned from ancient texts applied to writing and being on stage. The same process I used to align myself with the universe was the same one I used in writing to go deeper into the material. The same path I took to a poem led to divine truths. These paths became interchangeable. Unique by design but more similar than I imagined. A magical place where art and philosophy intersected. An invisible border where commitment merged into trust.

There are few things more exciting than watching inspiration at work in your life. Seeing all that come alive made me even more excited about processes that required a lot of work on my part. There weren't a lot of things I could trust in my life, but I started to see through the cracks. I had to learn to trust. Trust myself to know what I wanted. Trust the art of allowing. Trust myself to get the idea onto the page. Trust myself to dive into the raw draft. Trust myself to show up to the work every day. Trust that the final draft would be completely different than the first. Trust that every way is the right way. Trust I’m serving the work in ways I couldn’t have defined yesterday or the day before. It’s a hard concept for people to grasp.

People want absolutes. They want to know. But art isn’t about knowing. Trust opens doors to beginnings and endings. It is the rope binding each part of the artistic process to the next. It’s the edge of the cliff, the beginning of an idea, the thing that lights our way, the thing that reflects back what we’re thinking and doing, the thing that catches us in midair. A paradox of paradoxes. Letting go of results shifts us into a position to trust. From inspiration to drafts to rewrites, trust becomes the key to open those doors. Write your truth is an empty phrase until you first learn to trust. I see now that commitment to writing practice shapes and hones art. Trust is a powerful tool for writers. The gateway from which all great ideas enter.