I HOPE I’M WRONG

By Raegan Teller

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about bookstores. As a child, I believed they were magical spaces. I could spend hours walking up and down the aisles, running my hand reverently across the spines of beloved books. It never occurred to me that one day I would doubt bookstores are relevant.

Over the past year, reports have enthusiastically proclaimed headlines like “Independent Bookstores Are Thriving” or “Independent Bookstores Grow for the Second Year After a 20-Year Decline.” After reading many of these articles and hoping they are right, I’m not convinced. While many of the independent bookstores have survived, and even grown, they have drastically changed their business models. Many are in smaller towns, and they host a wide variety of events, not just the typical author signings. These stores have rebranded themselves as entertainment and social hangouts. I applaud their vision. However, it’s likely many of the other, less visionary, indie bookstores won’t fare as well. And, the future of big book stores, like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, is definitely not good.

What does this all mean for writers? Where do we sell our work? As one author recently said to me, “You can’t think out of the box, because there is no box.” She’s right. I suspect if you looked at all the places, physical and online, where writers have an opportunity to sell their work, you’d see that there are more places than ever. Short fiction is on the rise again, and people are reading on their phones, listening to audio books or to serialized books on podcasts. Despite the current decline, I think ebooks will rebound, because it’s just too darn convenient to carry hundreds of books in the palm of your hand. The bulk of today’s readers are middle-aged, and as they grow older, many of them may turn to e-readers, like Kindle and Nook, because they can enlarge the print. Young people today use digital textbooks, so it’s highly likely that if they read a book, it will be an ebook. Having said all this, my point is not to make a pitch for digital or audio books. In fact, I sell far more print copies of my books that I do ebooks. I want bookstores and print books to go on forever. But I’m also a realist.

The point I am trying to make is that writers should not assume the decline of physical bookstores necessarily signals a further decline in reading. As my statistics professor pounded into me, “correlation is not causation.” These two issues are related but separate. As writers, we must seek out alternative venues for book signings, explore audio and digital options, develop online sales opportunities, and keep the faith. I believe humans crave stories and will continue to seek them out in some form. But I also believe that bookstores will become irrelevant.

Just know that I hope I’m wrong.

REALITY CHECK

By Rex Hurst

A lot of times when we’re all starting out as writers - no matter what age we throw our hat in the arena - we often stumble about trying to find our place in the vast and crowded literary marketplace. Everyone wants to be the next Harper Lee (except I don’t think Harper Lee wanted to be Harper Lee) and produce the great literary novel that fills the minds of generations with soulful insights. But that’s probably not going to happen.

In fact, let me assure you that the email inboxes of various “legitimate” agents and “serious” publishers are full of proposed great American novels. Maybe five percent will make it to market. I myself fell into this trap, sending serious story after story to these various despots, these self-proclaimed last bastions of literary merit in the West, only to be rejected and spit on at every turn. In reality these places are filled with nepotism and incestuous relationships, so if you’re not in the club, you’re not even considered.

As such I found myself adrift, constantly questioning whether I had talent or not, that's when I wrote my first horror story - or rather novel. It was supposed to be a short story but took on a life of its own. Well I put that together and it was snapped up by the first publisher I sent it to. With that encouragement I wrote up my next one. It too was immediately accepted by the publisher I sent it to.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that I had found my niche. Out of desperation, out of anger, out of sheer exasperation I found it. My point is if you are stuck in a rut, can't get anything published, try writing in a different genre. It could be that you haven’t found your niche. Romance, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, crime, and so on. Try your hand at a bunch. See if you can’t get a nibble from a different type of story.

USE DIGITAL LISTENING TO PROMOTE YOUR WORK

By Kasie Whitener

My friend Big Redd once discovered a conversation between a baseball player and his favorite Christian Rap artist in which the player thanked the artist for providing his walk-up music. Big Redd reached out to the player and promoted his own album. Three days later, it was his song being played on the Rockies’ PA system when that player stepped up to bat.

Big Redd’s strategy of “social listening” was to find the conversations that are relevant to your topic and then participate in them to promote your work. He called it “social” because he uses Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook social media platforms to do his listening.

I call the strategy “digital listening” because I expanded it to the blogs, podcasts, email newsletters, and events being promoted by other writers. You can practice this marketing strategy in three easy steps:

Find the influencers.

You probably already have your favorite writing blogs (like this one) and you may have liked several authors’ Facebook pages. Expand that list of follows to include the hashtags being used on Twitter and Instagram to link conversations. Then make a list of the eight or 10 places you’ll visit on your digital listening tour.

Create a habit.

Take to the internet once a week for research. Work through your list of bloggers, email newsletters, Twitter and Instagram hashtags, and Facebook groups and author pages to see what everyone is posting. Look for repeated phrases and common themes. Then Google those phrases to find even more content (or not) written about that subject.

Last week our Write On SC radio show had the topic “traveling to break writers’ block.” It didn’t start out that way. It started as “the traveling writer” because I figured every writer uses road trips for inspiration. When you Google “travel” and “writer” together you get endless blogs for Travel Writers which is a genre in and of itself. As these were not what I was after, I kept re-combining the words until I found some resources that talked about using travel to break a block.

The lack of search results told me that this topic was a place in the digital world with little to no content. I should write about it! That’s step three.

Join the Conversation.

Create content that contributes to the conversation. Using the keywords, hashtags, and influencer posts you’ve discovered, build something new. Then share that something new with all the people and conversations that you researched. Tweet your article using their hashtag. Comment on their blogs with a link to your own.

As writers, we often create out of an inspired frenzy making our efforts more self-serving than audience-serving. But when we need to market ourselves and our work, we have to find the audience. Let the digital world be your pond. Go fishing for readers by joining the relevant conversations already in progress.

THE NEXT CHAPTER

By Sharon May

May 11, 2019, starts a new chapter in my writing career with my retirement from teaching. I started working summers at 15 while in school, and had my first full-time job at 21. With work and school, I’ve always had excuses not to write anything besides academic papers and comments to students – no time nor energy.

Wasn’t like I didn’t have lots of ideas for creative non-fiction and fiction. I wrote in spurts over the years and have several incomplete manuscripts in a file cabinet, waiting. I promise myself that I will do what writers are supposed to do: write daily and immerse myself in the craft and business of writing.

I’m an early riser, but my circadian clock might shift. I plan to start my day with writing, just after breakfast, for at least an hour or two. By then, my wife should be up and about, and we will decide what housework and errands we need to knock out that day. I will use time away from writing for incubation to assess what my work and determine the next step. Maybe I’ll be driven to write more later in the day.

Reading improves writing. I tell my students that once a day. It has been difficult to read fiction as much as I would like to or need to with paper grading hanging over me for the past 30 years. My new schedule will allow me to set aside at least a couple of hours a day for reading. God knows I’ve got enough books on the shelves.

Of course, there is also a plan for exercise – daily walks in the neighborhood and personal training twice a week. Need to get fit if I plan to live long enough to finish all those manuscripts.

Getting more involved in writing community would also be a benefit. Besides writers’ workshops, I would like to attend conferences, at least a couple a year, particularly those held in Appalachia. Conversations about writing spurs my creativity.

There will be times I can’t keep this schedule. While traveling, I plan to journal. I usually carry a laptop in case I have a chance to write, but honestly, our vacations have very little downtime. The key is to get back writing immediately after traveling.

Will I stick to writing plan? I’ve made excuses and procrastinated long enough. It is time for discipline even when distractions come along. I need to be better with setting boundaries with friends and family. With discipline, I will revise my novel into a second draft and start shopping it around as well as continue working on my memoir.

I’m looking forward to this new chapter so much so I’ve found my job to be a struggle for the first time in my career. I just want to write, read, and of course, travel, and I want to start today. I am chomping at the bit. Yeah, my head has already retired.

WRITING BY HAND

By Sandra Schmid

There’s a current trend to get rid of stuff. We walk through our house, picking up each thing, asking if we love it. If not, Goodwill gets it. 

I’m trying the same technique on my manuscript. Chapters are dropped that don’t move the story. Excess words, slashed. Till eventually, I can hold something I love. 

The question arises, how do I know when I love my writing?

I’ve been writing the same story for twenty years. Drafts have accumulated. I’m a hoarder of words.

  

To rediscover my love, my hand and eyes becomes the gauge for whether the words stay or get thrown away. If copying a paragraph by hand feels torturous to my arthritic fingers, it’s probably ready for Goodwill. On the other hand, if the pen floats effortlessly across the page, I’m reconnecting with the heart and soul of my story. Those are the words worth keeping. 

When my eyes speed across the page, skimming to get through, I’m bored. My reader will be too. But when my eyes slow down to take a long, sensuous look, I start copying. 

Unlike the current trend to throw everything away, I advise keeping copies of our waste. Sometimes, old words trigger the best parts of our book. 

Reconnect with an old manuscript stashed away in a suitcase. Romance it. Feel it with your hand, your eyes, your heart and soul. Write until you love it.

FICTIONS for WEIRD PRIMATES

By Caleb Pennington

I’m a weird primate, half hairy, named Caleb. I have the mystery of my existence to solve. I’m scared that there isn’t a purpose.

One day I picked up a fruit of sorts. It was the letter A. I asked: “The hell is this?” I said: “It’s the letter A.” I then knew that it was real. Like bedrock to a mountain. Hardly ever changing. It made me feel good. Comforted. The world has real things in it. Things I could piece together.

So I wrote: The letter A is a standalone fact. It is objective. There is not one literate half hairy primate on this big life ball planet that won’t get it. It is a tool. It can create something. I couldn’t argue with it. I told myself: I think I just learned something real.

Promising, the realization was. I started typing. I wanted words in sequence to be real like math. But a math of the spirit. My spirit doesn’t seem to be half primate. Sometimes, maybe it’s a human and thinks about all the problems of not having a purpose. My human side wanted to read a book. It did. It then said: These fictions and myths have a reason for living. The letters that makes them is as objective and durable as the bedrock on this planet.

So, I started introducing myself to fictions and myths.

After a while, I said to myself: I made a friend, today. Fictions meet myth, myth meet fiction. My name is Caleb.

Fiction said: Nice meeting you. I don’t get to meet many people, these days.

Myth said: Yes, likewise.

I asked was: Why are you here?

They both said: To answer.

I asked: What? ‘Cause I have some questions.

Myth said: Hypotheticals pertaining to your survival, the reasons for the natural world, the reasons humans must adhere to a natural order. They die when they don’t. They suffer.

Fiction said: Hypotheticals pertaining to your spirit in the context of your experience.

I said: Damn, that’s pretty deep fellers.

They said: No shit. You must not be too educated if you didn’t already know that we’re deep.

I said: I’ve read Nietzsche.

Myth said: He made me feel relevant, again.

Fiction said: He breathed life into my lungs.  

I thought that was pretty cool. Fiction did too, so he made me a recommendation. He gave me Richard Bachman, or Stephen King in disguise. His writing is crisp, but it felt like someone was just trying to put me in a demonic world that scared me as a half primate. I wasn’t feeling too human. I still wanted a purpose for being here. So fiction handed me 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I realized I was going to die at the end of it. That I couldn’t escape time. My family couldn’t, either.  

After I read that, I had to go over to my mom’s house because she is my mom. She was on the couch, watching T.V. Gabriel Garcia Marquez made me realize she was going to die. I told her I love her. It felt good. For thirty minutes, I wanted my purpose in life to be loving my mom. It felt good.  

So I said to fiction: “You know, that book made me want to spend time with my mom.”

Fiction said: “Understandable. All loved ones pass away in that fiction you read. As they do in life.”

I decided to pose some questions to him. Because he gave me some answers when I was with my mom. I asked: Could we come to the weakest’s rescue? Would we if they were a dog? A cow? A fetus? Are you too good to save a fetus?

Fiction and me are trying to answer them. I think that’s the reason I try to know him. He helps me figure things out.

  

  

HEAD-HOPPING VS FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE

By Bonnie Stanard

I’m back with point of view (POV). Bear with me. I’m trying to turn my head-hopping into the professionally respected Free and Indirect Discourse (FID) ) . (If you read this nomenclature as wordy, I find it even wordier to write.) Head-hopping, after all, is a signpost of an amateurish writer. I’ve been there, and when workshop critics suggest confusion about POV in my work, I cringe.

Online information about FID does little to distinguish it from head-hopping (or from omniscient POV, for that matter). Some descriptions apply to both, and you’re left in more fog than when you began. What is the difference? I’m not going to clear the fog, but I’ll tell you the conclusions I’ve reached.

Narrators in both approaches presume to third person, but in both, Third Limited POV is scattershot throughout the fabric of the story. Neither can be considered Third Limited because we’re not confined to one character’s viewpoint. Both approaches get into the heads of various characters and put forth individual thoughts, feelings, and motivation.

One way to differentiate the bad from the good: head-hopping gives you whiplash with its herky-jerky POV whereas FID doesn’t.

The difference, as I see it, is whether or not the narrator holds on to her voice and keeps it consistent. So? Put another way, the FID narrator maintains a pivotal voice even as she flits about describing the inner life of characters. It deteriorates to head-hopping when the voices of the characters overcome the narrator’s control. That is to say, the characters bounce their thoughts around in a power struggle with nobody minding the plot.

As I aspire to FID, I am reminded to protect my singular narrator, or teller of the story, from being usurped by the characters. For instance, I may write “John thought his mother ignored him.” There—it sounds like I’m in John’s head. That’s fine as long as the narrator doesn’t capitulate to John in a way that elevates John to the level of narrator. Since John doesn’t know the plot nor where anything is going, his thoughts are merely pieces of a puzzle.

You keep the narrator from being overtaken by John by pulling back (it’s about distance between narrator and story/characters) and asserting control; make it clear that the story teller is describing John, not John telling us about John. Add a sentence such as “John would have denied it, but he always thought he was being ignored.” John wouldn’t talk about himself in this way. This is the FID narrator saying, “John, you’re not telling this story. Those are your thoughts, but I’m going to tell them.”

The FID narrator makes objective observations that serve to distance the teller of the story from the characters in the story. The idea is to talk about the characters instead of talking for them.

In head-hopping, readers know the insecurity of having no anchor, even if they don’t consciously realize it. The bottom line is that your narrator is the boss, regardless of how many characters try to tell you otherwise.

You may realize by now that the FID narrator has much in common with an omniscient narrator. But let’s stick to one fog at a time.

THE BOOK HANGOVER

By Kasie Whitener

What must the teen-aged clerk have thought of me at 9:57 on a Tuesday night, the hum of a vacuum in the back of the store, jammy pants tucked into my Ugg boots, hair snarled into a messy bun, wild-eyed and profusely thanking him?

Weeks before, I tore through The Bronze Horseman, secretly scheduling meetings into my work day so I could sneak into conference rooms and read. I had purchased the book in Fremont, California, on Monday afternoon. By Friday at 1 p.m. when I boarded the plane home, all 810 pages of it were over. I hadn’t read that fast or that much since graduate school. I was reawakened to the power of an intoxicating story. And I was hungover for weeks afterward.

Sometimes you only recognize the book hangover when you start the next book in your stack and feel an overall “meh” as you turn the pages. The book hangover makes you bitter about the writer’s inability to produce more work. I once considered burning effigies of Cassandra Clare when I learned the next book of hers would not be released for 18 months. The book hangover makes you jealous wondering just what that author was able to do that twisted you so desperately into knots.

Like getting intoxicated, you know while you’re doing it that this will end badly. As you near the end of the book, your spirit sags. The pages in your right hand feel too light to meet a satisfying end. How many things will go unsolved?

It’s not just good books that cause a hangover; any book that connects with you at the right time, in the right way can do it. You feel euphoric and invincible until it’s over. Then, parched, lethargic, grumpy, and suffering in a way only cheeseburgers and milkshakes can solve, you lie on the couch and binge watch Netflix swearing to never read again.

I want to write the book that does that. The one that gets the reader so deeply invested, s/he will ignore family, work, and the Super Bowl to keep reading. I want to write characters like tequila shots and turning points like toasts, climaxes like bar anthems sung at the top of our lungs and denouements like fervent whispers that lead to one-night-stands.

I want my readers drunk on my novel. And afterward, when they’ve finished, I want them spent, heartbroken, and lonely. Like I was after The Bronze Horseman.

In desperation one night in Cincinnati, I trolled the Amazon listing, a jilted lover internet-stalking the book that had meant so much to me.

And learned there was a sequel.

Wild with desire, I called Barnes & Noble to check availability. Told them I’d come right over.

“Don’t close yet!” I begged.

Their last copy of Tatiana and Alexander sold, opened, and reading before I even made it back to my car. And like the hair of the dog bartenders prescribe, I was drunk again within minutes.

THE ART OF REJECTION

By El Ochiis

Can rejection be an art?  Can it ever be acceptable? 

The first time I was rejected for a piece of writing, I curled into a fetal position and subsisted on a diet of kale and oatmeal for, well, five days.  I love kale but, at three meals a day, that’s just gross.

When I look back, I don’t feel so much like I had failed as much as I had submitted something that was not ready to be published. I had dated this guy whose sibling was a famous New York agent.  He was impressed by a piece of writing I had published in a publication.  In hindsight, he was trying to impress me with a connection to a world that I had dreamed and I, for some unexpected reason, wanted to impress him with my writing talent, which was silly because I really wasn’t crazy about him.  But, I figured if his connection to the tough world of New York agency could get me a fast road to acclaim, maybe I’d come to love him. 

Of course, I heard my grandma mah’s voice in an ethical chamber of my head: “Never use people for your own gain.” 

Firstly, grandma mah was not living in an empty loft on Varick Street in NYC with a view of an entrance to the Holland Tunnel, to New Jersey, no heat and an empty refrigerator.  To be fair, I couldn’t afford electricity so there was little need to put food into an unplugged apparatus that was supposed to keep stuff cold. The point was, rejection still sucked.

Recently, I’ve read about a movement, in NYC, whose members have come to embrace rejections like they were awards. Some writers were aiming for their one hundredth rejection slip.  Who has skin that thick? One writer even parlayed her rejections into a teaching gig at a workshop and college.

Then, I heard that voice of grandma mah again: “Turn your lemons into lemonade, my child.” 

I am not even that fond of some yellow, bitter fruit in a glass of water with sugar. However, I must admit, they might have been right, both granny and the writer with a centennial of rejections.  Still, I’ve always found it difficult to grow titanium skin. So, with my second rejection, I took to a more pronounced fetal position and played blues songs for twenty-one days straight.  This rejection took my guts from behind my rib cage and played bongo drums with them.  I had turned down an offer for a piece, I deemed a literary masterpiece, because the producer’s creative vision was for a cable show in some foreign market. How dare he use my literary musing, that rivaled Tolstoy, in my opinion, as fodder for a commercial endeavor – oh the horror. 

It was my “awakening” when an editor reminded me that Tolstoy was dead. Um, now was that a metaphor for my writing? I checked and she was right, figuratively, literally and metaphorically.  Damn you Russian men who shaped my view of how to pen stories. Was I blaming someone else for my own failure?

Never mind, I heard your agreement there granny.

But, undoubtedly, we have to learn to accept failure – well that was what I would told my offspring to make them feel better.  Without failure, there is no success – Michael Jordan said he missed hundreds of the shots that he threw – look at his career. Writing is not basketball; writing is sitting down and ripping out your intestines, putting them back in again and describing it so that a reader would, not only understand the process, but believe it.

Couple that with solitude, poverty and anxiety. 

Who would apply for such a job?  A writer would, that’s who.  That’s why rejections, though they suck, have to be tolerable. 

How many times did I use the word “Suck”?  Crap, this is so going to be rejected – I’ve assumed the fetal position.

CELEBRATE the WRITERS BEHIND ACADEMY AWARD MOVIES

By Nick Rolon

                                                                                                         

 Let’s roll out the red carpet for writers. Tonight, the 91^st Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California (8pm EST), broadcast live on ABC. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honor the best films of 2018 with Oscars awarded in 24 categories. For the first time in over three decades, the ceremony will have no host. Yes, we will see many actors and actresses, directors, and producers walk the stage to receive their Oscar but behind each Academy Award movie is outstanding writing. There would be no Academy Award winning movies without great writers.

Screenwriters bring the script to life using original works or adaptations from books. The writers capture the movement, actions, expressions, and dialogue of the characters on screen. Of the eight Best Picture nominations, seven have been nominated for Best Writing in adapted or original screen play.

Since the inaugural Academy Awards in 1928, more than sixty Best Picture winners derive from literature whether it be a novel, biography, play, or short story. Thirty-seven Best Picture winners originated from books including Kramer vs. Kramer, The Sound Of Music, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Godfather. Twelve Years a Slave, an autobiography published in 1853 and written by Solomon Northrup, who was kidnapped and put to work on plantations in Louisiana for 12 years, won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.

The first Oscar awards for writing were given in 1940 (Original Story) to Lewis R. Foster for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and (Screenplay) to Sidney Howard  for Gone With The Wind. Frances Marion was the first female writer to win an Academy Award in 1931. Ben Affleck is the youngest writer, at the age of 25 for Good Will Hunting, he co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Damon. In 2009, Geoffrey Fletcher was the first African American to win a Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) award for the movie Precious and in 2017, Jordan Peele was the first African American to win for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for Get Out.

The written words behind these great movies have inspired us during our most challenging historical and personal times including the Great Depression (The Grapes of Wrath), the Civil Rights Movement (Selma), Space Exploration (First Man). They gave us triumph in sports (Rocky), and hope (It’s a Wonderful Life). The movies have provided us with a moment to escape and be entertained. The written words brought to life by the actors/actresses inspire us with understanding, comfort, determination, and good will.

Tonight, make a bowl of popcorn, relax watching the 91^st annual Academy Awards, and give thanks to the writers who made it all possible.

 Below is a list of the 2018 Best Picture Nominees and the respective Screenwriters:  

Best Picture Nominee	Screenwriter(s)	Notes
Black Panther	Ryan Coogler/Joe Robert Cole	Adapted from the comic books by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Nominated for Best Writing- Adapted Screenplay
Bohemian Rhapsody	Anthony McCarten	Movie name from the song made popular by the British rock band Queen in 1975
The Favourite	Deborah Davis/Tony McNamara	The written script began over 20 years ago and finally becoming an Oscar nominated film in 2018. Nominated for Best Writing- Original Screenplay
Green Book	Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, and Brian Currie	Inspired by a true story with the written script based on interviews and letters by family members Nominated for Best Writing- Original Screenplay
Roma	Alfonso Cuaron	Alfonso chose to withhold the script from many of the actors so that none of the cast members would know where the film was headed. Nominated for Best Writing-Original Screenplay
A Star is Born	Bradley Cooper, Eric Roth, Will Fetters	A remake from the original movie and script in 1937 Nominated for Best Writing -Adapted Screenplay
Blackkklansman	Spike Lee, Kevin Wilmott, David Rabinowitz, Charlie  Wachtel	Spike Lee also directed the movie based on the 2014 memoir of Ron Stallworth. Nominated for Best Writing- Adapted Screenplay
Vice	Adam McKay	Adam McKay also directed the movie which follows the path of former Vice President, Dick Cheney. Nominated for Best Writing- Original Screenplay

   

                           

INSPIRATION

Here is a rerun of a post from 2013 by one of our much-loved and now departed members. We miss you, Alex. Your presence is always felt.

By Alex Raley

We look for inspiration when we write.  We look for inspiration when we write. Often it comes out of the blue or from the pleasant and interesting things going on around us. A couple months ago, I found myself with my head against the wall waiting for the 911 folks to arrive and wondered why I had put myself in that situation. In the hospital and on my way to recovery, I began to think of all the experiences a hospital brings: some debilitating, some embarrassing, and some just downright nasty. With the right attitude they can be funny. I began to think poetry as soon as I settled down in hospital routine (meals to the minute, vital signs as soon as you fall asleep, the day’s date with nurse and nurse tech names, shift changes with new names, morning doctor visits. I imaged everything poetically, including the 911 activity. When not interrupted by hospital routine, I was constructing poems, poems much too bawdy for a blog but poems that will eventually see the light of day. Does that seem odd?

 Do not let experiences pass by you. Even the most unusual or gruesome can be an inspiration to write. I had never thought of gruesome as an inspiration, but I cannot tell you how my mind raced once I wandered into the groove. Now that I am at home I need to hit the computer and put those bawdy poems to paper.

HERE AGAIN for the FIRST TIME

By Kasie Whitener

Poetry readings need to take place in a coffee house. There’s a consistency in coffee houses that enables the work, that breaks open the caged hipster in us all, that unbinds our artistic sensibilities and makes us willing to listen. Willing to be changed.

Everything about the place is familiar though I’ve only been here once. There’s something almost cliché about a coffee house in an old Colonial on a college campus. Dark corners and nooks where students huddle together over textbooks and lidded cups. There’s an age and creak to the stairs. An unfulfilled ambition in the artwork on the walls.

I’m here by invitation to a weekly meet-up in Columbia but it could be any campus in the world, any coffee house, anywhere, any time. Nostalgia overwhelms me; I want a cigarette and a spiral notebook and a pencil. There are unwritten things inside me pressing to the surface.

As the singer/songwriter strums his tunes, I feel the simplicity of them invade me. And I am once again, opening like a moonflower, to the possibility of change. He sings about coming home. About losing something that seemed small at the time but since then has been indicative of a much bigger loss. About an airline pilot’s constant flight.

The word distance takes on new meaning.

Across the room, I catch my poet friend’s eye and he smiles, cheeks rosy from the cold, satisfaction beaming from him.

Mindgravy is a weekly poetry reading and open microphone event at Cool Beans brought to the Columbia arts community by Al Black, an Indiana native with a Southern writer’s heart. He’s compelling in verse and presence and the room at Cool Beans in its familiarity is a welcoming place to find yourself quietly waiting to be changed.

Partitioning the room are heavy sliding doors that stick and groan and resist the push and pull of people slipping in and out in various attempts of subtlety and respect. I leaned to the man next to me, a regular, and said, “Are the doors always a distraction?”

“Every week,” he said, with an amused smile, “Part of the charm.”

Al read a new poem, one he first asked the man on my left permission to share. It was about a series of visits with the man and how Al had watched his friend work through the process of his father slowly dying.

“Daddy is comfortable,” the man would tell Al and Al put it in the poem as the refrain of grief and acceptance.

Then the same man stood to finish the night with a flute to his lips and played the most tender dirge I’ve ever heard. Quiet and shimmering with so many tears already shed and dried and gone but not forgotten. I felt grateful. I thanked him.

What a gift to feel the camaraderie and friendship, the empathy and passion, the love in the room at Mindgravy. Thanks, Al, for inviting me. I look forward to returning.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New SCWA Columbia II Blogger

EL OCHIIS

El is a recent transplant to Columbia, SC, having relocated from New York/New Jersey to attend classes towards a second, advanced degree at USC.   

She earned a BA Degree in English, studied art in Paris and Athens, traveled abroad, married, divorced, then took a hiatus from creative writing and graduate school, to rear two offspring. Putting her writing on hold, she focused on earning a paycheck to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on. As a result she spent a considerable amount of time as a freelance and contract writer for New York advertising, marketing and public relations firms, however she vowed to get back to writing stories. 

After returning to storytelling, El has won various accolades for her writing, including First Prize in Adventure for a Screenplay in a New a York Screenwriting Contest; Quarter Finalist in an Annual Screenwriting and Fiction Contest for a short story; and a poem about a famous street in NYC, in song format, won Honorable Mention at the Grand Ole Opry in Songwriting (no, she does not know how a song about NYC won in a country music competition).

El's first blog post on this page follows.

WRITING IS DANGEROUS

By El Ochiis

Whenever, as a young person who was always protesting some egregious injustice against citizens, I was detained and asked if I’d ever been arrested, I would use satire in the form of Dante’s levels through hell, from his Inferno or I would respond: “Which time?” Moments after an officer would get a glint in his eyes, thinking he’d caught a harden criminal, I’d add: “Fighting for the right to vote in Alabama; Protesting against redlining in Bedford Stuyvesant – civil disobedience is a very serious offense?”  When viewed as a dissident, for simply exercising natural rights, disarming government sponsored opposition by using “metaphors or allegories “ from great writing, was the only defense I had – a way to telling them that my only crime seemed to have been the ability to think, a skill I hadn’t found in a majority’s job description.

I had utilized Dante’s witticism when I was politely removed from a scene at the Fontana di Trevi in Rome.  A man had grabbed my rear end and I had promptly cold-cocked him with a bottle of cheap, French wine. 

“You a hit him with a bottle a wine, not even a Italian wine,” scolded Polizia di Stato, Gregorio La Trosciscana, smiling, after he had escorted me to the passenger side of his little European patrol car and began navigating his way through the narrow streets.

I wasn’t at all offended at being interned in a patrol vehicle, I had run out of money and needed a ride to a chapel, about an hour away, to meet Umberto, an artist friend who was working on the restoration of artwork.

“You a ever been in a trouble in a Europe before?” 

“Yes, I received a Level Eight, Bolgia #2, but I thought it should have been Level Nine, Bolgia #13,” I answered, locking eyes with Gregorio, then, looking away, covering my mouth to hide a sly grin.

“Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi che entrate qui,” chimed Gregorio after he had hopped out of the car and held the driver’s side door open for me as if he’d just chauffeured me to a fine restaurant. Fear gripped me, had I gone too far?  Was he actually going to throw me in jail? “You don’t a know it in Italiano, no?”  Gregorio had strutted up the steps of an old building with Italian writing, holding open, yet another door. 

 “Know, know what?” I asked, biting my nails and climbing the steps with guarded trepidation. “Abandon all hope, you who enter here?”  “Wow, a cop who, not only can read, but quote from Dante’s Inferno, impressive.”  Gregorio smiled, loosening the bland, government issued tie around his neck, as he retrieved a chair, then motioned for me to sit. “Where are we, by the way?” I asked, staring up at an ornate ceiling. 

“This is where my grandfather was detained by Polizia, my grandfather was, how do you say, protester, see that room, he had a old printer press – he was jailed for writing a dangerous words, under Mussolini.”

“Wow, what a great man, you must have been proud of him?” 

 “When you no have food to eat, you no so proud.” Gregorio leaned in close to my face: “I want to go to a university so bad, but my family no money, I take care family, I a read everything, I learn a English – but I no write – Dante, he say the root of fraud – linguistic sin – linguistic sin is greater than murder, I think I agree, no?”

“But writing can dismantle power; writing can change lives, especially lives of those without a voice.” “Why do you think they jailed your grandfather?”  

“I know so, so I read; I think, but I don’t write thoughts.”

“But, think about it, if the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin didn’t, slaves might never have been freed in America – it was rumored that her writing caused the spark that ignited the American Civil War; Charles Dickens not only gave the world a window into the underclass and the poverty stricken in London but, attacked the judicial system for its discrimination against the poor; you know how Americans got federal food safety laws?”  

Gregorio shook his head front side to side, then took a pencil and paper and began jotting down everything I said.  “Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”– it described the deplorable working conditions, the diseased, rotten and contaminated meat, shocking the American public.” Chinua Achebe told us what the impact of colonization was on African culture in Things Fall Apart.” I was nearly out of breath. “Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience stated that the best government is the one that governs the least; Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man argued that political revolution is a justifiable action when the government fails to perform its duty of protecting the natural rights of its citizen.”  

Gregorio bought me dinner before dropping me off at the Chapel, giving me thumbs up as he meandered his way, once again, through the ever-crowded city of Rome.

Often times when I sit down to write or teach writing, I think about that impassioned conversation I had had with Gregorio and watching Umberto hang atop a ladder in chapels surrounded by the works of artistic giants. Words are like an arrow leaving a bow; once shot, you can’t take it back.  So, as writers, we should, not only write well, but we should write with purpose. Our goal should be to try and do what Baldwin said writing ought to do: “Write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. In some way, your aspirations and concern for a single man in fact do begin to change the world.” Writing is hard; life is hell, but, good writing, now that’s dangerously divine.