SOME WRITERS – AND MOM – SCARE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF ME

By El Ochiis

I didn’t grow up with a television, a fact that my High School English teacher stated made me a more creative writer.  She said I had only my imagination – funny, this was the excuse my mother used to justify the reason we were the only people without a square gadget with images flickering through windows of homes along our street in some non-descript small town.

She would often tell the me the story about a man - Tesla - who dreamed of creating a source of inexhaustible, clean energy that was free for everyone. He, like mom, strongly opposed centralized coal-fired power stations that spewed carbon dioxide into the air that humans breathed. Just how mom was going to harness that lightning bolt to convert it to a form that would power her electric stove which she used to bake bread with flour milled using an ancient, home grain milling machine was never fully explained by the dear woman.

 

Mom’s greatest eco belief was that indoor plumbing was killing the fish because of the sewage being drained into rivers and streams.  When you are a kid, idealistic, off-the-grid, hippie-like parents like my mom were just an embarrassment, and, you as the offspring of such parentage was a recipe for getting chased home by the kids whose parents religiously worshipped showers, sinks, toilet bowls, and, multiple televisions.

 

One night, after my crazy mother had demanded that we save the planet by turning off the electric lights and reading a good book, by candlelight. I picked a book, from one of our five shelves, a novel by Harry Max Harrison, born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, entitled: “Make Room, Make Room “– I guess the pen name had a certain writer’s ring to it over his given one. 

 

Harrison was a citizen of both the UK and Ireland who distrusted generals, prime ministers and tax official with sardonic and cruel wit – he made plain his acute intelligence and astonishing range of moral, ethical and literary sensibilities - ah, the kind of writer whose prose would mirror my mom’s eccentric, erudite lunacy, I thought. 

 

I propped up on two pillows and lost myself in a story that explored the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority - set in 1999 – thirty-three years after the time of writing - where the trends in the proportion of world resources used by the United States and other countries compared to population growth, depicting a world in which the global population was seven billion people, plagued with overcrowding, resource shortages and a crumbling infrastructure.  Max’s plot jumped from character to character, recounting the lives of people in various walks of life in New York City whose population had reached 35 million.

 

Then, in 1973, a movie, called “Soylent Green”, was made, based on Harrison’s novel. Perhaps influenced by the 1972 heat wave in the Northeast and the oil crisis of the early 1970’s, Soylent Green imagines a sweltering future where the temperature never dips below 90, Margarine spoils in the fridge and sickly fog, similar to London’s historical “pea-soupers,” hangs in the air, forcing the city’s last remaining trees to be shielded under a tent. The film changed much of the plot and theme and introduced cannibalism as a solution to feeding people.

 

Were these calamities the fault of humankind or a natural disaster?  The film isn’t clear, but, in the source novel, it’s implied to be the former.  After sitting through the movie in college; I rang mom to tell her about it, for which she chimed “Some of those writers are prophesiers.”  She sent me a window solarium so I could grow my own food.

 

I was petrified after reading Max Harrison’s novel, that is, until I picked up Mick Jackson’s “Threads”, written in 1984 – an unflinching account of nuclear holocaust – one that guessed how ugly we might become if we continue to allow ourselves to be run by greed. 

 

The elite of “Soylent Green” had a novel way to unwind:  video games – in luxury apartment of a Soylent board member, a sleek cabinet contains Computer Space, which, in real-life 1971 had become the very first coin-operated arcade game.  Ah, but we've avoided pushing the big red launch button; We're too happy to keep pushing the buttons on our digital devices instead.

 

Mom’s not here to witness the iPhone or the laptop, but she left me a legacy of books by writers who had predicted the future of most of it – and, quite frankly, I am too afraid to stop reading them – though, somewhat relieved mom didn’t take to that 1936 Underwood Model 6 Typewriter she inherited from her grandmother and banged out her own stories – she wasn’t going to call them sci-fi either…

Excess

 by Lis Anna-Langston 

When I lived in Wisconsin, I used a Marilyn Manson CD as an ice scraper. My friends acted like it was a commentary on the music. I liked the CD a lot, had listened to it a lot, and then one day, stuck between ice and a hard place, I repurposed that MTV-award-winning beauty into a practical tool.

It’s what writers do.

Mechanical Animals turned out to be an excellent ice scraper. Durable. Easy to maneuver. Perfect at removing ice without scratching the windshield and came with a handy case sporting great artwork. It appealed to all my writerly senses. Mechanical Animals is an album full of excess. So is the process of writing.

Repurpose. Recycle. Reuse. These are terms we hear daily. In art and writing, they very much apply.

We’re always going to have excess. That section you cut from a short story, or chapter you really loved. Can it be expanded into a piece of flash? A series of vignettes you can create under a certain theme? That chapter you love in your current work in progress. Can you polish it and submit it as its own stand-alone piece? Fragments of writing exercises? What images, symbols, visuals do these conjure? Can they be memes? Key marketing materials? A new story built from another?

Later, after I moved to North Carolina, I had a roommate/close friend from Cuba. He repurposed EVERYTHING. I’d be standing in the front yard holding a cup of coffee with my nose scrunched, asking, “Why don’t you just buy a new one?”

In the late winter light, he’d turn to make eye contact with me like I’d just sprouted six wings and four heads. I came to learn that, because of the embargos, Cubans definitely didn’t live in a shopping mall culture. If something broke, you fixed it. If you were tired of something, you transformed it into a new item. I knew something about this, growing up in one of the poorest places in Mississippi. Poor wasn’t a term we used. That was for outsiders. For insiders, we knew how to do a lot with a little.

So, what about that line you absolutely loved that had to be cut? Can you start a new writing exercise with the line? Create a catchy piece of digital art? Take all the edits you loved and group them together to create a new project?

Part of repurposing is discernment. The ability to recognize that something isn’t a piece of the story puzzle you’re working on and quietly put it away or transform it into a new piece entirely. I once took the cuts from a novel and created a new novel. It went on to win ten book awards. All because I saw the process of elimination as an opportunity.

Writing is a process of discovery. At least, it is for me. Keeping notebooks and showing up to the page every day means you’ll likely end up with more material than you need for one project. So, every now and then, when you’re not feeling the fit of the raw drift, polished draft, fully realized draft, take up the challenge and shift into seeing those old pieces with fresh perspective. There is opportunity in excess.

Procrastination

by Sharon May

 

Here I am drafting a blog on procrastination the Sunday morning of submission day. What are the odds? I committed to writing this a month ago but didn’t start a draft in all that time. Instead, I mulled the topic, considering what to say and how to start. A few days ago, I jotted down ideas I wanted to include, though today I declared them useless.

 

I am a procrastinator of the finest ilk. It is my roadblock to productivity, and I am far from being in recovery. My writing routine is so ingrained that I’m almost convinced it’s my “style.” I mean, it has served me fairly well since high school, having won awards for my work. Notice: I’m just rationalizing.

 

We all have our own methods of avoidance. No fretting on my part, and I may not appear to be procrastinating because I immediately ponder, read, and research the topic as necessary. It’s almost obsessive thinking, as I talk over my ideas over with family and friends, whomever I can corral, and I listen to their thoughts on the subject as well, bouncing them all around in my head until it’s time to sit down at the laptop. No matter the project – long or short, major or minor – I wait until the last minute to write, and even determine how last minute the writing will be by setting a deadline for drafting. Telling me to start early is not really useful as I’m stuck in the beginning.

 

I’ve been writing other works, but not so much that it prevented me from completing this task. So, I’ve taken approximately 28 days to write 500 words. I could have knocked it out on any one of those days. Instead, I surfed the Internet for articles on writers’ procrastinating, watched several men’s and women’s basketball games, and who knows what else I’ve done in that time period beyond the typical activities of living. Then I took a five-day vacation out of town, during which I did no writing.

 

When my deadline arrived, I started my usual avoidance routine -- slept late rather than obey the alarm I had set, had a leisurely breakfast, took care of the cats, and chatted with a couple of friends who are also early risers. At the computer, I fought the urge to clean my workspace, though I couldn’t resist checking my email. Finally, I opened a blank document and begged the muses for words. Fortunately, the muse does finally come and words appear on the page.

 

Procrastination can be a matter of priorities. It’s how we choose to live in the moment, and procrastinators live without considering the consequences. My choices make me less productive than I could be, though I can convince myself that I’m always working. I keep trying to set goals and deadlines to move me to more seat time, but habits are stubborn.

 

How do you measure procrastination?

On the Bedside Table

By Bonnie Stanard

 

I've been asked where I get my inspiration to write. It has taken a while, but I've figured out a response, which comes as close to an answer as I can get. More times than not, my ideas come from books. There's always a book on my bedside table (currently The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson).

 

Several years ago I read Rest in Pieces by Bess Lovejoy and didn't realize at the time that a chapter about Moliere would eventually inspire a novel.

 

Rest in Pieces recounts the adventures of Moliere's corpse. The famous French actor was stricken on stage, was removed to a house across the street, and died shortly thereafter. At the time, the Catholic Church condemned actors. Most of them renounced their profession to a priest just before dying to get a Christian burial. However, Moliere died without a priest. No Christian burial for him. Louis XIV intervened and the Church relented and allowed a burial at night somewhere in St. Joseph's cemetery, but nobody marked the site. Even his wife, upon returning to the cemetery, couldn't find his grave. His body was lost. But an idea grew and my novel found his grave and a character stole his skull. I have Lovejoy's book to thank for sending my imagination off to France in 1672.

 

Here's a thought I'm having now. At present I'm working on another historical fiction about a person being held in a prison-like chamber of a chateau. It's become a challenge to develop this story, given a situation in which nothing happens. When I mentioned this to a friend, he enthusiastically recommended a book with just such a plot—"A Gentleman in Moscow," which he said was a story about a man held prisoner in a hotel. I've ordered a copy but do I dare read it now? Will it unduly influence what I hope will be my story? Might I subconsciously copy from that story?

 

We subconsciously and unconsciously and deliberately take information from books, which is one reason why we should read authors whose work we admire. We might find in another book a person, place, or plot that motivates us to develop a story.

 

If that happens, it won't be the first time. Take a look at writers who based their work on previously published book.

 

The Hours by Michael Cunningham on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe.

Ulysses by James Joyce on The Odyssey by Homer

March by Geraldine Brooks takes a character from Little Women

Robinson Caruso re-written by J.M. Coetzee (Foe) and Michel Tournier (Friday)

 

From Steven King comes advice that doesn't grow old: "Read, read, read. You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write."

Method Writing

By Lis Anna-Langston

I studied Dramatic Arts at a Creative and Performing Arts School from age eleven until graduation. There wasn’t a creative writing program, but I was able to write my own material. 

Acting has never been my favorite. There isn’t much I like about it. But being in the program day in and day out created a complicated relationship. People like Stella Adler became my heroes. 

It’s impossible to study acting and not love Stanislavski. Brando said, “If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It’s the ultimate hustle.” Oh, Brando. Sigh. There is so much to love about Method Acting that even typing this thrills me to the core. And yet, I’d do anything to avoid acting.

In North Carolina I continued to study Method Acting. It actually led me to the staggering 9 ½ year mark of study. Wondering why on earth I’d ever spent that much time studying something I’d never use, a fellow writer commented that I’d sorta carved out a new niche: Method Writing. I’d never seen it from that angle, but it was true. An intense inhabiting of my characters, like a skin suit, and wearing it to see what it felt like until it felt real. Motivation, magic, subtext, observation, and the body as an instrument are just some of the tools in acting. 

Another common tool is to tap into “emotional memory”. A quick summary of EM: you bring your own memories, and the feelings associated with your memories, and use them during a performance.

Feel.

Feel is at the heart of Method Acting. Feel is at the heart of my Method Writing.

How does the world feel? From climate to culture, what is the feeling? Method Writing feels so real to me because I start by going in search of a single truth and building up.

I had a woman follow me into the breakroom during a workshop and blurt out, “I am so sorry about your childhood.”

I hadn’t been writing about my childhood, so I was curious what she was referring to.

“The stories you just read aloud. They’re about you, right?”

“No,” I said, “I did not grow up in a trailer in South Carolina with a mother who is an exotic dancer.”

“Oh,” she said, cheeks flushed. “Your stories feel so real.”

“They’re supposed to. That’s the job,” I said, pouring a cup of coffee.

“But how did you do that?”

Method Writing. That’s how.

To the best of our ability, our job as creators is to walk the paths of our characters. Stand in the dark city. Put on the corset. Move surreptitiously through a crowd. Send the secret message. Then, link this to how a character feels and what it means to them.

Method Writing is a lifelong pursuit. At its core, it is the simple act of choosing something real from my life, environment, experience, dreams that drives a real feeling. Find something great and build up, creating a multi-dimensional character, flawed and vibrant, with a feeling that anchors to a moment in your life. The choices are endless.

Confiscating Others’ Experiences

By Sharon May

During last year’s Halloween frenzy, Peggy repeated her story about being required to collect money for UNICEF while politely refusing her neighbors’ sugary treats as commanded by her parents and teachers. Not the Halloween her seven-year-old mind had envisioned, particularly given that she had received candy in previous years.

I’ve heard the story often in our 17 years together, but this time I felt her resentment and connected it to mother-daughter stories she had also told me over the years. When I say Peggy is resentful about being robbed of her Halloween fun, I don’t mean that she remembers being resentful, but that she experiences the same deep emotion she did at seven. With that realization, I began envisioning a short story about deprivation.

I began working on my it, and realized I had drafted a similar plot some 30 years ago that was now languishing in a file drawer after meeting an early death due to my inexperience with life and a lack of craft. I dusted off a draft and read it. The basic premise is that a college professor takes her fiancé home to meet the family she had willingly learned to live without. Her conflict with her mother and their confrontation over old resentments drive the story. Sounds a lot like what I had in mind with Peggy’s story.

So, maybe I didn’t have a new idea, but a resurfacing of an idea I was too young to write about. I guess the idea was being seasoned till the right moment, when I can understand how a 66-year-old slight can endure and shape a person. Had I tried to write it previously, I would have had a confrontation with a 30-year-old woman and 50-year-old mom. I envision the exchanges will be more complex if the women are older. There is something more humorous, as well as sad, if both mom and daughter have to hash out old memories that have been smoldering for years.

No matter how the story turns out, I will always think of it as Peggy’s story as it will have bits and pieces of Peggy in it. The daughter in the story she is a college-educated woman who taught at a small rural, liberal arts college as Peggy did. They are also both from small towns they desperately wanted to, and did happily, escape to make a better life for themselves. Both had troubled relationships with their mothers, though for different reasons and outcomes. Peggy never had a chance to discuss with her mother her experiences or feelings about them, as her mother died young when Peggy was in graduate school.

But there will be lots in the story not based on Peggy because characters come to life on the page and tend to do and say what they want, surprising the author as much as the audience.

The Book Isn't Ready

by Kasie Whitener

 

Last week I had the longest conversation I’ve had with my agent since she said she wanted to sign me. We spoke for nearly two hours about the first 100 pages of my manuscript. After reading them for the second time, she wanted to share her thoughts.

 

I took four pages of notes in a separate Google document while we spoke. Everything she said was spot on. She had questions I couldn’t answer about the world I’ve built. She found contradictions and inconsistencies. She found confusing motivations and no motivations and inconsistent motivations.

 

She found out the book isn’t ready.

 

And this creates a lot of work for both of us. Me on revision, her on reminding herself that I will make her money someday. Just not today.

 

I knew Being Blue wasn’t ready for an agent or a publisher. I knew it even as I sent it to her. But I also didn’t know exactly what to fix. The exchange went like this:

 

Me: You rep vampire novels? I have one of those.

Her: Send it to me.

Me: It’s not ready. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it.

Her: Send it to me.

 

And here we are, eight months later, talking about what it needs to make it ready. To make it irresistible to any editor she shares it with. She didn’t drop me. She told me to revise it.

 

I’m not discouraged. In fact, Amy was so supportive of the work – and continually said she loves it – that I felt excited to jump back in. I felt like I stood in front of Gordon Ramsey while he tasted my dish and he said, while rubbing his lips together, “So savory. For anyone else, this would be great. But it’s not your best.”

 

Fresh eyes on your work can be transformational. Being Blue has been workshopped through Columbia II for years. I mean, years. Every scene has been in front of other writers. But Amy isn’t looking at this like a writer. She’s a reader. Even better, she’s a salesperson. She knows what readers buy.

 

I’ve been given painful feedback before. Everything from dismissing vampires as a misdiagnosis of rabies to being accused of being a Twilight wannabe. My vampire pages have been in front of readers who wanted to love it but didn’t and readers who wanted to hate it but couldn’t.

 

“It’s well written,” some reluctant readers say, not liking the sex, the cussing, or the killing. “But vampires aren’t really my thing.”

 

I’ve received painful feedback before, but Amy’s was like the day after a 120-squat workout. It’s a good hurt. You know it took effort. You know it built muscle. You know it’s the next stage that will get you to the next stage.

 

And since Tuesday, I’ve been working on the key fixes she identified for me so that the next time we talk, we can address a different set of fixes. Again and again. Until it’s ready.

Why I Journal

By Sharon Ewing

I believe the reason some writers have dismissed the value of journaling is due to its definition.  Webster defines journaling as “an account of day-to-day events”.  Notating mundane everyday acts isn’t going to interest anyone except the writer, with rare exceptions.

That definition pretty much describes the first journal I kept as a preteen. Growing up in a family of six, sandwiched between and sharing a bedroom with two sisters close in age, there was little privacy, but my precious pink diary had a lock and key.  My journaling experience had begun.

Writing after that consisted of school assignments. Then parenthood arrived, along with a teaching career replete with papers to grade and endless lesson plans.  Free time didn’t involve paper and a pencil.  All that changed one day at dinner as I listened to my kids teasing one another about an earlier childhood incident that I had forgotten.  I thought about how my siblings and I enjoy reminiscing whenever we get together, laughter filling the air as we share the events that keep us connected. I dug out a spare spiral notebook, and set out with a new resolve.

Soon a business opportunity initiated a family move South. Myriad changes that accompany new jobs and an unfamiliar location along with adolescent angst provided new fodder for daily entries, along with a new reason.  I poured emotions onto page after lined page.  Both writing and rereading the entries eased some of the turmoil impacting these years together. 

Journaling proved to be an even more valuable outlet when I couldn’t voice the agony of watching my dad sink into Alzheimer’s and when my husband suffered a heart attack miles away from home. It became my best friend in a place where I was a stranger.  Through the births of my grandchildren and the deaths of several more family members, including that of my daughter, I filled lined pages with questions and ramblings, emptying myself each night before crawling into bed hoping to sleep.   More recently, in our first covid year I began a morning journal with statistics attempting to find sense in all of it. It helped. 

Today my stack of journals, all shapes and sizes, are tucked away on a shelf in my closet, my memories, heartaches, questions, prayers, and ramblings, the pieces of my life.  I don’t know how or why, a cheap spiral bound book replete with ramblings of the soul can bring some peace of mind.  I do know that it doesn’t matter if I ever use them to create a memoir, a story or two, or even if I ever read through them again.  Their greater purpose, to complete me.

3 Steps to Set and Pursue Writing Goals in 2022

 original post December 2014, updated for 2022

By Kasie Whitener

The top resolution every year is to lose weight. It’s not a coincidence that most of us feel like we’re carrying a little extra baggage.

For writers, losing weight means something a little different. The baggage we carry around is often unrealized goals. As we move into another year, we again plan to be more productive, give more time to our writing, and make actual progress toward publication.

Rather than renewing the same resolutions and hoping for the best, try these three strategies to ensure satisfaction.

Review the previous year

First, review your goals from last year and determine how well you did against them.

For example, my biggest goal was to publish a manuscript. In August, the second book in the After December duet was released. It's called Before Pittsburgh and met modest success, like its predecessor.

What goals did you have for 2021? How did you do?

Set Realizable Goals

Be honest with yourself about what you want to achieve and how you plan to do it. Rely upon your knowledge of your own limitations to curb your most ambitious goals into achievable milestones. Set a goal that’s just beyond the work you’ve already done.

For example, my goal for 2022 is: complete the follow-up to Being Blue, the vampire novel currently being shopped by an agent. I also have two non-fiction projects and a non-vampire fantasy novel that all need work. I would also like to earn more literary journal publications and maybe an award or two in 2022. But focusing on the second vampire novel will position me for a successful sign if Being Blue finds a home. So that's priority one.

How much have you already done toward the goal you’re setting?

Plan Check-ins

Other people are not necessarily planning to help us with our goals. For example, literary journals are not likely to respond immediately to the work I send. A periodic check-in can remind me how long it’s been since I last submitted something. 

Word count, pages, chapters, and deadlines are all ways to measure my success toward writing goals. Checking in weekly or monthly helps me stay on track.

Are you moving closer to your goals?

I have a sign on my desk that says, “Is what you’re doing right now moving you closer to your goals?” The sign reminds me, every time I read it, to refocus, stop procrastinating, redirect when something’s not working, and be purposeful about the actions I take.

Begin with the end in mind and be prepared to seize the opportunity of a new year. With focus and a plan, you’ll find that even if you haven’t lost weight, you’ve managed not to gain any more in 2022.

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.