Because Reading Is Fundamental

11/19-11/25

I was lucky to have gotten this much reading in, what with the holiday travel and all.

  • Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, “The Young Wife’s Tale”
  • J.G. Ballard, “Deep End”
  • Ryan Boudinot, “Drugs and Toys”
  • Ryan Boudinot, “Contaminant”
  • Kelly Link, “Lull”
  • J.G. Ballard, “The Overloaded Man”

11/26-12/2

  • Ryan Boudinot, the remainder of his collection The Littlest Hitler
  • M. Rickert, “Don’t Ask”
  • Stuart Dybek, “Farwell”
  • S.L. Gilbow, “Who Brought Tulips to the Moon?”
  • J.G. Ballard, “Billennium”
  • Stuart Dybek, “Chopin in Winter”

I think I made some decent headway with things I’ve purchased over the Thanksgiving holiday, used and new. The stories from Gilbow and Rickert are from the December ’07 issue of F&SF–I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll buy just about anything with M. Rickert’s name on it, including whatever collection “Don’t Ask” might end up in. Sort of like I keep downloading buying all those greatest hits compilations that the band Chicago keeps putting out.

No Tough Love Today

The crit group was cancelled due to inclement weather, so that sucked. Just as well, because I didn’t have anything to contribute this week aside from my usual half-baked opinions of other folks’ writing, much like the half-baked thinking I’m about to share with you now.

I’ve come across a bunch of stories lately that make me wonder what would happen if I re-typed them and submitted them to the crit group. What would they say about unclear narration, too many points of view, or just plain too many adverbs ending in -ly in a story I tried to pass off as mine? Would they have the same comments regardless of who wrote the story?

And, I’m not talking about the authors everybody loves to hate, either. I’m talking about writers whose talent I’d gladly sell a testicle to Ol’ Scratch to have. So, I’m not hatin’ on anyone.

Makes me go, “Hmm…”

Where’s My War Face?

A couple of folks in the crit group have tried to tell me about the need to let a story cool sometimes. I’m almost afraid to allow that. I’ve gotten to a point where my first drafts are coming at the sort of clip I’d like, thanks to my Inner Drill Sergeant. The truth is I’m frustrated that my editing hasn’t reached that point yet. I’ve got two pieces on the burner right now. I know I have all the parts I need; I just need to make them fit better. And I wanted it done yesterday!


“I will motivate you!”

I might as well give them a rest though–a little one–while I try to unfuck myself, lest my Inner Drill Sergeant unscrews my head and shits down my neck. I’ve been hitting my head against brick walls anyway, so why not? I didn’t go idle today, though. I shot a piece off to 6S, so we’ll see what happens with that.

Story Log

From the week of 11/12/07-11/18/07. Two weeks ago, sure. I’d spent that week reading more prose poetry from Great American Prose Poetry and Simic’s The World Doesn’t End, but I still managed to sneak in…

I’ll put up last week’s tomorrow, or something.

“I guess you’re just what I needed”

Still with the family for the holiday. Before the trip though, the wife and I swore we wouldn’t go near the Half-Price Books this time around. We just got home about an hour or so ago, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m fucking glad I went, because finding this made the whole 6-hour drive worthwhile…

I was, no joke, going to order this earlier today, hoping it would arrive shortly after we returned home. I had absolutely no logical reason to think I would find this at any bookstore, but here it was! Oh, and I found the last issue of Conjunctions too, along with a couple of other books.

Story Log

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “What, hasn’t he been reading? All that shit he adds to his goodreads list; what’s he doing, slacking?”

Slacking on blogging, that’s for sure (and engaging in general human contact, household chores, and stuff). Been busy, but to make it up to you like an absentee parent who disappears for weeks at a time, then bombards you with gifts, here are three weeks worth of lists of stuff I’ve read…

10/22-10/28

  • Mary Robison, “Seizing Control”
  • Veronica Schanoes, “Rats”
    (Comments here)
  • Jessica Hagedorn, “Tenement Lover: no palm trees/in new york city”
  • Caroline Cheng, “Consolation”

10/29-11/4

  • Amy Hempel, “Daylight Come”
  • Amy Hempel, “The Harvest”
  • Jan Lars Jensen, “Happier Days”
  • Jane Avrich, “The Life of Cards”
  • Aimee Bender, “Lemonade”

11/5-11/11

  • Kate Bernheimer, “Whitework”
  • Judy Budnitz, “Abroad”
  • Barry Hannah, “A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis”
  • Mikal Trimm, “Climbing Redemption Mountain”

Tough Love

I submitted my last piece to group for the year. I’m not going to let any more unedited pieces pile up. I’m gonna finish them and spend the beginning of 2008 getting things back out into circulation.

In the meantime, here’s what they had to say about the latest thing, “Before Me Was a Pale Horse”…

The Good

  • One person said the characters “leap off the page.”
  • The same person noted that while she wasn’t at the last session to hear the first half of the story (though she heard my quick summation), she didn’t feel lost going through the second half.
  • Dialogue was realistic, i.e. “what people would say.”
  • One person liked how the narrator/protagonist was likeable, despite his obvious flaws.
  • Folks felt they got a clear picture of each character with a minimum of description (e.g. one character who “waddled over in his khakied, polo-shirted Sunday best…” was all the description they needed)
  • The story was paced well.

The Bad

  • A certain unclear passage regarding one character’s spacial distance to another.
  • The ending is too hitched to religion.
    (Which means I screwed up trying–if it was even possible to begin with–to use as many religious references as possible while minimizing religious themes.)
  • Again, I mashed two stories into one (possibly three, depending on how one reads the ending).
  • Some folks wondered if the protagonist paid too high a price for his flaws at the end. (Though one person didn’t necessarily see anything wrong with that.)

The Ugly
No ugly from the others; just from myself.

  • For one, I had the unfortunate experience of re-reading a short story by pure happenstance, one that I first read about four years ago, with the same fucking conceit. I about tore up the MS. I didn’t, because by any measure, I know my story’s different. But if some schmendrick comes up to me and goes, “Gee, isn’t your story just a blatant rip-off of _____?” I think I’d have to give that a response without automatically smacking the person upside the head.
  • The reason there were “two stories” was that as I wrote, I spotted a particular chink in my protag’s armor that was just too tempting to pass up…
  • …but instead of jamming the knife in and twisting at the end, I got squeamish. I copped out and “implied” the ending.

So, basically this leaves me trying to figure out how to have my cake and eat it, too. I got some good suggestions from the group. I just gotta be careful not to allow them to “write it for me,” so to speak. None of them want that, either.

Baaaaaaaa!

Normally, I’d do this on this neglected blog, but because SaltyMissJill asked so nice (“Hey! I tagged yo ass!”) on this blog, I’ll play along here–at least as far as I’d usually play along.

Here are the rules for the meme:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random [?] people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

Sorry, but I just don’t do the last two. Nothing personal–just sheer laziness.

1
I can hum along, note for note, with the horn lines of every Chicago song (with horns), from the Chicago Transit Authority album to their latest, Chicago XXX.

2
I have successfully gone black and gone back–not once, not twice, but three times.

3
I worship Cassandra Wilson.

4
The one food I’d be willing to subsist on: Chinese restaurant fried chicken wings.

5
The first concert I ever went to: Depeche-fucking-Mode.

6
I’ve played the trumpet, off and on, for almost half my life.

7
I know kung fu.