It Ain't Watcha Write...

Finite Thoughts

2012-01-09T18:55:00.000-06:00

Next to my bed is a bookshelf full of all the books I intend to read or have begun reading or enjoyed so much that I feel the need to keep close to me as I slumber. For a good while, Infinite Jest occupied the “plan to read” shelf, sitting there in its immensity, spine taunting, the book clearly aware that I am a slow reader and an easily distracted reader, the kind of reader who has five or six books going concurrently and is reading none of them with any expediency. At a little under 500,000 words and notoriously dense, Infinite Jest seemed very much like the kind of book I wouldn’t finish. So I didn’t start. Until, of course, I did (no book gets away with taunting me forever). And an unexpected thing happened: I didn’t once put the book down to pick up something else. I finished it. Every word. Sure, it took a good, long while and lots of hauling around, the book occupying entire compartments in my luggage whenever I traveled, the thing sitting prominently on nightstands in ways that felt a tad ridiculous. But I finished the novel, damn it. I persevered.

If it sounds like the book was a bit of a struggle for me, that’s because it was. Don’t get me wrong; I quite enjoyed Infinite Jest. The language is astounding and the ideas are huge and the effect is penetrating. This is not a novel about which I will soon stop thinking. I would very much like to write a novel as grand. But, good God, the thing can get tedious. David Foster Wallace has no patience for my impatience. It’s his world and he’s going to reveal it in as much intricate detail as he can. Even when that detail lacks any sort of internal propulsion, narrative or otherwise (save Wallace’s enthralling voice).

Plot? This novel has no traditional plot. It has moments that may or may not be part of a greater plot but are, just as often, nothing more than temporal segments extracted from the lives of fascinating characters. These moment/segments interrelate, but the interrelations occur most often in the gaps between sections (i.e.: in the spaces within the reader’s mind) as much as they occur on the page. The last tenth of the novel is mostly flashback and summary of flashbacks of things that occurred well before the events of the novel. The first chapter occurs after the events contained in the rest of the novel. We have here not a story told from beginning to end, but a rain of fragments, a splintered meteor ablating into luminescent parts that incandesce in loose formation, streaking towards us and begging to be assembled back into their whole. Of course, such an assembly is not fully possible, not for this novel and certainly not for life itself where our own moments come and go and end up contained in remembered fragments, some possessing great significance, some merely absurd, and some waiting unattended within us until recalled at a later time and imbued with a new meaning.

Infinite Jest occasionally teases with the possibility of a grand plot, but it ends right before everything seems ready to coalesce. The first chapter gives us clues as to what happened after the “end,” but all we really get to see is the effect those events had, not the grand events themselves. Those events are transformative, but Wallace chose not to write them. I think I like that. Much of our lives are about those things that come “before” and those things that come “after.” The events that change us are just that: events. They are not the change itself. Change is something else. Change is the thing that transpires inside all the other moments. Even the ones that feel mundane.

I have a feeling that reading Infinite Jest has changed me. Many books do. But this one may eventually get a place back on my bedside shelf. Alongside those other favorite with which I like to sleep.

This is the First Time I've Ever Mentioned Tao Lin

2012-01-03T17:16:00.001-06:00

Apparently there has been a controversy (litroversy?) over a story published at MuuMuu House. “Adrien Brody” by Marie Calloway. I like Rae Bryant’s take. Super intelligent and just the right tone.

MuuMuu House is a Tao Lin production. Tao Lin gets mentioned an awful lot in the indie lit world. This is the first time he’s been mentioned here.

It seems people like to take positions concerning Tao Lin. My official position on Tao Lin is: meh.

My official position on “Adrien Brody” is: I’d have liked to have seen it as a 450 word prose poem.

Full disclosure: I didn’t read the whole 15,000 words. I found it not to my tastes.

This Caitlin Horrocks story in Paris Review is to my tastes.

As is this Robb Todd piece at The Fiddleback.

Both those stories take place in a normal kind of day and are written in clear prose. And yet, the voices are beautiful and the impacts lasting.

I got into a period last year where I moved too far away from direct storytelling. I blame Matt Bell. How They Were Found has some brilliant stories written in structurally innovative ways; I read it early in 2011 and was so impressed I wanted to try some formal experimentation, too. Turns out, I can’t do what Matt does. Or, perhaps, rather, my most true voice cannot accommodate too much fiddling with form.

Last year was mostly a lost year publishing wise. But I think it was a very significant writing year. Even if 98% of what I wrote in 2011 will never leave my file folders.

By all accounts, Marie Calloway is very young. I wonder what she’ll be writing when she’s 40.

I wonder what I’ll be writing when I’m 40.

I’ll be 40 in 2.75 years.

People tell me this makes me young, too.

Making Time

2011-11-09T21:06:00.000-06:00

The newest new rewrite of my novel involves a map. As a child, I spent hours drawing maps of imagined places. I’ve learned I haven’t lost this particular passion.

On my desk (which is really just the dining room table) there sits the phone blinking with the notification of a voicemail. I have no desire to listen to said voicemail. I never have desire to listen to the home phone’s voicemail. The news I care about comes by text or email or cell phone. My home phone is a relic resigned to those people and things about which I care little.

In the town of my youth, they sold no alcohol because they believed this would lead to violence and sin and would ruin the neighborhood. Now, I live in a very nice neighborhood where liquor stores are common. You know what this has led to? Excellent selections of fine liquors. Seriously, the single malts are amazing.

We had a rotary phone growing up. It was in my parent’s bedroom. Even then it was out-of-date and I used to think the time it took to dial was insufferably long. New technologies make so many things insufferably long. We live in an era governed by the millisecond.

And yet, find a good single malt, and time will wait.

What I mean: if I were to draw a map of my desired life, the cardinal points would be a measurement of time and up at the top, where hours linger, there’d be friends and family and books and single malt scotches, and down there at the bottom, where everything moves fast, there’d be voicemails on my home phone and rote copywriting and dental appointments. I’d get what feels like a hundred years to write a novel. Paying bills would seem to go by in a blink.

Ruin, I believe, is only sometimes a product of external influences. Most of the time it’s a product of an error in our internal compasses. So I try to keep directed to what’s important. Like family, and novels, and single malts enjoyed on a November porch.

Of Droughts and Mayors

2011-11-09T21:01:00.001-06:00

Got a story up at Hobart called "A Good and Hopeful Man Leading His People Forward. It's here.

I love Hobart. I own a Hobart shot glass and almost every print issue. I don't need to tell you how happy I am to be part of this great publication. But I will.

I'm overjoyed.

Pre-Order. 'Cause Post-Ordering is for Losers.

2011-10-24T23:41:00.000-05:00

I refuse to be negligent. These things must be noted. Proclaimed.

Jason Jordan’s novella The Dying Horse is available for pre-order from Main Street Rag.

Tiny Hardcore Press is offering you Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale AND Amber Sparks all in one place. Pre-order the chapbook collection Shut Up / Look Pretty here.

These are writers y’all want to be reading.

Occupation

2011-10-03T20:07:00.002-05:00

There are people on Wall Street who aren’t normally on Wall Street. Doubtless you’ve heard because the media coverage has been non-stop. If by “media” I mean “a bunch of my friends on Facebook.” Of course, some days, that is my media.

I don’t have time to have time. This isn’t an excuse or a complaint. It’s a statement of my state. I’m a parent and a freelance writer and someone who, when given a few moments, very much enjoys having a good meal or going to a movie. I’m not going to occupy anything but this chair where I work and where I hope to write something worth something. And by worth I don’t mean worth money. I mean worth my presence here. I mean: writing something that makes me worth having around as a writer.

I spent a few hours yesterday pining for a more innocent me. That innocent me believed that Tony Romo was a top NFL QB. These are the things that sometimes occupy me. I’m not ashamed of this. Without our diversions, we tend to be pricks.

But about Wall Street. I am not a rich man, but I am not hurting. I have a well-stocked bar and two working cars and I pay someone else to cut my yard. But there’s a stagnation here, a sense that my hard work—or, really, my wife’s hard work, because, God knows, she brings home the proverbial bacon—isn’t worth what it might once have been worth. And this time, by worth, I do mean money.

Let me just say this: when a small number of individuals or entities control large portions of the market, it’s not a free market. And you’re either for a free market or for a controlled one. And if it’s controlled, who breaks it up and spreads the power back around?

Seriously, Tony Romo hurt me yesterday. Cracked me.

But this Wall Street thing. Shit. I don’t even know if they want what I want. I suspect that they don’t. But for the love of God, do we not want something different? I mean, isn’t this the kind of moment where the best of us make us better? There ain’t nothing wrong about finding our diversions. But at some point, we’re going to have to find our purpose, too.

And Now?

2011-09-11T12:11:00.004-05:00

I write this not because I’m unique, but because I’m not. Because I’m just another American who remembers that day and can’t quite shake free of its grip.

There’s a rawness here. Still. So I’m not going to claim that I am blessed—as are some—with that enviable ability to lean back and observe this all from a morally pure point of view. I can’t do that. This thing. It did a number on me.

That day? I was just at work. A lot of people were just at work. That was the thing, I think. It was so easy to imagine ourselves there.

A few days after, my wife and I decided to lay flowers somewhere, but we didn’t know the right spot. We were living in DC, so we walked down to the National Mall and wandered the vacant spaces between those memorials. We finally chose the statue of Roosevelt sitting in his secluded site. What we wanted was wisdom and strength.

You know what we’ve ended up with instead.

How about this: The bodies from the Pentagon traveled in yellow helicopters. They passed low as I grilled burgers on the roof deck.

That’s what I tell people when they ask for a story about being in that city, at that time. I also mention seeing a machine gun mounted on a jeep that drove down my little street. And the smell of a building and bodies burning for days.

But those aren’t stories. They’re fragments. Ash. And we still live in that debris, I think. A man falling. A fireball. A bullhorned voice and grainy images of dark-skinned men running an obstacle course. It all drifts down around us. Coats us, still, and makes it hard for us to see.

“Perhaps the most heinous act of terrorism in history.” A columnist wrote those words for my local paper today. He’s wrong, of course. People, throughout history, have terrorized one another in far worse ways. Unbelievably worse ways.

And yet...

What happened was horrific and frightening and angering and, despite what I just wrote, I get a little ill when I hear fellow Americans trying to minimize what happened, trying to act as if our national obsession over those events is somehow a sign of moral weakness or intellectual dimness. What it is, I think, is a sign of our humanity. As much as the horrors elsewhere in the world might make us ache, we Americans felt the scorch of those fires ten years ago. The worst atrocity is always the one that happened closest to you. It’s the way our minds operate. It’s understandable.

And yet, again...

We’re here. You, me. Ten years on and we’re still here. And I sit in a house I didn’t own back then, with two children who hadn’t been born back then, with a decade beneath me that couldn’t have been imagined back then—I sit with all this newness and know you sit with a newness of your own. And I wonder: where to now? If we can still feel so connected to people who were just at work—whom most of us didn’t know—can’t we feel connected to others as well? Can’t we sense those strands tying us together? In this newness—in this continuance of life—so many seem so focused on dividing themselves from others, on withholding compassion for reasons often as narrow as a difference in political affiliation. But to what ends? Truly. If we refuse to admit we're all journeying forward together, where do we think we're going to end up?

Because, you see, there are names in bronze lining two pools where towers once stood. But there are so many other names in this world that no one will ever inscribe. And there will be more. A lot more. And what are we going to do about that?

Remembered Sounds

2011-08-29T17:28:00.000-05:00

My neighbor is doing some work on his house and, this morning, someone was using what I assume was a nail gun. The sound was rich and rhythmic, something between a tap and a thud. It was a sound that sent me thirty-or-more years back, leaving me a young boy sitting in a wood-paneled den and listening to my mother type her first novels. Her work came in these tap-thud bursts that I'm sure I didn't quite understand. But the sound of that typewriter--the sound of my mother writing--must have pushed deep into my mind. Lodged there. So that this morning, as I worked on my own writing, a nail gun reminded me of my mother in her literary youth.

And I wonder, in thirty-years to come, if my son or daughter will hear a soft clicking like a keyboard and think of me, still young and believing, sitting with a dark head of hair at the dining room table of their youth and writing books that now sit on their shelves.

Charlie Baxter Dance Party

2011-08-26T08:57:00.000-05:00

I was gone for awhile, on the mountain, they say, although those of us on this side of the continent (even those of us in the flat parts) tend to call such soft and rolling land hilly. Not mountainous. So, I was in the hills. Of Vermont.

Everything was very old, except the people. Many of the people were young and filled with what I believe is called verve. Even the old people had young people verve. I’m pretty sure no one was themselves and everyone was exactly who they are.

I’m talking about the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, by the way.

We ate at determined times and we ate what we were fed. I liked a duck dish. The tacos made me laugh. Those deemed to have incredible talent and potential waited on us and I could not help but note how much they all sweated. They were nice people. All of them. But I was jealous. They’d been chosen. I was just allowed to watch them work.

Somewhere between the inn and the Frost cabin, I realized why so few of my stories ever end in any satisfactory way. I was carrying this little green fruit that I’d been told was a crab apple and I was talking and talking, as I do, even when sober, which I was since you couldn’t get a drink until 5:30 or so. It’s about tension, I said. The story ends at the point that particular story cannot contain any more tension, at the point right after it breaks, or right when you know it inevitably will. There is no end until the tension reaches that point. This sounds rudimentary as I write it. There was more to it. There was revelation.

I credit Charles Baxter. He gave a lecture on plot that made people cry. No shit. That happened.

I wore sweaters some days. It was 100+ degrees back home and I was in sweaters and listening to the rain. You want to talk feeling displaced? You want to talk falling out of time? I could feel the thousands who had come before me. Hope. Laughter. In a corner of the barn a piano sat mostly unplayed. They used to jam on it, I was told. They used to fill that barn with their singing.

No one knew where we were. Even those who could find us on a map.

Everyone carried satchels of books. I just spent two-hundred dollars at the bookstore, people would say. And we thought this is how the world should be.

On the last night, there was a dance. There’d been a dance previously but the last dance is always the best dance. And so we drank and flung ourselves around. I smacked into Charles Baxter who laughed. I banged my fists on the floor with the guy who’d began as my roommate but is now a wonderful friend. I consumed a healthy amount of wine and, when the music ended, I was still spinning.

Coming down that hill (that mountain) on the final morning, I thought I might be ill. I blamed it on the wine. But it was probably something else.

Because It Can't Not Be Today

2011-08-06T13:53:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I make the mistake of reading the comments sections of news stories. The anger is a sickness. I can feel it working its way into my blood.

I’ve heard we shouldn’t use clichés because they are lazy. I’m pretty sure they can also be dangerous. At least when enough people believe they’re true.

Amazing how language can become drumbeats, subtlety stripped and meaning stretched into a thinness that sounds hollow and repetitive yet nevertheless makes feet fall into line.

But, seriously, I mean, come on: at what point did so many people of modest means stop caring about the condition of those most like themselves and start fighting for the interests of the wealthy? How does something like that occur?

There is a myth of martinis and cigarettes and there’s a true story of fire hoses. If only it could be reduced like that. History as some pretty old Christmas card, or history as some righteous progression. We think we’ve lost something or we think we’ve valiantly moved forward, but you know what I think? Sometimes I think we’re just spinning.

Today will be a fragment of my children’s past. You and me, though? This is the middle. This is what we’ve been given. Work with it or just turn on Jersey Shore. You know?

"An Incomplete Registry of Deaths: Part One" Up at Corium

2011-08-03T08:25:00.002-05:00

Got a new story in the new Corium. Read it here. It’s a series of somewhat interrelated micro fictions. I’m hoping to do more of these but who knows. My projects don’t always hold.

Thanks to the wonderful Lauren Becker for including the story. I haven’t been getting a lot of stuff out there this year, but this one I really liked and am so glad it found such a great home.

A Collection of Bookstores

2011-07-19T13:32:00.002-05:00

On Saturday nights in Brooklyn, when I was alone and my friends weren’t calling, I’d take the F train up a stop to Prospect Park and spend the evening in the Barnes & Noble. I wasn’t the only one who did this. The place was packed.

A man once came up to me in a San Antonio Borders and tried to recruit me for the army. It was midday on like Tuesday. I was out of work at the time and must have looked it. He said military service was a good way to make money for a few years. He didn’t mention war. Or patriotism. This was fall of 1999.

There was a Borders in the World Trade Center. You could still see the sign in the rubble.

I went to The Strand the second day of my first trip to New York. I decided then that I needed to move to the city.

Shortly before my son was born, the stress overwhelmed me. I left the condo and walked a long way to a Barnes & Noble (maybe a Borders) in downtown DC. I browsed for several hours until I felt better. Then I bought a Guide to Literary Journals and told myself I’d publish something before I was thirty. I had six months. Four months later, I received an acceptance from Flashquake as my son rolled side-to-side on his mat.

If I’m in Austin for even a couple of hours, I’ll stop by Book People. It’s across the street from the flagship Whole Foods. These are good hours.

There’s a bookstore in Dupont Circle with a bar. I don’t much like coffee. But a martini while I browse the new fiction? Genius.

I own a Kindle. I’ve bought a lot of books from Amazon and spent a lot of time on their site. This is all very convenient. But it never has the right smell.

Every time I take my kids to the nearby movie theater, we do two things after the film is over. We get ice cream. We go to the second floor of the Borders and we pick out a new book from the children’s section.

We should probably do that this weekend.

That store is going to leave a big space to fill.

So, I'm Going to Ramble About Movies for Awhile

2011-07-08T11:02:00.002-05:00

The makers of Hangover 2 should watch Cars 2. That’s how you rethink things, fellas. Cars 2 ain’t brilliant, but it’s nothing like the original.

In case I wasn’t clear, Hangover 2 was bad. Has there been a lazier sequel to a good movie in recent memory?

I said sequel to a GOOD movie. Transformers 3, you may put down your hand.

I haven’t seen Transformers 3. But Roxane Gay has. And I trust Roxane.

Still, could it be worse than Green Lantern? I’m a comic book nerd and I thought the GL movie bit more than either of the Hulk movies (both of which bit terribly hard—like gnawing on over-smoked jerky). Amorphous bad guy. Hero who just needs to learn a little selflessness. Final fight scene that mistakes special effects for drama. And the Green Lantern Corps? Oh, lord. They managed to retain all the lameness of the GLC from the comics and STILL butcher the main facts. That takes work.

I officially hate 3D now. Terrible thing. Pointless. Most of Pirates of the Caribbean 4 was unwatchable through those dark, bulky glasses. Biggest rip-off in entertainment.

My kids saw King Fu Panda 2 twice. I didn’t see it at all. I consider this one of my biggest victories of the year. Hot parenting tip: convince other people to take your kids to kid movies.

Bridesmaids is the best movie I’ve seen this year. Not that the competition is strong. But, still. I definitely cared more for Kristen Wiig’s character than I’ve cared about anything in any of the other movies I’ve attended this summer.

Although, actually, Super 8 was okay. Nostalgic for anyone of my generation. A bit “hermetically sealed,” though. Other than the computerized effects and the continuous utterances of the word “shit” from young mouths, it was like a found volume of early ‘80s Spielbergness. A Movie with that capital M. You could feel the gears turning.

I never walk out on a movie. But I’ll stop reading a book pretty quickly. This says something about me, I suppose.

I have fallen asleep in movies.

Movies I wish I slept through recently: Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, Hop, Despicable Me, Owls of Gahoole

I see a lot of kids movies. I need to take my “hot parenting tip” more seriously.

And, yes, Despicable Me is bad. I could write an essay on why. The short version: it’s cynically constructed.

I have high hopes for the newest Harry Potter, though.

I read the first four books to my son. Decent reads. But we never made it past the first 100 pages of the fifth book. It was horrifically slow; J.K. Rowling is just lounging in her fictional universe by this point, enjoying the process of world creation far too much and leaving the reader with scant plot. Also, as the series draws on, the POV choice becomes an increasingly frustrating mess. Everything is 3rd person from Harry’s POV. We don’t learn anything that he doesn’t learn. But, because Rowling expands the wizarding universe to such extremes, this POV means the books increasingly become a series of people telling Harry what has happened and will happen next. Yes, Rowling invents various magical devices that allow Harry to see and even experience events outside of his own life, but it’s never quite enough. Switching to a multi-POV style after the second or third book would have greatly improved the novels, I think. Although, admittedly, I haven’t read the last few.

Somehow a post about summer movies became a lazy book review.

But, seriously, Cars 2 is a spy thriller. Cars was a coming of age movie. More sequels should be so bold.

I Was Going to be Crass

2011-06-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

I dreamed I called an old friend. I was in my kitchen. The conversation was filled with pauses and words used to end those pauses. “Well.” “Anyway.” I had the sense that I needed something resolved but I – the dreamer – didn’t know what this thing needing resolution was. More-or-less, I was observing myself in a private moment. Two degrees to my own left. This is how I feel every time I write a story. I never quite have a grasp as to what the hell is going on.

I want to complain about something but I don’t want to seem like a whiner, or ungracious to a world that has, overall, been very kind to me. Maybe it’s my Texas stoicism. Or Celtic pride.

I was invited to a party and they let me have a beer then asked me to leave. I stood on the street and watched everyone else through the window. It was bright in there. People moved like cattails and swallows. No one looked down to see where I’d gone.

If you type in swallow on Yahoo’s search bar, it will suggest that you’re searching for “swallow birds,” “swallow tattoo,” “swallow my load” ... in that order. I was wondering if swallow like the bird was really spelled the same as swallow like the action of the throat. Apparently, yes, it is.

Part of me wants to title this post: Swallow my load. As you can see, I did not. I’m uncomfortable being crass. Your crassness, however, bothers me not at all.

Drought

2011-06-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

There’s a drought on and everything’s going towards dead.

There’s a drought on and the sun has gone mean with heat.

I could bake cookies in my car.

I sweat and think of Brooklyn, where there was no drought but no air conditioning either. I was about as young as you can be and still be an adult. My white shirts went to yellow. I thought I’d soon publish in the New Yorker.

There’s a drought on and my inbox fills with work requests and newsletters and promises of Vegas.

I could stay in the desert for $35 a night. More fun than waiting for the desert to come to me. Which I think it’s trying to do.

I assume we’ll irrigate and overuse and predict the best of outcomes.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt rain. Not once.

Not even in Brooklyn. Which may have been a fever, come to think of it.

Cocktail Hour

2011-06-01T18:44:00.001-05:00

I want you to accept me or reject me. I don’t like being stared at. I don’t like being the thing you will stoop to if it’s last call and you’re feeling drunk and needy.

I sit with a six-o’clock whiskey. Irish. It’s too hot for the Scotch. Or, rather, I don’t drink scotch on rocks, so the hot is not for Scotch.

Gin was once believed to cure gout. I sometimes believe it cures the insufferability of being trapped inside one’s own body forever. A good friend once stuck that bit of silliness into gin’s Wikipedia page. It lasted a week before someone erased it. I think the erasure was terribly shortsighted.

Hemmingway said he could tell the exact point on the page where Faulkner took his first drink of the day. I paraphrase. But I wonder if Faulkner wrote drunk. That seems preferable to revising drunk.

Jameson, Hendrick’s, Tito’s, Tanqueray, Caol Ila, Bacardi, Milagro, Jack Daniels. Crown Royal. That’s one each of the four whiskey groups, two gins, a vodka, a tequila and a rum. For those keeping score at home. Or considering your cocktail options should you decide to visit.

Accept me and I’ll buy you a drink. Reject me and I’ll pour myself one.

Short Getting Shorter

2011-05-24T12:51:00.005-05:00

I haven't been writing much flash. I've been enjoying taking a little more time with things, leaving room to extend language. Not that I'm writing epics, mind you.

But I wonder what the popularity of flash is doing to our perceptions of things. And by "our," I mean the world of journals and journal readers. Today, I had a story rejected. The reason given: the story is too long to be so reliant on the poetic over the narrative.

The story is 1,500 words.

I'm pretty sure that's quite short.

I assume the journal had issues beyond the poetic-to-narrative balance (not claiming it's the most brilliant thing I've ever done), but I do find the specific concern over the length strange. It's as if flash has trained us to expect a full story in the tiniest possible spaces. Maybe this story needs to be cut in half. But, eight years ago, I would've never imagined a 1,500 word story referred to as "a story of this length." As if it were something bloated and unwieldy.

Something Something

2011-05-21T17:25:00.002-05:00

Something cool: Hazel Foster talks about my story “Leap” at Matt Bell’s blog, here.

Something new: I finished three stories this week and sent them into the world. They are all at just one or two places. I find that I prefer this method to the scattershot. Of course, this method may also be why I have so little coming out right now.

Something old: Novel. In rewrites. Thought I was done last summer. Turns out: not so much. This could be a post all its own. I have a second novel just banging itself against my skull, but the first one is still something I want to pursue. Oh the complications...

Something worth buying now: Like poetry? Buy Lauren Schmidt’s new chapbook from Main Street Rag. It’s Voodoo Doll Parade and you’ll love it. Find it on this page. Lauren was in my MFA class and I can more than vouch for the amazingness of her work.

Something worth getting ready for: The one-and-only Roxane Gay has a book of stories forthcoming. Ayiti. Preorders from Artistically Declined Press begin this July!

Something else: Saw a bunch of shiny, youthful Mitt Romney supporters in a Las Vegas casino. They were standing around in a cheery sort of way, apparently anticipating Romney’s arrival. Politicians and slot machines. Plenty can seem bright and alluring. Then you put some money into one and ... well ... yeah.

Chosen

2011-05-10T07:41:00.001-05:00

The thing that mattered came packed in a box filled with tight little bags of air. I don’t know where that air came from, how the exhalations were chosen. But they nevertheless took up most of the space with their cushioning. Large percentages of space. All of them just sitting there with their purpose already over. Lasting until I deflated them and disposed, carelessly, of their skins.

The Sweet Smell of Failure

2011-05-03T15:47:00.008-05:00

That was the title to an original oratory I used in theater/debate competition when I was a senior in high school. It didn't ever win. No one wanted to hear about failure. The people who won talked about patriotism or gun rights (this was Texas) or how important it was that we beat the Japanese (economically, of course ... this was the early 90s). I think my oratory took people too far out of their comfort zone. I also think I could've used a better title.

Anyway, that's the long intro to this video by friend and fellow writer Yuvi Zalkow. It's more-or-less about how to get past writing failures while revising. It's great. I think you'll like it. I've even embedded it below for your convenience.

I Am A Failed Writer. Episode 1: Revisions from Yuvi Zalkow on Vimeo.

Justifications

2011-04-28T13:43:00.002-05:00

A forty, maybe fifty-foot pecan looms over my house. I say looms (not towers, rises, soars or stands) because I want the tree to sound menacing, like it has some want for authority over me. Of course, it’s just a pecan tree. It only looms in my mind. And, really, only when I’m thinking about storms and wind and the unfortunate proximinty of the tree to my house. If not for the wall, I could touch it from my bed.

So, I remind you of storms.

And I say the tree looms.

Then I tell you: I think I'm going to kill it.

This Other Thing

2011-04-21T12:56:00.001-05:00

I should be revising a novel; instead I burned a week on one of the worst short stories I’ve ever written. That’s probably not true. I’ve probably written worse, but this one is closer so it feels uglier.

I do this a lot. Write bad stories. Sometimes I even submit them. Sometimes I submit them repeatedly. Then, one day, I read them and I see that they are bad and I feel ashamed about that, although, truly, there shouldn’t be anything shameful about producing bad art. Not giving up your seat on the bus to an old lady – that’s shameful. Failing at art? Hell, least you’re focused on something outside of your own personal comfort, right?

And yet...

I don’t know. I wish I could better identify a bad story early on – like before I even start writing it. Time trickles into this jar beneath me and I can’t get it back and more time just keeps falling and I know this shouldn’t make me all antsy, but it does. I believe I have some great writing within me, but it takes so damn long to extract that I could die before I ever hit the main vein. That’s what this is about, of course. Death being what everything is about. Even love, I think. Although that’s probably one of those simple statements that sounds profound but is really just simple.

I’m a bad reviser. I try to correct every little thing and I obsess on those things too much and just end up making things fake and inaccessible. I can’t seem to shake the belief that all things CAN be corrected with the right effort. I’m not talking writing, although it applies in full to that. I’m talking about my state of being. My mistakes ... well ... I don’t ever believe things are ruined. I believe, if I just work at it, I can fix what I broke. This, I think, seems admirable. Or, at least, that’s what I’d tell someone who told me they don’t give up on fixing what they broke. But sometimes shit is just broke. It’s trashed. And all the tape and glue will never make it anything more than this wad of tape and glue that somewhat resembles an unbroken thing.

I wish I had more time, or started earlier, which is the same thing in a way.

I wrote a story about a rainbow because I dared myself to. It’s pretty good, I think. Then I wrote a story about two women who are married and have no genitalia – because someone suggested I should write such a story. That’s the horrible one referenced above. I would’ve thought the results would’ve been the other way around. Then, again, I thought Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was going to better than 30 Rock. Sometimes premise and potential are nothing. Sometimes it’s just about knowing who you are and not trying to be this other thing.

This other thing. Whatever that is today.

So Close and So Far

2011-03-15T19:16:00.004-05:00

I love a story I could never write, that I couldn’t even conceive of writing, the diction and the plot and all of it existing somewhere outside of myself and yet – YET – somewhere so close to me that the damn thing makes me feel, makes me read the story again, then again.

That’s “Men Glass” by Sarah Rose Etter in The Collagist this month. Good stuff. Good read.

Tournaments and Tragedy and Everything

2011-03-14T13:18:00.001-05:00

So I’m sitting with a fellow writer at a chain restaurant bar in a part of town that only has chains and people who want chains and we’re watching the spread of TVs and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is being covered on most of the TVs except one that is covering the devastation in Japan and I look to my writer friend and I say: isn’t this the kind of thing modern writing should be trying to capture? This shattering of attention, this bizarre alignment of the banal and the horrific, what we consider important being shifted and moved by the programming needs of media as well as our own selfish needs to be insulted from things such as catastrophe and comforted by things such as sports where winners are clear and the pattern is so set that it’s known even before the participants are known, the only unknown being the final way those participants will be organized within the pattern. And here we’ll be, filling out our brackets while Japan bags up its dead and searches for enough capacity in their crematoriums. Although, I imagine, there are plenty of banal distractions in Japan, too. Then again, the thing is, I’m not so sure the NCAA tournament IS a distraction for a lot of people ... I think, for some, Japan is the distraction and that the NCAA tournament is the more important happening, will use up more emotional energy. I don’t place a moral judgment on that; it’s just an observation. There’s too much happening at any given moment and too little energy within any one of us to FEEL something about everything. Libyan rebels are getting murdered, btw. They’ve picked a bad news cycle.

This Thing, Right Now

2011-03-07T17:32:00.005-06:00

I finally saw The Social Network. Seeing a highly praised movie well after its “moment” is a good recipe for disappointment. That expected disappointment didn’t disappoint.

The movie was fine. It was well-acted and the dialogue was that fun, nobody-really-talks-like-that-but-wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if-we-did thing with which Aaron Sorkin has been delighting me for many years. But I completely missed how this movie captured anything about the times we live in – or rather how it captured anything more about the times we live in than say, Inception, which, if nothing else, cut right to the way our modern world relies on controlling the opinions of others (leave your “Inception sucks” complaints elsewhere – I’m celebrating its premise more than its execution).

In my mind, The Social Network wasn’t about “this world” but rather “that world,” meaning the world of programmers and hackers that occasionally creates fantastical explosions of humanity-altering change that rockets several odd, probably-on-the-spectrum, geniuses to fame and fortune. This movie, I think, could be about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Which isn’t to say the movie had nothing to say about the current times, just that what it had to say was submerged beneath a character study of Mark Zuckerberg and those his rise to success affected most. Just because it’s about Facebook doesn’t mean it’s about Facebook.

And, really, I’m not sure any film can adequately capture what things like Facebook are doing to our culture. And that’s because what Facebook is doing is so internal to each person. Our external lives look pretty much as they have for awhile – we take kids to school, we make dinner, we sleep and root for sports franchises. But inside of this, we’re building these new communities that have the power to affect our wellbeing as much or more than our physical world.

This is significant. This is an alteration of the psyche that I’d argue is on par with the kind of shift caused by the great wars of the 20th century. How we perceive and relate to the world is radically changing.

A movie about the founder of a social networking site doesn’t really capture this (in America, young white men have long been able to get filthy rich and screw over their friends by taking control of a valuable product). What I believe can capture this in all its complexities is literature. Because, out of all the arts, literature is most capable of piercing the interior of human thinking and reflecting the way we order thoughts and emotions.

I’m sure a gifted filmmaker can and will prove me horribly wrong in my assessment of film’s ability to capture the social networking revolution; but I’m also sure I will, in the coming years, read far more fiction that captures this than I will see movies that capture this. In fact, I already have. What is Matt Bell’s How They Were Found but a representation of the reordering of thought and the imprecision of truth that comes from a world where our access to information is as likely to complicate as it is to solve anything? And what is Kevin Brockmeier’s new novel The Illumination (which I am reading now) but an examination of what becomes of us when all our inner pain is broadcast for the world to see? (as so many seem intent on broadcasting ever ache and misfortune on Facebook)

We live in a heady time, y’all. This is happening now. And those of us who write, have the opportunity to help make sense of this all ... or at least provide evidence of what it’s like to be alive in this time of incalculable change.

Just the other night I said to my wife that I’m glad I was in college before the proliferation of digital cameras and social media. There weren’t a lot of photos taken in those days and those that were taken are sitting on film, likely forgotten in someone’s closet. That fact right there separates me in profound ways from those who were in college just as few years after me. In fact, my college experience –or, at least, the repercussions thereof, are closer to my parents’ experience than they are to my friends’ who were born half a decade later. If that’s not evidence of something radical happening, I don’t know what is.

How do we capture this? That redefining of privacy? That change interpersonal relationships? That effect on the ways we conduct our daily lives? That alteration in the ways we perceive and present ourselves?

Those, I think, are excellent questions for us writers writing now. Excellent questions.

What Shall Not Be Disliked

2011-02-22T18:25:00.002-06:00

Jason Jordan wrote this post about some writers he doesn’t much care for. Indie lit world (is that the proper terminology?) went all flamey. Maybe it still is all flamey. I was away and missed the beginning of this and so I’m not sure where we are on the outrage arc. At least far enough to have passed through immediate attack against Jason and the following stages of various defenses.

(I would link to all this talk but I am lazy and if you read this place you probably read other places and I’m recapping what doesn’t need recap. Which I hear is excellent writing.)

Anyway, this is all interesting. I used to political blog. A lot. And if you are ever inclined to find reasons to dislike me, feel free to Google my political pieces. I wrote from the contrarian center and almost certainly wrote an opinion or fifty you’ll find obnoxious, even ignorant and callous. I’ve been called a supporter of evil – from people on both “sides” of the spectrum (I consider this a feat worth mentioning). I’ve been emailed hate mail so vitriolic, so dismissive of my humanity that I’ve questioned the very stability of our national psyche.

But that’s how it works in the political blog world. Bloggers going after each other with high-tech rhetorical weaponry (and low-tech vulgarity). It’s free speech at its most audacious. Not for the thin skinned.

I mention all this for what is probably an obvious observation: the indie lit world (still don’t know if this is the right word combination) operates under very different “rules”. We praise effusively that which we like and stay mum on that which we don’t. I imagine this is out of some shared sense of fragility, that our community needs protection and encouragement because we’re cultural outliers and already suffer under the weight of constant rejection, not just from journals but from all those who look at us not-famous writers and say “have I heard of anything you’ve written?” as if such a thing is the only conceivable measure of our worth.

That said, I tend to think too much carefulness is stifling. Too much tending of the walls means not enough tending of the sheep. (I don’t know who the sheep are in that metaphor, but go with me here.) If the indie lit world can’t suffer a guy listing some indie-ish writers whom he doesn’t like, how can we expect to survive the metastatic dismissiveness of the greater culture? Who even cares if Jason Jordan gave fleeting rationale for his personal tastes or not? Are we not allowed to dislike something publically? Do we really feel such a thing will topple our walls?

I think the proper reaction to Jason Jordan’s post is to debate his opinions not attack him for having one or hide behind attacks on his chosen style of critique. This is the first and almost certainly the last time I say this, but: we could learn from the world of political bloggers. There’s something to be said for sucking it up and moving on.

Questions, Questions

2011-02-08T09:41:00.001-06:00

If I gave you a page of fiction and said “this is the first page of a three-page story,” you’d have certain expectations, right? And if I said “this is the first page of a novel,” you’d have other expectations. But in each case, what would it take for you to want to read more? Is the bar set higher or lower for a novel or a three-page story? I mean, if you know there’s only two more pages to the conclusion, does that make it more likely for you to read more? Or, conversely, if that first page is promising but not, say, “gripping,” is it the novel that would make you read more (because there’s so much space for things to develop)?

Does knowing the length of something impact your judgment of its beginning? Is it even fair to judge a novel on a page or a few pages? Do you expect literature to begin like an episode of Hawaii Five-0 with a lot of action and a clear establishment of stakes? Or do you just want something that displays a compelling voice or sets up something big and potentially grand?

I often make judgments on a piece of short fiction in a journal within the first paragraph. I’ve done that with books in a bookstore, too. There are plenty of times I’ve stopped reading right there. But, clearly, whoever published the piece or the novel had a far different reaction. Chalk that up to variations in taste.

But it makes me think. Is it possible to write something that can’t be dismissed? Or can everything be dismissed by someone? And if everything can be dismissed by someone, what percentage of dismissing is acceptable for you, as a writer? 10%? 45%? 85%? I mean, even if only 5% of people who read what you write think its existence is necessary, that’s a lot of people. And aren’t those people worth writing for?

These Things Will Make You Moody

2011-01-30T17:37:00.002-06:00

Last night I checked my email late, just because. There, waiting, was rejection number 3,435 from a certain online journal. Hyperbole, of course. But it feels that way and every time they tell me no, I spend a few moments sulking. This time, since it was late, I headed to bed gripped by this ugly mood, only to find my daughter awake in her room and looking terribly sad. She’d had a bad dream or wasn’t feeling well – her articulation of the problem was poor – but I picked her up and carried her to my bed and let her sleep on my shoulder.

Then I thought of this. An essay at Big Other where Amber Sparks admits to feeling undo anxiety because she’s constantly reading on Facebook (and elsewhere) about other writer’s publications/readings/general success. She feels behind; she feels pressured to keep up and write more and be noticed more and achieve more. And I’m lying there with my daughter on my shoulder and I’m feeling sorry for myself for this latest rejection, except now I’m wondering why. The story is good. Many of the pieces I’ve sent to this particular journal have been good. And, frankly, despite their prestige, I really only enjoy half of what they publish and tend to find the other half perfect presentations of the emperor’s new clothes. Why do I keep submitting to a journal with an aesthetic that I think tends towards the incomprehensible for incomprehensibility’s sake, that holds up a certain kind of obfuscation as something grand when it is, in my opinion, mostly something meaningless.

This isn’t an attack on certain styles of writing; aesthetics vary and I know I don't have the most experimental of tastes. But, seriously, why the hell am I submitting to (and getting disappointed by) a journal that is clearly operating at an angle different from my own?

The answer is: it’d be really cool to appear there. I mean, it seems like everyone else gets published there. Shouldn’t I want to be published there? Isn’t it imperative for me to keep up with the writing joneses? See me, see me, I’m a talented and prolific writer!

This is silly. This is unhealthy. We’re not a factory; we’re not measured on output. And the quality of our work doesn’t change based on where it appears. A good story is a good story is a good story. The goal, I think, should be to write those good stories and let the rest work itself out. If it takes a long time to craft that story, then it takes a long time. If it takes fifty rejections to find a home for that story, then it takes fifty rejections.

At least these are the thoughts that came to me last night. With my daughter on my shoulder. The purpose of things and such. The point of it all.

"The Abomination" at decomP

2011-01-30T17:32:00.003-06:00

The February issue of decomP is live and my story "The Abomination" appears within. It's a monster story. It's part of a little project I'm working on about various beasties and such and I couldn't be more pleased to have it in decomP.

Thanks to Jason Jordan for including me!

Do You Read Booth?

2011-01-25T21:03:00.004-06:00

Should. It tends to publish stories and poems that refuse to let you stop reading.

Check out: "Run Time" by Jesse Goolsby. It's one of those stories where the plot is minimal but that doesn't matter. It holds you.

And Sometimes It's Just About Getting Ecstatic

2011-01-20T10:05:00.001-06:00

The purpose of writing? The big story behind what we do? Yeah, I’ve been known to talk about that.

That’s why I was so entranced by M Kitchell’s HTMLGiant post that uses Dan Hoy’s THE PIN-UP STAKES to focus in on what we as writers (or at least what he, as an artist) should want to achieve/do/create. It’s one of those high-speed, wind-whipping-in-your-mouth kind of posts that concludes with the idea – to paraphrase – that we’re either blowing up the order of things or we’re falling into the trap of the already-is. And that already-is – the world as it stands – is a shitty place that we already understand all too well.

Kitchell doesn’t want to be told how the world IS. He wants to “end the world and change life.”

Diversion here (although this all matters to the end I envision for this post): Kitchell spends a chunk of his post chastising those who think the young can’t write about Important Things (he’s in his mid-twenties he says). He’s right, of course. Age and experience/wisdom/artistry do not have to correlate. But what’s cool is: he makes that argument while freely sounding his age. Which is to say: he has the enthusiasm and the fuck-you attitude of a guy in his mid-twenties.

I bring that up because, in his post, he quotes my post over at Hayden’s Ferry Review. And he quotes me as an example of what he DOESN’T want writing to do. Which is to say, he doesn’t want to read/write anything that: “ takes you into the unique life of an “other,” a life that in some way broadens your own understanding of the world, that brings illumination to places previously darkened.”

But the thing is, we’re making similar points. Or so I think we are. I mean, what I want out of fiction –as a reader – is to be shown something new. I want to have my brain reshaped. I’m not particularly interested in reading the kinds of quiet, realist fiction that makes up such a big chunk of American literature. That’s not to say I have anything against “realism” – I just have something against realism that I’ve already experienced, already seen, already spent God knows how much of my reading life rolling around inside the carcass of.

My HFR post was kind of about that – an argument in favor of making fiction new and necessary. And yet, when Kitchell read it, he found something staid in my words. What’s going on? Well, maybe I just think I agree with him but I really don’t (because I’m not getting his point). Or, maybe it is what I think it is: a difference in age and disposition.

Age how? Age as in: I don’t know too many people in their mid-thirties (as I am) who haven’t changed in their opinions and temperaments in the decade since their mid-twenties. Something happens in that decade that causes most people to disconnect from the ecstatic. We lose our excitability and find ourselves sunk into the pragmatic. So we write essays that are “admirable” (Kitchell’s words to describe my piece) rather than “wind-whipping-in-your-mouth.” This isn’t true for everyone, of course, and the degrees of change varies depending on the person. But for me, ten years ago, I’d have wanted to write a piece like Kitchell wrote. Now? Not happening. Or at least it’s not happening without me looking like the guy with the toupee in the dance club.

But I’m glad there’s someone out there writing shit like Kitchell wrote. We need the ecstatic. We need to be reminded that Big Things are possible and that, despite whatever has changed in our lives, we can still be turned on by ideas. Or at least I need that. I trend towards the square. But I still want a world in which people read something like Kitchell’s post and then everyone agrees they need to go out, get drunk, and discuss the damn thing until that place on the corner starts serving breakfast.

Because, really, it probably doesn’t matter HOW we want to approach this writing/art thing (realism, meta, nonsense, whatever). It just matters that we’re still enraptured by its possibilities.

Symbols and Death and All of This

2011-01-10T23:40:00.001-06:00

Horrible things happened in Tucson this past weekend. You know this, of course. And you know what followed – the mourning, yes, but also the finger pointing, the political gamesmanship of fixing blame. This wasn’t just the usual human need to find something to repair whenever something so tragically breaks, but a markedly political need to “win” something or to “not lose” something, both “sides” turning tragedy into an opportunity to play politics, to “prove” the veracity of their particular world view, or prove the invalidity of their opponent’s.

I use quotations there. Because there are no sides except those we artificially impose and there is no proof for ideology. We create these concepts because, without them, there appears to be no order . We generate symbols (these right here that I’m using to write with and other symbols like flags and peace signs and entire people and movements) and we manipulate these symbols to force meaning into our world. And this is okay, of course. Necessary. What is writing but the creation of meaning out of abstraction?

But here’s the thing, here’s what I believe: nothing is as simple as our structures often lead us to believe. A human being doesn’t walk into a grocery store and shoot another human being in the head because yet another human being used gun sights in an advertisement. Sure, those gun sights and other symbols may have filtered in to the killer’s paranoid psyche and maybe in some unknowable, unverifiable way those symbols contributed to the act.

It’d be easy to believe this. Because symbols are power, right? Because symbols are the way we organize our reality? But let’s not fool ourselves about what words and symbols really are. It’s all nothing more than artifice. Than construct. What truly exists can never be captured in symbols. Yes – hell yes – we need more civility, more consideration, more compassion in our modern discourse. And, hell yes, hate breeds hate and there's never a wrong moment to condemn those who demonize, who divide, who callously ruin. But in all this conversation about the power of words – of symbols – I think it’s important to remember that all words and all symbols will always fall short of truth.

Some things defy our attempts at order. Some things exist outside categorization. Some things are, by their nature, incomprehensible. And I think it’s okay to admit that.

Guest Post Up at Hayden's Ferry

2011-01-05T10:00:00.003-06:00

I've written a contributor's spotlight over at Hayden's Ferry; it's about race and class and gender in the world of literary publishing. It's something I've been thinking about for awhile and something the amazing Roxane Gay brought to the forefront of the conversation last month at HTMLGiant.

Hope you get a chance to check it out here.

Thanks to Beth Staples for working with me on this and giving me the opportunity to post it on Hayden Ferry's blog.

New Things

2011-01-04T09:56:00.003-06:00

Couple new pieces out there in the world.

My poem-like thing "How to Pronounce Water" is part of Mud Luscious 14; many thanks to Andrew Borgstrom who put this awesome issue together.

And "Stars Like Glass" is up at Necessary Fiction as part of this month's first footing project. Thanks to Steve Himmer for allowing me to be a part of this -- the idea is to take the last line of a story and make it the first line of a new story. Cool stuff.

Talking About He Is Talking to the Fat Lady

2010-12-15T12:22:00.001-06:00

When I heard xTx was releasing a chapbook, I jumped. Glad I did because I’m now the proud owner of one of the few printed versions (#36 in fact) of He Is Talking to the Fat Lady; and I love owning printed things. I don’t even have to feel guilty for hording words. The chapbook is digitally available here at Safety Third.

This isn’t a review. This is a suggestion that you get a hold of the stories contained within He Is Talking to the Fat Lady. While a lot of writers are flitting around the edges of ennui and introspection, xTx is driving straight into the gut. The result is a collection of stories that combine physical violence and various kinds numbness to create a beautifully desperate look at emotional frailty and our attempts at resilience.

I often think we live in an overwhelming time, where none of us truly has the capacity to bear or even process the stories of horror and loss and struggle that flood into our lives through all these connections. xTx is capturing that overwhelming experience in a way few writers can.

That sounds like a review. Maybe it’s a review. But I intend it as a recommendation.

"The Nameless" at PANK

2010-12-15T12:15:00.003-06:00

If this was Novemeber, I could say Happy PANKsgiving and feel mildly clever. But it's December. So maybe: Merry PANKsmas. I'm not sure that's appropriately non-demoninational. It also sounds weird.

In any case, this is all to say that the December PANK is live right here and it contains my story-like thing "The Nameless."

So ends today's self-promotion.

How We Talk About This Thing We Do

2010-12-08T17:46:00.003-06:00

For reasons not worth explaining, I was quote-hunting today, centering my efforts on the various arts and their various inspirations. I looked for quotes on dancing and music and painting and poetry and general writing (aka that thing we term fiction).

Here’s what prompted this post: for all the arts save general writing (aka that thing we term fiction), the quote sites overflowed with pleasant little missives about how said art was the yada yada whatever journey to/revelation of truth/beauty/life. Good quotes. Perfect for my needs today.

Now, as for those general writing quotes, I’d say 90% or more pretty much discussed what a god-awful slog this business of ours is and how it requires nothing short of pulling your soul out of your nose/anus/ear/pores.

Poetry? Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat (Frost). Poetry is an echo, asking shadow to dance (Sandburg). General writing? Yeah, that’s pain, pain, suffering, pain.

Bollocks.

Bollocks. Bollocks.

Writing – general writing, fiction writing, whatever – is the most freeing thing I do. As silly as it sounds, I get to be a lover, a killer, a mechanic, a prince (actually, I don’t think I’ve ever written about a prince, but I sure as hell could). I get to recreate the world daily. I get to squeeze this big mess of nonsense into something that contains meaning – at least to me, at least for me. And that’s not nothing. That’s not something everyone gets to do.

Sure, some days it’s a pain to write – because I’m tired or sad or busy or because I’m feeling suffocated by the omnipresent fear that my creation will fall painfully short of my vision. But despite this, I do write. And I do love it.

So, in the event I’m ever fortunate enough to be Bartlett’s worthy, I pledge to say something like this: Writing is the way we slice through the chains that hold us inside ourselves. Writing is how we, for even a moment, stop being so damn lonely.

Enough now. Back to this story of mine that’s falling painfully short of my vision for it.

"Leap" at Hayden's Ferry Review

2010-12-06T12:33:00.009-06:00

Thanks so much to Beth Staples and the editors at Hayden's Ferry Review for including my story "Leap" in Issue #47. The story is available in the print issue; or you can read it online here.

The opening:

They found my roommate’s body stuffed into a drainage pipe two miles from campus. I saw it on the news before anyone came to my dorm-room door. “Body of Missing Student Believed Found.” He’d been dead for five days. I’d like to claim I was the one who’d reported him missing. But I hadn’t even known he was gone until his girlfriend called the police.

The knocks at my door began a few minutes after the news of his death hit. Light tapping at first. Then people banging, shouting for me to open. I imagined them swarming in the hall. If I’d opened the door, they would’ve eaten me. Skin first and then the red parts. I sat in my desk chair next to the window, the February air coming in cold as I watched my roommate’s fish swim circles in his tank. A key rattled in the lock. Then the door opened, and there was the resident assistant with two cops, clones of each other, formal posture, pug faces. A crowd gathered behind them but didn’t come in. “You the roommate of Baron Butler?” one of the cops asked. The RA told him I was. “That’s David Nikkola,” he said. My name is Davis. But I offered no correction. Or maybe I mumbled one. I don’t know. This was five years ago now.

Cut Through the Bone Now Available!

2010-12-01T15:46:00.003-06:00

You should order this book. Because Ethel Rohan is amazing. And amazing writers should be read.

Buy it here.

Finding Meaning in How They Were Found

2010-11-30T11:03:00.002-06:00

The first time I read a collection of David Foster Wallace’s short stories, the depth of his fiction reminded me of the depth in great essays. The man had a point to everything he wrote; his fiction doesn’t just tell a story (in the same way his nonfiction doesn’t just, say, report on a lobster festival). He was always needling at something more important, something worth examining, something worth trying to understand even if understanding is/was impossible.

While reading How They Were Found, Matt Bell’s excellent new collection of stories from Keyhole Press, I saw Bell engaging in a similar process of digging. Bell – while a very different writer than Wallace – doesn’t keep to the surface. The stories in How They Were Found dig into essential questions. How do we organize our life after tragedy? How do we comprehend that which has no explanation? How do we uncover what matters amidst so much that seems so meaningless?

Confession: a lot of modern fiction bores me. Truly. Many of the short stories I encounter are well-written and nicely controlled, but ultimately unimportant because of their smallness in consequence or because they travel such well-trodden terrain. Bell doesn’t write that kind of fiction. Bell writes fiction that roils with a desperate want to comprehend this world, a burning desire to seek out and grasp some truth, even if it's small, even if it vanishes in a breath.

From the very first story that follows a man using a system of cartography to seek out a lost love to “The Receiving Tower” where the main character is losing his memory (in a possibly post-apocalyptic world, nonetheless) to the structural experimentation of “Wolf Parts,” “The Collectors” and particularly “An Index Of How Our Family Was Killed,” Bell has assembled a collection filled with characters yearning for understanding and propelled by a belief that such understanding is actually possible. It’s that yearning – that hope – that pushes us to care and makes us want to read more, even when the stories turn disturbing (helpful tip: read “Dredge” on an empty stomach).

Writers enamored with inventive structures and rich language sometimes produce impenetrable work that is more literary artifact than meaningful story. Fortunately, despite the complexities in many of Bell’s stories in this collection, they are still stories. Which is to say: they are good reads. Nothing feels overly forced; nothing feels done just for the sake of showing off writerly abilities or messing around with language for the sake of messing around with language. The structural choices within How They Were Found are the product of specific characters and their specific need for understanding. Bell allows his characters to present information in whatever ways are most meaningful to them. Sometimes, that’s linear with traditional flashbacks, but sometimes that’s in the form of an alphabetized list. The result is a collection of stories that feels born from the characters and not from the mind of some overly playful writer.

The collection, of course, is not perfect. The best stories (“Collectors” and “An Index Of How Our Family Was Killed” being my personal favorites), so outshine some of the smaller stories in this collection that, when going back to write this review, I came across a couple of stories I’d completely forgotten. This is not an uncommon problem in story collections. But, with Bell, I get the sense that it’s a consequence of him being a writer just beginning to come into his own. The collection is certainly well-assembled and well-paced, but there are softer spots, stories that lack the openness of some of the collection’s best stories, as if Bell is still working to find a balance between his desire to cross literary boundaries and his desire to make his stories meaningful. The stories that make this collection brilliant are the ones that Bell allows the reader to move through and explore. The stories that shine less so are the ones where I felt Bell leading me by the hand (i.e.: “Hold Onto Your Vacuum” loses some of its whacked-out strangeness once the sadistic Teacher explains the purpose of his violence. I would have liked if the meaning of the story had been much less tidy.).

Nevertheless, How They Were Found is an excellent collection and is worth reading by anyone who enjoys good stories. Even more so, it’s a collection worth reading for those who want their fiction to contain deeper meanings. Fiction, at its best, is a submersion into the questions of its age. And in a world of random violence, cultural wars and proliferating “truths,” I’m not sure there are too many questions more important than: how do we find meaning in all of this? Matt Bell explores that very issue. And it’s what makes his collection a true standout.

This Thing of Ours

2010-10-26T21:10:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I get frustrated. Out of whack. Writing will do that to you. Just trying to write will do that to you. The other night I was emailing a fellow writer and it all just kind of fell apart for me. Or came together in that weird way collapses combine what wasn’t before combined.

I crib from that email here because I feel the impetus to do so. You see, I’m in a weird place: I’ve got this novel that I would really, really love to get out into the world, but those things take time and as those things are taking time, I’m trying to make a living and trying to keep writing and trying to raise a family and trying be something that simulates normal. It’s all just a dog pile after awhile.

This thing we do ... this writing thing ... it’s a fight. It’s a fight against the cultural impetus to hang it up. And it has been a fight since the moment we realized we want to write, hasn't it? I mean, everything I've encountered in life has tried to push me into something less-than art. My job as a copywriter is the perfect example. What a ruinous compromise! Or, rather, it would be ruinous if I was to convince myself that it’s enough to call those websites and brochures and ad campaigns real writing. I have to fight to keep them in their place. To call them a paycheck. To give them no more emotional weight than money deserves. I often fail at this. I often let my day be destroyed by the petty happenings of my job.

Even now, I think: oh, shit, I shouldn’t be writing this. Someone who pays me will read it and assume I don’t care, that I’m not giving my copywriting my all. But that’s not the point. The point is really the opposite: to make a successful living – to feed a family and all of that – you better as hell give it your all. But giving your all to one thing makes it that much harder to give your all to another thing, particularly when that other thing is this pursuit – this mostly uncompensated pursuit – of something that might be art.

It’s brutal out there, out here. Doesn't matter what your choices have been. Single. Married. Kids. No kids. Rich. Poor. This is not a culture that values what we do in any grand sense. This is a culture of enterprise, of capitalism. Dreamers are rewarded only by the economic viability of their dreams. We are not rewarded merely for the capacity to express those dreams in ways no one else can. And yet we choose to keep at it -- to try to pierce through the culture, to expose some small bit of truth or beauty or horror or failure. We jab and jab and jab and only those who keep at it can hope to succeed.

So I keep at it. Because the alternative is shit. The alternative is giving into all those little nits that try to fill me with self hate, that try to tell me I’m nothing but mediocre. That say: make a damn living, man. Go to Vegas. Drink good wine. Forget this thing with words.

Can’t. Won’t.

I’m in a mood. So I write.

What Wal-Mart Doesn't Have

2010-10-18T12:23:00.003-05:00

I needed things last night. An assortment of items affiliated only by their eventual ownership by me. A wireless router. Some light bulbs. Bananas. I went to Wal-Mart because it was close and it was late and sometimes convenience wins.

But I really dislike Wal-Mart. I’m not talking about its business practices, I’m talking about their stores. They are unwelcoming. Soulless. They grab you by the back of the neck and shove your face into the fact that you are a consumer and every damn thing is a commodity. You like to eat? Tough. Wal-Mart doesn’t sell the joy of eating. They sell packaged foodstuffs. You like to look attractive? Wal-Mart doesn’t sell fashion, they sell body coverage items.

It’s all about the sell. Where what cog fits into what hole.

Sure, there are those who will say that’s what all stores do. And there are those who will blame the soul-sucking nature of capitalism in that weird, simplistic way people like to blame complex, inexact systems for the majority of our problems. But I believe that most of life is just people interacting with people. And while the fulfillment of basic needs is obviously essential, people don’t just connect through basic needs. We have passions and fears and desires and insecurities and we pursue those or try to mitigate those through human interaction.

Wal-Mart removes all of that upper-level stuff.

I mean, sure, they try to make their stores bright and clean, but they go to no effort to relate to their customers on anything more than a transactional level. Just because I am a person who needs to buy an item doesn’t mean I have to be reduced to a personality-less consumer. I go to a place like Target (which provides essentially the same items as Wal-Mart) and I feel that there’s someone human behind the store – someone who has taken a few minutes to consider what I might want, not just what I might need.

I could go on, more examples and all of that. But I’m going to end up talking in circles. My point isn’t to throw Wal-Mart onto the pyre, it’s to note how alienating their business-model is and how that alienation is becoming such a defining feature of our society. I don’t much go in for the overheated cries that our civilization is failing, but I take notice of all these ways we’re removing ourselves not just from each other but from our own personalities, our own identities.

I mean, we talk about what the great literary/artistic themes of this period are and will be and I keep coming back to this notion of alienation. Not the lost generation stuff of nearly a century ago, but a far stranger alienation, one that can only be broken through with increasingly bold leaps of faith (in love or God or just in the very notion of truth).

I read a lot of these writers publishing on-line (Roxane Gay and Ethel Rohan and Matt Bell and Amber Sparks and all the others I've referenced on this blog) and I read others like Edward P. Jones and someone like the late David Markson (whose Wittgenstein’s Mistress was about 20 years ahead of its time) and I see all these characters hoping and dreaming for these connections that might not even exist or are only found at great costs, and I think, my God, this is what’s happening. This rebellion against alienation. Taking to the barricades. Maybe in failure but always in passion. The return of sentimentalism not as some saccharine or moralistic device but as a real attempt to forge connection, one person to the next, through this bizarre period where a trip to buy a router and bananas can make you feel as if your very identity has been bludgeoned.

I overstate. Or oversimplify. But maybe the point is in there.

Zombi Love

2010-10-11T17:50:00.001-05:00

This story has been praised by others, but some stories deserve all the huzzahs they can get.

The story is ”There is No ‘E’ in Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You Or We” by Roxane Gay at Guernica. I should say the inimitable Roxane Gay. Her stories always get me. And this one is just phenomenal.

Check it out if you haven’t already.

Goings On

2010-10-04T18:34:00.002-05:00

Several things.

Journey to The Ancient City in its permanent home. Amber Sparks did such a great job with this. It’s so cool because it’s not so much an editor’s aesthetic as it is the project’s aesthetic. Great writing abounds.

My story “Bad Hands” is out in Coal City Review #26. Thanks to Mary Wharff for giving this story such an excellent home.

And a huge thank you goes out to the anonymous and extraordinary folks at > kill author for nominating my story ”My Father Believes” for Best of the Net. This is my first nomination for anything writing related and for it to come from one of my absolute favorite journals is just incredible and so frickin’ exciting. And, adding to the good news, the wonderfully talented and cool Jason Jordan was also nominated by > kill author for his piece ”Do Not Let Them Take You”, a creepy, marvelous story that you should read right now if you haven’t yet.

Remembering Ralph Vicinanza

2010-09-29T10:42:00.001-05:00

I learned today that literary agent Ralph Vicinanza died this past Sunday. Ralph represented some of the biggest names in sci-fi, fantasy and horror. He was also a truly great guy.

I worked for Ralph for a stint in 1999 and, although life carried me elsewhere pretty quickly, I was at the agency long enough to gain great respect for the man. He was incredibly busy – as you might expect – but when you sat down with him, his entire attention was on you. This was both intimidating and wonderful; and it was a kind of intensity I’ve rarely encountered again.

There were times I heard Ralph yell, sometimes at very powerful people, sometimes in language masterfully profane. And he ran a tight ship: there was no permissible tardiness for us assistants, no extended lunch breaks, no minor error that went without reprimand. Just reading him his messages over the phone could make me tremble in fear of doing something outside the bounds of his structures. He kept order. And that order kept that agency running smoother than anyplace else I’ve ever worked.

But here’s the thing: despite the demands Ralph placed on me and the three other assistants in the office at that time, I really liked him. I was twenty-four and clueless and one of hundreds (thousands?) of kids who’d come to New York to work in publishing. He could have very easily been one of those types who use assistants up and then move on to the next bushy-tailed kid. But he didn’t do that. He cared about me and my life; I felt that compassion every time we sat in his office and chatted. When I gave notice because I’d decided to move back to Texas, he worried that he’d somehow failed me, that my position with him hadn’t lived up to whatever expectations he thought I had.

I left New York for a lot of reasons. None of them had anything to do with Ralph.

We’ve lost a good one this week. Rest in peace, Ralph.

The Boy of Threes

2010-09-28T17:19:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Amber Sparks for letting me be a part of her Ancient City project over at Necessary Fiction.

My story, "The Boy of Threes," went live today. It's a post-apocalyptic piece. I seem to have an affinity for those.

Lily Ponds

2010-09-23T12:20:00.005-05:00

Ever feel like you're writing the same story over and over?

Even if it's not really the same story.

It still kinda is.

But that's o.k., right? I mean, if you've got a good subject, not even hundreds of renderings will ever capture all the possible subtleties.

Learning to Read

2010-09-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

During my MFA coursework, we were often told that we need to learn how to read. Of course, they meant we need to learn how to take apart a plot, a scene, a sentence, a metaphor. But, for my son, learning to read literally means learning to read.

And, man, you don’t realize how messed-up the English language is until you start helping your kid learn to read.

They teach the concept of a “bossy e” which is a silent e at the end of the word that turns a vowel long. You know. Five. Drive. And, um, give. Explain that to a literal-minded six year-old.

But wait, there’s more. GH is an f in words like tough and rough but silent in though and bough (with the ou pronounced differently in each of those, of course). And, really, what the hell is that gh doing in light and fought and drought (and again, the ou isn’t pronounced the same for any reason other than it’s not pronounced the same).

There’s a bizarre b at the end of bomb and tomb and comb but it modifies that o in three different ways. And if tomb is “toom” why isn’t loom “lomb?” (And, for that matter, shouldn’t comb be come ... except, of course, come is already its own irregular).

And let’s not even get started on when c sounds like an s and a ph is an f and an x is a z. Anything more complicated than “See Spot Run” requires the explanation of rules that sometimes true and sometimes not. (oo makes the long u sound ... except when you look for a book in a nook).

My son will get it ... I suppose we all do. And what we don’t get is corrected by spell check. But I wonder what the sometimes lawless construction of our words does to our minds. Semiotics and all that. Does it promote neuroses? Creativity? Does it make our written word more inaccessible? Does it make our written word more beautiful in the way nature is beautiful in all its organic jumble?

In this world of binary code (and binary politics for that matter), there’s something wonderful about the fact that words like bough and cough exist. They’re messy; they speak to the archaic and the anarchic. They make learning to read a challenge. But I love the way those odd words taste.

A Good Rant is a Wonderful Thing

2010-09-08T19:15:00.002-05:00

Amber Sparks unleashes.

She's writing about the frustrations of the submission process. Namely the long response times that too often end in form rejections.

One thing Amber doesn't really get into: if you allow simultaneous submissions, how in the world are you finding the best stuff if it takes nine or more months to reply? Every story I've published has been accepted within four months of submission (with the exception of one unique circumstance). By taking so long to reply, aren't you asking for the best stories to be withdrawn before you get to them? I mean, if I've never withdrawn the story and you reject me after a year, you can be pretty sure the story has either been shoved into a drawer out of disgust with its quality or it's been seriously revised.

I totally understand the difficulty of reading huge numbers of submissions for no or nearly no pay. But Amber's post expresses the frustrations most of us feel at some point or another. Good stuff.

No More Fantasy

2010-08-26T19:36:00.000-05:00

Football season is starting soon. Until last year, this meant I was preparing for multiple fantasy football drafts. I was actually pretty good at the game – probably because I can be, um, obsessive. A year ago, I tried to calculate the amount of time I was spending studying stats and ready FF articles and trying to make trades and all that mess. The answer was: an f’n lot.

You only get so many hobbies. I think us writers get even fewer. Fewer because most of us are already spending a fair about of time on other pursuits that earn us a living, but fewer also because writing is a consuming craft. I haven’t met a good writer yet who honestly claims to be able to knock off a brilliant short story between trips to the gym.

Good writing takes time – time in the room and time conceiving, learning, observing. I’m not going to say fantasy football never taught me anything about life, but I will say that what it taught me was minor compared to what it cost me. I was unable to play the game casually. I was wasting too much intensity on which tight end to start on a given week or which running back was about to have a breakout game. Time drained. So I gave the game up.

I’m entering my second fantasy football-free NFL season and I actually feel wonderfully unburdened. There’s something to be said for winnowing away distractions.

Is it Wrong That I Liked Inception?

2010-08-10T19:37:00.003-05:00

I finally saw Inception. It was the first adult movie I felt compelled to see in the theater since Christopher Nolan’s last outing with that little Batman/Joker flick. It’s not that I don’t love movies. It’s that I have kids.

Anyway, I enjoyed the film. There were plot holes and a general lack of emotional complexity, but the premise was cool and the action engaging. It’s not Chinatown, but it’s certainly worth the time. I’d see it again. If possible, I’d trade in the minutes I spent watching Cats & Dogs just to see part of Inception.

But, really, what interests me is not so much the intricacies of the plot (dream or not dream and all of that), but the reaction it’s created in some quarters. And by reaction I mean negative reaction. Some people hate this movie – and not just this movie but Nolan in general (and specific). In fact, some people hate it so much that they are willing to spend untold minutes of their lives explaining in detail why the rest of us should hate it, too.

This strikes me as odd. I understand not liking the movie. I don’t understand the need to beat your chest and proclaim yourself a superior film viewer whose tastes are more refined (I don’t mean to pick on Mr. Jameson, here – he clearly knows his shit and his piece convinced me of Nolan’s failings -- but he’ll be the only link here because I’m lazy and this one was easy enough to steal from HTMLGiant).

I kinda think the vituperative approach comes from a tendency among some intellectuals to be reactionary to popular taste. In this way of thinking, it’s given that the common man/woman is an idiot. Therefore, anything commonly liked must primarily appeal to idiots. I’m not so much defending Inception as I am defending those who enjoyed Inception.

A movie doesn’t have to be a work of pure art to be worth the effort. In fact, I’ll argue that the fact there is so much discussion of this movie (and not of, say, Cats & Dogs) is proof of the film’s cultural worth. A movie that strives for classic and falls short is as fascinating a movie as one that succeeds in its artful attempts.

Unfortunately, instead of praising what the movie did well and criticizing what the movie did wrong, plenty of people feel compelled to label Inception an abject failure, a travesty of moviemaking, a sign of all that’s wrong with art. Okay, I’m the one being hyperbolic now. But the point is: Inception wasn’t awful.

I guess I just don’t get the need to so vigorously hate on those things in culture that are popular but not exactly art. God knows (and my wife knows) I’ve been less than generous towards Stephanie Meyer. I’m not above some, or even a lot, of intellectual/artistic superiority. But what’s really the point? To tell people they’re idiots for liking something you don’t like? Debate is one thing. Ripping something apart in service to a greater agenda just seems a few steps too far.

The People of Paper

2010-08-04T20:57:00.001-05:00

I was in Austin today and stopped by Book People and saw on their recommended table The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia and I thought to myself: I don’t push that book hard enough on my friends and acquaintances.

The novel is brilliant. It’s experimental and deeply moving and lyrical and brain twisting and it does about fifty things I normally dislike in fiction and yet I can’t forget the book. It arrives in my head quite often and makes a mess of things.

You should read it.

Creative is the Power

2010-07-28T18:58:00.005-05:00

I was watching Mad Men the other night and having a nice bit of joy at the power Don Draper wields as a creative director. In my life as a creative (adjective become noun) in advertising, the account team has always held the power. My contributions are respected but, when it comes to a break point, I lose.

I'm freelance, so my power is limited. But it's really not the freelance vs. staff member dichotomy. It's the profit vs. idea/creativity/art dichotomy. The point of any ad agency is to make money. And, like it or not, satisfying a client is how an agency makes money. Sometimes it's just not worth it to the account team to force a creative idea at a client who would rather have a standard idea.

In the world of Mad Men, Don Draper shits on clients who want a standard idea. Maybe that's a 1960s thing; most likely it's a fiction thing. In today's world, safe ideas often sell better than creative ideas.

And the thing is ... I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with the idea that what I do for money is not always art or even creative. I'm okay that I sometimes am asked to push work that is less than my best work. It's not that I'm just in it for the check (I'm not; I always love a truly original campaign), it's that commerce is commerce and profit is profit and you either accept that or you make yourself miserable

In my fiction, I can do whatever I want. I can be as wildly creative as my brain is capable of being. But in copy writing, I'm a tool of a greater system. Creativity is only valuable in its ability to appeal to clients and, ultimately, sell product.

What I don't know is whether making my money this way is a bad thing or a neutral thing. I lean to neutral but some days I wonder. Some days I just want to be creative and not, for a moment, worry about the earning possibilities behind my work.

"A People's History of Martin Zansamere" in MAR

2010-07-15T09:57:00.004-05:00

So, if you haven't heard, the new Mid-American Review is out. This would excite me no matter what. But it's extra-double exciting because my story "A People's History of Martin Zansamere" appears in the issue.

I love all my stories. But this one holds a special place in my writing life. I wrote it a little over a year ago at a time when I was really struggling with what kind of stories I wanted to write. I had been trying very hard to replicate voices like Alice Munro and Raymond Carver and Amy Hempel and Edward P. Jones -- all wonderful writers, for sure, but my immitations were falling flat. Instead of writing what came up from within me, I was writing what came down from outside of me. If that makes sense.

I was only sort-of aware of this problem. And when I wrote "Zansamere," I didn't have any kind of ah-ha moment about my writing. In fact, I worried that the story was too far removed from what I should be writing. Then a mentor at Antioch was kind enough to read 15-20 of my stories all at once. "Zansamere" was his favorite. It was very different from everything else I showed him and his appreciation of the story got me to thinking: other than "Zansamere" being non-realist, what the hell had I done differently?

The answer, I realized, was stupidly simple: I'd written "Zansamere" because it was fun to write. The idea for the story had struck me while folding socks (yeah, socks play a part in this story). I wrote the story in a week or so without care for anything other than making it the kind of story I'd like to read.

That realization changed my writing life. Almost everything I've published was written after I wrote "Zansamere." Sure, I've written reams of crap since then, too, but I haven't written any more blatantly imitative stories. In fact, I don't write anything that I don't enjoy writing. And that, as they say, has made all the difference.

I have no idea why it took me so long to figure out such a simple truth, but there it is. And I wanted to share. Because, you know, this is a weblog and all.

Gradumicated

2010-07-02T19:17:00.001-05:00

Last Sunday I officially finished my MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles. Since Antioch is low-res, the week leading up to graduation was a beautiful mess of lectures, readings, drinking, talking, tears and toasts as my fellow cohort members and I (the Cobalts) rushed through our final residency.

I could make this post snarky. Be all ironic and detached and throw out nothing but shrugs and grunts. But that wouldn’t be what I really want to say. Here’s the inside of it:

Thank you, Antioch, for changing my life, for giving me the direction and confidence and wherewithal to turn a passion into something tangible, something I can see carrying me through the rest of my life. Thank you to all the mentors and workshop leaders and fellow students who made these last two years two of the most transformative years of my life. And thank you to my family who not just tolerated but supported me ceaselessly through this degree.

I leave Antioch a vastly better writer. I leave with friends I know I’ll have for a lifetime. And I leave with writing habits that I know can sustain a career. There’s that pejorative use of “MFA story” that I hear bandied about. I know what people mean when they say that. I’ve written stories like that. But Antioch pushed me to write away from that, to find my own voice, to write what is true to me rather than reaching for the simple, the artificial. And they taught me how to do that as not just a hobbyist, but as a professional.

I wouldn’t be where I am now in my writing career if not for Antioch.

That’s truth.

Splinter Reading This Thursday

2010-06-20T13:13:00.002-05:00

If you're in L.A. and want something fun to do this coming Thursday, June 24th, come on out for the Splinter Generation reading.

20 Under 40

2010-06-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

So, apparently, I didn’t make the New Yorker’s much-talked about list of 20 Under 40 fiction writers worth watching. Such a shame. They only do these things once a decade or so and I’ll be 40 in a little more than 4 years.

There is, of course, a lot of criticism of this list. I’m not going to link to it because it’s easier to summarize (and I’m lazy): The list is predictable. It’s boring. It’s boringly predictable. It represents nothing more than New Yorker’s staid aesthetic. It’s too concerned with token diversity. It’s too full of writers with big agents and a knack for self-promotion. It doesn’t include _______ or ________ or __________ who are clearly superior to the collection of two-bit hacks actually chosen.

I think people are mostly jealous. Not just of the list itself but of what often seems like the random way certain writers break through while others do not. And, yeah, that part sucks. It sucks to think someone of lesser talent and lesser work ethic and even lesser savvy might hit it big while you pluck along unnoticed forever. But then again, a lot of things suck and we can either dwell on the general shittiness of the world or we can try to shovel some of it out of our way.

I didn’t mean for this to collapse into a “chin up, bucko,” diatribe. I just prefer to channel my own jealousies into motivation instead attacking those who make me jealous. I suppose not being jealous at all would be a better choice, but, yeah, there’s only a select few people of whom I’ll never be jealous. When it comes to the greater game, I want to play, too, and I envy those who already have a seat. That’s just how I’m wired.

Again, this post is going all tangential. Sorry.

What I meant to say is how damn lucky I feel to be working in a profession where being in your thirties is considered being early in your career. A 35 year old writer is “one to watch.” A 35 year old NFL player is on the brink of retirement.

I didn’t write much in my 20s. And what I did write was really bad. In fact, it wasn’t until just a couple of years ago that I really committed myself to writing. I often think that means I squandered more than a decade. Maybe I did. But the good news is, assuming good fortune, I have many more decades left to write. Regardless of who is and isn’t on The New Yorker list, all of us under 40 should note that, by choosing that auspicious year, The New Yorker is acknowledging that most writers don’t bloom until later in life. They picked writers they think have already shown signs of become exceptional. But imagine how many they missed.

Weird

2010-06-01T21:03:00.003-05:00

I wrote a story about Japanese porn and masturbation. It's here at Thirst For Fire and it's not really about Japanese porn and masturbation. Although, it is.

Good issue. Weird. I like weird. In fact, I'd say that weird is the number one thing I look for in fiction. When I'm in a workshop and I read something strange, I circle it and get all excited with my red pen in the margin. Give me alternate worlds. Zombies. Magical realism. Perversities. Desperate people with unstoppable urges. Take me by the neck.

I'm overstating it. Or stating it poorly. It doesn't all have to be tattoos on the face (and probably shouldn't ever be tattoos on the face). It can be lizards in the gut. Quiet little lizards.

Coming Out of a Fog

2010-05-19T17:51:00.004-05:00

Been absent for awhile as I've been working towards my MFA. But I just finished my last packet today and now it's just about doing a reading and teaching a lecture at the June residency and I'll be a proud recipient of an MFA.

"An MBA? That's great!"

"No, an MFA."

"Oh. What do you do with that?"

"Um. Buy a nice frame."

But, really, the MFA program at Antioch L.A. has been a life changer for me. It's taught me the big difference between WANTING to be a writer and actually BEING a writer. I feel like I'm leaving the program as someone who has a chance to make a career at this. Not just because I'm a far better writer than when I went in (which I am) but because I'm a far more disciplined writer as well.

Plus -- or maybe "most importantly" -- I come out of this with some amazing friends who I know will support me for the rest of my writing life.

Two years have gone fast. But I can't imagine spending them in any better way.

Oh, and in my silence, two stories have gone live.

"Incubus" over at Dogzplot and
"That Kid" over at Staccato

Thanks to Barry Graham for working with and publishing the former. And thanks to David Erlewine for working with me on the latter and the guys at Staccato for publishing it.

One last thing: Storyscape has an anthology out. You can get it here. I have a story in it about the Dust Bowl.

Atrophy

2010-05-04T23:22:00.001-05:00

I hurt my finger two weeks ago. It came out of its splint yesterday and I can’t bend it very well. Apparently, two weeks of disuse is enough time to start causing the ligaments to atrophy. It’s reversible of course. But here’s the thing – does writing work the same way? Can your writing atrophy?

If you take time off from writing – to handle work or take care of life issues or go on a bender or whatever – are you stiff when you come back? If you used to be able to write for 4 hours a day, do you find you tire out at two?

I write just about every day. And I write a lot of words most days Sometimes I think it would be nice to take a month off and catch up on my Entertainment Weeklys and episodes of Anthony Bourdain and, I don’t know, yard work. But then I think, could I go right back to it after an extended break? Or would the process hurt?

The finger is stiff. I mean, really, I can’t make a fist right now. I suppose it’s a terrible fallacy to equate physical conditions with mental ones. But it makes me think. Especially with the large amount of work I’m getting these days and with the end of my MFA life coming up in June. Lots of reasons to take time off. But I don’t think I will. I don’t think I could risk the effects.

Whatcha Want to Know?

2010-04-20T11:30:00.004-05:00

So, Tres Crow over at Dog Eats Crow recently conducted an interview with me.

It's now live.

Everyone should be so lucky as to have someone else ask them in-depth questions about their work. Tres's questions really made me think about what I write and why I write it. I can only hope my answers lived up to the questions.

"My Father Believes" at > kill author

2010-04-14T16:08:00.005-05:00

Love > kill author and I'm excited to have a little piece in Issue 6.

It's "My Father Believes and it is surrounded by some incredible company. Really. Check out the issue. Good stuff. Thanks to the mysterious editors for letting me be a part of it.

AWP Highlights

2010-04-11T16:56:00.002-05:00

A good few days out in Denver. Saw a lot of interesting panels. Bought a bunch of books. Had a few drinks. Heard many, many great writers read. A few highlights:

Buying Hobart 11 straight from Aaron Burch (and getting a free shot of whiskey with my purchase).

Meeting the great PANK people in person.

Attending DOGZPANK reading where 15 amazing writers shared their words.

Hanging with my Antochian friends.

Seeing Dan Chaon on a panel.

Seeing Brian Evenson on a panel.

Shaking Richard Bausch's hand.

Buying Kyle Minor's In the Devil's Territory from Matt Bell at the Dzanc table

And that's just a bit of it.

Will I go again? Maybe. I got my pass for free through my MFA program this year and Denver is easy to get to from San Antonio. I'm glad I got to go -- and got to meet people in person that I wouldn't have gotten to meet otherwise. Of course, it's good to return home. And now it's back to the writing.

And Away We Go ...

2010-04-06T21:22:00.004-05:00

Heading off to Denver tomorrow for AWP. Never been. Don't know what to expect. Hope to meet in person people I've only met on line. And hope to meet all kinds of new people who've never heard my name. Mainly, I hope to talk writing. And listen to people read their writing. I probably won't do much writing, but inspiration is an invaluable thing. I hope to get me some of that while I'm there. Or, if not that, then I hope someone I've never before met buys me a drink. And lets me buy them one, too.

Conventional vs. Experimental -- SmackDown 2010

2010-04-01T12:05:00.002-05:00

I love a good literary/writing discussion. Yesterday at HTMLGiant, Roxane Gay got one going with her defense of conventional narrative and Christopher Higgs hit back with a conventional narrative/realism sucks post. And, of course, hundreds of brilliant comments came flooding in. I never have time to get into comment threads, but I’ll get into the conversation here in my own little space.

So, in short, Roxane says some experimental writing just flat-out confuses her and that she still likes good stories, plainly told. Christopher says conventional storytelling has little worth because it’s too controlling of the experience of reading/story-creation. He also claims there is no such thing as a good story or a bad one and that all attempts to communicate through language are futile in their own ways.

(at this point let’s just note that we are working with extremely loose definitions of “conventional” and “experimental” but that should in no way slow us down – cool?)

Here’s the thing: some experimental writing is written in clear, direct sentences (that link up in strange, often non-narrative ways) and some experimentalist writing reads like a string of nonsense. I many not always “get” the former kind in terms of its meaning, but at least it gives me something to work with and build around and, more often than not, I enjoy this kind of writing.

The nonsensical writing is, in my opinion, interesting only in an intellectual way. Or a music-as-language way where almost all the meaning is stripped from the words and we’re left with a kind of musical response – the story feels like something but isn’t about anything other than that feeling. Those kinds of stories are pleasant enough in tiny bursts but it’s hard for me to enjoy more than a few sentences worth before I tire and decide that putting on Tchaikovsky would be easier. (In my less-generous moments, I think that nonsensical writing and the famously unclothed emperor might have something in common.)

As for conventional narrative, I love a good story with a traditional beginning, middle and end – if there’s something new/unexpected about the story. I have a strong dislike for the type of story that is often pejoratively referred to as an MFA-type story (although my MFA program has actively pushed me away from writing such stories). These are the ones where there is a mostly internal conflict, symbolism in every gesture, low-gradient rising action and a climax/conclusion that ends on a soft epiphany usually revealed through a beautiful, lingering image. And, most importantly, the style of these stories are interchangeable from one writer to the next. Voice is subservient to structure and rules of language. Ugh. I’ve written plenty of stories like that. And now I have a visceral repulsion to them (probably, in part, a self-hate thing for having written too many stories in that tired style).

If that’s conventional realism/narrative, leave me out of it.

But we all know Roxane isn’t defending cliché and mimicry. She is, I think, defending the idea that there’s still value in stories written in a manner that doesn’t require forehead-creasing consideration to comprehend (or that doesn’t require a belief in aforementioned magical clothing). I agree with Roxane on this. Plot has a purpose. Language that is not overly self-conscious has a place. There is room in the great world of literature for both the experimental and the traditional. Why wouldn’t there be? Why shouldn’t there be?

Final point: I reject the relativistic idea that there is no such thing as a bad story. That’s nice and pretty and progressive and all – but it’s wrong. We cannot give all things equal value just because we wish to place art on some higher plane. Judgment has its place. And arguing over what is good and isn’t good has its place, too. Saying such considerations are invalid is, in my opinion, a copout – not to the mention a strange aside in a discussion that seeks to rate the merits of experimentalism vs. conventionalism.

And that’s what I have to say about it.

And now to make it good ...

2010-03-29T13:15:00.002-05:00

Just finished the first draft of my first novel. 155,000 words. Each one requiring revision. Maybe not each. I suspect most of the characters names will stay the same.

Onwards.

Damn Fine Fiction from Ethel Rohan

2010-03-21T19:40:00.000-05:00

Some stories crackle under each sentence, the story emerging not so much in some linear ascension but in some exponential expansion until the whole of it overwhelms. That’s Ethel Rohan’s How to Kill currently over at the Hobart website.

Just take this line: “He pushed away his breakfast plate, the leftovers looking violated.”

Amazing. Read it.

Just a Thought ...

2010-03-12T19:20:00.003-06:00

If you were an editor of a journal and got a sub-par story from a well-known writer, would you publish it?

This is not a problem over at Splinter, btw. I just sometimes see "name" writers (whatever that means for that journal) publish just okay stories from familiar names. I wonder about the decision-making process. It's not like most journals are making money or are reaching outside the literary culture. I mean, I'd rather read a brilliant story by someone I've never heard of than read a familiar story from someone I recognize. So what's the incentive for accepting a known writer's just okay story? Did they solicit that story and feel obligated? Do they approach the story with the intent to accept when they approach other stories with less bias?

I just wonder.

On a side note, why do well-published authors often win Narrative contests? Do those writers really enter online journal contests with $20 entry fees? Or are the rumors true -- Narrative is part journal, part scam to direct money towards friends of the editors? I'm not saying that's the case, but it's hard to find another journal where the contest winners are so well published.

Feral Fiction

2010-02-16T22:41:00.000-06:00

Some stories are more than stories. They’re explorations of your mind. Or of the collective consciousness. In the new issue of The Collagist, Amber Sparks gives us a kind of all-in-one story about feral children. In fact, it’s called Feral Children: A Collective History.

It’s got a ton going on in a small space. Matt Bell and co. know how to find fantastic new fiction. What an amazing publication.

"Cast Out" Now at PANK

2010-02-15T12:01:00.003-06:00

The newest issue of PANK is now live and includes "Cast Out" -- a post-apocalyptic short story I wrote while considering ideas for a novel.

Can't say how excited I am to be in PANK. They consistently publish some of my favorite stories. And they manage the rarest of feats -- a consistent aesthetic that isn't beholden to a specific style or genre.

Hope you get a chance to read the whole February issue.

A Story I Keep Remembering...

2010-01-29T16:55:00.003-06:00

I didn't write about this story when I first read it. I think it's possible I hadn't yet started this blog. Or I was busy. But I want to mention:

Yearlight Savings Time by Kevin Griffith. Published in the August '09 issue of PANK.

This is fantastical fiction about Americans trying to relive a year exactly as it happened the year before in an attempt to stave off the end of the world. The story centers on one man, the narrator. His personal hopes and failures are perfectly interwoven into the story of a world struggling to relive the past in order to have a future.

It's fantastical fiction at its best because it makes you think AND feel. Given how many stories I read, I think it's a sign of this one's power that it keeps returning to me. So I wanted to mention it.

And encourage you to read it if you haven't.

Steve Almond on the Newer Generations of Writers

2010-01-22T07:42:00.002-06:00

If you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to Steve Almond give a talk, that’s a damn shame. But here’s a taste of Almond courtesy of The Splinter Generation (where I do some fiction editing).

He’s got great things to say. What caught my eye was something he said about younger writers:

The main thing I see in the writing is this strain of what I call “hysterical lyricism.” Certain younger writers are just so saturated by visual media that they feel like the only way that plain old words will hold someone’s attention is if they’re all really dramatic and urgent and sort of panicked. It’s like they’ve lost their faith in traditional storytelling. The result is a lot of confusing stories and novels. Needlessly confusing. It’s too bad, because people are always going to need stories to feel less alone. And we should recognize that.

Interesting comment about younger writers being over-saturated with other media. I think that’s very true. Everyone wants not just my attention but my heart and soul, too. They’re not happy with me simply buying their product. They want me to love it. To make it a part of my identity. I think addressing that over-saturation is probably going to be one of the key concerns of the newer generations of writers. But I also think Almond is right to lament needlessly confusing stories. The idea is to connect because we’re so disconnected. Confusing the reader just creates a greater disconnect.

Take a moment to read the rest of what Almond has to say.

Looking at Photographs of Sean

2010-01-12T20:32:00.000-06:00

In the new JMWW, Sean Lovelace has a wonderful story about possibly himself or possibly a character named Sean as described by a photographer who has been taking pictures of Sean for years. It’s called, ”Ten Notes on Photographing Sean” and is in the style of short story I call vignette fiction.

I’m fascinated by this form. It’s basically a deconstruction of narrative into pieces that are arranged not with a plot arch but with an emotional one instead. As a reader, we don’t follow a A to B to C narrative line but rather an A + Q + F line that equals something other than a resolution. It equals an understanding.

“Ten Notes” does this so well. There’s such a growing sense of frustration in the photographer narrator and such a sense of performance, of hiding that isn’t fully successful from the character Sean. The combination leaves me with a yearning. And I like being left with emotion. Particularly want.

Take a moment to read it and see what you think.

"Touch Me" Live at JMWW

2010-01-07T07:41:00.002-06:00

I love JMWW. Really great quarterly. And I'm so glad to have my story "Touch Me" in the current issue.

Very cool.

Remembering the Ohs

2009-12-31T00:03:00.001-06:00

I wanted to do a best list for the decade. You know, my picks for best movies and books and short stories and music and, I dunno, food trends. But I don’t really remember a lot of that – or at least I don’t remember it in any quantifiable way, in a way I can sort and post in a pithy list form.

So this is what I’m going to do. I’m posting my most memorable moments of the decade. Those personal moments that have stuck with me. Because, hell, it’s my blog. So, here we go:

I remember meeting my wife. A wine tasting. Too much wine but not so much as to dull. Not so much as to make that first kiss anything less than spinning, lost, thrown through time. I remember sitting on my stoop a week later and looking at her beside me and knowing I loved her. Knowing. Knowing, knowing.

I remember the births of both my children. The first long and fogged. Everything torn from me except love. The second like completion. Like fate.

I remember 9/11. I remember crouching in the bathroom at my office and crying because I could think of nothing else to do. I remember walking down 17th Street in DC that night and seeing all the bars full. I remember being able to talk about nothing else for weeks and singing the national anthem alone in my car.

I remember moving back to Texas. I remember my son, a toddler then, running circles in the empty living room and realizing this would be the first home he’ll ever know.

I remember poker. Which poker? I don’t remember. But I remember a lot of pocket aces and pocket seven twos off. I remember my heart beating my ribs as I waited on a stranger to call or fold. I remember the pride of a big stack. And the hollowness of a short one.

I remember a perfect double rainbow seen while in a traffic jam on I-95.

I remember my son reaching up and wiping a tear from my cheek as we laid my grandfather to rest.

I remember my dog falling through the ice in the middle of a lake and somehow living.

I remember a single bite of transcendent sushi from Bar Charlie.

I remember a lot more. New friends. Travels. All those kisses from my kids. All those walks. And all those nights spent awake into the wee hours as I tried to find that perfect word for that ultimately failed story. Hell, there is so much to remember. Just the other day I was joking with my wife that it’s a shame we didn’t do anything this decade. Really, I’m not sure we could’ve done more. Despite the troubles the world faced these past ten years, I’ll remember the ohs (the aughts?) for so many good things. So many personal things. Things that seem much more lasting than any movies or books or albums. As great as some of them were. As much as they deserve lists of their own.

20,000 Words

2009-12-28T19:04:00.002-06:00

That's the length of my novel as of today. My goal is to have the first draft complete by the end of April. This would be so much easier if I'd come up with a small idea. As it is, I'm negotiating the fate of an entire city. Good thing I'm still having fun writing the beast.

Do Not Hit Delete

2009-12-21T23:36:00.002-06:00

I used to write a lot of political commentary that appeared on various blogs of various acclaim. I did this for around four years before giving it up so I could focus more time on my fiction. But here’s the thing: if you looked at my opinions circa 2005 and then looked at my opinions circa 2009, you’d find a few inconsistencies. O.k., a lot of inconsistencies. That doesn’t bother me because those inconsistencies are really just a record of my political evolution. I like that I can trace my growth in knowledge and shifts in philosophy. So why do I sometimes feel different about my published fiction? Why do I occasionally want to delete the links to some of my older stories?

Here’s the truth: anytime anyone mentions they liked one of my stories and say they’re going to read all the stories I link to here, I get a palpitation. Seriously. What if they don’t like anything else I’ve written? What if they decide the first story of mine they read is the only worthwhile thing I’ve ever written?

But that’s stupid. And I know it. First of all, I’ve never submitted to a journal I don’t respect. So, if they published a story of mine (even five years ago), I gotta respect their decision. Sure, maybe I don’t write in that style that anymore. Maybe I think I write better now. Maybe a few of my stories now represent everything I’m trying to get away from in my fiction. Maybe, maybe, maybe. What’s the point of fretting? I wrote it. Someone I respect published it. Let it live as a record of my writerly evolution, right?

And that’s why every story I’ve ever published is linked to here. Because, after those palpitations recede, I really do want to keep that record.

Residency

2009-12-19T03:31:00.004-06:00

Spent the last week and a few out in L.A. for my fourth MFA residency at the Antioch L.A. low-res program. I gotta say, there was a time in my life that I thought MFAs were pointless. But that's hardly been the case. Flat out, this program has made me a far better writer. I don't even know how to measure it.

Thought I'd put that out there.

No Good, Very Bad ...

2009-12-01T12:00:00.004-06:00

I want to walk to the store to buy bread. And milk. But it's raining and cold. And in a couple of hours I have to go get a flu shot. Why do I feel like I'm in a children's picture book and should now threaten to go live in Australia?

A Fanboy Moment

2009-11-30T23:11:00.002-06:00

Is it wrong for a writer’s blog to post about football? And is it extra-special wrong if that posting has no merit outside of fanboy blathering? Should I not leave such fanboyishness to the sports bloggers?

I think not. And here’s why: In the last six months, I’ve winnowed. One by one, I’ve dropped the distractions in my life, pulling everything inwards so that my entire attention is focused exclusively on my family, my closest friends and my writing. Except I can’t slice off every extraneous bit. There has to be something dangling free. And that thing is the Dallas Cowboys.

Why is this important today? Because it’s minutes from December. And while the rest of the world gears up for the holidays and parties and too many sweets, I’m bracing for the dreaded December Slump. Like the first cold snap of the year. Like mall Santa’s with fake beards. You know it’s coming and there’s no good way to avoid it. The team is 8-3 now. A 9-7 finish is not unfathomable. In fact, I can easily fathom it. If only I knew how to prevent it. If only the team knew how to prevent it.

Here’s my strategy: don’t be Charlie Brown trying to kick the ball. I’ll get excited if we’re still playing come mid January. Until then, Lucy can just hold that ball. I’ll watch but I got better things to do than get worked up. Because, hey, nothing says you’re indifferent quite like a late-night blog post.

A Little Noise for "Quiet"

2009-11-20T08:56:00.001-06:00

What I love about reading online fiction is the variety you can find – particularly in the realm of flash (a form that is very suited to the Internet). That’s all just a prelude to the praise I want to throw David Erlewine’s way. Specifically for ”Quiet”, his new story in PANK.

The story is under 250 words and has the weight of a story ten times as long. David does this so well in his writing –condenses the essential flavor of a narrative so that nothing is missed despite the brevity. In “Quiet”, he gives us the entire story of a mother/son relationship. Impressive not just in its ambition but in its effect. Its impact. Its success in causing the reader to pull in a long breath and wait a good moment before being able to move on.

Considering Brian Evenson

2009-11-18T16:52:00.002-06:00

Confession: I’d never read a word of Brian Evenson’s until today.

I’d, of course, heard plenty about him. Most of the lit blogs I read speak of the man in breaths of pipapitating awe (yeah, I made that word up). I kept meaning to order one of his books. Still meaning too. But when I discovered via HTMLGiant that a story of his entitled “Windeye” was up at PEN America, I figured I’d better go see what all the pipapitation is about.

I was surprised. I have no idea if this one, brief story is representative of the Evenson style, but I really didn’t expect such clarity of prose and tightness of narrative. Frankly, I expected the story to be “difficult” – the kind of story that takes multiple reads to suss out an ounce of coherence. I don’t know why I expected this. Perhaps because there’s been a trend within certain quarters of the short fiction world (including the quarters where Evenson is praised) towards a kind of linguistical and structural experimentation that forgoes a strong narrative in favor of artistic impressionism. While I often find those kind of stories brilliant in their own right, I don’t often enjoy them as “stories” in any traditional sense.

I enjoyed “Windeye” as a story. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. And what did happen next repeatedly surprised me in the way a very good story can. But, what truly impressed me was how much depth Evenson manages to create in such a small, strange space. There’s a haunting quality to “Windeye” that is very rare in fiction this short. I could tell even after the first reading that the story was going to rattle around inside me and resurface in the months and years to come.

So, yeah, if this is what Evenson is all about, I get it now. No more procrastinating on reading more of his stuff. Orders will be placed very soon.

Not a Bad Monday ...

2009-11-16T09:25:00.004-06:00

Two new stories up today.

"Beautiful Beast" over at Monkeybicycle.

"What Ever Happened to Sue Ellen?" over at Staccato.

Very glad to be a part of these great publications. Many thanks to the editors.

Submission Realization

2009-11-15T20:22:00.001-06:00

Was reading submissions this weekend for Splinter Generation and came to a realization:

Man, this generation is lonely. Story after story about lonely people looking for connections. Is there a reason for that? Maybe every generation feels cut off. But I can't help but think there's so much more to be cut off from nowadays. Like, maybe loneliness increases the more you're aware of how many people you don't know. One of six point seven billion.

I'm going to go pour myself a drink and think about that for awhile.

The Limits of Everything

2009-11-03T20:55:00.002-06:00

And so, there is a novel.

It’s slipstream or cross-genre or whatever you want to call it when a story doesn’t exist in flat reality. No synopsis here because it’s in the early stages. Like a young relationship. All hope and sparkle eyes. No doubt the crafting of this will suck away my time for writing short stories. But that’s okay. It’s about the story, right? And I love this story. Like I said, a young relationship. Puppy love. Seriously, time to get a room.

Don Says...

2009-10-30T15:58:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago on the show Mad Men, creative director Don Draper told his protege:

"You've never done a thing for me that I can't live without."

Brutal. But it's been spinning through my mind ever since. Have I ever written anything the world can't live without? The answer is a clear no. Without intending to shit on my own talent, I just think writing something that the world can't live without is a goal few of us will ever achieve.

But it's now a thought I keep in the back of my head every time I sit down to write. Sure, I'll probably fail. But I think the writing will be better because of the trying.

Green-Haired Girl

2009-10-28T22:36:00.002-05:00

Now live here at Storyglossia.

Very excited about this one. The issue is themed around musical obsession. Can't wait to make my way through the stories.

Strange Rejections

2009-10-28T17:48:00.002-05:00

"Unfortunately we need to pass on it at the moment."

At the moment? So, maybe later, then?

Seriously, all a rejection needs to say is: "The piece isn't right for us." That's it. Move on. Most of us out here are capable of handling a hard landing.

Words

2009-10-23T12:42:00.002-05:00

Those I love:

plank, swollen, churn, sea

Those I hate:

apartment, magic, butt, chortle

Just saying...

Stories that Sweat

2009-10-21T09:58:00.000-05:00

I don’t write a lot of fiction that you’d classify as disturbing in a gut-swirling way. Maybe that’s why I have such admiration for those who can pull off a good skin-crawling story.

In the newest issue of Kill Author, Mel Bosworth manages to both shock and hit you in deep in the chest with Turn.

It’s the kind of story you can feel pushing against you. Sweating on you. Leaving you sticky. (And I mean that as a good thing).

What's In a Submission?

2009-10-21T07:44:00.000-05:00

Over at HTMLGiant, Blake Butler wants to know if writers would submit to a journal called: joesdickshed.blogspot.com. While many of the people commenting are just having fun with the idea, I think Blake is touching on a really interesting question: why do we choose to submit where we do? What factors do we consider?

I don’t use a very complicated formula. It’s pretty much: 1) do I like what the journal is publishing? 2) do I have a story that fits their aesthetic? 3) will the journal give the story good exposure (a good number of good readers and a good chance the publication will still be around a week after my story appears)?

So, sure, I’d submit to joesdickshed.blogspot.com if they met those criteria. But, um, you first Blake.

The Invasion of the Realists!!

2009-10-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

Via Matt Bell, I came across this article from Context that claims neorealism has a stranglehold on major American literary journals and that experimentation, while often given lip-service, is fundamentally discouraged.

The author, Daniel Green, does note that things might be better on the web, so I won’t call him to task for missing such places of invention like Diagram or 5_trope or many of the other online journals publishing stories with voices a good deal outside traditional realism. I’ll even give him a pass for overlooking Unsaid and Monkeybicycle et. al. because his focus is so specifically on journals like Ploughshares and Gettysburg Review and others known for having stories regularly selected in the prominent yearly anthologies.

Given Green’s narrow focus, the question isn’t whether or not he’s right (he is right that those journals prefer realism and anthologies/awards like Pushcart fill their pages with predominantly traditional stories – although not always). The real question is: does it matter? While journals such as Paris Review may help a writer land an agent, how influential and representative are they really? Most successful writers I know don’t pick their style based on what’s winning awards. They come to their style based on their own peculiarities. And that style is often hard to categorize with easy labels like realism or experimentalism.

If realist-leaning prose is popular with many journal editors, I suppose that’s because realist writers have something vital to say about our current world. And if less realist writing is bubbling up from the Internet and newer journals, maybe that’s because, in our incredibly confusing world, those styles have something vital to say too.

I know I’m being all accepting here. But, generally, I reject the assumption that literature is stagnant if it’s not being wildly inventive. A good story is a good story. Maybe I’m missing the point. But despite the fact that none of us can make a living writing short fiction, it seems to me there are more venues available for publication than ever before. That should mean more opportunity for all kinds of fiction to find its audience.

Transcript of Thomas Custard Carl ...

2009-10-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

... is available to be read right here at Storyscape. It's issue number four of this really cool journal. I'm making my way through the stories and feel very lucky to have something of mine surrounded by such great writing.

Check it out.

Feeling Dirty

2009-10-12T17:15:00.000-05:00

So, Vestal Review has put up their first group of Dirty Dozen stories, and one of three selected pieces in my piece "Dominatrix" (can you call a twelve word story a "piece"? More like a ditty. A word bauble?).

This is a fun feature. I'm already looking forward to what they select next month.

Schrodinger's Submission

2009-10-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

That would be the scientific phenomenon of seeing an editor's name or journal's name in your inbox with the subject "Re: Submission" or some such. Until you click on the email, your story could either be accepted or published, a dead cat or a live one.

And speaking of dual-states of existence, isn't it odd how you can absolutely love a story, then it gets rejected by a journal you admire and suddenly the story reads like the half-ass work of a two-bit hack (which I guess makes it a one-bit story). I think that phenomenon needs a name too. The Law of Quality Deceleration or something.

Fever Dreams

2009-10-06T13:37:00.000-05:00

While sick, I went to sleep trying to think of the perfect story. I spent the whole night dreaming in colors, each thought a string of blue or red or green or orange flying away from me and then yarning up all around, out of my reach and yet somehow scraping against my head, pressing me inwards so that even more colored string burst out until I could see only shapes -- but not shapes like we're taught. Nothing measurable. Formless forms. A geometrical freakshow of thought baked at 103.

Force Me Down

2009-10-01T16:58:00.000-05:00

A moment of complete honesty. I read a lot of online fiction (that’s not the revealing part). I’d say I stop reading 75-85% of the stories and never come back to them (sad but true). It’s not that they’re poorly written or that I’m such a busy, busy man that I can’t be bothered to keep reading. It’s just that – I get bored rather easily.

And then I think – shit, how many people never make it to the end of my stories? And that makes me think – shit, better write better. Sometimes, I actually do. Or think I do. And then I stumble across a story that forces me to read it in full in one sitting. Holds me down and forces. And I think – yeah, that’s how it’s done.

Roxane Gay has one of those stories up at JMWW. "His Name Is". Love it. And not just because it takes place in Las Vegas and I’m a sucker for Vegas. It’s got force. And it’s got lines like: “He scurries away, his short legs trying to keep pace with his optimism.”

Nice.

What's in a Translation?

2009-09-30T19:42:00.000-05:00

Here’s a thought a writer friend and I had today when we both agreed we preferred Chekhov’s short stories to Joyce’s. Does Chekhov benefit from having modern translations while we still read Joyce in the original? Would Dubliners be more engaging if a translator whisked away the cobwebs?

Hard to know. But we agreed that antiquated language is not a sure-kill. After all, that Shakespeare guy is still pretty engaging. You know, if you like love, murder and betrayal.

King Lear, man. That’s all I’m saying.

I Just Realized ...

2009-09-25T11:33:00.000-05:00

We'll soon know what to call this decade. We're what? Three months away from the VH1 premiere of I Love The ____.

I hope we end up calling it The Ohs. I just can't see myself saying "aughts" like some Dust Bowl era sharecropper remembering the good ole' days.

Deep Sea Reading

2009-09-23T11:17:00.000-05:00

Came across Squid Quarterly today. Their first issue was this summer and it’s great. All short shorts and prose poetry ranging from the more experimental to the more traditional. Lots of very lush writing. I particularly liked Michelle Nichols The Lament of the Fire Baton Twirler. But I read the whole journal in one sitting and am already looking forward to their next installment.

Check it out.