Lit TV: "You Have to Forget Yourself"

This craft talk by Peter Straub, offered by The Center for Fiction, starts off jokey but ends up quite serious indeed. He opens with rules and tricks, like starting a sentence with "and" or "but" is like "a rimshot" (and not in a good way), but by part three, admits to slogging with the process like anyone else. There aren't really any tricks. With regard to revision: "What really works for me is always related to something I'd written earlier, and the best advice I give myself in such times is to really go back and look at what I did on page four, look at what I did in chapter three--because there's a reason those things happen. They seem random, and at the time when you write them they may be random, but as you go on, they're determinative. They color everything that happens afterward, and they must be remembered."

He reminds that it's not about you, it's about the thing you are making. With respect to killing his favorite parts: "You have to forget yourself." I think I need to hang that sentence over my monitor.

FREEDOM's Just Another Word for Me Missing My Train Stop

This blogger thinks Jonathan Franzen's FREEDOM lives up to the hype, and earned its sprawling proportions. (Love a spread-out book about, among other things, the harmful nature of spreading out.) Family conflict runs deep, and it takes a lot of pages. Just ask those Russian novelists the character Patty keeps reading. Meticulous plotting, with many, many ends he manages to tie up. Characters you love but might not want to live with--the best kind!

If you enjoyed it as much as me, you might get a kick out of this podcast from Slate's DoubleX Gabfest, in which they hash out all the major characters and themes (including spoilers, so read it first for sure). Is it a masterpiece? Do we care? What will we do until the next Franzen opus?

Also, if you're a fan, prepare to be a little freaked by this 1996 Charlie Rose roundtable in which Franzen has a mild debate with (RIP) David Foster Wallace. They are discussing the death of the novel. Turns out we humans are far more mortal than the stories we tell.

And on a lighter note, Franzen is among the advice-giving writers in this old Guardian article, "The Ten Rules for Writing Fiction." His #10, which reminds me of his characters: "You have to love before you can be relentless."

Lit TV: Abani on Horror, Humanity, and Superhero Comix.

"You can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror, but the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you."



This one grabs me in the gut every time I watch it. Thought I'd share.

Lit TV: Getting to Know Litmags

Youtube, Vimeo, and the like are loaded with live reading videos, which can be a fun way to get to know literary magazines. This video, sponsored by CLMP and NY Public Library, features members of the editorial staff of several magazines. They make macro comments about each magazine, talk about publication schedule, philosophy, and history, before reading excerpts.

Taking Care of the Writer

With so many folks around me learning to cope with serious illness, grief, and transitions, it's absurd for me to obsess on my recent batch of routine literary disappointments. The skinny SASE's and almost-theres are nothing new to me, and I have plenty of practice handling them.

One disappointment has nothing to do with literary merit. The class I was planning on taking this summer has been canceled. I heard from Captain Fiction himself that he has chosen to take care of his own health instead. Six-hour lectures are no joke for anyone at any age. He clearly made the right choice, one that I hope might lead him back to the writing desk. (It's selfish of me, but I would not mind reading another single-paragraph Lishkowitz novel.) Maybe I can learn, if not from his yelling voice in class, from his example of self-care. (Dumb, therapyish choice of words, for which he would probably yell at me, but yeah. I said it.) He is "refusing the gas pipe," to use his own words. Refusing suicide-by-teaching.

I find myself running all those choice sentences through my head, the ones I have been composing carefully and hoping to test out on him, the man with the magic ear. Then it dawns on me: this is just the usual schoolgirl crap. Hoping to please teacher. Hoping to please editor. Please, notice me! Notice me! When will I just stop already?

The teacher I need to please is me. The editor I need to please is me. The ear I need to tune up is mine. Self-care is how adults cope with routine difficulty and disappointment.

And with that in mind, I went back to another teacher, one I have never met. Natalie Goldberg's books helped me access some rich subject matter back when I was first exploring fiction-writing. I discovered they are available on audio download, for a reasonable price, read by the author, with remarks thrown in, the 50-year-old Natalie commenting on the 36-year-old Natalie. She has evolved, but also cares for the person she used to be. It's a self study that is full of the right kind of humility. In her Long Island accent, she "nags" (her word) me gently to "get to work."

Teachers come in all forms--some gentle, some not--some in person, some far removed by geography or time. So, for the moment, I'm back on track. Writing. Back in the practice, as she says.

I feel impotent in the face of the frailties of body and spirit I have been hearing about in the past few weeks. I think we all do. For all of you I know who are heartbroken or grieving or in pain or facing giant challenges right now, I think about you every day, and wish you peace of mind, energy, and courage.

Lit TV. Gaitskill Talks About Reading

If you haven't discovered the Center for Fiction channel at Youtube yet, discover it. They have full videos of their fantastic events, in parts. In this one, for example, Mary Gaitskill talks about the writer's arm. It's very physical, to her, writing, and reading is a sharing of the physical between writer and reader. I love this point of view.

Dogs With Hands--ALWAYS FUNNY.

Right up there with hairy men in tutus.

Some Old Drawings.

This embedded slideshow thing is new for me. Fun!

The drawings are 52 illustrations for a long poem I did in 1994, entitled Stories Inside a Crawling Skin. I published it at home in an edition of 52 (or was it 50)? signed copies. I'm proud of both the drawings and the poems, even though my work has evolved a bit since then. What I miss is the artmaking energy I had. I still have the research and inquiry and obsession thing pretty strongly, but I don't stay up all night drawing any more. I sleep instead! Gave up drawing for dreaming.

Running Around in Circles

In a good way! Check out Baby Gracie, all grown up. She has her own friends, even.

Medieval Guild System? Maybe.

I just love Anis Shivani's essay in the Fall 2010 issue of Boulevard, "The MFA/Creative Writing System is a Closed, Undemocratic, Medieval Guild System that Represses Good Writing." I don't entirely agree with it, but I do love the argument. What are your thoughts? "Well-told myths of internal solidarity and well-timed rituals to enhance fellow-feeling"--well, that sounds about right. Programs each have their "house style." He goes after all the big institutions: the schools, the artist colonies, the fellowships, the summer conferences, the magazines, even the annual "bacchanal" of the AWP gathering, with an almost gleeful hammer. Masters, journeymen, and the rest of us schlubs trying to get in.

The only thing missing from his argument is joy. Yes! The kind of joy that doesn't come from a dark outlook. Maybe this fellow-feeling isn't all that false. Just one girl's opinion.

As for the assertion of written output getting more "conservative," this is something many of us agree on, including the MFA-ers themselves. Part of the challenge of entering the guild is knowing which kool-aid to drink, not losing sight of the world outside the guild.

Anyway, I highly recommend this entertaining essay. Inflammatory in all the right places.

Hempel's Dog Notices Stuff Too

What's not to love about Amy Hempel and her yellow lab? And that wonderful story, "The Harvest?"



"How you solve being alive...what do you have that you can draw on?"

Live at r.kv.r.y

Check out the April 2011 issue of r.kv.r.y, and not just because I'm in it! I love the theme of this journal: recovery in all its forms. Emotional, physical, even environmental. Also, the editor, Mary Akers, interviewed me here, on the r.kv.r.y blog. Topics include knitting, transitioning from visual art to written art, and the use of sensory detail in fiction.

(Yes, I'm alive!) Ann Beattie on craft.

Sorry for my long blogosphere absence. I decided today I miss it.

So I'll go right to my go-to: podcasts. I am still addicted.

Check out this Michael Silverblatt interview with Ann Beattie. They talk about the process of getting into the New Yorker (she went through the slushpile), the temptation to "hide behind technique," how "bringing the strands together" feels concocted in a short story, and how she aims to undercut lyricism. The key is the "surprise after the surprise." Beattie did not take any fiction workshops, but did learn a ton from sitting beside editor Roger Angell.

Writing Class Time Machine

Ever wish you could take a workshop with Faulkner? Check out this free resource. Listen in on a writing class from 1957.

Without the Mosquitos

This year Bread Loaf posted some of its readings very quickly on podcast. Free and no mosquito bites! Jim Shepard's fiction reading is worth a listen. Click here to go to iTunes U, then click on Summer 2010: Lectures & Readings to get to the content.

Life Before Language--and After, and During

What emotions does a human being feel on the discovery that things have names? How did Shakespeare come up with new words and expressions (madcap? eyesore? dead as a doornail?) that feel like they always existed? Is language required to think about thinking? How do humans develop language in a vacuum of language? Why do I always cry when I listen to Radiolab?

Tune in and join the sobfest...

Judging a Book by the Evolution of Its Cover

I found this article and slideshow from WSJ interesting, about the evolution of a book cover for a bestseller. I see this book everywhere I look now. Wild to think it almost didn't look like that. I haven't read the book, so I won't comment on its guts. But the final version of the cover is my favorite. Also the one that was "too Scandinavian."

A Memoir is Not a Shoutout

Catching up on my podcasts. I don't write much memoir, but I enjoy a peek under the hood, since fiction is not all that different. I like what Stephen Elliott (no relation, but I like how he spells his name) has to say, and the plain way he says it, on the Pen on Fire podcast. Free writing lesson! He talks about not-knowing, which we writers love to talk about, and editing characters out for the sake of narrative, since a memoir is "not a shoutout." Enjoy and be inspired.

OK, I'll Go There

I'm not a cuteness blog, but this can't be stopped.

Two younguns have joined our household recently. Above is Grace, who is now about 11 weeks old. The vet guesses she'll grow to 50 pounds or so.

And the sleeping view:



We've never had a puppy this age before, and it's an education.

And below is her brother, Antonio, who we adopted last fall. He's about a year old now.

Guy from Star Trek Writes Stories?

...says the guy with the lapdog. Oh, and women can sort of write too. But who can read? Enjoy Gary Shteyngart's new book trailer: