I'm Back

Where did I go? Nowhere, I just wasn't blogging. I got tired of saying, "What I'm really going to write this week is this" and then not doing it and having to say so the next week. I think I will just blog as the mood strikes or if I have something to say.


Last night I went to Denison University, my alma mater, for a reading by a novelist and a poet. I graduated five and a half years ago, and I thought being on campus again and seeing all the students would make me sad and yearn for those days. But instead, I just felt grateful that I wasn't a student, feeling anxious about my writing career and worried about what the heck I would do after college. The only thing I really miss about college is the open schedule, but getting paid decently to sit in an office for eight hours a day isn't so bad.

Anyway, the readers last night were Nancy Zafris and Jill Bialosky. I had never heard of them before, but I'd always enjoyed the readers Denison brought in while I was there. Nancy read from her work in progress, a novel about a car crash that divides a small town in Ohio, and I really liked her prose. She had some wonderful sentences which made me smile, and I liked the flow of the book and could easily picture the events as I sat there and listened. Then Jill read several poems, most of them out of her new collection, Intruder. I have to admit I've never been much into poetry--I guess I don't get it, but her poems had a narrative feel, and two of them I really loved. I think if I knew more about poetry, I would've appreciated more of her work.

One thing, though, that I've noticed every time I've heard a poetry reading, is the poet reads in this kind of monotone, but every few words the inflection goes up just slightly, not as much as you'd have when asking a question, but I guess just enough to let the listener know the poem isn't over. Most poets seem to do this, so I guess that's how it's supposed to be read, but to me it sounds distracting, and I start to lose the moment. I just wish they would read them more as a story, if possible, and just follow their punctuation. But then again, I'm no poet.

After the reading I bought Nancy's The Metal Shredders and Lucky Strike. The Metal Shredders was out-of-print, but they had new, hardback copies for $5! And I'd read good reviews about Lucky Strike before the reading. She signed both books. I didn't tell her I was a writer because I figured most of the students attending were in the creative writing program, and she'd just be like, "Oh."

I'm glad I went and discovered a new author, but mostly I was happy to not feel the anxiety and panic I used to feel around visiting writers. I know what it is to have a full-time job and write. I know that I'm not dead because I haven't published anything yet. And best of all, I know I've found a wonderful writing community online, and my reading and writing life didn't end when I left the classroom.

Work-in-Progress Wednesday

Wednesday! Which means it's almost Thursday. Which makes me happy because I get to work from home on Thursdays.

I didn't write last week. But I finished reading that screenplay for the guy in my writing group, and I was so impressed with his revisions! I wonder if he will send it off now. He wrote a horror script a few years ago that was excellent. This one I finished was more of a mystery/thriller. Anyway, he's really talented, and I hope to see one of his movies someday.

I also sent another short story to Lady Glamis, and Davin read it, too, and they both liked it! That made me feel good, and I'm going to find some lit mags to send it to. I sent it to Glimmer Train a few summers ago but didn't make it. That's okay, though, because I read a Glimmer Train story about a year ago and it was amazing. I should subscribe to that magazine. Do any of you subscribe to literary magazines? I had a subscription to Tin House one year. I guess they always seem so expensive, but then again, you get a lot of stories to read. But, I have a hard time choosing which one to subscribe to. Maybe I could do a different magazine each year.

Anyway, but all this sharing of short stories made me want to write short stories again, so I'm going to! The Literary Lab is talking about shorts this week, and I'm inspired. Davin told me he's taught writing classes before, and one exercise is to have the class write 10 short stories in less than a week. I'm going to do that. Starting tonight! Next week I will tell you how that went.

Also this week I finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower which is a coming-of-age novel published in 1999 about a high school freshman. The novel is written as letters to an unknown person (though the person is obviously just the reader). I liked the book pretty well. It was a quick read, and Charlie, the main character, had some sweet and interesting moments. He was a very sensitive kid, and I was curious the whole time to see what his deal was. I finally found out in the last few pages, and I was let down. I just didn't think what happened explained enough, and I felt a bit cheated. And the ending was too nicely wrapped up, for me. It reminded me of why I didn't like Catcher in the Rye when I read it in high school, which Wallflower referenced a few times. I do like coming-of-age stories--an amazing one is Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way--but I guess I don't like when the narrator is like, "Okay, that's all I'm going to tell you. See ya." I do recommend the book because it really was fine up until the end, and the ending might not be a problem for anyone else. My friend who also read it loved it.

And finally, this week I've been dealing with a horrible case of poison ivy. It's the 4th time I've had it this summer, and I realized it's from my cat who keeps going off in the woods. I'm never petting her again! At least not till winter. Here are some gross pictures of my left and right hands, which I have been aiming the blow dryer at every few hours, "scratching" it. It hurts so good.

Blog Chain: Who Makes These Rules, Anyway?

Oh, writing rules. The blogosphere is full of them. I've been writing and studying writing for years, but I've only been reading blogs about it for several months, and I'm often shocked by all the posts about rules. It's overwhelming, and I think most of these posts are counterproductive. Which I guess makes me a bit hypocritical for writing such a post of my own, but, it's blog chain time.

Kate has me thinking about rules with her question:

What writing rules/advice - whether it was a matter of cannot or will not - have you broken?

Check out Sarah's post before mine and B.J. after me.

The two writing "rules" I most often read about are Write, Write, Write and Read, Read, Read. While I do spend my time writing and reading, I don't think I'm doing them as much as I should be, so that is a rule I'm breaking, though not so much in a willful way. It's more an issue of time management and lack of confidence than a crossing my arms over my chest and saying, "Not gonna' do it!" But, I do believe that the more writing and reading a writer does, the better that writer will be.

As for writing advice I won't follow, most of it has to do with marketing and social networking. Maybe I'm digging myself a hole by saying this, but I think social networking and marketing on blogs and twitter etc. is a lot of hype. I now know dozens of writers with agents and book deals, and I know what their books are about, but that doesn't make me want to buy them. I will buy or read a book that's interesting to me, but I'm not going to pick something up just because I heard about it a lot. Sometimes, the more I hear about something, the less interested I become. It's oversaturation. It's like how stores began displaying their Halloween merchandise in August. I love Halloween, but I've already seen so much of it, and by the time the end of October is here, I'm going to be sick of it.

I'm not saying having a blog and writing about your book is a bad thing. Obviously, I do the same thing every week. I'll be reviewing my wip's progress after this post. I like having my writing blog because it keeps me accountable with my projects, and I have met some awesome people and found truly inspiring blogs through this process. But I don't consider this blog a very effective marketing tool. I'm on facebook, but it's for fun, not for networking. And I've tried Twitter, and I don't like it. For me, it's a waste of time. I already said I have time management issues, so I don't need more noise keeping me from writing and reading.

So, just like agents are inundated with query letters, I'm inundated with the rules of writing and publishing blogs. Agents filter out the stories that don't speak to them, and I'm filtering out the rules that don't feel true to me. I don't blog to build a platform, and I'm not concerned about "hooking" my reader on the first page, and I don't really care what the market's doing or what the next breakout novel is. I just care about me, haha! There is not a lot of time in the day, so if I'm ever going to write amazing stories, I need to be writing them and not reading about how to write them.

And I must stop talking now so you can write, too.

Work-in-Progress Wednesday

Another Wednesday, another blog post. Because, yeah, I'm light on the posting.


Last week I didn't crack open Outlaw Song, but I revised my short story a bit, and then I sent it to Lady Glamis, and she was kind enough to say it had potential. She said other nice things, too, and constructive things. It was pretty much a second draft that I sent, so I knew it had a lot wrong with it. But I was thinking about what she said about potential, and how you can have all the potential in the world, but it does you no good if you're not using it. So, what I'm saying is, I need to write more. Which is always what I'm saying.

Also I've been critiquing another script by someone else in my writing group, and it's very, very good, and I've seen a few versions of it, but he has vastly improved it since last I read it, and it's very exciting for me to read and see his progress. I guess that shows, too, that if you keep working on something, eventually it gets better, and then it gets done.

Speaking of done, I finished reading Revolutionary Road a few weeks ago. I liked the book, but I didn't like the characters, except maybe for John, the crazy son of the neighbors. I couldn't decide if Richard Yates was rooting for his character Frank or if he thought he was a terrible person, and he just wanted to write about a terrible husband and father and a terrible wife and mother. I thought it was a pretty easy read and certainly a commentary on the late 50s in suburbia. I saw the movie, too, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. I felt like the book was about Frank, and the movie was about April. So, that was interesting. If you like to read books about people screaming at each other and talking with a lot of, you know, emphasis, I recommend it. I don't recommend the movie, though. But usually when I read the book first, that's the case.

And that's it!