Title TK

Emotionally Right/Wrong

2012-01-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

You can plan out a novel or short story as much as you want. Some people use elaborate outlines, plot character arcs and development, devise color-coded index cards to document chapters and scenes, etc. (And for the record: I don't do any of those things. I know where I'm going generally, and I'll list out things I want to happen or cover, but I tend to discover as I go, for better or for worse.)

But sometimes it happens: you reach a point in your novel or short story where you thought something was going to occur, but when you finally arrive at that point, you realize it's not the right thing for the story. What it comes down to is this: it doesn't feel right emotionally; it feels wrong.

This happened to me recently. For a long time, I thought the reunion of two characters in my novel would happen at the very end of the book. But when I came to a certain point, I knew that it had to happen sooner. Emotionally, it felt right. I fought it for a while, but I came to the conclusion that I couldn't keep these characters apart any longer. Emotionally, it was time for them to meet again.

And it's happened before: In a previous novel, I envisioned an act of violence occurring in the closing pages. But after having written the novel, it just felt wrong and out of place (it was, primarily, a satire and comedic, and violence and satire/comedy don't always mix so well; emotionally, it felt wrong).

The point being, I guess, is that you can plan all you want but ultimately you have to be true to the story you're telling and what feels true/right for your characters.

The blog Of Random capitalization

2012-01-23T19:33:00.001-08:00

I think I've mentioned The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks a couple of times.

Yesterday I was at Burger King (yes, sadly) with my kids and I had an idea for something similar: The Blog of Random Capitalization.

This would be my first entry:

The Rat-Eye Dark

2012-01-21T09:03:00.001-08:00

There a few books that I'll randomly pick up and read a page or two of, then quickly move on. I'll do it for inspiration. Or because I'm in one of those restless reading moods.

Underworld, by Don DeLillo, is one such book.

I can read any page and immediately be transported into the novel's universe.

Here's one such passage that I read today (page 635), describing a blackout in New York City:

"The streets began to darken, drained of traffic and headlights, and an odd calm set in, edged with apprehension. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands trapped in subways or aloft in packed elevators waiting. The always seeping suspicion, paralysis, the thing implicit in the push-button city, that it will stop cold, leaving us helpless in the rat-eye dark, and then we begin to wonder, as I did, how the whole thing works anyway."

One of the things I love about DeLillo is those startling phrases and descriptions he packs into his sentences: "the rat-eye dark," "edged with apprehension," "the push-button city."

Freeway Lit

2012-01-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

The new year is underway. It has happened.

Not a lot to report. I'm working on my novel. Staying focused. Making progress.

Here's a passage I was working on today. It's from the point of view of one of the novel's minor characters, a physical therapist who lives in L.A. and does home visits and thus spends a lot of time stuck in traffic...

"By the time she’s back on the 605, she’s sitting and stewing in traffic, sucking it again (just part of the job when you’re an in-home physical therapist who lives in Los Angeles), and within minutes she knows she’ll be late for her next appointment, way over in Long Beach. It’s that time of day when she’s driving directly into the sun. Sucking it. Sunglasses help, but only a little; she still has to squint as she drives, the cars and trucks crawling along, eventually passing an accident, two cars, minor damage, the far left lane blocked, and so she has to merge, and because people are generally assholes no one lets her in until she practically hits another car. How much of her life spent like this, braking, stopping, starting, on Southern California concrete? All that time spent dream-thinking, life-reliving. Because what else can you do? If she had done X. Said Y. Ignored Z. Mostly she ticked through the list of men that had appeared in her life—ah, men and their inevitable disappointments!—starting with her father, and including both those with major roles and those with minor, walk-on parts, and somehow they all equally haunted her. Brake. Stop. Start. Traffic is traffic. Men are men. Because what else can you do?"

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

2011-12-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

2011 Recap

2011-12-29T15:47:00.000-08:00

My writing goal for 2011 was simple: finish this latest draft of my novel Believers.

Well, with two more days to go, it's safe to say I'm not going to make it.

I'm trying to not beat myself up about this. I'm trying to look at the positive.

This is the positive:

I've made a lot of progress on my novel in 2011, more than I have in the past 2-3 years. I feel engaged with the book, I feel like the changes I'm making have improved things immensely, and that I've been able to successfully integrate older material with newer material (I've been working on this book on and off for several years). This is probably the most challenging (and exhausting) thing I've ever done fiction-writing-wise, and it's possible that it's working out.

So yes, there's that.

There's also the fact that an excerpt from Believers was published in The Sun in July.

I was also lucky enough to be a featured writer at an event sponsored by the New Short Fiction Series and the Annenberg Foundation.

And I did a reading back in February.

And several short stories found a home.

Plus there was this nice interview.

Yes, the positive. That's what I'm focusing on.

My writing goal for 2012, then, will be the same as 2011: finish my novel. I've given myself three more months, even though it will probably be more like six.

And that's OK.

Because these things take time.

Revising, Rejections, Wilco

2011-12-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

Those are just a few of the topics covered in this interview with yours truly, part of Fictionaut's weekly Fictionaut Five series.

Archaeologists and Artists

2011-12-03T14:15:00.000-08:00

More random quotes from my six-year-old son Ethan...

"Why do women wear zucchinis to the beach?"

"I burped for ten hours."

"What the heck is a vagina?"

"You don't know what Justin Bieber is."

"Do you know what I'm going to be when I grow up? First I'm going to be an archaeologist and then I'm going to be an artist."

New Story "Precision" at BLIP

2011-12-02T14:21:00.000-08:00

You can check it out here.

This one was inspired by Grace Paley's amazing story "Wants" -- one of those stories that I go back to frequently.

40 Times

2011-11-29T19:05:00.000-08:00

That's how many times my story "Where You Live" was rejected before it was finally published earlier this month.

Usually I don't tally these things up, but I was curious, because this is an older story that I've been tinkering with and sending out for several years.

So yeah. Persistence pays off.

New Story "Where You Live" at the Good Men Project

2011-11-19T07:01:00.000-08:00

The Good Men Project has been publishing some great fiction, thanks to fiction editor Matt Salesses.

So I'm very happy that my short story "Where You Live" has found a home there.

Here's how it starts:

"It was the director himself who called. His voice, serious and low, sounded trained for such occasions, the delivering of bad news to loved ones and relatives. And this was what he told me: my mother—68 years old, known for her marble sponge cake and Zen-like bridge skills, a rabid fan of movie musicals—was missing. Missing. Though he didn’t use that word. Euphemisms were employed instead. 'Temporarily unaccounted for' was one, 'currently unsupervised' another."

You can continue reading "Where You Live" here.

Fessing Up

2011-11-15T16:22:00.000-08:00

Paris Review editor Lorin Stein recently fessed up about the famous books he’s never read.

OK, I’ll fess up too...

Books I've never read:

War and Peace

Paradise Lost

Robinson Crusoe

Winesburg, Ohio

Catch-22

Tristram Shandy

Books I've started but never finished:

Moby-Dick

Anna Karenina

Blood Meridian

Gravity’s Rainbow

Anyone else care to confess?

Coming Soon: Pank 6

2011-11-07T12:26:00.001-08:00

The next print issue of Pank is due in January (yes, 2012 is just around the corner), and you can preorder it right now.

The list of contributors includes, well, me, along with Lindsay Hunter, Sara Lippmann, Lincoln Michel, Frank Hinton, John Warner, and (wait for it) Sherman Alexie.

The cover also looks fantastic:

Pank's print issues are always a thing of beauty, both inside and outside, and I'm very happy the editors gave a nod to my story "Close."

Kathy Fish's Dream Writing Day

2011-11-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

Katrina Denza recently interviewed the amazing Kathy Fish.

Here's how Kathy describes her dream writing day:

"I always begin with notebook and pen. I don’t think I’ve ever started any writing at all on the computer. I need time to scribble. And it’s all over the page. If something feels like it might be good I circle it. After awhile something clicks and I know I’m ready for the keyboard. I’m very unstructured. I don’t give myself a time limit or word count goal. Coffee is always involved. I know the writing’s going well if the coffee gets cold.

"A typical writing day is spent messing around on the internet for longer than I ought to until I’m seized with guilt and shut it off. I stare out the window a lot. I take my dog for a walk. I pour another cup of coffee. Maybe after two hours I start to scribble in my notebook. I look out the window some more. My dream writing day is when I get past all of this and go into that beautiful trance, where I forget everything and look up, finally, two hours later and have before me something that feels real and right and pretty decent. A dream writing day is when it feels effortless."

Kathy's book "Wild Life" is a master class in the art of flash fiction. Highly, highly recommended.

Gift

2011-10-30T10:22:00.000-07:00

This is something from an in-progress essay/story I've been writing about my father. He died seven years ago today...

Dodger stadium. A night game, mid-week. Sometime in the late 70s—the golden age of Garvey, Cey, Russell, Lopes, Yeager, Baker, Smith. Sitting in the exile of the left field bleachers. Peanut shells piled below us. The hum of people and baseball and memory. The announcer’s voice was the voice of God. I was keeping score.

Over the years my father and I had attended hundreds of Dodger (and Angels) games, and never, not once, had we ever caught a foul ball. I stopped bringing my mitt to games; instead I bought the game programs and religiously tracked the balls and strikes, the double plays and ground outs.

But that particular summer night, deep into the game—say, the seventh or eighth inning—it happened. The bat cracked and the ball rose and made its slow-then-fast descent nearby, landing with a smack and bouncing madly two rows in front of us. There was immediate mayhem. My father leapt over some empty chairs and then dove head first toward the skittering ball. I’d never seen him move like that. He was probably fifty-four or fifty-five at this point. An old dad, just like me.

And now, thinking of this, many years later, after asking my oldest son if he wanted to go to a baseball game (he sighed and said no thanks), I can still see my father’s lanky frame stretched out, reaching for the ball, fending off the other dads and scrambling combatants, the look of satisfaction on his face once he had it, the ball, secure in his hands, walking triumphantly toward me, climbing back over the chairs (yellow? I remember them as being yellow) and sitting down next to me, placing the ball in my hand as if it were a prize bestowed to a prince, and I’m inspecting the scuffed leather, the rough feel of the red stitching, rubbing my fingers over the fresh blemish from the impact of the concrete, and also there’s the sweat on my father’s brow, his breathing slowing, sipping his beer as a reward, and again I look at and rub the magical object, over and over, slumped in my yellow chair, unaware of the passage of time, the game continuing, finally having what had been coveted for so long, this gift being given from father to son, son to father, and back again.

What's It About?

2011-10-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

Writing a novel involves (OK, big understatement coming up) many challenges.

Sure, there's the writing itself: wading your way through the dark, watery tunnel that is a long-ish piece of fiction. There's the doubt: wondering if you can do it, wondering if it all somehow ties together (probably not), wondering if you should just chuck this book and work on something else.

And, too, there's the myriad distractions from writing, some of which are important (the dishes need to be done, we just ran out of toilet paper) and some of which are not (Facebook, checking email; Facebook, checking email).

Then there's the non-writing stuff. Like answering the inevitable question about your novel: "What's it about?"

In general, I try to avoid the subject of my writing all together. When that tactic fails, I'm usually vague ("Oh, I'm scribbling away. Making progress. Slowly but surely.").

Sometimes, however, I get asked the question and I have to say something.

The next tactic is to then be flip: "It's about 438 pages."

And if that doesn't satisfy I start rambling: "It's about a family, there are multiple points of view, lots of characters, it takes place in Los Angeles, in 1999, the key thing about the family, though, is the daughter who..."

And I start to get down on myself. I should have my go-to elevator pitch description (you know, something like: It's a heart-warming story of a boy's coming of age in World War 2-era Kansas.). It should be brief. It should be compelling. But because my novel is 438 pages (the number goes up or down on a daily basis) it's hard to distill a coherent summation into a tiny, easily digestible sound bite.

Part of it, too, I know, is not wanting to talk about my novel until it's done. I'm superstitious that way.

So maybe, hopefully, when it's done, I'll have a little distance and be able to better summarize what my novel is about. I won't ramble on so much.

Hopefully. Maybe.

Literary Death Match, San Diego, Episode 3

2011-10-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday night, Literary Death Match, courtesy of Todd Zuniga/Opium Magazine and So Say We All, made its third San Diego appearance.

Congrats to the most excellent and radiant Heather Fowler, who emerged victorious. Well done, Heather.

The superb and stylish Jim Ruland was also a judge. It’s worth noting that at last year's LDM in SD, Jim resoundingly kicked my ass (and by that I mean we both read and he won the round, eventually going on to become the night’s winner).

It was great to see some familiar faces as well as meet some new writers (yes, I don't get out enough).

And I think I’ll have to stop saying there isn't much of a writing scene/community in San Diego. Because, actually, there is.

He Realized, Suddenly, That He Could Write a Novel

2011-10-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

From this weekend's New York Times Magazine profile of Haruki Murakami:

"His career as a writer began in classic Murakami style: out of nowhere, in the most ordinary possible setting, a mystical truth suddenly descended upon him and changed his life forever. Murakami, age 29, was sitting in the outfield at his local baseball stadium, drinking a beer, when a batter — an American transplant named Dave Hilton — hit a double. It was a normal-enough play, but as the ball flew through the air, an epiphany struck Murakami. He realized, suddenly, that he could write a novel. He had never felt a serious desire to do so before, but now it was overwhelming. And so he did: after the game, he went to a bookstore, bought a pen and some paper and over the next couple of months produced Hear the Wind Sing, a slim, elliptical tale of a nameless 21-year-old narrator, his friend called the Rat and a four-fingered woman. Nothing much happens, but the Murakami voice is there from the start: a strange broth of ennui and exoticism."

Note to Myself About the Novel Chapter I'm Currently Working On

2011-10-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

More energy. Ha!

More voice.

More happening in the moment.

Not so much exposition and essay-ish stuff.

Something happening now.

Something with neighbors?

Sounds?

Someone knocks?

The Emotional and Psychological Stuff That You Can't Shake Off

2011-10-17T12:51:00.001-07:00

The last paragraph of Jeffrey Eugenides' "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write 'The Marriage Plot'":

"That’s the intellectual background of The Marriage Plot. But you don’t write a novel from an idea, or at least I don’t. You write a novel out of the emotional and psychological stuff that you can’t shake off, or don’t want to. For me, this had to do with memories with being young, bookish, concupiscent, and confused. Safely in my 40s, married and a father, I could look back on the terrifying ecstasy of college love, and try to re-live it, at a safe distance. It was deep winter in Chicago when all this happened. Every day I looked out my office window at snow swirling over Lake Michigan. After separating the two books, I put one in a drawer and kept the other on my desk. I ran off with The Marriage Plot and didn’t look back. I changed completely, became a different person, a different writer; I started a new life with a new love, and all without ever leaving home."

(Looking forward to reading Eugenides' latest novel, which is currently on its way to my house.)

The Quotable DeLillo

2011-10-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

"It's tougher to be a young writer today than when I was a young writer. I don't think my first novel would have been published today as I submitted it. I don't think an editor would have read 50 pages of it. It was very overdone and shaggy, but two young editors saw something that seemed worth pursuing and eventually we all did some work on the book and it was published. I don't think publishers have that kind of tolerance these days, and I guess possibly as a result, more writers go to writing class now than then. I think first, fiction, and second, novels, are much more refined in terms of language, but they may tend to be too well behaved, almost in response to the narrower market."

Wall Street Journal interview, January 29, 2010

Will He Run?

2011-10-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

Henry's Story

2011-09-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

Henry: "Can I tell you a story, Daddy?"

Me: "Sure."

Henry: "Three little pigs."

(Pause.)

Me: "Is that the story?"

Henry: "Yes. The end."

Take a Wilco Break

2011-09-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

(Instrumental outtake from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.)

Losing Your Work

2011-08-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I did something stupid.

During the day, I’d worked on my novel for about two hours. Not a huge amount of work was done, but I made a fair amount of changes and revisions, which I felt halfway OK about.

Then, at night, tired and bleary-eyed from a long week and weekend, I accidently saved the file from my hard drive to my flash drive instead of the other way around.

So: all that work was gone. And it was especially frustrating because I hadn't worked on my novel for about a week, and so on the one day I do, I erased everything. Nice.

I posted something about this on Facebook, and someone responded he once lost two to three months of work due to a save mishap. He took the Zen approach and said it was a sign to start working on something else.

Losing two to three months of work would give me a seizure. I don't think I'd take the Zen approach. I've lost stuff before, but never that much. (Last night I stayed up late troubleshooting and trying to reconstruct my changes while everything was still fresh in mind.)

There are famous stories of writers losing work: Hemingway's first wife losing a suitcase that contained everything he'd written so far, Maxine Hong Kingston losing a manuscript in a fire, etc.

These kinds of things always make me wince, one of my greatest fears realized.

Any horror stories to share about lost work?

Scrolling Headlines and What They Us About Us

2011-08-16T20:42:00.001-07:00

Find out here (it's a new story of mine that's in A-Minor Magazine, and it's one of those he/she stories that I seem to be so fond of).

Growing into Novelhood

2011-08-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

"I was a semiconscious writer in the beginning. Just sat and wrote something, or read the newspaper, or went to the movies. Over time I began to understand, one, that I was lucky to be doing this work, and, two, that the only way I'd get better at it was to be more serious, to understand the rigors of novel-writing and to make it central to my life, not a variation on some related career choice, like sportswriting or playwriting. The novel is different. . . . We die indoors, and alone, and I don't mean to sound overdramatic but you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, all of this happened over time, until eventually discipline no longer seemed something outside me that urged the reluctant body into the room. At this point discipline is inseparable from what I do. It's not even definable as discipline. It has no name. I never think about it. But there's no trick of meditation or self-mastery that brought it about. I got older, that's all. I was not a born novelist (if anyone is). I had to grow into novelhood."

-- Don DeLillo in a 1995 letter to David Foster Wallace

The Mental Illness of Persistence

2011-08-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

From an article about New Yorker editor David Remnick (by Nicholson Baker):

"Remnick is modest about these writing successes, which he attributes chiefly to 'sitzfleisch' – the capacity to sit in a chair until the work is done. 'A lot of what I do is just the mental illness of persistence,' he told me."

I need to work on my sitzfleisch.

Pear Noir! Number Six

2011-08-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Today I received my contributor copies of the latest issue of Pear Noir!

It looks purty. Lots of good folks in this issue, including Amelia Gray, Jessica Anthony, Mark Strand, Ryan Ridge, Salvatore Pane and many others.

Also included is my story "Look," which begins like so:

"Neighbors kept calling, one after another, a steady stream of complaint. They wanted to know what her husband was doing lying down in the middle of the street. It was getting dark now and he was still out there, Dave, her husband, sprawled like a corpse or a drunk, oblivious."

The issue is sold out, but a second print run is imminent...

Don't Write What You Know

2011-08-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

That's advice from Bret Anthony Johnston in the Atlantic's annual fiction issue.

I guess this issue has been on my mind lately (see posts below).

Here's a quote from the Johnston's article:

"I don't know the origin of the 'write what you know' logic. A lot of folks attribute it to Hemingway, but what I find is his having said this: 'From all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive.' If this is the logic’s origin, then maybe what’s happened is akin to that old game called Telephone... A similar transmission problem undermines the logic of writing what you know and, ironically, Hemingway may have been arguing against it all along. The very act of committing an experience to the page is necessarily an act of reduction, and regardless of craft or skill, vision or voice, the result is a story beholden to and inevitably eclipsed by source material."

The novel I'm working on is not autobiographical. But the place where it's set is where I'm from. Sort of...

Autobiographical Fiction or Fictional Autobiography

2011-07-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

This relates to my post yesterday…

Here’s what Jeffrey Eugenides had to say about the whole fiction/autobiography conundrum in a recent New Yorker Q&A (he has a story called “Asleep in the Lord” in the summer fiction issue):

“I’m ashamed to say that ‘Asleep in the Lord’ is the most autobiographical thing I’ve ever written. Ashamed because I don’t especially prize autobiographical writing (why write fiction if you want to talk about yourself?) and also because it took me so long to figure out how to do it. The difficulty of writing autobiographical fiction, for me, at least, is that you feel compelled to be faithful to your memory, and so you end up putting in characters and scenes that you don’t need. Almost everything I’ve ever written, and especially “Middlesex,” is made up. Here, it was different. I began trying to write about these events at the time I was experiencing them, way back in 1982. I tried again many times over the years. The Talk of the Town piece, in 1997, represented another small attempt.

“I could never get it right, though. In trying to be true to my experience, I ended up replicating the inartfulness of real life rather than creating a narrative with its own coherence and patterning. Finally, after thirty years (!), I managed to get enough distance on the events to able to chuck out a lot of ‘what really happened’ and write the story. So, while ‘Asleep in the Lord’ remains autobiographical in nature, it’s no longer burdened by too great a fidelity to the actual.”

New Story at Metazen: "A Brief Survey"

2011-07-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

You can make the argument that all fiction is autobiographical -- that is, a fiction writer puts his or her own thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc., into the characters and situations he or she creates on the page.

But I've never considered myself an autobiographical writer. Sure, things pop up that can be traced to my life (character names, certain events), but I've always steered clear of basing my fiction on what has happened in my life. I'm more of a "I like to make stuff up" writer vs. a "write what you know" writer.

Anyways.

My story "A Brief Survey" (published by Metazen) is the most autobiographical story I've ever written. In fact, it might not even be called fiction.

The narrator is me; the scenes and emotions are straight from the past few years, during which it's seemed as if someone was sick or dying or being diagnosed with an illness every other month; and the part from the notebook is an almost verbatim of what I wrote right before and after my father died.

I'm not sure how it feels yet, to have something so "me" out in the world. But it seemed like a story that needed to be told. I only hope that I told it well...

New Look

2011-07-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

I spent some time last night tinkering with the look of this blog. Still not sure what I think.

I'm also thinking about switching over to WordPress (instead of using Blogger).

Updates/posts have been pretty minimal, I know.

I've been trying to stay focused on finishing my novel Believers. Sometimes that feels close, sometimes far away. Today it feels... somewhere in between.

My Head Is for Looking

2011-07-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

More random quotes from my six-year-old son Ethan...

"The mall is so cool. The mall is everything."

"Oh stop it you chicken tender."

"Your head is for banging nails. My head is for looking."

"Han Solo is a loser."

"What if my whole name was Ethan Commander Roe?"

"Don't put it on Facebook."

"I love Star Wars bigger than this house."

"You don't memorize. I memorize."

"Star Wars is freaking me out."

"Put it on Facebook."

"Accident" in The Sun

2011-07-05T07:35:00.001-07:00

My story "Accident" (which is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress Believers) is in this month's issue of The Sun.

You can read the first part of the story here.

I'm so honored and thrilled to have a story in The Sun. Still pinching myself. Pinch, pinch.

And tonight I'm headed up to L.A. for the New Short Fiction Series/Annenberg Foundation event featuring my story "My Status." A good day!

Preorder Pear Noir! #6

2011-06-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

You can do that here.

The issue features my story "Look," as well as work from Amelia Gray, Mark Strand, William Fitzsimmons, Jamie Iredell, Salvatore Pane and more.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

"My Daddy" by Ethan Roe

My dad is as handsome as me. He weighs 34 pounds and is 50 feet tall. Dad looks funny when he plays jokes on me. Every day I would like him to play with me. I wouldn’t trade my Daddy for my toys. He likes to play with me and his favorite food is granola bars. Dad likes to go to the park. He is really good at cooking. If Daddy had one wish he would wish for a toy Superman.

July 5 Event: Writings on Independence

2011-06-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

Here's some info about an event that will feature my short story "My Status."

Very excited about this. If you live in Southern California, it would be great to see you there!

Note: Despite the event's title and date, I will not be wearing a powdered wig.

And here's more info.

The Other Woman

2011-06-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

My story "The Other Woman" is part of the new issue of Wrong Tree Review.

The issue also includes work by Molly Gaudry, Brandi Wells, J. Bradley and many other fine folks.

Maybe I Want a Pep-Talk: David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo

2011-06-03T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've always been interested in the correspondence between David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo -- two of my all-time favorite writers.

The two wrote each other for years. From what I understand, there's a father-son/mentor-student-type component to the letters and their relationship.

Wallace and DeLillo's letters are now part of the Wallace archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. (DeLillo's archive is there as well.)

Max Ross recently paid a visit and wrote about it.

Ross focuses quite a bit on the Wallace-DeLillo letters:

"In editing his sentences, Wallace edited his thoughts; and in editing his thoughts, he edited himself. Nowhere is this struggle more transparent, and more devastating, than in his correspondence with Don DeLillo. There’s one letter in particular that seems to pit Wallace the Writer vs. Wallace the Compassionate Guy He Wants to Be. The Wallace that emerges from that particular fight is a devastatingly confused guy.

"Many of his letters to DeLillo were advice-seeking, favor-seeking, and comically respectful, full of apologies and thank-yous. There’s something childish – boyish – filial – in all Wallace’s letters to DeLillo, and in certain missives he wondered explicitly if he were looking for approval (10/10/95: “Maybe I want a pep-talk”). For today’s literary voyeurs, a big part of what gives the letters their intimacy is that both writers copyedit them, and so the pages are messy with handwritten insertions. Wallace and DeLillo weren’t afraid to show each other their mistakes, and there’s something powerful in that..."

There are two places in the world I'd really like to go to. One is Machu Picchu. The other is The Ransom Center.

Writing Advice from Max Perkins

2011-05-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

"Generalizations are no use -- give one specific thing and let the action say it...

"When you have people talking, you have a scene. You must interrupt with explanatory paragraphs but shorten them as much as you can. Dialogue is action...

"You tend to explain too much. You must explain, but your tendency is to distrust your own narrative and dialogue...

"You need only to intensify throughout what actually is there -- and I think you would naturally do this in revision, anyhow. It is largely a matter of compression, and not so much of that really...

"You can't know a book until you come to the end of it, and then all the rest must be modified to fit that..."

This advice came from Perkins' letter to Marcia Davenport, as quoted in A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, which I finished reading last night (overall I thought the book was a bit uneven, but it made for fascinating reading, especially the parts about Thomas Wolfe, who I knew next to nothing about).

Stuck

2011-05-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck.

I've been working on -- that is, wrestling with -- a chapter from my novel for far too long. Spinning, I guess you could say. I was away from the novel for a while, then I was sick for a couple of weeks, and now I'm having some trouble getting reacquainted with the book.

I keep going over the opening paragraph of this particular chapter. You'd think it would be perfect by now. It is not.

I'm also looking at other chapters I've written from this character's point of view (about 80 or so pages) and trying to determine what, if anything, is salvageable. (Is is all shit? Should it all go? Maybe. Maybe I'm wasting my time by sifting through old pages and drafts, when I should be forging ahead with completely new material. And yet, looking at the older material, there's some pretty decent stuff there. Also some pretty lousy stuff.)

This particular chapter comes about two-thirds of the way into part 1 of the novel. It's the last chapter to be finished for the current draft of part 1 that I'm working on. So maybe part of it is being afraid to finish this chapter, because next I need to make some major surgical revisions once this draft is finished. I know what needs to be fixed, which is good; but the task ahead also seems daunting.

On a more positive and less neurotic note:

A while back I mentioned that The Sun accepted an excerpt from this novel. I recently found out that the piece will be appearing in the July issue.

July. That's pretty soon.

A Good Symptom

2011-05-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

"Writing a novel is a very hard thing to do because it covers so long a space of time, and if you get discouraged it is not a bad sign, but a good one. If you think you are not doing it well, you are thinking the way real novelists do. I never knew one who did not feel greatly discouraged at times, and some get desperate, and I have always found that to be a good symptom."

--Max Perkins, from a letter to a novelist worrying about her work

He Was Water

2011-05-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Millions recently posted a write-up about David Foster Wallace's now-famous 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech, which was later published as This Is Water.

The article's author tracked down Kenyon students who actually graduated that day (May 21, 2005) and heard/witnessed the speech.

Here's what one of the Kenyon students had to say about DFW's speech:

"The one emotion I remember is intensity: he was clear, driving, and inwardly focused. He also didn’t say anything dismissively. Whether it was his technique or his real feeling I have no idea, but he read the speech like he was passing on a message of importance. Sitting here, I picture a guy at a radio in a bunker intercepting a message, then reading it off to someone else, wasting no time and enunciating every syllable."

And I didn't know the speech was on the YouTubes:

Listen to part 1

Listen to part 2

It's That Time of Year Again

2011-05-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, Wigleaf has announced its Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2010.

This year's list includes stories by Matt Bell, Aaron Burch, Roxane Gay, Len Kuntz, Sara Lippmann, Kyle Minor, Jim Ruland and many other fine writers.

My story "I Don't Want to Be Stevie Nicks," which appeared in Dark Sky Magazine, made the long list.

Congrats to all!

Alternate Titles for The Great Gatsby

2011-05-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires

Trimalchio in West Egg

Trimalchio

Gatsby

Gold-Hatted Gatsby

Fitzgerald's editor, Max Perkins, always liked The Great Gatsby. But Fitzgerald himself vacillated on the title right up until the book's publication.

(I'm reading A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. Hence the recent Fitzgerald posts.)

While My Ukulele Gently Weeps

2011-04-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

DFW/Balsa Wood/Wind

2011-04-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

David Foster Wallace to his editor re working on The Pale King: he said that working on the novel was "like wrestling sheets of balsa wood in a high wind." (Quoted in a recent TPK review in the New York Review of Books.)

I'm a little afraid to read Wallace's "unfinished" novel because, well, it's unfinished, and also because he apparently struggled with the novel's structure, and I'm currently struggling with the structure of my novel.

I will read it at some point. Just not now.

Max Perkins' Cable to F. Scott Fitzgerald Upon Reading "The Great Gatsby" for the First Time

2011-04-27T22:21:00.001-07:00

THINK NOVEL SPLENDID

Everything You See Is Real

2011-04-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

More random quotes from my five-year-old son Ethan (who won't be five much longer)...

"Everything you see is real. That's the science term."

"You can only joke on Chinese New Year."

"What the heck is a parsnip?"

"Daddy, every day your mind is going blank."

"Mommy, you're freaking me out."

"Mommy, I'm downloading these dinosaurs so I can bring them to life."

"I wish I lived in the mailbox."

"I'm going to make a toilet car when I grow up."

"The Leapster malfunctioned."

"What is Elvis talking about?"

"Christopher Columbus was the first person ever born."

"I told you guys Star Wars was real."

"I want to kill NPR."

If You Don't Try Very Hard

2011-04-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

"Early on, I was very scared about whether or not I was good enough. I’d been a writer for a very long time, but also, not really. The thing is, I had tried, but not very hard. Because if you don't try very hard, and you fail, you don't have to feel that badly about it. I think it's terrifying when you say, 'I'm really committed to this,' and you try your hardest and do your absolute best work. Then, if you fail, you don't have anything to hide behind."

That's Alexi Zentner from an interview at The Millions.

The line that really haunts/stings is this one:

"Because if you don't try very hard, and you fail, you don't have to feel that badly about it."

Alexi -- who I met yesterday at a reading in San Diego -- just published his first novel, Touch.

Faith and the Novelist

2011-03-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

"So it took me a while to work up the nerve to write a novel. You need an extraordinary amount of faith I think to write one. It’s almost a religious endeavor. But I tried to keep in mind what Doctorow says about writing a novel being like driving at night in the fog: you can only see as far as your headlights. Once I resigned myself to the fact that it might be a colossal failure and that was okay, at least I’d die trying – then I managed to write one."

Eric Puchner, from a Rumpus interview

Storybucket 2011

2011-03-30T16:02:00.001-07:00

This is a very nice list, put together by Erin Fitzgerald (thanks Erin).

It features many wonderful writers (Mel Bosworth, Roxane Gay, xTx, Kathy Fish, Ethel Rohan, Ravi Mangla and Linsday Hunter, to name a few).

Someone was kind enough to give a nod to my story "This Is What It's Like," which appeared in Blip a while back.

There are lots of great stories listed, but I highly, highly recommend xTx's "Standoff." It'll knock your socks off, guaranteed.

Believers

2011-03-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

I got some amazingly good news about my novel: The Sun will be publishing an excerpt. (No details on when yet.)

This is a much-needed shot in the arm. It's a book -- called Believers -- that I've been working on for a long time (I won't go into the details; perhaps another post), and the past year I've been wrestling (unsuccessfully) with the structure.

Right before I got The Sun acceptance, I finally had a breakthrough. I finally figured some shit out. And I've made more progress in the past few months than I have in the past few years. (Additionally, I've sworn off working on short stories and flash pieces.)

So there's that, which is nice.

And also, more recently, there's this: a very small excerpt from Believers is now up at Wigleaf. It's called "The One You Don't Pick."

Opening Sentence of DFW's The Pale King...

2011-03-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

... can be read here.

Jim Shepard

2011-03-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

"I think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination."

That's a Jim Shepard quote from a new Rumpus interview.

Jim Shepard is a great writer and a very nice man.

And he has a new collection of stories out, called You Think That's Bad.

Playing the Score

2011-03-17T06:30:00.000-07:00

"Kurt Vonnegut once described literature as the only art in which the audience plays the score, and if that's a bit of a throwaway, it's also astute. Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another being."

-- David Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading

A while back I saw Ulin (former editor and now book critic of the L.A. Times) interviewed in San Diego. He mentioned the Vonnegut quote.

I've thought about the important/vital role of the reader in literature, but the idea of the reader "playing the score" really struck me.

It's true. Books bring so much to us, but we (as readers) also bring so much to them.

Writing and Parenting

2011-03-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed this essay (posted on Glimmer Train's website) by Lisa Catherine Harper.

It's about being a writer and being a parent -- two things I struggle with every day.

Here' s a taste:

"Russell Banks has said that literature 'teaches us what it means to be human.' Parenting can do this, too. In the Venn diagram of my life and my art, the two occupations overlap consistently, sometimes productively. Both writing and parenting demand stamina and discipline. Both demand honesty. Both demand that I confront conflict. Both call on me to be generous to myself and others. Both demand a sense of purpose, which on some days is the only thing that keeps me from despair. Both routinely stage my failure. In order to write or parent well I must show up, every day. I must be fully engaged in finding meaning (and sometimes beauty) in what Gertrude Stein calls the eternal present."

Photo from VAMP Reading

2011-03-01T22:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a photo from last week's VAMP: Love Is for Suckers reading...

Morning

2011-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

I have a little tiny something (called "Morning") in the new issue of Bluestem Magazine.

You can also hear me read the story. If you're so inclined.

Edited by the amazing Roxane Gay, the issue also features work by Tawnysha Greene, Len Kuntz, Gary Moshimer, Robert Swartwood and many others.

I Used to Write Poetry

2011-02-17T20:25:00.000-08:00

...is how an essay of mine, recently republished by Thumbnail Magazine, begins.

It's about writing very short fiction, flash, whatever you want to call it.

The Ocean Is Exploding

2011-02-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

More random quotes from my five-year-old son Ethan:

"I'm the best rememberer in the world."

"The ocean is exploding and so is part of America."

"I'm the king of pizza."

"When I grow up I want to be the Pope."

"The key to me is privacy."

"You look like a toilet when you put your glasses on."

"Can you videotape me and put me online?"

"Too bad they don't have TVs in parks."

"Your skin is in charge of you. You're not allowed to do what you want. Your skin is."

"I am wiped out."

Love Is for Suckers

2011-02-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

I'm on the bill for an upcoming San Diego reading sponsored by So Say We All.

There's a theme to the evening. The theme is: Love is for suckers.

The date/time/place is: Thursday, February 24, 8:30 p.m., the Whistle Stop.

I'll be reading my story "The Riot and Rage That Love Brings," which is currently in search of a home.

More details here.

Captured

2011-02-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took the train from Oceanside (where I live) to downtown San Diego (where I attended an Edward Tufte seminar on presenting data and information).

For part of the trip the train skirts along the Pacific, and there are some stunning views of the ocean and the shore and the horizon.

At one point I looked out the window, took in everything (the water was calm, flat) and thought: "A blue blanket of ocean."

No great shakes language-wise, sure; but that's the phrase/description that immediately came to me. That's how my mind works. That's how I see the world. And that, in part, is why I write: this need to describe, document, elevate.

I wrote "a blue blanket of ocean" in my notebook. Maybe I'll use it later in a story/novel. Maybe not. But I'd captured something. As a writer, I'd done my job.

Just Kids

2011-01-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

Early in Just Kids, here's how Patti Smith describes a life-changing trip to an art museum:

"I'm certain, as we filed down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve-year-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not."

Upcoming Pub: Juked #8

2011-01-27T15:11:00.000-08:00

My story "Couple" is in the latest issue of Juked, which can now be preordered here.

More Conversations with a 5-Year-Old

2011-01-27T15:05:00.000-08:00

Ethan: "Daddy, look at this picture of an asteroid I found in this book."

Me: "Wow. It says there are millions of asteroids floating around the universe."

Ethan (very concerned): "But not here."

Me: "No, not here. Far, far away."

Ethan: "Yeah. Way far away. Like Texas. They have armadillos there too."

Tom Franklin on Being Stuck

2011-01-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

"Being stuck can also be a sign that you need to take some time off. Don’t fret about leaving a ms for a few days or weeks or even months. I have 3/4s of story that I started in 2000 that I take out and peck at every few weeks. At some point I’ll finish it, knock wood. But only lately have I realized what the ending should be. This is, what, 2011, and by my math that’s like 11 years. So don’t worry if you set something aside. Work on something else for a while."

More from Mr. Franklin here.

This Is What It's Like

2011-01-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

The new issue of Blip Magazine is now live, featuring my story "This Is What It's Like."

The issue was guest edited by Courtney Eldridge, and includes work by friends Alicia Gifford and Rae Bryant, as well (deep breath):

Delphine Blue, John McKernan, Kimberly Ford, David Laskowski, Erin Bealmear, Timothy Buckwalter, Karla Eoff, New Waves, W.F. Lantry, Mel Bosworth, Bill Yarrow, David Ryan, Kevin Spaide, James Russel, Greg Pierce, Douglas Silver, Chuck Stephens, William R. Gilliland, Erik Smetana, Shelagh Power-Chopra, Daniel Crocker, Jon Patrick, Rick Moody, Nick Ripatrazone, Michael Snediker, Sheree Rose and Matthew Levin.

Isak Dineson Quote:

2011-01-09T22:29:00.000-08:00

"I write a little every day, without hope and without despair."

Where Shall We Meet?

2011-01-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

I have a new story at Used Furniture Review.

UFR is a fairly new online journal, and editor David Cotrone has been publishing some great stuff, including work by Kim Chinquee, Julie Innis, Michelle Reale and Randall Brown,

I wrote "Where Shall We Meet?" for one of NPR's three-minute fiction contests. Alas, I didn't win, but I got a story out of it, and I'm happy this one found a home at UFR.

The Carver Bio

2011-01-03T14:26:00.000-08:00

It's January 3, 2011, and yesterday I finished reading the Raymond Carver bio by Carol Sklenicka.

I think Stephen King nailed it in his New York Times review when he called the book "exhaustive and exhausting." It really wore me out. It really, at times, depressed the hell out of me. Often I wanted to take a break and stop reading, but I always kept going.

What kept me going was Carver's sheer determination to carve (sorry) a literary life for himself. (It also helped knowing that eventually he got sober after years of drinking and out-of-control alcoholism. He took his last drink at the Jambalaya bar in Arcata in 1977.)

For so many years he struggled -- trying to write, submitting stories to small magazines, working crap jobs, raising a family, declaring bankruptcy (twice), bouncing around from one teaching job to another, gaining, at long last, the literary reputation and career he dreamed about.

But what struck me the most was how his family struggled, too. His wife, Maryann, supported him for long stretches. Carver's writing was the focus of the family. And his kids also struggled. Yes, alcohol was involved (Maryann also drank), but it was painful to read about the sacrifices made, all in the name of "art."

Carver's essay "Fires" discusses how his children have been his greatest influence. But not in a positive way. He talks of his children as a "baleful" influence. He talks about the "ravenous and ferocious years of parenting." He talks about the burden of family life and caring for his children: "And I would always have them, and always find myself in this position of unrelieved responsibility and permanent distraction."

There's a heartbreaking scene in the bio when Carver's son, Vance, is talking to Tobias Wolff. Vance says: "My father is really good, isn't he?" And Wolff says: "Your dad is one of the greatest short story writers of all time."

Yet Carver's family, including Vance, was repeatedly hurt by his stories and poems.

And this, ultimately, is what got to me: the sacrifice between life and art. The sharing of vibrant, wonderful, necessary stories vs. the pain bestowed by those stories, both in their creation and their journey into the world.

There's much more to the book of course -- the whole Lish/Carver thing is fascinating -- but that's what I'm processing now. It's relevant because I'm also raising a family. And I worry that my writing impacts my family negatively. I worry about a lot of things these days. Potential New Year's resolution: not to worry so damn much.

Anyway.

At some point I want to read Maryann Carver's memoir, What It Used to Be Like. But for now, I'm Carver'd out.

Talent and Drive

2010-12-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

"It wasn't easy. I was the worst-read person in the room and I was handing in the most unpolished stories. I knew I was behind but I was also in love with what I was doing. I'm also a bullheaded person, so I did the work. I got up at 4 a.m. and wrote until 2 p.m. every day. It was crazy. I was handed a list of 100 books every writer should read. I hadn't read any of them. But I read them all in a single year. Being a writer is equal parts talent and drive. A lot of people I went to school with were more talented. I kept hammering long after they hung up their tools."

From an interview with Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding

New Story @ Moon Milk Review

2010-12-20T21:16:00.001-08:00

It's called "Job History" and you can read it here.

It's kind of a companion piece to my story "Three," which was published in wigleaf a while back.

Moon Milk Review recently got a nice call out from Flavorwire as one of the top 10 online magazines.

Big thanks to MMR's editor Rae Bryant for including my story.

A Writer's Proper State...

2010-12-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

"Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer."

-- James Salter, from a Paris Review interview

I Don't Want to Be Stevie Nicks

2010-12-01T09:39:00.001-08:00

... is the title of a new story of mine that's in the latest issue of Dark Sky Magazine.

Just realized: today is the first day of December.

Did some writing in the car on the way to work this morning. Not recommended, but sometimes necessary.

I've always wanted to write a story with "Stevie Nicks" in the title. And now I have.

Patti Smith Interview with Jonathan Lethem

2010-11-29T20:38:00.000-08:00

Ravens

2010-11-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

Writerly doubts? Sure. All the time.

A few days ago I came across this Cynthia Ozick quote in The New York Times:

"I think early recognition is everything. It was everything for Updike and for Roth. It gives you a kind of confidence for life. I write now with the raven of doubt sitting on my shoulder all the time."

And today I saw this passage from a W.S. Merwin poem:

I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

The poem is called "Berryman," and you can read the rest of it here.

I found the Merwin passage in a Faster Times article: "Writing Advice from Emily Gould."

Gould had this to say about writers who don't have doubts:

"People who are totally convinced of their own awesomeness are nearly always totally crappy writers, or if not, they’re still totally crappy people to get stuck sitting next to at a party."

And this too:

"One of the weird things the Internet has done has made it seem possible to just kind of be a writer — ie, you can be published, a lot of people might read your work, and yet you haven’t had to give up your secure nine to five and alienate and scare most of your friends and family in order to anonymously post your amusing comments on a blog. That little bit of attention and acclaim convinces some people that they are writers. They are not. Writing is not about acclaim. It is also not about being “successful,” in the sense of making your living as a writer. You know who are very successful writers right now, in the sense of being on the bestseller list? Both Karl Rove AND Laura Bush. Being a writer, ultimately, is about writing — writing honestly, writing something only you can write. Every time you do this, you succeed."

So yes. Doubts. All the time.

Randomly Random Bits

2010-11-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

1. The film Synecdoche, New York really messed with my head.*

2. My contributor copies of Sententia arrived over the weekend. I have yet to thoroughly dig in, but so far I've read Ethel Rohan's short story "The Key" and Roxane Gay's essay "Fat Girl's Rhapsody," both of which I devoured and enjoyed immensely. Thanks to Ryan Bradley for including my story "The Big Empty."

3. The New Oxford American Dictionary honored Sarah Palin by naming "refudiate" the 2010 Word of the Year.

4. In his autobiography Life (reviewed here by Liz Phair), Keith Richards refers to Mick Jagger as "Brenda."

5. The Harry Ransom Center has acquired Spalding Gray's archive. And speaking of the Ransom Center: You can watch a reading to celebrate the opening of the David Foster Wallace archive.

6. Slumdog Millionaire was much better than I expected.*

7. As part of The Collagist's Classic Reprints series, you can read Amy Hempel's "The Most Girl Part of You." Last week, I just happened to read this story for the first time. The whole thing is amazing (hey, it's Amy Hempel), but the ending is one of those endings that leave you breathless.

8. Enjoyed Kirsty Logan's post at the Pank blog about Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays and how the book's short chapters work as flash fiction.

9. My five-year-old son Ethan: "Daddy, did you know that when you put your hands inside your pants, you can feel your penis?" Me: "Yes, I was aware of that."

10. After watching the first season of Deadwood, I've noticed that my inclination to curse has gone way, way up.*

*Finally got Netflix. I've seen more movies and TV shows in the past two months than I have in the past two years. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Drive

2010-11-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

A realization after revising my short story collection: a lot of my stories feature driving.

People driving. People in cars. People going somewhere -- or, more often than not, going nowhere.

Is this a writerly tic?

A byproduct of living in Southern California?

Or is it thematic? Something symbolic of the transitory nature of my characters and, well, contemporary life in general?

The latter certainly sounds better, but I'm not sure. Could definitely be a tic.

Note to self: lay off the driving when writing.

Writing in the Bath

2010-11-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

Really like this quote from a Fictionaut Five interview with Sara Lippman:

"Dani Shapiro once told me that when Grace Paley was her teacher at Sarah Lawrence, Paley said she wrote in the bath. Of course, Paley didn't mean she was soaking in the tub with dripping wet pages. What she was referring to -- and what Dani passed along to me -- is the space around the work. The time that you're not physically writing, that's all part of it, and as writers, we need to grant and honor that, too, as part of the process.

"Right now, it's enough of a trick to secure time to write, let alone carve out space around it, but I have this time each day when I walk to pick up my kids from school. Roughly twenty minutes there, and - depending on whether or not my daughter conks out in the stroller - another twenty minutes to get my son. I've 'written' a whole bunch of stuff during these quiet, uninterrupted spells through my neighborhood."

You can read the entire interview here.

Preorder Sententia 2!

2010-10-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

You can do that here.

The issue includes my story "The Big Empty," which begins like so:

"We took the kid. And I know how bad that sounds, really, I do, but believe me: He was sitting by himself at the gas station, out in the back, by the bathrooms and dumpsters and greasy cardboard boxes, and when Jim came out of the men’s room, all sweaty, looking like he might hurl (he didn’t), and we started heading back to the car, there he was—this kid, by himself, sitting with his knees tucked up tight against his chest and his head leaning sideways, cheek resting on his knees like he was trying to fall asleep and dream his way out where he was. I remember thinking: Am I seeing what I’m seeing? There was no one there with him. No sign of parents or brothers or sisters or anybody. He was alone, forgotten, and seemed like he was used to it."

And here's a list of all the contributors:

Gregory Sherl, Peter Schwartz, Brad Green, Pacze Moj, Samantha Ducas, Howard C. Mueller IV, Ali Abdolrezaei, b.l. pawelek, Shaindel Beers, Neila Mezynski, Amanda Deo, Nathan Graziano, Jessica Anya Blau, Ethel Rohan, Josh Goller, Janey Smith, Meg Tuite, Timmy Waldron, Michael Pollock, Claire Foster, Nate House, Scott McClanahan, Ken Sparling, Robert Lopez, Christian TeBordo, Roxane Gay, and Barry Graham.

A Passionate Amateur

2010-10-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

"There is such a thing as a passionate amateur. By strict definition I am a professional novelist. But I don’t ever feel like a professional when I sit down to do the work. I feel, with each book, like I’ve never written a book before and I have to figure it out… It never seems to get easy.”

Jonathan Franzen, in an interview with the Guardian

More Writing Advice from a Five Year Old: Put the Best Story First

2010-10-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

So I've been revising my short story collection. Again. Putting in newer stories. Taking out other stories. Tinkering (improving, I hope) stories that have already been published. Catching typos and repetitions and writerly tics.

This is the sixth official revision. At least there are six versions of the Word doc that contains the manuscript. The truer number is probably more like 20-25. Something like that.

And this time I did a little something different.

I wrote out all the story titles on 3 x 5 index cards. Then I spread the cards out on the floor. Arranged. Rearranged.

This really helped me "see" the collection as a whole (vs. scrolling through the Word doc).

At one point, my five-year-old son Ethan came into the room.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "I'm trying to see which order I want to put the stories in my book. To see which one should go first and then second and then third and on and on. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah."

"What do you think?" I asked.

He looked down at all the index cards, all the individual stories that hopefully come together as something more, something greater.

"You should put the best story first," he said.

Bits and Pieces

2010-10-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday's Literary Death Match in San Diego was a blast. I bow to Jim Ruland's greatness. And Todd Zuniga is one of three people in the universe who can get away with wearing a white suit. You can see some photos here.

Best novel first lines? Here's a list of 100. What's missing? DeLillo's Underworld: "He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful."

New books I want to read ASAP: Bruce Machart's The Wake of Forgiveness, Ethel Rohan's Cut Through the Bone (available for preorder starting today!), and Matt Bell's How They Were Found.

Salinger bio due in January. Galleycat has the scoop: "[It] provides a tremendous amount of new information, shedding light for the first time on many unknown events in Salinger's life: his wartime romance; the inspiration behind The Catcher in the Rye; the impact of his experience fighting in the D-Day landings; the true story behind Franny and Zooey; full details on his romance with Oona O'Neill (later Mrs. Charlie Chaplin); his office intrigues with famous New Yorker editors and writers; his friendship with Ernest Hemingway; surprising evidence that he intended to continue publishing after his last story appeared in l965, and much more."

Philip Roth on Getting Started

2010-10-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

"I don't know very much," [Roth] says about how he begins a novel. "I write my way into my knowledge. Then, if I'm lucky, I get a break. That's why it's so important to get started. Because however awful starting is — and it is absolutely awful — when you get into it, when you've got 10 pages, which may take two weeks, then you can begin to build."

Philip Roth, from a recent L.A. Times interview.

I really like that "I write my way into my knowledge" line.

But with a novel, that can be a scary approach (maybe not so scary if you're Philip Roth).

The Fierce Pleasure

2010-10-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

"[Fiction] doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it, and the different kind of pleasure that's taken in reading something that's durable and made to last, as well as beautiful in and of itself. Something that throws off these sparks—a persistent and steady glow, however dim."

Raymond Carver, from a 1983 Paris Review interview (quoted in "A Day in the Life of Hannah Tinti," which is definitely worth a read).

LDM in SD

2010-09-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Literary Death Match (LDM) is coming back to San Diego on Tuesday, October 12 -- and I'm on the bill this time.

I'll be reading along with Jim Ruland, Justin Hudnall and more.

Details here.

Now I just have to figure out which story to read...

Happy

2010-09-22T23:15:00.001-07:00

My William Vollmann Story

2010-09-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Back in July, Jim Ruland interviewed me for his Vermin on the Mount blog. He asked about the most unusual experience I've ever had at a reading.

Here's what I had to say...

"Many years ago I saw William Vollmann read at the Booksmith in San Francisco. He walked into the store, stood at the lectern, took a sip of water, and pulled out a gun. Three or four times throughout the reading, he picked up the gun, aimed it at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. The gun, of course, wasn’t real; it was a cap gun, but it was fucking loud, and I was sitting in the first row. My ears were still ringing the next morning. Vollmann was weird and edgy and intense. He wore a white t-shirt and stalkeresque windbreaker. His glasses were very large. In The Catcher in the Rye, doesn’t Holden say something about how wouldn’t it be great if you read a book and could then call the writer on the phone and become pals? I wouldn’t want to call William Vollmann."

Coloring Is My Dream

2010-09-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

More quotable quotes from my five-year-old son Ethan...

"Can I marry a girl or a boy?"

"Hollywood? There's no such thing as Hollywood."

"Coloring is my dream. I color every day."

"I'm going to be Teddy Roosevelt for Halloween. Next year I'm going to be Albert Einstein." *

"Are your bones glued together?"

"These socks are really stretchy and good for doing things and maybe like killing bad guys."

"PBS Kids is real."

"Too bad everyone doesn't have penises."

* Ethan is also currently writing a book about our 26th president.

Lydia Davis on Anger, Workshops and Mentors

2010-08-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

A few quotes from a recent Rumpus interview with the great Lydia Davis (italics mine)...

Rumpus: There are certain words that come up again and again in your work: “anger” and “disturbance,” and to some extent “upset” and “annoyance.” Many times the narrators and characters are walking around with loads of anger. From the story “Story”: “Finally I sit down and write in my notebook that when he calls me either he will then come to me, or he will not and I will be angry, and so I will have either him or my own anger, and this might be all right, since anger is always a great comfort…” I’ve found that in life anger is one of the most common yet hidden emotions. What is it about anger that makes you reference it so? How would you define it? Would you consider it central to your work?

Davis: I would hope that I wouldn’t have to say anger was central to my work—that sounds so sad. I suppose people are more likely to turn to writing when they’re filled with a negative emotion than with a positive one, so the stories might be disproportionately negative—angry, sad, upset, etc. There is simply less of a need to “frame” or “distance” a positive emotion. I read somewhere that anger is always a secondary emotion; i.e. the primary one might be fear, or frustration. I found that very interesting. Now, I look beyond the anger to see what the primary emotion might be.

....

Rumpus: A few writer friends have expressed how they would prefer to have a mentor rather than go through a creative writing program. How important is a mentor for a writer trying to find their way? Did you have one?

Davis: I would be wary of both the writing workshop and the mentor. Each is useful in small doses, but each can have too great an influence—dangerous. I would suggest working mainly on one’s own, with, as I said, occasional doses of mentorship and/or writing group situations. A friend with the same sensibility who gives useful feedback is also good—or several for different kinds of work.

Why I Respect My Cell Phone

2010-08-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

From Don DeLillo's short story "Baader-Meinhof," published in The New Yorker in 2002:

His cell phone rang. He dug it out of his body and spoke briefly, then sat with the thing in his hand, looking thoughtful.

"I should remember to turn it off. But I think, If I turn it off, what will I miss? Something so incredible."

"The call that changes everything."

"Something so incredible. The total life-altering call. That's why I respect my cell phone."

(You have to be a New Yorker subscriber to read the story online, but The Guardian has it for free here.)

Happy Enchilada

2010-08-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Your Own Quiet Corner

2010-08-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

(Wrote this up a while back but forgot to post...)

Some interesting comments from a Big Other post that quoted an interview with Amy Hempel:

Interviewer: As a writing teacher, and in the interest of all the aspiring writers reading this, what’s the most common mistake young, fresh writers make?

Amy Hempel: This is the young writer mistake question: Wanting to publish more than wanting to write well.

The post was titled "Amy Hempel's Answer -- What's Yours?"

Steve Himmer chimed in with this comment:

"To some degree, I think the constant hum of the online lit community exacerbates that pressure [to publish], and the rapidity with which stories go from written to submitted to published online. I’m not getting all Andrew Keen here and blaming the web, but for me at least the constant awareness via Facebook and Twitter and email of who’s publishing what and where and how often makes it harder to find the calm, quiet corner where my writing actually needs to get done. Obviously, it’s up to me – not the web – to tune that noise out and do the work.

"So maybe my advice to young (and old) writers would be — along with what Hempel said — to get offline more often and trust in the possibilities of your own quiet corner."

For me, finding that quiet corner has been a challenge. Yes, there is family, job, house, commute, my Vaudeville act, etc.

But part of the challenge also involves what Steve is talking about. In the past I've tried to take a break from FB, blogs, keeping up with what other writers are doing, and so on; yet I've found it very difficult to detach.

The constant hum is, well, constant. And I get caught up in it more than I should.

I like Steve's advice to get offline and trust in the possibilities of your own quiet corner. Now it's a matter of actually taking it...

Getting the Words Right

2010-08-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

Some stories take longer than others.

I recently (well, fairly recently) "finished" two stories that I'd been working on for probably more than 10 years (though "working on" isn't really accurate; years went by without touching them). One story found a home; the other is still an orphan.

The former was recently published in kill author. It takes place on a plane. In May I flew to New York. I hadn't thought about the story in a long time, but as I settled in for the long flight, it came to mind. I had a few ideas, jotted down some lines. More important, I finally figured out the beginning and ending, both of which had always eluded me. Nothing ever felt right. And the entire story never felt done. Something was wrong. Something was missing.

Here's a well-known quote from a Paris Review interview with Ernest Hemingway:

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?

Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

Getting the words right. So simple and yet not so simple.

I've started and finished many other stories while these two other stories were "in progress."

As a writer, sometimes you have to be patient. The story takes a while to be told. And that's okay. And I've found that the ones that take the longest are also usually the most satisfying.

New Story: "Flight: SFO to LAX"

2010-08-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

The new issue of >kill author is now live, and it includes my story "Flight: SFO to LAX."

Other contributors include Lauren Becker, Sheldon Lee Compton, Elaine Chiew, Frank Hinton and many, many others. It's chock-full of literary goodness.

One of the things that I like about >kill author is how they dedicate each issue to an author. This particular issue is dedicated to Nabokov. I like that.

Frauds

2010-08-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

This, from Doug Dorst, sounds familiar:

"My [writing] warm-up technique appears to be to waste several hours on the web, waste several more telling myself I’m a fraud, and finally, if I’m lucky, telling myself, oh, hell, just type some words already."

You can read the rest of the interview over at The Rumpus.

I got a chance to know Doug a bit while we were both living in San Francisco. He's a very nice guy. He was once a Jeopardy champion. He also has great taste in music. (We kept bumping into each other at shows.)

Doug has a new collection of stories out, called The Surf Guru, which was enthusiastically reviewed by Robin Romm in The New York Times.

And since I'm in a linking kind of mood: check out the collection's title story. Highly, highly recommended.

Photos from Vermin on the Mount Reading

2010-08-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

Saturday's reading was a major success -- more than 100 people showed up, and the readers delivered the goods.

Thanks to everyone who came.

Here are a few (poor quality) pictures:

The uber-cool poster...

I had a little lighting malfunction issue...

Me again...

Aaron Burch read a very good, very painful story about hemorrhoids...

Amelia Gray read this amazing story...

One Last Plug

2010-07-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night I'll be reading in San Diego. Here are the details...

What: Vermin on the Mount Reading in Downtown San Diego
Date/Time: Saturday, July 31, 8 - 11 p.m.
Where: Sushi Performance and Visual Arts, 390 11th Street, San Diego, CA 92101

The night will feature a stellar lineup of writers, including Aaron Burch, Lisa Fugard, Jess Jollett, Amelia Gray, Lindsay Hunter, Enrique Limón and Adam Novy.

More info here.

I'm planning on drinking at The Field, a great Irish bar, beforehand.