Gifting Random Acts of Poetry and Art

February 19, 2012

If you like to think of your writing as a gift to others (see Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird), or if you’ve been touched by a piece of art or poetry, wouldn’t you like to share that inspiration with others? Well, tomorrow is Random Acts of Poetry and Art day, a pay-it-forward movement from Cristina Raskopf Norcross, Sonya Shanti Sinha and Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick. Their suggestions for things to do tomorrow are in italics below–
*Write a poem on a napkin or a piece of paper, with a special thank you, and leave it behind with your monetary tip at a restaurant or café. (This makes me think of an early date with my chemist husband when he drew chemical structures on a napkin to try to help me understand his thesis project. Writing on napkins always inspires me, one way or another. :-) )

  I haven’t read this book by Jennifer-Crystal Johnson, but I think I’ll be checking it out. Love the concept!

*Print off copies of a beautiful photo of a sunset and leave it behind on the tables of your local coffeehouse with the simple message, “Enjoy!” (Or, a haiku on the back?)

*If you have time. Do some preparation. Have some of your poetry or art printed on postcards, or print them yourself at home, and leave them at local libraries, bookstores, galleries, community bulletin boards, community centers and cafes. (So not happening for me, but if you can do it, bravo!!)

*Draw an inspiring design or an impromptu sketch of a scene in your local town and leave it on a park bench. Maybe you will inspire someone else to leave behind some beauty and hope for the next person to find!   (Again, not for me.)

If you join the movement, they’d love for you to leave a post on their facebook page about what you did. I’d love to know too – because it will make me smile and you can consider it another act of sharing and kindness. Go for it and enjoy! Spread the art and poetry.

Happy #writing and/or #drawing!

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Flash Fiction Champions – Susan Tepper & Robert Vaughan

February 16, 2012

It’s been a while since we’ve had an author visit along with the accompanying 100 word prompt response. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with Susan Tepper and Robert Vaughan — both prolific publishers of, and champions for, great flash fiction.

Susan Tepper is the author of four published books.  Her most recent is a collection of linked-flash-fiction titled “From the Umberplatzen” (Wilderness House Press, 2012).  It’s a quirky love story set in Germany.   Tepper also hosts the Monday Chat interview column on Fictionaut, and a reading series called FIZZ at KGB Bar in NYC.  www.susantepper.com  

Robert Vaughan lives in Milwaukee where he leads roundtables at RedBird RedOak Writing. His prose and poetry is found in numerous literary journals. His short stories are anthologized in Nouns of Assemblage from Housefire, Stripped from P.S. Books, and Exquisite Quartet Anthology 2011. He is fiction editor at JMWW magazine, and Thunderclap! He co-hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect. His blog.

 

Q: I’ve had a love-hate relationship with flash fiction. At times, I adore it and at times, I read some and think, what? You call that a story? The flash fiction I admire most hints at something before and after the scenes we get — for me, the reader is engaged in the piece in large part because of what it evokes. You two are making a huge, well-deserved splash in the flash fiction world. How would you describe flash fiction for someone either unfamiliar with the form, or, perhaps ambivalent?

Susan:  I adore writing and reading Flash Fiction.  I think good Flash Fiction can almost eclipse “normal” sized stories, because Flash has to make every single word count. So what happens with Flash is that you have a story that starts out very strong, and keeps the plot tension going, then ends with a strong finish.  So there’s no time to dilly-dally around and contemplate your belly-button (if I may act silly for a moment)!  Because a lot of stories “fail” when the writer fails to realize that there cannot be a let-down in the story tension.  It has to keep moving along at some sort of pace (be it movement-pace or emotional-pace).  Otherwise the reader will get bored and put the book or story down.

Robert:  Flash fiction is like Disney on acid, it’s like a joyride without the joystick. When I riff on a great flash, it’s as if the world doesn’t exist, all falls away. Writing it can feel entirely daunting, scary and subtly powerful. I try to go with the first draft, find a voice, or a point of view that sticks and zoom away. But it always needs tweaking. For instance, the Windy City prompt has endless directions in which to cast the net…is it Chicago? A literal place, an emotional metaphor? Or even more abstractly, I pondered a bull in a china shop on Michigan Avenue as protagonist. To those who say “nay” to flash, I also agree. Not everyone loved Gone With the Wind or Doctor Zhivago.

2. I’m thinking you two met on Fictionaut first? Have you met in person and what was that like, to put skin on a cyber-friend? :-)

Susan:  I met Robert on Fictionaut and was drawn to his work right away.  Then we met for real this past September when he came to read in my FIZZ series at KGB Bar in NYC.  We met beforehand at a little cafe near the KGB.  It was as if we’d known each other a lifetime.  I had on these crazy fake diamond earrings that kept coming apart, and as soon as we hugged the earring fell apart and rolled across the cafe floor!  We started laughing, and gossiping, and it was all so great!  Then the rest of the gang arrived and the fun was amped up even more.  

Robert: I think Susan and I met on Fictionaut, a cyber writing network, although I grew even more familiar with her work initially through a writing collective called 52/250, edited by Michelle Elvy, Walter Bjorkman and John Wentworth Chapin. We originally were to meet over the summer of 2011, but the KGB reading was postponed to October. It was a stellar event, and Susan had the whole gang of readers (Danny Goodman, Christine Vines, and Meg Tuite) meet prior at a cafe around the corner from where I lived for years in NYC’s East Village. The entire experience was like a dream- Susan and I are family, in every sense of the word. Instant recognition, and comfort. So lovely.

3. Susan, I’ve only started From the Umberplatzen, and I’m loving it. It strikes personal chords for me since I lived in Germany for a year. When did you know these pieces would become a connected collection of flash stories? What did you enjoy most about the process? Least?

Pam, I loved every moment of writing From the Umberplatzen.  It was a totally inspired writing time for me.  Like you, I also spent a considerable period in Germany, so it was familiar.  But in the course of writing, the Umberplatzen became something more than trees and a park to my characters, M and Kitty Kat.  It became a place of deep longing and fullfillment.  They shared a great love for each other.  The book is a story about a great love.  But not in a sappy kind of way.  And it’s also about a love for this strangely mystical place they named The Umberplatzen.  Every little story revolves in some way around the Umberplatzen, yet each story is quite different from the others.  Each starts and ends on a single page, yet they make up a unified whole.  That’s what prompted Robert Olen Butler to call it: “a mosaic of a novel.”   I knew I had a collection when I was unable to stop writing these stories.   

Robert: This is Susan’s novel, From the Umberplatzen, although I have to chime in and say I LOVE THIS BOOK! Have anyone who does not think a novel can be told in flash stories, read this! Also, I interview Susan for The Lit Pub about this book and so much more, coming soon to a theater near you!  

4. Robert, it’s been thrilling for me to look at the authors included in your new anthology Flash Fiction Fridays from your monthly Flash Fiction Friday program on WUWM. I’m SO tickled to see so many friends’ pieces, including some previous visitors to PamWrites, like Kim Suhr, Christi Craig, Mary Jo Thome and Sara Lippmann. I imagine selecting the pieces is both challenging and fun … true? I’m curious about how you determine the monthly themes … do they bubble up from submitted pieces, or do you start with theme ideas and see what you get that fits?

Robert: Flash Fiction Fridays, the radio program, always feels spontaneous and completely off the cuff. Of course, it isn’t, and Stephanie Lecci, my co-host, is a fantastic editor, not to mention a brilliant partner-in-crime. All of the pieces are pre-selected from submissions, and usually I have an idea of who I would like as the “international” writer- which Susan, Sara Lippmann, Meg Tuite, or some of the other writers were in 2011. I try to alternate between a male and female writer as best I can. Then, I pair that piece with the best local submission possible, either new or stored. The themes tend to come into place once I have read the two (or in some cases three) works as a cohesive unit, that is not always easy.

For our writing prompt, we each responded to: The Windy City? Bull, the air hung like…. And, as always, our goal was to stay as close to 100 words as possible. Enjoy!

Act III, by Pam Parker, 110 words

The Windy City? Bull. The air hung like dusty curtains on an abandoned stage. From his bed, he waited for leaves to dance outside. Not a shiver, a quiver or the tiniest glissade. Somewhere in his lungs, fear rose, bumping his ribs. It had come to this. Frightened of the air, like the pause on opening night after delivering the last line. Would they like it? On his pillow, positioned to view the active world, movements and speech had long since exited his life. The only motion for him was a pulsing echo in his mind: the wind must move; the wind must move. The air couldn’t die before him.

My Stint as an Elevator Operator, by Susan Tepper, 150 words

The Windy City? Bull, the air hung like cotton-sugar, he said.  I answered that he was insane.  I said the wind off the lake was so cold I felt paralyzed.  He told me that I’m a cold fish.  I told him to divorce his wife.  Watch me warm up then.  He said she spent her days in their bedroom.  Doing what?  I said.  He said he didn’t know, actually.  I said: And you don’t want to know.  He suggested a short trip to Chicago.  A pretend-business trip.  I told him about the woman in the Hilton elevator, the one who told me to Press 6, because I had on a navy-blue suit.  My stewardess uniform.  I went along with it and pressed 6.  My stew friends all laughed. The woman nodded and thanked me upon exiting.  Take your wife to Chicago, I told him.  Get her out of that bedroom.

Forget It, by Robert Vaughan, 93 words

The Windy City? Bull, the air hangs like I’m giving blood on Valentine’s Day. But I’m still in bed and if I just lay here, will you lie with me? Show me a garden under this float of ice. Let’s forget what we’re told. Lie before we’re too old. Too late for that? Because all that I ever was, all that I am: is draining out onto these sheets, veins running red in the streets. And the city, windy, will always be here, near or far. It’s not who we are.

Hope you enjoyed this chat with and the writing from Susan and Robert — If you will be attending AWP, they will be there, along with Meg Tuite, on Thursday,  doing a book signing at Connotation Press Booth # 811 (from 9:30 am thru 11:30am).
Then the big Connotation Reading just a few blocks from the Hilton, starting at 2:30pm. They’ll be at other off-site readings and venues too. Pay attention to your facebook announcements and/or visit Google U.

Thank you again, Susan and Robert!

Happy #writing all — let my guests know what you thought of their comments and/or writing in the comment section.

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Good Enough or Great Enough? Winning Contests for Juried Conferences

February 15, 2012

Thanks to Sabra Wineteer, who I met in 2010 at the Tin House conference, for this guest post.

   Sabra Wineteer grew up in Moss Bluff, Louisiana. She has since lived in England, New Zealand, Germany, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and currently calls rural Pennsylvania home. Her work has appeared in TWINS Magazine, storySouth, The Rumpus, 7X20, and is anthologized in the book 140 And Counting. She is the 2012 recipient of the Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award. She will be attending her first AWP this year as a co-submitter and panelist for Writing Class: Representing Socioeconomic Realities in Your Work.

Good Enough or Great Enough? Getting into Juried Conferences and maybe, winning scholarships!

Whenever I needed to submit “my best unpublished work” for a conference or contest, my brain always went, “Blarg!” I had loads of unpublished work, but I faced two distinct issues whenever deadlines loomed. Firstly, I had nothing new to submit to conferences or contests. In other words, they’d already seen my best unpublished work last year or the year before or the year before the year before. Didn’t matter if I’d revised it year in and year out. Didn’t matter that for a dyed-in-the-wool novelist that my best unpublished work took four or more years to get up to speed. They’d already seen it. And they’d already rejected it. BTDT. I had to exclude my novel as my best work. They already told me they didn’t want it back in 2005 or 2006 or 2007. Secondly, if I had new work, it was painfully new. I might only be in a third or fourth draft. It was, in other words, too new ever to be my “best” work.

So, I tended to submit work that tickled me. Either I liked the sardonic nature of a main character or I loved the voice I’d written. Word to the wise— never submit work you get a kick out of. Your ego’s too invested in the piece. It probably sucks, you just don’t have enough distance from it to see it yet. I rationalized this and my other previous conference and contest submissions. I told myself that my work was “good enough”, most especially for workshops. After all, what’s the point of workshopping a piece that’s mostly done?

Eventually, I realized I needed a paradigm shift. I needed a short story (which is also helpful because it so easily stands alone and my novel chapters tend to end with cliffhangers). Problem was that my short stories sucked. So, I decided to cheat…a little bit. My favorite contemporary short story writer is Rebecca Makkai. She’s also a friend of mine. So not only did I have her Best American Short Stories inclusions (four as of today) to study from, I’d been a little privy to her process. She tends to take relatively disparate elements that hold her interest and mix them together. She also has some of the best opening short story paragraphs. Ever.

So, I had an idea for a short story. I had a title, “A Siege of Herons”. I started pulling in elements that interested me. And I thought a very, very long time about this story. I even started drafting it. Then I got hung up on a literal siege of herons. Despite my growing up in Louisiana and for most of my life living within habitat ranges of Great Blue Herons, I’d never actually seen one. I wasn’t sure they existed. And that muddled my ability to write this short story. I put the thing aside and worked on other things for months, maybe even a year.

Then I saw one. One adult and three juveniles. They were hanging out by a creek near two highways. I immediately went home and continued my draft. I had a complete draft in two days’ time. Then I put it aside. For a very long time. Then I revised. And put it aside. Then I revised again. And put it aside. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Eventually, I got it to the point in which I couldn’t make it better on my own. I put it up for workshop on an online forum. Got feedback. Revised again. And put it aside. And I revised again. And submitted it to a conference.

Here is the key to workshopping a piece at a conference: get a wide range of opinions on workshop faculty. Then choose. Joan Moe might be a great novelist, but if she’s not a good workshop teacher, what will her literary success matter to you and your piece? So, I asked around, listed the faculty teaching at this conference I’d be attending, and then had an immediate shout out for Charles D’Ambrosio. He was tough. I wanted tough. So, I signed on.

Charlie skewered my work. He skewered everyone’s work. His biggest gripe with my short story I already knew. In that unfortunate time frame between submitting the short story and attending the actual workshop, I’d realized I had a point-of-view issue. He had other points, but he liked it. He was enthusiastic about it when we had our one-on-one conference. I took copious notes and went home. And did nothing.

I didn’t think about the short story for months. There was a five and a half month gap between my submitting the piece for the workshop and the next time I opened it to work on it. It took me that long to be able to rip it apart. I started the whole revise and put it aside pattern all over again. Then, I got it to another “can’t do anything more with this on my own” and sent it out to a virtual workshop group I’d been invited to. Two folks gave me feedback. They pretty much had the same criticism. I thought on it, decided how I’d revise it. Did so. Put it aside. A few more rounds of revise and put aside.

Then I submitted it. I submitted to journals. I started getting “encouraging rejections” from top 50 literary journals. I knew, then, that it was my best unpublished work. So, when I decided to try for an award to a conference, I sent in this short story. I crossed my fingers, held my breath, but knew no matter what, I was attending this conference— Margaret Atwood had hand-selected 12 writers to workshop with her in Key West and I was one of them.

I won. My short story went through the selection process and all the way up to Joyce Horton Johnson who personally chose it for her named award.

You’d think after all that, it’d be done. It’s not. My time with Margaret Atwood illuminated a great deal. Those of us from her workshop group are re-examining all of our work and giving it an “Atwood edit” as we’ve come to call it. In doing so with “A Siege of Herons” I’ve cut 400 words from a 5,000-word short story. I’ve revised and put it aside. Again.

I used to feel sheepish about admitting how long it’s taken me to get something up to snuff. How much work it took to achieve my best unpublished work. We live in a literary world full of pissing contests. I have felt deficient for not having a published book before I was 30, 35, and as my 39th birthday is only a week and a half from now, 40. I have felt less talented because it’s taken me more than four years to write and revise a novel. (Four seems to be the “normal” number of years writers admit to working on a literary novel, BTW.) I have felt inept that it takes me innumerable drafts and revisions and months/years to get somewhere with a single short story.

Then I sat across the table from Margaret Atwood for three hours at a day for four straight days. She dispelled all of my inadequacies. “It’s hard for all of us,” she’d said. This from a Booker Prize winner with over 50 books. Such a statement coming from such a literary rock star is priceless. She went on to say that it’s “bullshit” for anyone to intimate that it is writing is not hard for them, or doesn’t take them multiple drafts, or multiple years to draft and revise, or even multiple years and attempts to make the first break through. For her, she spent six years trying to get her first book of poetry published. Later, for one of her more recent books, she’d been 100 pages into a draft before she realized she had to trash it and start completely over.

*          *          *

            While I was shifting my “best unpublished work” submission paradigm, I took a year off from applying to conferences. Though I missed hanging out with other writers, talking shop, going to craft sessions, and the workshop itself, I think it was more important for me to be patient. To pause and contemplate and understand that my work might not have been as ready as I once believed it to be. That there is a vast difference between “good enough” and “best.” That it takes time and a hell of a lot of work to get a piece to “best.” Knowing now that my own literary icon also has the Sisyphean task of getting books up a hill and eventually over the crest to the other side, I know I can, too. I have to push back on literary pissing contests, my own self doubts, the crushing issues with early drafts, the tediousness of revising and editing, and my own desire to say something is “good enough” rather than truly being my “best.” Now, I’ve left behind the petulant notion that a piece is “good enough” to get me into the best conferences and to win contests. I now ask myself, “Is it great enough?” I don’t stop working and pushing a piece up a hill until I can stand on top and answer, “Yes, this is great enough.” Only then can I push it over and watch it roll.

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AWP Advice “Managing the Madness”

February 13, 2012

Yesterday I was on the phone with a writer friend and confessed that the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Chicago at the end of the month would be my first. She said the best advice she could give me was to NOT miss the book fair, to hang out in the bars at night :-) and to bring business cards. Checking online today, I also found a helpful post from Courtney Algeo, writing for Arts Orbit with the Twin Cities Daily Planet. Algeo’s post offers helpful tips from none other than Jerod Santek, program director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and chair of AWP 2012. Santek also mentioned the importance of bringing business cards and added these tips:

*Create a daily plan/schedule for yourself

*Scope out routes through the hotel before the conference begins

*Pack snacks for long stretches of back-to-back panels.

Get more ideas at the full article here, “Managing the Madness.”

 

Coming soon on PamWrites….. interviews with Susan Tepper and Robert Vaughan.

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Need a Writing Pill?

February 11, 2012

This morning as I took my veritable daily pharmacy of medications and supplements, one pill rolled off the kitchen table and onto the floor. Naturally, Jefferson Airplane came into my head and as I was humming, “One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small….,” I got to contemplating the quick fix idea of pills. We’ve all seen the lose weight in a week ones. The improve your memory ones. The enlarge your male body part ones. :-)

One of my sons was not of the mindset to give a hoot about many of his classes when he was in high school. Often from his teachers, I would hear, “He’s so smart, if he would just put his mind to it.” And usually only in my head, but occasionally aloud, I would say, “I know. And when they invent a ‘Give a shit pill,’ he’ll do great.”

So, this reverie got me thinking about writing and pills. Here are some pills I need:

**The Get out of your narrator’s head pill — I can happily spend weeks in my narrator’s mind and let nothing happen in the story. I have to watch out for this constantly.

**Submit your work pill – Sometimes I forget to follow through on this very important piece of being an author.

**Quit making excuses pill – Oh, I hate to admit it, but sometimes that’s the one I need the most.

And, you? Any writing pills you need? Hope you’ll add some in the comments, following the song. Hope I don’t give you an earworm. :-)

Happy #writing.

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Short Stories & Self-Publishing: Yea or Nay?

February 8, 2012

Yesterday I read a post by Sabra Wineteer at the Bloomin’ Blog. I met Sabra at the Tin House conference in 2010 and was thrilled when I learned she had won the Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction award to attend the Key West Literary Seminar in January, 2012. She had the amazing opportunity to study with Margaret Atwood — yes, envious sighs are allowed.

Sabra’s post,  “Self-Publishing a Short Story,” brings up some interesting points. With an award-winning story, and the lead time on literary journals, would it be worthwhile to consider self-publishing the story on Kindle and other e-readers? Margaret Atwood suggested it. Yes, she really did.

So, Sabra’s considering the idea, and I for one, hope she goes for it. I want to read this story! And you bet I would pay to read this story. I hope after you’re done with this short post, you will click on the link above to see Sabra’s thoughts.

Wondering if other writers out there have made the leap to self-publishing short fiction? If yes, has it been a good experience? If you gave it some thought and opted not to, why was that?

Happy #writing.

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