Shameless Self-Promotion

One of my stories appears in the newest issue of the North American Review--the Summer 2010 issue. I'm guessing most people who visit this blog are already aware of this bit of news via other social channels, but I figured I needed to slap a post up here, and this happened to be all I could come up with.

I mean, all I could come up with, bitch.

I Haz A Plan

This post is actually appearing in tandem with my other blog, mainly because I haven’t touched either for a while, and this topic is relevant to both. The issue at stake (mmm, steak) right now is my writing; since the beginning of this semester, what little writing I was doing has slowed to a crawl, but I think I’ve figured out a way to get back on that horse, thanks to technology. Thank you, technology horse.

Anyway, after prepping for courses, teaching those courses, and then evaluating students’ work from those courses, the motivation to write has been beaten right out of me. I wallow in shame at my lack of stamina; however, while the flesh is weak, the mind is still strong and willing. Well, willing anyway. Between blogs, new short story ideas, and The Novel, I’ve usually got quite a few narratives bouncing around in my head—so many that I often find myself thinking, Oh crap, what the hell was that idea about that thing that came to me the other day? The irony in this is that I’ve publicly boasted my habit of not jotting anything down, because if it’s a strong enough or good enough idea, then it’ll “stick,” but my brain has lost its stickiness. It’s like one of those window-crawling toys I had as a kid that lasted approximately half a dozen trips down the window before it just bounced off the glass and landed on the floor every time I threw it. No more sticky. Gone.

So I had to dig down into that crispy decrepitude and figure out some way to get past this, uh, this dry spell (ba-dum bum, crash!). After taking a quick inventory of tangible and intangible assets, I’ve devised a plan based on the resulting list which consists of:

• 6 hours of commute per week (more to come by the end of October),
• 1 laptop with relatively long battery life,
• 1 earpiece headphone w/microphone,
• 1 voice-recognition software application,
• 1 word processing software application,
• 1 audio recording software application (should the previous list item crap out on me).

Using my drive as writing time seems inevitable. My collection of podcasts and audio books is dwindling, and lately I’ve noticed my thoughts wandering off from whatever happened to be playing anyway. Focusing those thoughts on talking through my stories should be the ticket for making progress on this stalled creativity, even if I’m doing something as trivial as filling plot holes, talking myself through character profiles, or even dictating stupid blog posts.

Expect progress reports—probably on this blog. The other one will probably be filled with the stupid dictated posts.

The Iceberg

Let’s start off with a basic scenario; you’re waiting for someone—in a shopping center, in a café, at the park, anyplace public with other people milling about—and you’ve arrived early enough to people-watch. You see people hunched over laptops, reading books or newspapers, and chatting in small groups, but you see one person on the phone sitting off to the side. The conversation appears intimate; you can tell by the way expression on their face and certain buzzwords that ring of familiarity. Suddenly, their attention is diverted to the person walking quickly toward them, whom they acknowledge with a gesture, and then the phone call is ended abruptly while that person’s entire demeanor transforms—you think you can detect a hint of guilt.

What happens next? Based upon the picture you’ve already built in your mind, maybe the next thing you imagine is a tense conversation between a dysfunctional couple. There are cues which would support your assumptions, but there are quite a few details intentionally missing from the description, like:

• Their gender.
• How they are dressed.
• Whether the person on the phone is actually holding it to their ear or is using a Bluetooth.
• Exactly which buzzwords are used.

Identifying any of the items from this list in the description may have sharpened the image, but it could also change it entirely. If you haven’t already, picture the two as male and female, dressed casually, and it was the female on the phone (holding it to her ear). Now consider how different things would be if the two are both male, wearing expensive clothing, and the man on the phone was using a Bluetooth earpiece (which, by the way, would allow that character to leave the call connected--talk about a scene-changer). Mix and match any way you want and the scene has the potential to change drastically. The point is, you are in the middle of a scene in which an entire back story is built based on what you see and presumption is based on your personal experience.

Take a look at the first paragraph of Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”:

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.

That’s all you get. This setup constitutes the longest paragraph in the story and precludes a rather ambiguous conversation between the two main characters. All Hemingway shows us for sure is that they’re drinking beer as they wait for the train, he’s an American (an image that has most definitely changed since Hemingway wrote this story), and she’s a girl (nationality curiously undefined). Tense dialog follows this introduction, signifying a possible change in their relationship. There are two standout lines which hint at what is really going on without saying it outright:

“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” the man said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”

And shortly he answers one of her questions by saying:

“We’ll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.”

Hemingway trusts you to see the rest of the iceberg. As writers, our jobs should be to decide whether or not we can show only the tip of the iceberg and trust readers to envision the rest of it on their own. The trick is in getting the reader involved, to make the reader work at it without having to work so hard that they don’t care and simply give up. Sometimes the situation may dictate that we have to lay everything out on the table, but if I read a story in which the author did that, I doubt I’d continue reading for very long—most likely due to a slight case of insulted intelligence.

I'm just a rejectionable sort of guy.

A few posts ago I talked about how I'd forgotten to withdraw a piece submitted to a literary magazine I thought had gone defunct, but then they (luckily) rejected me anyway. Now I'm not so certain that people might just be rejecting me for the fun of it.

I checked the mail when I got home today and found a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with the return address of a literary magazine I'd recently submitted to--a place where I'd remembered to withdraw my submission. There was a reply of thanks to my withdrawal email, congrats on landing the story, and well-wishes on any future work, but apparently someone didn't update their records, because I tore open the envelope to find that it was rejected anyway. Unnecessarily. Whee. OK, maybe there was some small part of me that hoped the editor was mailing me personally to tell me just how jealous he (not being sexist by assumption, the editor is male) was that he couldn't publish it himself. Don't tell me you wouldn't have felt the same.

After further consideration, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd have been in the same pickle had they mistakenly accepted it (see earlier post), but I still have copies of the withdrawal and reply, so I'm golden.

Whew, I'm plum tuckered out from posting after all this time away, and this one wore me out. I believe it may be time to knock down a few more pages of Tropic of Cancer and call it a night--it's been too long since I've read this one.

Routines, and Why Can't I Fall Into One?

Actually, what I should say is, why can't I fall back into a routine? I mentioned in a previous post that I'm a slower-paced writer; a planner, if you will. But I don't know if what I'm doing right now can be blamed on planning, though. Granted, anyone who can get me talking about my current projects will realize soon enough that I've got all sorts of contingency plans for getting through this, or an idea how to explain my way out of that, and it's all because I try to roll around as many scenarios as I can before I feel satisfied with the credibility of not only my characters, but also the situation they're in. But for the most part, these are all "big picture" concerns for me.

What I find is my biggest hurdle at the moment is word count, and more specifically, language. When I'm going through and explaining to my friends what I'm doing (going to do) with a story, I can jibba jabba on and on about all the different angles I want to hit, and it generally turns into an abstract in monologue form.

OK, one thing I want to do right now is squash comments from anyone who might be reading this and thinking to themselves, "Tsk tsk, you shouldn't be talking about a work in progress until you have a draft ready to workshop." That's all fine and good if that's the way you want to roll, and I know people who tend to follow that rule for themselves, but there have been more than a few times I've caught a continuity error--or simply poor logic--just by talking things out before doing the bulk of the writing. Everyone has their way. So let them do it.

Which brings me to my point; I've been doing a bang up job of finding foundations, the seeds of so many stories, and they've been hitting me so often lately that I'm kicking myself for forgetting many of them before taking the opportunity to jot down a note for later. Yeah, boo hoo, right? A horrible problem that absolutely no one (no writer, especially) will pity me for, and if they did, I'd even wonder what the hell their problem was. But I'm not as concerned about the mystery of the disappearing story ideas as I am about the unfinished projects wobbling around like spinning plates, yet I can't seem to drag myself in front of the keyboard and mash out a page or two. I need to fill out the details of my abstract monologues--to tell not only that he walks to work every day, but how he wound up walking with a limp; to tell not only that she's unusually fidgety during conversations, but whether that's a birthmark or a scar she's trying to hide; to tell not only how these things look, but also how they appear to affect the character's overall disposition and those around them.

I'm having a tough time finding (making) the time to fill in those details. I'll admit, these past couple weeks I've had nothing but time, but it's coercing myself into setting up a timely routine that's just not happening.

Early last month, Ryan talked a bit about "The Workshop," but I have something non-tangible to add to his list of things to expect in a workshop: routine. One thing I'm missing in a big way right now about workshop is the pressure of a deadline, because it's much too easy to let personal deadlines slip. Sure, making a personal deadline is a silent victory, and silent victories are just as lonely as the failures, but I'm afraid that the failures will numb me to the point where I don't care that I'm not disappointing anyone else but me, when I should be more disgusted with myself than anyone else ever could be.

Classes start up again the week after next, and I'm hoping between now and then that if I can't finish a draft of one of these projects, that I can at least fall into some sort of routine. These plates could fall at any time, and I feel like listening to Radiohead all of a sudden.

Multiple Submission Etiquette: How I Flirted with Disaster

I just received a rejection slip in the mail yesterday. Here’s the kicker; I’m rather surprised I even got a reply. I suppose that requires a little bit of background.

A while ago—a looooong while ago—I submitted a story to a certain fiction journal. This journal isn’t anywhere near what I’d call top-tier, but it appears to be fairly respectable. It's listed on Duotrope’s Digest (where I seem to recall finding it) and I think my writing in general matches their general aesthetic—generally—but apparently not this time, which is fine.

No, really, it is fine, because the story in question is forthcoming elsewhere. Yup, it was accepted and has already been through the proofing edits in preparation for an issue either later this year or early next. Anyone familiar with submitting their work knows that not informing the first journal immediately of acceptance elsewhere is bad form on my part. But wait, there’s more.

What if I told you that I contacted that journal (many) months ago to inquire about the status of my submission? What if I also told you that not only did I received no response to my polite inquiry, but their website sat unchanged since my original submission and they didn’t have a new issue that entire time either? As far as I was concerned, that journal had gone defunct and I wasn’t going to waste my time waiting for a response. The rejection slip proves my assumption to be 100% wrong, but even if I think the editor’s actions at the journal are grossly unprofessional, I still feel like I dodged a bullet. Here’s why: if that rejection slip had been an acceptance letter, I would’ve been stuck in a position in which I would have to explain how I failed to follow protocol and contact them to withdraw my submission—and it would have been entirely my fault. When it comes right down to it, I’m the starving artist eager for my story to appear in their fine publication, and I’m certain they have a hefty slush pile from countless people like me they’ll never see the end of unless they reject them all en masse and start from scratch.

Best case scenario in that situation is that I could sweet-talk (read: kiss some major ass) and explain it away as a simple mix-up, and worst case would probably be that I pissed them off royally, resulting in me being black-listed from their journal no matter what quality work I send their way (chances are they’d never know one way or another because they’d see my name and not even bother reading it). As I said, my personal opinion is that this particular journal’s behavior has been unprofessional—and I’ll stand by that—but even so, I’m not eager to burn that bridge because there’s a chance I may feel like submitting there again.

One thing I should stress about all this is that I made it a point to read and follow their submission guidelines. Always follow the guidelines. In fact, don’t even think about submitting without consulting the guidelines (not every place is the same), because even though you may not hurt anyone’s feelings by not being thorough enough to research their journal, you will almost definitely give the impression that you don’t care enough to have done so, which is probably just as bad. Congratulations! I hope you wrote one hell of story, because it’ll have to be in order to pull you out of the hole you just dug yourself.

Bottom line, as ugly as this may sound, your fate rests in the subjectively whimsical hands of each and every editor you submit to, and unless you have even a fraction of Joyce Carol Oates’ clout or own a printer that only prints gold*, no one’s going to put up with your crap. I know I’m a nobody, and luckily I learned this lesson painlessly. Even if my email floats off into the ether as soon as I hit the send button, my ass will always be covered by the formal (and time-stamped) withdrawal sitting in my ‘sent items’ folder.

Now I if only I had the problem of being accepted so often that sending withdrawals are necessary.

*I can’t take credit for the quip about the golden printer. Others may have said it, but I heard it first in a conversation with Ryan. Possibly accompanied by profanity.

I Think, Therefore I Am: The POV Decision

There it is; a story idea. The idea may be as broad as a concept or as honed as a single image, but it showed up unannounced and begs you to run with it. Give me substance, it pleads, and you know what it’s really asking for: it wants you to decide who will be telling its story.

I would assume that many writers go through a process of slow deliberation over the major components of their stories before they even type the first word of their first draft, while others are struck square in the noggin by their muse and inspired to let their fingers fly as the story pours out naturally onto the (virtual) paper. I’ve taken both approaches, but more often than not I belong to the former group of planners rather than their impulsive counterparts. Someone asked me recently how I decide on the voice (ie first person, third person limited/omniscient, etc.) when I start in on a story, and I realized that for as much as I poke and prod an idea before I finally feel confident enough to begin the actual writing, rarely do I make a conscious decision whether my narrator will say things like, “I think, therefore I am,” or “S/He thinks, therefore s/he is.” I can only assume my answer at the time was disappointing, and although I’ve spent a bit more time thinking about motivations for voice, I’m still not sure I have come up with anything more concrete than before.

One thing I recall from early fiction workshops is that many new writers tend to write about themselves; the protagonist is an embodiment of the author, sharing everything from physical to mental traits (or possibly more accurate—philosophical traits). The blissfully unaware may even throw everything into a first person voice. Others may feel the subconscious urge to feign some level of separation and fall into third person for distance. If this is fiction we’re talking about, it makes sense to train writers to stop putting themselves into the story; if you want to talk about yourself, save it for your memoir. Then again, maybe not.

A common phrase for writers is to “write what you know.” Maybe it’s possible to be clueless about a subject and still write about it, but one thing that makes a story enjoyable—at least for me—is that the author sounds like they know what the hell they’re talking about. If it takes placing one’s self into the narrative to make me buy it, then I guess I can’t complain too loudly; although in a workshop setting this can be a little awkward if the protagonist is easily identified as the author, and especially so if the story ends up revealing a little too much about their personal lives—TMI, as the kids say. And since I mentioned memoir above, there’s still a danger that writing a really great story based too much on reality may blur the line; Tim O’Brien’s collection, The Things They Carried, seems like fairly good representation of that.

I would be lying if I said that I’ve never put myself in a story before, but I usually try to spread myself out a bit, or as Bilbo Baggins says, “…sort of stretched, like butter spread over too much bread,” and so one character may use one of my high-rotation phrases, or another may share one of my pet peeves—you see what I’m getting at. Another way to shake things up based on your personality is to take a character and allow them to embrace an opinion or outlook you don’t necessarily share, but there is a danger in taking on a condescending or judgmental tone—like a staunch anti-abortionist creating a protagonist who contemplates or goes through with an abortion—because the chances are high the finished product won’t resemble so much a story as it will a piece of propaganda bullshit. The character needs to be believable, easily mistaken for a flesh and blood person, because it’s a character, not a caricature.

Anyway, before I get too far into character development and lose sight of the POV question (can you see now why I say a story has to roll around in my head for a while and find a shape before I get going?), once I have a feeling who is going to be in the story, I have to figure out who is telling it. Great, now we’re right back to the first paragraph. But wait; now I’ve thought about who I want to be in the story, and if I’ve got that much, I probably also have a better idea of what the overall story will be about. So now a subconscious question occurs:

How closely do I want to reader to be involved with the protagonist?

If the answer is “very much involved,” then I’ll have a strong tendency to go with first person. With first person, I can write so that a reader becomes the protagonist, in a way. In a couple of my short stories, I have characters who aren’t even identified by name, and I did that purposefully because I want the reader to feel the urgency. With first person, perceptions and emotions can be immediate and brutal—and hopefully the reader is feeling as much ownership as the character experiencing them.

A sense of immediacy can be achieved with third person, but there’s always going to be a sense of distance as well. I can write:

“The door slammed on his hand, and after the initial explosion of pain, the resulting numbness as his body went into shock told him fingers were missing even though he could plainly see all five present and accounted for.”

Maybe a bit graphic for an example, and the time frame is anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, but the point is that there still exists some separation here—and I don’t mean body parts. The third person will always tell a reader that someone else is relaying the action, and yet another degree of separation is the element of time. I wrote this in the past tense on purpose, because this distance feels almost as if the narrator has become privy to these thoughts sometime between the actual event and the event of telling us. If I were to change the example to present tense with the third person, then it would feel as though we may be dealing with an unreliable narrator—at least in my opinion, because who could know someone else’s thoughts as they happen—or we’re dealing with a god-like omniscient narrator, and I think that would even further remove the reader from the protagonist, because it’s quite likely the narrator is able to look into one or more of the other characters’ heads whenever they feel like it.

For those writers who are planners like me, maybe there’s a similar process that goes on—unconsciously or not—while getting ready to begin a new project. Maybe the impulse writers do the same thing but much quicker, and if that’s the case, I’m officially jealous. And sometimes it just takes writing and writing and writing and then going back to realize that something in first person would sound better in third person, or vice versa.

So after all that, I suppose I’ll just fess up and say that I still don’t have a clue. I guess it all comes down to whether or not the story feels right and hope I can recognize if it doesn’t.

I should wait on this, but...

I just can't help myself. Yeah, two posts in on a blog that looks like it's in danger of becoming neglected, and what am I going to do? That's right, it's time for me to write a vanity post. As humbly as possible.

First, the humility: I'm currently experiencing the submission itch after polishing up a couple short stories and completing my first ever piece of shit flash fiction (short-short if you prefer). I like to research the various journals and fiction reviews out there by doing exactly what they suggest; find out what their aesthetic is by buying an issue or two and reading them thoroughly. When you're broke as hell, that's not always an option, so the past couple days have been spent browsing NewPages and Duotrope's Digest in order to make a list of possible targets. I'm realistic enough to know I'm essentially a nobody (how's that for humble?), so I tried to keep the list realistic as well--no examples so as not to offend any lit mags with my subjective view. Anyway, today I've been going down the list, scouring their websites for general info and/or reading samples, and looking up any feedback on each publication.

Here's where I transition over to the vanity portion of our show: I found this website, The Review Review, and noticed that someone named Stephen Dorneman wrote a review for Alimentum, and it happened to be for the issue in which my first publication appeared. "Hey, let's see what he had to say," I thought. He talked about the stories in the order they appeared, so mine being third from the end, I eventually made my way down to see this:

And then there was “Apples” by Erik Hanson. “Apples” is about a dog, and apples, and hungry soldiers, and the evils of war, a terrible story with unpleasant characters an unhappy ending that you should read, and that will stay with you forever, because it is unsparing in the depiction of the large and small cruelties, and triumphs, that happen in wartime.

Not bad. I definitely liked the "stay with you forever" part, but that's not how Stephen made a friend in me. He mentioned the last two stories, and then says this:

...but “Apples” was the best story of the issue for me.

Ah, many happy returns to you, Mr. Dorneman. I've always wondered what it would be like to read a review of my work, and now I know. I like how it felt. A lot. I probably should get back to my research now.

Read the review for the entire issue here.

The Story Behind the Picture

I searched for a while trying to find a picture I wanted to use for this blog, and while not using a picture is always an option, I'm one of those people who prefer graphics of some sort. Maybe it's the idea of a picture being worth a thousand words. I don’t plan on writing a thousand words, but I thought I’d offer an explanation as to why I chose this one.

The picture above was taken in 1978 at East Park in Mason City, Iowa. I was four years old, and those are two of my cousins peeking out on the left. The train had a stair and handrail attached, but beyond that it was a parent’s nightmare. There were open, jagged gashes with rusted edges (you can see a huge one right below us) throughout which threatened tetanus—at best—for any of us foolish enough to ignore our parents’ instructions to be careful. If you consider crawling beyond anyplace with handholds, scaling the side to stand at the very top, and jumping from one point to another with no safety guard as being careful, then we were being quite careful indeed. Not only were we aware of the torn metal, but we would stop to inspect some of them, kicking them with our ragged tennis shoes, and sometimes even used them as the hand and footholds to some of the higher-altitude vantage points otherwise unreachable. We climbed all over that deathtrap for most of the day, and the details are vague, fuzzy action sequences which have blended together—likely because no one ever did get hurt. The one thing that still stands out clear in my memory is the turd.

Our early explorations of the train began in the obvious places: the flat surfaces of the cab and attached coal bin. I don’t recall which one of us made the discovery, but there was a summons to “come look at this” and we were all huddled in the back corner of the coal bin over an especially wide gash in the metal panel. Nestled in the shadows was a pristine turd, relatively large (but everything from childhood memories seems bigger) and so unnaturally perfect and alone that it could have been a novelty gag item—none of us inspected it closely enough to confirm otherwise, but still highly unlikely. We laughed and threatened to push each other—or some other equally effective method of making each other touch it—and once we got tired of all that, we continued the exploration and games. But now, rather than focusing on the clear threat presented by jagged shreds of metal, the area that commanded our cautious respect was the corner of the coal bin and the turd therein. Whatever we did, the last thing we wanted to do was lose our heads and accidentally touch the turd or the day would be ruined.

The point is, when I see this picture—or for that matter, whenever I drive down State Street past East Park and see the restored train with its confining chain-link fence—I can bring up memories of that time, that place, and who was there. My memories aren’t exactly crystal clear, but as sad as it may sound, it’s the memory of the turd that allows the rest to endure. It’s a strange element to pick out and hold on to, even if it’s only my subconscious to blame, but I’ve eventually come to realize that occurrences like this are convincing reasons for me to pursue writing. As a writer, that turd not only anchors my memories of that day’s events, but it’s also a catalyst that makes me ponder its back story. How did it end up there? Was it a drug- or alcohol-fueled act of juvenile vandalism? Maybe there was an adventurous couple excited by the danger of having a late-night tryst in the train, only to have one of them ruin the mood (or maybe not?) by having a bowel movement right there. Or maybe it was a vagrant who used the train since the public restrooms were locked after park hours. Maybe it was only a novelty item planted by a mischievous uncle who ended up being disappointed by our significant lack of reaction. There are all sorts of potential explanations, and without the luxury of knowing for sure, I get to choose one and run with it. To retell the story of that day on the train without the turd would be boring (assuming it’s not boring now) because there wouldn’t be anything to make it stand out, to defamiliarize what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill family get-together.

If my career as a writer ever takes off, I’ll have to write a book on the craft of fiction and throw a revised version of this post in as an introductory chapter.

The book’s title will be The Golden Turd: When Paint Can Increase Value.

Hello, World.

The title of this post seems appropriate. I began school as a computer science major, and "Hello, World" is the typical first line of output coders begin with. I changed my major to German and spent an academic year studying abroad in Austria, which was my introduction to a much larger (or should I say smaller?) world. I went on for my MA in English and have been writing ever since--more or less.

The bond between each of those areas of study, at least in my mind, is syntax. In programming, there is little or no room for error or your application will crash. In a foreign language, an improperly conjugated verb may earn you a strange look, but your message will most likely get across. In fiction, I can do whatever the hell I want and call it art; the problem with that is everyone else might call it crap instead. Considering I hope for writing to become a significant portion of my livelihood, I may end up having to expend more effort than writing a line of code or searching my vocabulary für einen fehlerlosen Satz zu bilden. My writing needs to be as flawless as I can possibly make it.

I feel the overall title of the blog is also relevant, because I'll be the first to admit that I'm rather new (relatively) to this writing gig, which would also make me rather clueless.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some writing to do.