a writer's journal

Thursday, July 1, 2004

My acceptance for 27th Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School came through. I'm hoping Lee Smith will get my story ("First Husband, First Wife") for critique. This year, I may sit in on sessions other than short story and novel--poetry perhaps, , children's fiction or memoir. The schedule requires choices, and I've made the obvious ones in past years. This year, I may try a different approach. Whichever sessions I attend, it'll be great to see friends from prior years there, share meals and readings, front porch rocking chairs, and late night singing.

"Paragon Tea" is out in the world, looking for a place in print. And another story, this one "Lake Charles," is twice-revised based on workshop feedback. I'll give it a final going over in a week or so, and then send it out. "Lake Charles" is 4200 words, more or less, comprised of a single scene. In the early drafts, it had a sizeable flashback half way through. It's been revised to move much of it into the current scene, one character telling another. So far I'm not completely comfortable with either approach. Maybe ten days of aging will help.

I'm thinking about how many of my stories are set in this region, and I'm wondering how to package them as a collection, to what degree the stories do (or can) connect without excessive stretching, what stories might still be written to fill in the mosaic they form. It may be a bit early to consider this, but the application date for the FY2005 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship is September 15. I'd like to solidify the concept and start planning for how to complete the collection soon, so the full vision is reflected in my fellowship application. I'm hoping the week at Hindman will help me see what's possible here.

There is a start on another story on the laptop, a voice, a few opaque sentences that seem to want to be something. It's nothing like I've written before, and it may come to nothing in the end. But it will be interesting to follow and see.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

My suitcase is more or less packed, I've printed out my most recent short stories, and I'm ready for next week at Hindman--the 27th Appalachian Writers Workshop.

I keep a notebook of clippings from magazines, newspapers, etc., articles or snippets or photographs that suggest characters or stories. It's hard to describe what it is that grabs attention in these. It can be something as minor as reaction to some moment, a glance, or postures of a couple as they stand side-by-side. "First Husband, First Wife" was born of a brief newspaper article, a judge's ruling in a drug possession case. A story from a few years ago, "Shadow Flag," came from a photo of four children, three boys and a girl, dirty from a playing, arms solidly slung across each others' shoulders. "Shadow Flag" had them reuniting twenty-some years later. Two main characters in "Things Kept," Dexter Chalk and LeAnn Selby, came from a book of photographs of Midwest county fairs, as did two characters and a setting in my young reader novel, Being Jericha Mize. For every one of these bits of resonance that I've used so far, there are dozen humming in the notebook's pages, awaiting freeing and exploration in some future story.

Another notebook has small quotes, usually a sentence or two. A few are 'words of wisdom' on writing, but most are something else. Most are examples of ways of saying things. When I write, one of my failings is a tendency to fall into a pattern of sentence structure, in reusing the same ways of phrasing things. When I read fiction by others, one eye is always on the lookout for a neat turn of phrase, a different way of expressing things. I'll copy the specific sentence or two into the notebook, but what I'm really recording, what I'm really interested in, is the way something is phrased, the mental pattern involved, the sentence structure used. I'll borrow that for my own writing, not the exact words or phrasing, but the unique way something is said. I look through the notebook once in a while, just to remind myself that the first way of writing something that comes to mind might not be the best.

The most recent books I've been reading are The Coal Tattoo by Silas House (who will be leading sessions on The Novel at Hindman next week), and Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer. The Coal Tattoo is set in this region, which makes it of special interest, and it ties together the characters from House's first two novels, Clay's Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves. Earlier this year, I heard Packer read from Drinking Coffee in Lexington, bought her book then, but just recently got around to reading it. She is a wonderful short story writer, one I truly admire. Some of her imagery is magical, her endings sometimes breathtaking.

Friday, August 13, 2004

This year's Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School was excellent. This is the fourth year I've attended. Each time I come away inspired. This year was especially gratifying, as Lee Smith read sections of "First Husband, First Wife" aloud in the short story class, and the response was great, both during and after her reading. And her written comments on the manuscript (riveting, wonderful voice, loved the characters, ending a surprise yet exactly right...and marketable now!), how could I not be encouraged by them?

And, of course, being with the other Hindman writers again, renewing friendships and acquaintances and meeting several new writers, all this makes Hindman week something I look forward to each year.

Based on the super response to "First Husband, First Wife" at the workshop, I've used that as my primary application work sample for the Kentucky Arts Council 2004 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship. Since thirty pages are allowed for fiction, I've also included the opening seven pages of "Lake Charles," presenting the two stories as representative of a book-length collection, New Kentucky Tales, that I'm assembling. I've completed the application earlier today, and I'm glad to be through with what feels like horn-tooting and self-promoting. It's required, I know, but I'm still uncomfortable with that aspect. Far better they just look at the fiction and decide from that. But...them's the rules.

"The author should be, not the judge of his characters and their conversations, but only an unbiased witness." -- Anton Chekhov.

The Chekhov quote rings true, and it reminds me of what I find so annoying in fiction I critique. The writer is too involved with his 'message,' with the rights-and-wrongs he sees in this world, that he leaves no room for the reader to experience the story and come to his own realizations. Still, the writer must select what appears on the page and what doesn't. Even that act makes him something less than an 'unbiased witness.' The goal is real and important, though, writing with as even a hand as possible, not tilting the tale by word-choice or undue emphasis. Just tell the story as truly as possible, and give the reader plenty of room to experience it in his own way.

Another recent thought, completely unrelated: The reader will want to believe you when you say something happened in a story. But it becomes real to him when that something has an effect on character or setting. Verisimilitude is more a matter of reactions than actions themselves. For example: "Ben threw the empty beer bottle underhanded, lofting it high toward the center of the pond." The reader probably believes it. But when it lands "with a deep, resounding splash somewhere in the dark, leaving a strange sense of loneliness deep in his chest," then it seems more real. And a paragraph later, when "smooth ripples reflected moonlight in small crescents arcs, swaying water grasses, lapping the shore at his feet," then the reader is even more certain that the empty bottle was thrown, that it landed there in the pond. (The example isn't nearly as good as the principle is, when well-applied.)

Monday, September 20, 2004

The short story start which has refused to find a direction and lead somewhere is finally set aside, at least temporarily. I began a new one with a hidden pistol discovered by a boy, and the story, "The Accomplished Son," is complete now and in its critique cycle with my writers group. With its small town Kentucky setting, the story should fit nicely in the story collection, which I'd like to enter in the Jesse Stuart Foundation fiction competition, if I can pull it all together by the December 1 deadline. I'm several stories short of reaching the page-count requirements at the moment, so the deadline is a definite challenge.

Leonard Cohen wrote, "As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder." This is the newest reminder note tacked over my computer, a reminder to consciously split open the flatly analytical aspects of my fiction and incorporate the wondrous, both in language and in story happenings.

Meanwhile, I've continued submitting stories to literary magazines. A few rejections have come back, usually after two or three months, some with encouragement penned in the margins of the 'no' note. But most submissions are simply hanging out there, three and four months later. I've aimed high in choosing where to send my fiction, which invites a low success rate. And that's the success rate I've been experiencing…so far.

Friday, October 29, 2004

"The Accomplished Son" is out in the world now, one of three stories entered in the Web Del Sol short story competition judged by Robert Olen Butler. WIND, a Kentucky-based literary journal, is putting together Issue #94, which will be centered on The Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School and its writers. I submitted "Paragon Tea," one of my few short stories that fit their word-count guideline for fiction. It's not a particularly regional story, taken by itself, but maybe it will find a home in WIND.

Advice to writers from C. S. Lewis: "Don't say it was 'delightful;' make us say 'delightful' when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers 'Please will you do the job for me'."

I'm reading a novel now, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, this after several months reading exclusively short fiction. The first-person narrative voice is unique to say the least, and the novel's pace seems slower than what I've been reading lately. Still, the tension holds and the story hasn't sag at all. And while reading, the germ of a new story idea, possibly novel-sized, arrived. I made a few notes, and I'll try to develop it in the coming weeks while pulling together and editing (for character-weaving, etc.) a dozen short stories I've written in recent years, shaping them into a first-pass at a book-length collection, the one referred to above as New Kentucky Tales. I'd like to find a better title, possibly something playing off the Kentucky town's name, as Brad Watson did so well with The Heaven of Mercury. That means I need a name for the community that works on several levels. As I mold the collection, I hope that name somehow magically arrives. For the Jesse Stuart Foundation fiction competition, the collection must be finalized and mailed by December 1. Which means there is much work to do before then.  

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