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a writer's journal
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Recently I ran across this in Writers Ask, which is published by Glimmer Train.
I've written here before about what I've called "patterning," borrowing the voice and/or cadences from another author's work to kick-start a story of mine. I like Mary Gordon's "tuning fork" analogy even better as an explanation of how this feels.
In the past two weeks, while leading fiction workshops at Pima Writers Workshop and Eastern Kentucky University, I've mentioned "patterning" as something other artists do--painters, potters, collage artists, etc. Song writers borrow chord sequences from classic compositions to use in their tunes. Still, there is that nagging thing about plagiarism, where the lines are. So it felt gratifying to read Mary Gordon's interview and hear her acknowledge a debt to other writers, too.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
The new issue of Shenandoah arrived in the mail this week, my story "Nothing Like an Ocean" inside. It felt good, seeing it there. It's easy to get discouraged in the midst of writing, to let rejection weigh you down. So it felt very good.
I'm deep into historical research for H&H, and I'm reading (or re-reading) The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The March by E.L. Doctorow, and Tehano by Allen Wier. And I'm writing a little--bits for H&H and a very short (100-word) story titled "Rose" for an literary website.
Friday, April 27, 2007
In the May issue of The Writer's Chronicle, Maggie Bucholt writes about "Rhyming Action in Alice Munro's Short Stories." The term "rhyming action" apparently originated with Charles Baxter. It refers not to word or phrase rhyming but to the repetition of images and events in a story. He writes about it in an essay in Burning Down the House.
The entire Bucholt piece is fascinating to me, since I've admired Munro's stories and have often been mystified by what holds them together. Of particular interest in the article, Bucholt quotes from Munro's description of "her own quirky style" in the foreword to her Selected Stories. Munro writes:
So it isn't the linear journey, the trip through scenes strung together in time order, that gives her stories coherence. They hold together, at least in part, by virtue of her use of rhyming images and events. Some appear in the primary story and characters, others in secondary ones. Interesting. I want to go back now and reread several Munro stories. And I want to find Baxter's Burning Down the House, too, with his essay "Rhyming Action."
Monday, April 23, 2007
Busy weekend beginning on Thursday evening when I was interviewed by Marrie Stone on KUCI radio's Writers on Writing program. It will be archived soon as a podcast on their website.
Friday morning I drove to Bowling Green, KY, for the Kentucky Writers Conference where I gave a session titled "Seven Keys to Literary Competitions." Later that afternoon I helped Scott Turow with his bags at the conference hotel. And on Saturday, I met readers and signed copies of TKTLB at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest. Here's a photo my wife shot, me and tablemate Kathy Hardy Rhodes. The crowd wasn't huge, but they were all readers, and the company of other writers is the very best kind.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Last evening I spent an enjoyable hour with a creative writing class at Berea College, talking with them about the hows and whys of fiction. I love the enthusiasm and genuine interest of the students, both those who identified themselves as writers and those who didn't. They bring a wonderful energy into the room.
Friday, March 30, 2007
On Wednesday I was in Rockville, MD, talking to writing students at Montgomery College, being interviewed on TV, a program called "Campus Conversations." And in the evening I read from TKTLB to a warm and friendly audience composed primarily of students. They were enthusiastic, interested in all aspects of writing, and I found them so very refreshing in their youth, optimism, and energy.
With the two fiction classes, the Q&A sessions, the TV show taping, and the evening reading, it was a long and tiring day. But I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, especially the sense that some students may have picked up something valuable from the interchange. I know I did.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The AWP Conference came and went quickly, as did the InKY Series Reading at the Rudyard Kipling in Louisville. I've seen blurry photos of me at AWP, reading at the podium, so I know I was there. And an angled photo by Sherry Chandler's son at "The Rud." And I remember meeting up with so many writer friends in Atlanta and having a great time. I'm back home writing now, though, and these are only memories now--memories and a couple fuzzy photos.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
I've made some progress on H&H. I've also taken a run at revising Tucson Winter, a novel I wrote a few years ago, revising the opening and rethinking the shape of the novel. I'm excited by both projects and will try to keep both moving forward for at least another month.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The reading at Sycamore Library was a marvelous experience. The old hometown has changed a lot, but about three dozen friends showed up to hear Bob Hill and me read. There may be photos here in the next week or two, if the librarian sends them as promised.
I'm back to working on H&H and reading some non-fiction for research. I'm also reading Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, a marvelous novel that moves through back and forth through time and between storylines using a first-person narrator who is chronicling his grandparent's marriage and life together while beset with family problems of his own. Stegner's writing is absolutely masterful.
And I learned last weekend that TKTLB is nominated for this year's Kentucky Literary Award in fiction, a very happy surprise.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
On Friday evening former Kentucky Poet
Laureate Richard Taylor was in town to read with me at the arts council
reception for a new exhibit of bookends created by local artists. Taylor
read from his novel,
Sue Mundy, A Novel of the Civil War, and I read from
TKTLB. The crowd was standing room only, over sixty people according to
a semi-official count, gathered to hear Taylor and me. Tuesday, January 9, 2007
It's been a year since I learned that
TKTLB would be published. For four months now it's been out in the
world, and so far I've ducked the question: "So, what's your book about?"
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