Jim Tomlinson
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a writer's journal
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
I've been out of town for a few days and came back to find the advance reader copy of Nothing Like An Ocean in my mail pile. Here's what it looks like on the coffee table.
The ARC is paperback and the published version will be hardcover. And this one carries a few glitches that were corrected when we proofed the galleys. But it's solid and real. And I've already started practicing reading from it, preparing the EKU MFA reading in January.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
I've been thinking about the role of autobiography in
my fiction recently. In the latest issue of
Writers Ask, which is published by the
Glimmer Train
folks, there is an excerpt from an interview with novelist Carrie Brown,
in which she reflects on this. "I've written almost nothing that feels
autobiographical to me except for one story, and in that case I changed
the point of view from my own to that of another character--a male
character, in fact! William Trevor once explained his interest in
writing fiction as nosiness about other people's lives. This seems like a
good and honest (and funny) answer. But I also think that imagination is
born out of empathy. Indeed, I think empathy is, for me, necessary to
imagination. I am not very much interested in myself, at least as far as
my writing is concerned, because it requires no act of empathy to consider
my own life, and therefore nothing interesting or imaginative arises for
me out of pondering it. I already know what it feels like to be me. I'm
interested--I'm nosy about--what it feels like to be somebody else." My feelings about autobiography in fiction are much
the same. Does that mean that I don't use myself in my fiction? No. But I
don't use myself in big chunks. I'll lend a small piece here and there to
this character and that, male or female, young or old, scoundrel or saint
. A pinch is usually enough to enliven them. I will sometimes lift a situation from life,
though, some sort of dilemma, and I'll inflict it on my characters to see
how they handle it. More often than not, they'll surprise me in a good
way.
Monday, November 3, 2008
This evening I read at the Jessamine County Public Library in Nicholasville, KY with the incredibly talented Kyle Minor.
Monday, October 27, 2008 I'm just back from three inspiring days at the Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. The festival is run by the student staff of Grassroots, the undergraduate literary magazine, with a strong assist from Allison Joseph and Jon Tribble. There were readings all three days and craft panels on writing fiction and on writing poetry. I read during the first evening session, along with poet Janice N. Harrington. The writerly energy was amazing and the hospitality genuine. Events like this are a chance to escape the writer's cocoon and to meet writing students and others who are working at their craft. There was much good energy everywhere and I came home charged up and ready to get back to the novel. Sunday, October 5, 2008 I've been thinking about Phillip Roth's Indignation, which I recently read. That book has elements of religion and mortality that lift the simple story above the mundane and give it a novel-worthy scope. I'd like to instill some of that in H&H, my novel-in-progress, and I think I see a way to do it. Not sure at the moment exactly how it will work, but I'm excited by the possibilities. Tuesday, September 16, 2008 My wife and I had our older cat, Punkin, put down yesterday. He has been eating little in recent weeks, despite our efforts to bribe him with all sorts of food that we thought might appeal. Here he is two summers ago, on his favorite bench, still plump and king of the place.
Punkin was already living here when my wife and I moved to Berea. He was five or six years old, owned by the family from whom we bought the house. When they moved to a place a mile away, Punkin decided he belonged with the house. We returned him three times and when he returned yet again, we humans bowed to his wishes and agreed he could stay if he'd be an outdoor cat. It's likely Punkin's view of all this is that he let us live in his house, just as he allowed us to pet him occasionally. He often left warm-blooded gifts at the back door, results of his nighttime hunts. We accepted them as tokens of feline affection and tossed them into the woods as soon as he looked the other way. He allowed a younger cat, a near-kitten named Caesar, to share his yard and food and people's affections beginning a few years ago. Caesar now rules the yard alone. He too is trying to get used to that empty place on the bench. Sunday, August 3, 2008 I’m just back from a week at Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School. It was my first time back for the full week since 2004, although I have driven to Hindman for the Wednesday readings most years. It was great seeing so many familiar faces again this year. Mark Powell’s novel workshop was crammed full of helpful advice. He taught story deconstruction, illustrating his points with Michael Cunningham’s story “White Angel,” and novel chapters by Chris Offutt (The Good Brother) and Robert Stone (Outerbridge Reach). For my Wednesday conference with Powell, he gave me comments on a few early pages of H&H. They should be quite helpful as I get deeper into the novel. He also suggested that I read Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather as an excellent example of narrative language in fiction that is set in the past. I’ve ordered a copy. I also sat in on Chris Holbrook’s short story workshop each morning. I first attended one of Holbrook’s sessions at Hindman six or seven years ago, and this tie, as always, I learned much. Gurney Norman sat in one day, and the two of them discussed narrative voice and use of regional language in Norman’s Kin Folks and in James Still’s River of Earth, all good stuff for me to hear. There were readings by participants during the afternoon and at night by the workshop leaders. Afterwards there was socializing at two or three spots on the hillside, with a bit of storytelling, Tarot card reading, singing and such mixed in. They tell me some people hung out there until 3:00 or 4:00am. I have no way of knowing if this is true. Wednesday, July 23, 2008 My contributor copies of New Stories from the South, 2008 arrived in today’s mail. It’s a pleasure to hold in my hand and to see a story of mine included with those of so many excellent writers. Sunday, July 20, 2008 University Press of Kentucky will publish my second book of stories, a sequel of sorts to TKTLB, in spring 2009. The title, Nothing Like An Ocean, is taken from the manuscript’s first story. The contract was signed today, which makes it official, and now I can be less tight-lipped about all that’s been happening. As I mentioned last year, I’d entered the collection in a contest. I also showed the stories to the editor at University Press of Kentucky (UPK) and to the owners of a small press. Both eventually offered contracts for the book. Along the way I gained a literary agent, who helped me explore publishing with a larger house. In the end, I decided on UPK and with my agent’s help we came to agreeable terms. I’m excited about how it’s all worked out. Friends who have published with UPK all say such good things about working with them. Once my new book's cover design and color scheme is set, look for matching revamping of this website. Thursday, June 26, 2008 An excerpt from Robert Boswell’s The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction appears in the new Poets and Writers Magazine. In it Boswell discusses the limitations imposed by knowing too much about your characters, by not allowing room for surprise beyond type and complexity below the character’s knowable surface. He uses the analogy of a screenwriter using literal devices for a stage production and not letting the actors conjure up the window glass or the drenching rain and thereby letting the audience participate with their imaginations. By not filling in the biography and all the surface details of characters, by showing characters instead more deeply and with sketched-in desires, a complexity is implied. Then the reader can bring his own experience to his reading and discover fresh and relevant and (quite probably) unique meaning to the work. Like Tony Earley’s argument for less than perfect alignment in a story’s symbolism, Boswell seems to be saying that inviting a certain level of involvement (effort?) from the reader is key to making fiction work. It’s not an argument for obscurity, I don’t think, just a call for a real-life level of ambiguity.
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