“What is your profession,” the doctor, Jean-Louise, asked me as he manipulated my injured thumb, maybe attempting to assess what line of work would enable a woman to break a bone in a screen door.

“I’m a writer,” I said.

“Ah,” he said, nodding.  He was a gentle man with a French accent and certificates attesting to his education in several European countries.  ”What brings you to Kansas?”

“My partner lives here,” I said, “and I’m researching my third novel.”

“Love and work, good reasons,” said the doctor. “So you are going to be the first important novelist to come from Kansas?”

“No,” I said, a little indignantly. “There are lots of great writers from Kansas.”

The doctor looked up at me, light glinting off his glasses.  ”Oui?” he said. “Who?”

“Well,” I said. “Frank L. Baum.” Then I remembered that the author of THE WIZARD OF OZ, practically a Pavlovian reaction whenever you mention Kansas, was born in Chittenango, NY.

“Um, Willa Cather?” I said.

In fact, Cather was born in Virginia, and I wasn’t all that sure she had written much about Kansas in the first place.  I left the doctor’s office with an official diagnosis of  broken thumb, a prescription for steroidal-level Tylenol, and an ongoing argument.

Nursing The Broken Thumb

Which I continued with the doctor in my head, the way you do. Of course, once in my Jeep, I recalled a whole list of favorite novelists from Kansas. Laura Moriarty, whose debut novel THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING grabbed me and didn’t let me go, whose second and third novels I greeted and devoured with joy, whose fourth novel THE CHAPERONE I was lucky enough to read in ARC form (and which will be out June 5 of this year). Scott Heim, whose MYSTERIOUS SKIN had been made into a movie and whose WE DISAPPEAR is one of my favorite books. I’d had the pleasure of meeting Scott at Grub Street Writers when we were both teaching there. And NYT bestseller Sara Paretsky, whose novel BLEEDING KANSAS I listened to on audio when, on the East Coast, I was lonesome for the Sunflower State’s panoramic skies…  The list continued, and I reeled names and titles off in my head as I drove.

But, I realized, many novelists came to Kansas, wrote about Kansas, and left again. It’s one of the things I love about my new adopted state: it’s the American Istanbul, the crossroads between East & West.  I thought of the pioneers coming here in their wagon trains, loading supplies at Independence, KS, then sealing their geographic fates and those of generations to follow by deciding to go north, on the Oregon Trail, or south, on the Santa Fe.  I thought of the Ingalls family, whose most famous daughter Laura chronicled her family’s stint in Kansas in a book called LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE that inspired thousands of girls, myself included, to run around in sunbonnets and call their parents “Ma” and “Pa” even if they happened to come of age in 1970s New Jersey.

And I thought of perhaps the most famous novelist of all to come to Kansas for a story: Truman Capote.

You couldn’t grow up in my family and not love Truman Capote.  My dad always said when he met my mom she was a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” My sister and I both went through our Holly GoLightly phases (my sister with her dark glossy hair being more successful, though I was the first to break in the long black cigarette holder).  We argued over which was the better book, MUSIC FOR CHAMELEONS or OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS.  My favorite, though, was:

I loved–and love–IN COLD BLOOD. It’s the only work of nonfiction I read for pleasure.  It’s the only nonfiction I reread every other year.  It’s the book whose writing is almost as mythic as the story it contains: Truman Capote leaving the glitterati in New York City and coming out to tiny Holcomb, KS, dragging Harper Lee to play Ethel to his Lucy, charming his way into the ranks of Kansas law-enforcement who very likely had never seen the likes of a tiny fur-wearing man before–and eventually into the jail cells of the men who had murdered the Clutter family on their ranch, for a monetary prize that didn’t even turn out to be there, in cold blood.

Maybe Truman hadn’t come from Kansas, but like many writers before him, he had come to Kansas for inspirational succor. And he’d left with a tale so apocryphal and chillingly reported that it not only changed his life but invented a new genre: creative nonfiction.

How was it I had never been to Holcomb before?

Thanks to my alternate life, stormchasing (which I did to research my second novel, THE STORMCHASERS, but really, in that chicken-and-egg game familiar to many writers, I’d written a novel featuring stormchasing because I loved big weather in the first place), I knew the geography of Kansas better than I did Massachusetts. Back at the house, I looked up Holcomb on Google Maps.

It actually exists, this place Capote describes, in the opening lines of IN COLD BLOOD, this way: “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’

It shouldn’t have surprised me that Holcomb is real, given that IN COLD BLOOD is, famously, a true story.  But in the way you imagine things you love in books can’t be real simply because you’ve given them life in your own mind, I was surprised. And a little awed. And amazed that, as much and as often as I’d chased severe storms near Holcomb, I’d never been there.  I’d skirted it on several occasions, and I knew that in clement weather, the land around Holcomb looks like this:

and in less clement weather, like this:

But I had never been to the town itself.

What better place to visit for Writer On The Road?

I would make a pilgrimage to Truman Capote. I would go to the town he had gone to. Stay where he’d stayed with Harper Lee. Visit the Clutter ranch. And write about what it was like 47 years later.

Thrilled by the prospect, I did my due diligence. I set aside days on the calendar. I charted the drive to Holcomb and back. I looked up hotels and discovered that, disappointingly, there were no longer any accomodations in Holcomb, so I’d have to stay in the nearest town, Garden City, whose motel reviews said things like, “Pretty good except for the smell of the meat0packing plant across the road.” I made reservations at the hotel farthest from the meat-packing plant. I reread IN COLD BLOOD. I watched the movie versions: “In Cold Blood,” “Capote” and “Infamous” (liking the latter Truman bio the best). I tried to convince my partner to be my Harper Lee, to no avail (he had to work).

I was all set to go–and then.

I remembered I have a deadline.

Not for this column, which after all I intended to write on the road. But for the screenplay based on my first novel, THOSE WHO SAVE US.I’d told the producer I’d hand the screenplay to her around the end of February. Which we both knew really meant the end of March and maybe a little bit into April–since I’ve never written a screenplay before, and it’s a kindness on my producer’s part that I’m being allowed to take a crack at this one, and the process is something like singing country western your whole life and waking up one morning to be told you have to sing an opera. It’s all music, but the forms and skills required are very different.

Running off to Holcomb to visit with the ghosts of Truman and the Clutters seemed a much easier prospect.

Once I realized this, I shelved my copy of IN COLD BLOOD, broke off winning my mental argument with Dr. Jean-Louise, and returned to the decidedly unglamorous work of hammering out architecture. I felt sure Truman would understand. After all, he had sacrificed many a gala and gossip session over Manhattan martinis to stay in a Holcomb hotel room and create things that looked like this:

Screenplay On A Wall

–although Truman’s notes were written on legal pads instead of on a wall.

And he had probably relinquished many a Kansas Manhattan with Holcombites, not to mention more running around the High Plains with “foxy” Alvin Dewey, the prosecutor on the Clutter case, to stay in and file sections of IN COLD BLOOD to The New Yorker, which originally serialized the book. Truman understood sacrifice. It’s probably why he looked like this:

Truman, Somber and Grave

All writers get this: sometimes, to get the work done, we have to give up what we want to do and instead write what we have to. Because our first obligation is to the story and the people in it.

For me, for now, Holcomb would have to remain what in my head it had been for decades: an idea.

Until next time, when my deadline will have been met.

Truman fans, please stay tuned.

“All information is useless,” the poem reports or retorts, ready to exit, fleeing. At once shocking and familiar, it’s almost an unthinkable thought in the Age of Information, in which the access to information—good, efficient information—comes with the ever-increasing demand that it Be Useful.

We know this: what matters most cannot be measured. Emotional truths don’t show up on CT scans or in composite analyses of sweat; they defy the law of averages and cannot be quantified. Likewise, literature is not an info-product, but a process of thought, an ongoing, engaged, act of perception. It’s not so much about knowledge or wisdom, but what Marianne Moore called the “access to experience”.

Still, there’s a kind of magic and mystery to these facts about us: that there is such a thing as a typical lightning bolt. Our senses under the microscope are stranger and more astonishing than ever. The more we know, the more apparent the multitudes we contain seem uncontainable: the taste of tea changes every 7-10 days, the smell of a crisis-induced sweat isn’t really ours, and what it feels like to think—how many pauseless nerve-pulsed miles of the interiors of ourselves have been traversed while we were looking out the window? Can we slow down even if we wanted to?

If you’re familiar with contemporary info-poems, then you know that many of them would not arrive at the startling claim that “All information is useless,” and if they did, it’s even harder to imagine that they would push past that statement to one last fact. But Dean Young poems think poetically about information, since they know that all poems are useless in this and other ways, too. As Young writes in The Art of Recklessness, poets, and I would argue, all writers, are struck by lightning once in a while. It may not be useful or comforting, but it is something to observe and test the dimensions of experience.

Frost may have been right: nothing gold can stay. But in the 21^st century, information can and does stay. And stay and stay and stay. The heart rhythms, the word rhythms, pronounce themselves, and then, unlike information—perhaps thankfully, perhaps mercilessly, like lightning bolts, taste buds, skin, and even one day, pain—they vanish.

After they told me the CT showed
there was nothing wrong with my stomach
but my heart was failing…

The poem takes a deeply troubling event and reports it to us matter-of-factly, without comment, perhaps echoing the strategic straight-talk doctors use to inform their patients of medical crises. This opening adopts a sequential way of thinking that is familiar to many of us—“after that happened…I did this…”—in order to inform us of something terrible and uncommon and strange. We might expect many possible actions to follow this news, but because this is a Dean Young poem, we do not expect this:

 …I plunked
one of those weird two-dollar tea balls
I bought in Chinatown and it bobbed
and bloomed like a sea monster and tasted
like feet and I had this huge
chocolate bar I got at Trader Joe’s
and didn’t answer the door even though
I could see it was UPS with the horse
medication and I thought of that picture
Patti took of me in an oval frame.

After its initial three-line account of the terrible, the next nine lines yield to an avalanche of the ordinary: slightly ungrammatical and veering, the sentence swells with a somewhat inconsequential, downright weird, catalogue of average objects that fill this unaverage day. And yet each ordinary interaction becomes terribly consequential as the speaker tries to absorb the reality conveyed in the first three lines. It’s so real it’s unreal.

Chinatown, two-dollar tea balls, Trader Joe’s, UPS, outsized pills, and even oval frames may be part of a reproducible and repeatable human experience, even a lifestyle—something someone else has been paid to conceptualize, brand, advertise, and sell—but no one else would tell the story quite this way. And this is partly because, at every line’s turn, “the story” changes, surprises, slips away. One sequence stops, or fails, or just ends, and another begins.

On the one hand, the poem asks: what’s the value of all this stuff? More than two dollars? What is all this for? On the other hand, every detail seems unregrettable, charged with the momentary sense of the aliveness of life, of being part of the wildly stupefying inexplicable undeserved nonsensical world. How strange that we plunk, that things can appear to bob and bloom, that we imagine sea monsters, that tea can taste terrible, that huge chocolate bars and oval frames exist, and we think of them! Can you believe it?! the poem exclaims. As Elizabeth Bishop writes in a different key: how unlikely!

This ordinary wondering-blundering experience carries us to the poem’s second half, which interrupts the story and its characters to inform us of some interesting lesser-known facts that are as likely to appear on a science geek’s desk calendar or a screen in the back of a cab as they are in a poem:

                                                  Sweat
itself is odorless, composed of water,
sodium chloride, potassium salts,
and lactic acid; it’s the bacteria growing
on dead skin that provides the stench.
The average life span of a human taste bud
is seven to ten days. Nerve pulses
can travel up to a hundred and seventy miles per hour.
All information is useless.
The typical lightning bolt
is one inch wide and five miles long.

We don’t get to know anymore of that lingering thought about Patti, that picture, that oval frame—or what happens next. Instead, to our surprise and perhaps our delight (or dismay), the tentacular reach of information takes over. Is this an avoidance procedure? A late, unrepentant act of self-protection? A distraction? An entertainment? It’s hard to say. But what a relief to know that we don’t stink after all—bacteria do. That our burnt tongues will recover within a fortnight. And our nerves, if they make patterns on a screen, make them very fast—what velocities within us!—and rather unmagically.

You'd never recognize a poem in this getup

Of course, many poets are grateful for suggestions; usually the image or line I query them about was something they too had questions about. Other times, poets reluctantly concede. I once queried a poet about a title that seemed to be a strange fit for the poem. He thought of withdrawing the poem, then he changed the title, although I had made no such ultimatum.  Because we had almost lost his poems- which I loved- I second guessed myself: had he been wearing haute couture and been asked by me to tone it down to the predictability of something from the mall? My doubts were short lived: as an editor, I knew I wasn’t doing the poem or the poet any justice if I didn’t tell the poet what I saw and listen to his or her response. When I read this poet’s book and saw that he had returned to the original title, which made sense in the context of the book, I learned a lesson as a poet: I could change something for a magazine and still publish it how I wanted to in my book.

Back to the film festival. I had read a poem at a reading, and the woman editing the program for the Jewish Film festival at the MFA, Boston asked me if I would consider publishing it under a different title. She was pairing essays with films in the festival, and she thought it would be nice to pair a poem with one of the films. My poem– if I was willing to title it “At Home in Dystopia,” to be paired with the film At Home in Utopia, a terrific documentary that PBS describes as being “about a cooperative apartment house built by immigrants, factory workers and Communists in the Bronx.” My poem, “The Solitary Diner,” was a lyric about urban isolation. It was a strange marriage.

But I said yes. Who wouldn’t want to send their poem to a film festival, even if it had to go in a bit of a disguise?

It wasn’t the first time I gave in. I once read an essay by poet Sarah Vap that inspired me to write, for the first time, a poem about my experience wearing hearing aids. In the poem, I had an epigraph from the essay, but an editorial board assumed I was taking on her persona and questioned why a poet would be writing a poem about another poet’s experience. I let them cut the epigraph, although it felt like a loss.

Had I given up the integrity of the poems? In the end, I think not. In the first case, I found a new audience for a poem I loved. In the second, I allowed a change that kept me from paying homage to the lovely poet whose essay changed my life, but in that same act, I was able to reclaim my own experience in the poem.

Sometimes editors are wrong. Tell us. Sometimes editors help us step into the world in a new way. As a poet, for that I am grateful.

Dear Self-Obsessed:

Okay, I’m not a memoirist. I write fiction, just fiction. Short stories, novels, and Facebook statuses. I was going to hang my head, kick my toe around in the dirt and apologize for having the audacity to answer your irresistible question, but then I remembered: Oh yeah, I know what I’m talking about.

I READ memoirs.

Memoirs I Have Read IN THE LAST 3 MONTHS ALONE

And frankly, it doesn’t matter whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, poetry or autobiography. The short answer is: You had BETTER be interested in what you’re writing about. Because if you’re not interested in it, who else ever will be?

The first principle of good writing is BELIEF. Belief that you have something to say. Belief that what you have to say is important. Belief that your perspective on part of the world is new, interesting, will help other people. Thank goodness you have that belief already. Because without belief so strong it’ll make you levitate, you got nothing.

You Better Gosh-Darn Believe It

Because, however, I don’t write memoirs, I researched your question extensively by asking  people on Twitter.

The first response was from  @Van_O_Dudes (A van full of dudes). They said:

“@jenna_blum:  It helps if it’s interesting. Just our opinion.”

What makes a memoir interesting? Does it have to be sensational to be salable?  Do you have to be a war orphan? A disgraced-CEO-turned-Starbucks-counterboy? A recovering pyromaniac clown? Betty White?

I don’t think so. On the contrary, whenever I’m perusing the shelves at my local bookstore (REAL SHELVES full of REAL BOOKS at a REAL BOOKSTORE), whenever I see the latest autobiographical offering from a) an alcoholic b) an alcoholic child of alcoholics c) an alcoholic child of alcoholics who used to be pyromaniac clowns d) a celebrity struggling with addiction e) a celebrity recovering from addiction f) a celebrity with a sudden mental illness g) a right-wing Republican, I tend to go like this:

WhatEVER

and go the other way.

That’s just my tendency as a reader. Please forgive me if you are any of the above, are Betty White, or are related to Betty White in any way and love her.

I just don’t like gimmicks. And to me, sensationalism of any sort is a gimmick. True, there are people with real poignant stories about terrible things: war, illness, terror, surviving grievous tragedy. My hat is off to them if they can tell their story and tell it well. But above all, just give me a good story about how people live any day.  Give me Anne Tyler, who can write a whole novel about a husband and wife taking a car trip and not make you want to plunge a fork into your eyes–instead she makes you care about these people.  Give me Stewart O’Nan, brave enough to tackle what happens to the staff when a Red Lobster closes.  Give me Joan Didion, writing about her derangement in the year after her husband’s death. William Styron on the depression he survived after he inadvertently quit drinking. Wendy McClure on her obsession with Little House on the Prairie.

Little House on the Prairie?  Really? And not even Melissa Gilbert writing about it but some ordinary chick? Who cares about her LHoP obsession?

By the time you finish reading, you do.

Because these writers find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Because they know that really, there is no such thing as ordinary. Even the most ordinary-seeming person has a story.

The question is: what’s yours?

To answer this, you will need to answer this extremely important question:  So what?

The So-What is what will separate your story from the literally millions of other stories out there. The So-What is your context, your guiding principle. How do you sieve what’s interesting from your life? What particular facet of it should make us want to read about you? What’s your So-What?

As freelance editor Kate Kennedy said, “Everyone loves memoir, but no one wants to read your journal…It comes down to writing, voice, and the ability to craft a cohesive narrative/arc out of the lived experience.”

Arc of the lived experience? How do you get on this arc?

An example.

When we were discussing his potential memoir, my partner said, “Okay. Let’s say I’m dead, and I have a book contract with a publisher in New York, and you’re an editor for that publisher, and you fly out here to find the garage packed with banker boxes. And in each box there’s another part of my life: I’ve been to all the fifty states. I worked in Hollywood. I worked for Larry Flynt. I dated lots of different women from different backgrounds. I’ve chronicled over 20 hurricanes and over 100 tornadoes. I’m the single child of a single mom. How would you organize my life story?”

I said: “You worked for Larry Flynt?”

He said: “Let’s stick to the program.”

I said: “How many hundreds of women did you date?”

He said: “This is a hypothetical.”

I said: “Okay, fine. Well, since you’re DEAD, I’d choose the angle that most interests me most and let that be my orgainzing principle. Me being me, I’m most interested in the psychological angle: your being the single son of a single mom, how that shaped you, how your relationship with her shaped your clearly extensive and colorful adventures with many, many, many women, one of whom–one can only assume–undoubtedly caused your untimely demise.”

My partner said:  ”But what about the weather?”

I said: “WHO CARES? See, that’s the thing. YOU think your whole life is interesting, and in fact, probably most of it is. But you can’t just write about your whole life. Everybody has a life. So what? Who cares? What part of it are you going to pull out and use as the backbone, for your story?  What part of your life are you most interested in sharing with other people? What can you teach us through writing about it?”

He said: “Oh.”

The last piece of advice comes from Erika Imranyi, Senior Editor at Harlequin/Mira–also, when at Dutton/Penguin, the editor for my second novel, THE STORMCHASERS. She wrote, “Memoirs come in all shapes and sizes but voice is a must.”

The arc is the So-What. The voice is YOU. It’s the way experience is refracted into words; the way each of us, given the same experience, will choose different and specific words to express it.  Be aware of your characteristic style, the way you put words together that’s as unique as a thumbprint. How would you describe yours? Can you list ten things that distinguish your voice? Are you wry? Terse? Funny? What are your tics? What are you best at? Similes? Dialogue? Description? Semicolons?

And then, just be you. You’re already on your way. After all, the honesty in your question attracted me enough to make me jump to answer it–even though I’m not a memoir writer.

What more encouragement do you need?

Write on!

By Kate Flora

As a child growing up a small town with the library as my refuge, I thought writers were gods. I imagined that they lived very glamorous lives, an image that was fed by TV and the movies and novels that I read. Writers lived in New York. They went to swank parties and hobnobbed with famous people. They were sent around the country, if not around the world, on book tours. They rode in limos. They were profiled in magazines and interviewed on TV. They dressed, I thought, like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. (And yes, I know SHE wasn’t the writer, but I never imagined myself in a tweed sport coat.) When they had book signings, eager readers lined up around the block to get their signatures.

I dreamed of becoming a writer, but became a lawyer instead. And then one day, when I was taking some time off from work, and at home with two small boys, panicked about not having a job, I thought—well, I’ve always wanted to write. Maybe it’s something I can fit into the small spaces of a mom’s busy life. Nearly ten years later, after a long time spent in the unpublished writer’s corner, my first book was coming out, so I went to New York (glamour, adventure, the BIG TIME) to meet with my publisher to talk about promotion for the book. I wore black pants, white shirt, a vest. I looked very little like Audrey Hepburn.

After a tour of their offices in the Flatiron Building, crowded with manuscripts and crammed with shelves of book, over the moon with excitement, I went to lunch with my editor, my agent, and the publisher. A chicken farmer’s daughter from Maine becoming a writer in Manhattan. The publisher leaned back in his chair, studied me like I was a lab specimen, and asked, “Why are you here?”

“To talk about the publicity campaign for my book,” I said.

After a lecture on how much advertising is necessary to get a book noticed, he delivered the bad news. There was not going to be a publicity campaign for my book. It was a first book. I was unknown. They had invested very little in the book. Then he said, “What month is this? September? Nine months into the year, and you’re the first first-time author I’ve had lunch with.” I guessed that lunch was my publicity budget.

I was undaunted. I hadn’t really expected glamour. I wasn’t a dreamy kid in Union, Maine anymore. I was just thrilled to be published.

That was back in 1993 or so. And what Anne Lamott writes in her chapter on publication in Bird by Bird is a pretty accurate picture of how it is. There are no bands or parades. It’s more like a roller coaster. You get the prepub review that says you are “a treadmark on the underpants of life.” Later, you will get the starred review that takes your breath away. On your publication day, no one notices—there are no marching bands, no phone calls from friends, the only flowers you get are the ones you sent yourself.

You schedule an event at Barnes and Noble and they set you up in a ring of chairs occupied by street people who have come inside to get warm and are now snoozing in all the other chairs. Or they seat you at a table where everyone asks you the way to the bathroom, except the bored guy whose wife is shopping, who talks your ear off until his wife is finished, then leaves without buying the book. You speak at the Boston Public Library and a person with mental issues sits in the front row and talks over you until staff escorts her out. Then you go to a library in a small town, and sixty people show up and you sell every book you brought. You visit a bookstore after the New York cab driver has gotten lost three times and told you how he’s inspired by Andrew Carnegie, and no one is there. But the cab driver has given you a character and a story, and then a woman wanders up to you, asks about your book, and buys it, and then confesses it’s the first book she’s ever bought.

When I ask other writers about their glamorous lives, Sheila Connolly says: “I live in chef’s pants and cracked crocs. Every non-writer I meet assumes I make pots of money. And the absolute low point was driving across the state to a distant town, in the dark, in the rain, and only one person came. And she already owned the book.” Marnie Graff writes, “Well, we get to work in our jammies. But once we finish all those rewrites, we don’t get to sit back and relish that. Instead, we are setting up readings, traveling to hawk our books, promoting ourselves in blogs and in articles and interviews, if we can get them, when we’d rather be sitting home in our jammies, writing the next one.”

Charlaine Harris, author of the books on which the True Blood series is based, says: “I thought I would have to drink all the time. I discovered that that’s only optional.” And yet, at our conferences, that’s where we all are. Gathered in the bar. Incredibly congenial. And perhaps looking for a mutual escape from those incessant voices in our heads. An escape from the thousands of hours we spend all alone, in our pajamas, in our rooms, in our chairs, staring at screens as drops of blood slowly form on our foreheads and we face the reality that everything we wrote that day is absolutely crap. So glamorous.

My friend Kathleen Valentine, who’s really taking off on Kindle, says: I’ve only been a “success” for four months now so I don’t see much different except instead of spending my days glued to the computer designing web sites, I spend my days glued to the computer working on books. However, I can afford to order Chinese food instead of cooking more often….” Ellen Byerrum writes: “You have to be cautious when you have a day job. Employers believe you won’t give them your last drop of blood and while some coworkers think it’s cool, others can make your life miserable, particularly if they harbor thwarted writing ambitions. One person I worked with told me not to talk about writing because not everyone had such a glamorous life, which is funny because I gave all my nights and weekends to writing while they had fun. However, I have to say there have been moments of glamour.”

Moments of glamour indeed. Like getting nominated for an Edgar, the mystery world’s equivalent of the Oscars, and needing a gown and shoes. I got my shoes at Out of the Closet, in SF…and the guy behind the counter caressed my lovely peep toe, black satin Bruno Magli pumps with swirls of rhinestones on the toes and said, “Oh, I wish I would of seen them first.” Like having my editor take me for a drink at the Algonquin, because every writer ought to get to go there. And like being taken to a very fancy restaurant by the late, and wonderful, Leona Nevler at Ballantine. Leona, my agent, the publicist, the publisher, all hanging on my every word. And when I called her later to say “thank you” and comment on how wonderful it was to finally be treated like I always imagined a writer would be, she said, “Ah. Yes. But we can turn on you at any time.”

Do you know any good writing books? Can you recommend any good books on writing? Are there good books out there about writing memoir?

I must hear these questions a dozen times each term. Every instructor does. I usually tell people that how-to books about writing are sort of like diet books or romance novels or fly-fishing memoirs: Nobody has just one. If you own one writing book, you own a hundred of them.

I own a hundred of them.

I can’t help it. They have such sexy titles: Naked, Drunk and Writing, No Plot? No problem!, Will Write for Food. Or they make writing seem easy: 7 Easy Steps to Memoir Writing, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Memoir, Writing without the Muse. I like that. I want writing to be easy. (And trust me when I tell you that reading about how to write is so much easier than working on a draft that won’t coalesce.)

These books offer inspiration (or unintended hilarity), and yet, most of them can’t help students who have taken a couple of workshop classes. You’ve already wrestled with the issues discussed in beginner writing books. What you need is advice that will help you hone your skills.

I often tell students to check out Now Write! Nonfiction, edited by Sherry Ellis. The book offers nothing but exercises, and they call come from working journalists and essay writers. Some of the exercises have you practicing skills; “Anna’s Shrapnel,” on page 27, asks you to go out and observe people and use telling detail to describe them. Some involve structure and outlining. The section called “Are We There Yet” on page 286, takes you through the steps to creating a simple but powerful outline for your story. Other sections focus on research and revision. Several of the exercises have become mainstays for my classes. They are smart and thoughtful and will have you churning out pages and evaluating how best to tell a story.

When asked, my fellow Grub instructors came up with a wonderful list of books they recommend to students. Surely, these will tide you over until your next workshop starts.

From Ethan Gilsdorf, who teaches classes in freelance writing, planning your writing career, and memoir:

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, by Roy Peter Clark.

Ethan says: As the title suggests, Clark’s book is a toolbox of specific tips and strategies. Some operate at the sentence level (Tool #3 “Activate Your Verbs,” Tool #6 “Take It Easy on the –ings”). Others describe practical ways to make your prose sing (Tool #14, called “Get the Name of the Dog,” urges writers to use specific and concrete detail). Some tools offer advice on the muse at a more inspirational level (Tool #41 “Turn Procrastination into Rehearsal,” Tool #45 “Break Long Projects into Parts”). Each tool is described in a concise chapter, and you’ll find exercises at the end to put each idea to work.

From Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, whose classes include Jumpstart Your Writing and Creative Nonficiton II:

The Situation and the Story, by Vivian Gornick.

Alexandria says: Gornick’s idea that the memoir writer pulls from herself the narrator who is best able to shape inchoate life experience into story—and  the plainspoken way she analyzes and illustrates this—provides a valuable guide for the writer who wishes to shape her own life into memoir. The book is particularly useful when read alongside Phillip Lopate’s essay on turning oneself into a character, from the craft book “Writing Creative Nonfiction” (Philip Gerard, editor).

From Grace Talusan, who teaches Jumpstart Your Writing and Jumpstart Your Memoir:

Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Grace says: I always recommend and give this book to writers for its main argument: “The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential.” I like this quote because it dismantles the myth that you have to wait around for inspiration or great ideas before writing, or that some lucky few are born writers. Writing is a skill, and you can practice and improve. If it’s something you enjoy doing, writing can be its own reward.

From Katie Willis Morton, who teaches Creative Nonfiction I and II:

Writing Life Stories: How To Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas Into Essays and Life Into Literature, by Bill Roorbach.

Katie says: What’s great about this book is that it comments and instructs on the nuances of creating a piece of writing. Chapters include “Metaphor and Meaning,” “Finding the Facts,” and “Scenemaking.” The book is packed with specific exercises. Bill also has a great blog you can hyperlink to from the Grub Blog. It’s called “Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour.” The entries that fall under “Bad Advice Wednesday” are especially good.

Have any ideas for future Stories on the Street pairings? Send us an email to editor@drumlitmag.com with your suggestions for classic texts and contemporary places!

Stories on the Street–Andrew Marvell’s _To His Coy Mistress
More Stories on the Street from The Drum
The Drum: a Lit Mag You Listen To

Some of our other instructors and guest authors have been busy as well. Muse 2011 presenter Erika Dreifus reports that her story collection, Quiet Americans, has been named a 2012 Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title. Awarded by the American Library Association, the Sophie Brody Medal recognizes “outstanding achievement in Jewish literature.” Muse 2010 presenter Daphne Kalotay’s novel Russian Winter has won the Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Award, and Daphne read with the 3 other winners (in nonfiction, poetry, and children’s) on January 19th in Austin, TX. Becky Tuch just got news that one of her stories was accepted by Quarter After Eight journal. The story was written in fellow instructor Stace Budzko’s 10 weeks/10 stories class this fall. Becky says, “Talk about teachers teaching other teachers how to be students! I love Grub for letting us all learn from each other in this way.” Michelle Seaton and Chip Cheek are in the latest Harvard Review. Chip’s story is called “Negative Six” and Michelle’s is called, “Killer Kowalski’s School of Love” and the Grub staff highly recommends them both. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s essay “Cello”—“a brief bit o’ melancholia,” she writes—was published in the Winter/Spring 2012 issue of TriQuarterly Online.Kate Flora has an essay on Story Arc vs. Character Arc in the series mystery, and a writing exercise, in the new handbook, Now Write! Mysteries. Ben Berman just got my first book of poems accepted for publication through Able Muse Press. It’s due out next spring. Rebecca Morgan Frank’s book of poems, Little Murders Everywhere, comes out this month, and Morgan will have a variety of events in Boston in March, including an appearance at the Blacksmith House Poetry House on March 19th. And our wonderful intern, Shannon Wagner, just received her first publication: a poem in The Fiddleback.

Next, we journey to The Stace Budzko & Sue Williams Corner Office of the DoC: Monkeybicycle published Stephanie Thurrott’s short story, “Baby Teeth,” was published in the December 2011 issue of Bartleby Snopes, and her one-sentence story, “Search & Rescue,” was published in January. Stephanie wrote the first draft of the piece during a 3 Hours/3 Stories flash fiction workshop led by Stace Budzko and Sue Williams last spring. Barbara Bielinski Hermansen also got a publication out of Stace and Sue’s class: “Batman #12,”in SmokeLong. Barbara tells us that her New Year’s resolution is “to take more Grub Street classes.” This issue of the DoC should be dedicated to Stace Budzko, who was also helpful in the publication of a short story by Sean Lynch, who wrote it in Stace’s “10 weeks, 10 stories” class.  It will be published in a small publication called NAP Literary Magazine this spring.  Sean says, “This is not to boast, but to show my gratitude towards Grub Street for your exceptional programs, and especially Stace for his helpful criticism and unrelenting encouragement in a field that most often contains neither.” Erik Doughty had a story recently published in Flywheel Magazine, and a story accepted to be published in Red Lightbulbs. He wrote both stories for Sue Williams’ 10 weeks, 10 stories class for flash fiction. Phyllis Alexander is taking Sue Williams’ 10 Weeks, 10 Stories for the second time. She says, “Out of this wonderful course last spring came a story which has been published in the current issue of Boston Review. It’s called “Summer of ’76,” and it’s in the January/February issue.”

There’s one more office this time: The Michelle Seaton Corner Office: Andrea Fox tells us, “Before taking my first Grub Class with Michelle Seaton, I had two published essays.  Since that time, my parenting essays have been published/accepted in eight online and print magazines. I considered this a major coup since I’m a stay-at-home mom to a very active preschooler and I really like to sleep. And after participating in Tracy Mayor’s “Where to Publish Your Parenting Prose” (Muse 2011) I published in Boston Parent’s Paper, Babble.com, BlogHer.com, Horn Book Magazine, and Errant Parent.com.” Lauren Norton Carson’s “Dying Young” won 1st Place in the Flash Fiction Category of the Keat’s Soul-Making Literary Competition sponsored by the National League of American Pen Women.  The story grew out of a writing prompt given by Michelle Seaton at a Grub workshop.

There’s tons of other great news from our students and members, too. Kim Freeman received another residency fellowship–this one in late spring at Ledig House at OmniArts in the Hudson Valley. Kerrie Kemperman has a short-short is in the new issue of Brevity (Winter 2012, Issue 38), and she and Carrie Normand won grants from the Somerville LCC. Dave Sanfacon had a second essay published by The Good Men Project, after workshopping it in a class with Amy MacKinnon. Kathleen Nollet’s essay “Joy in Preparation, Joy in Music” was published in December 2011 as part of Emmanuel College’s series “Reflect Emmanuel.” Atinuke Diver had her feature piece, “Why Bridal Showers Are the Worst Place to Learn About Marriage” published in the Winter 2012 issue of Wedding Nouveau Magazine. Grub Street member the Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman has published an essay “Becoming a Woman Priest” in the Winter, 2011 issue of online journal Persimmon Tree, a journal whose mission is to publish works of women over 60. Jim Agnew’s Literary World book reviews and daily pick recommendations blog selected Grubbie Larry Kerpelman’s recently published book, Pieces Missing: A Family’s Journey of Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury, as a daily pick both on December 2nd and again on December 16th. Of the approximately 1,000 new books published each business day in the U.S., Larry is doubly honored that Pieces Missing appeared twice as a daily pick in Jim Agnew’s Literary World. Karen Lee Sobol’s book Twelve Weeks: An Artist’s Story of Cancer, Healing, and Hope is available to buy on Amazon.com.  Lesley Mahoney’s short story, “The Good Neighbor,” earned honorable mention for Glimmer Train’s November 2011 Short Story Award for New Writers. Three chapters from Gerald Zeitlin’s memoir Laughing and Crying about Anesthesia will soon be serialized in Anesthesiology News. Gerald writes: “This newsletter is circulated to 50,000 anesthesiologists and related professionals in the U.S.of A. Many of those actually read it.” Amy Cooper Rodriguez’s piece about surviving Holiday Affective Disorder (a disorder that she coined and surely suffers from) was published in babble.com. She wrote the piece when she and a fellow Grubbie met at a coffee shop and swore “to keep their butts in their chairs” until they had written something. The butt in the chair thing really works. Rosalyn Feldberg’s second book, Smart Mama, Smart Money: How to Raise Happy Healthy Kids Without Breaking the Bank will be released on March 6th, and just received an enthusiastic starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Michael Appell attended a workshop with instructor with Ethan Gilsdorf that that resulted in his essay “Exes in the Wedding Party” being published in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine (“Couplings” section) on January 1st. Thomas Mickey, just received a book contract from SUNY Press in Albany for his book, Landscape Design according to James Vick: A Nineteenth Century Seedsman Appeals to Middle Class America. And last but not least, Monica Hileman has a story in Final Fenway Fiction, and was the runner-up in the 2011 Miami University Novella Contest.

Congratulations to all!

Do you have writing news and want to be featured in the DoC? The first Monday of every month, The Rag email newsletter features Grub Street members who have sent their good news to whitney@grubstreet.org. To be included, please fill out our brand new Congratulations Form (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/congratulations) or kick it old school and send Whitney an email with information about your publication, award or fellowship. Limit your announcement to 60 words or less. Extra credit if the announcement is written in the third person, which is good practice for your writing anyway.

Dear Elle –

Short Answer: In theory, both!

Long Answer: In practice, both.

Well, Miss Elle (I always do this, don’t I? – Friday Five-O questions are just so…layered!), there seem to be two parts to your question: the first asks about the value of imitation as a writing exercise. The second wonders just whose work one should imitate – the familiar author’s or that of the unfamiliar author.

I remember walking down the street in Iowa City once with the poet Marvin Bell, my teacher at the time, after we’d finished having coffee and discussing some of my poems. (They had, incidentally, been pretty usefully thrashed.) He asked which poets I’d been reading. Once I’d answered, he stopped for a second and looked at me – right in front of the sports bar where I had of late been cultivating a newfound obsession with frickles. And while I’ll admit that I was suitably distracted even in that very moment (oh frickles, dipped delicately in ranch dressing, come live with me, and be my love…) – ahem – the point is that Marvin told me something meant to break through the fog of fried goodness: imitating established writers is one of the best ways to learn how to write, to write better, and even to write well.

But I already knew this, and so I felt somewhat disappointed by the supposed revelation. Almost like a soggy frickle, one might say. So I sort of nodded as we stood there and said, “Yep.”

Marvin could see that I didn’t get it. He patiently explained that the value of imitating other writers wasn’t so much to cultivate the same skills or to become mimics of the greats – though there was something to be said for those efforts, too. According to Marvin, the real value was in the pattern of failures that would begin to emerge – the stuff that you couldn’t bring yourself to imitate, or stylistic tics of your own that even an informed, sincere imitation couldn’t tamp down. In that way, the imitation might serve at least two purposes – acquainting you with the intricacies of the imitated work and acquainting you with your own work, your own impulses, your own style, which the imitation should require you to confront. I mean…pretty compelling, right?

So then the question becomes one of whose work to imitate. Of course there are advantages and disadvantages to focusing exclusively on writers you already admire. You will be able to move past impression or favor to a real analysis of how each author’s content and form converse, for instance. That’s huge. You’ll be able to justify your appreciation for his or her work, or to explain why elements you find so bad-ass are, in fact, bad-ass. You’ll inhabit the author’s sense of rhythm, of interruption, of closure.

Then again, you’ll encounter all of these benefits from imitation and analysis of authors you don’t automatically appreciate, too. In fact, with work you don’t love, you might even be able to get past defensiveness or rationalization to real impartial analysis. Why choose between them? I’d say it’s not an either/or situation. Of course there’s that pesky concern of time, and our general lack of it, yes, but you know – there are no breaks in the writing life. Not every exercise needs to occur at a desk. You could be engaging in imitations as you walk down the street or wait for the T. If you’re preparing for some imitation work, try memorizing a few poems or passages from a given author, such that you can mentally manipulate them and learn from them regardless of where you are.

Look closely: the parts that fail as foliage are the most helpful, no?

Really, my answer to your question is so simple – just a “yes, it’s good advice” along with a “yes, we should also challenge ourselves” – that I feel compelled to offer something extra: an imitation prompt or two. Here goes – hope they’re helpful!

1)      Try writing a stylistic imitation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” that dramatically shifts the narrative concerns: maybe a teenager is asking to borrow the family car, or a woman is gearing up to tell her husband she’s pregnant. Maybe a tax attorney is explaining a billing error. If you hate/fear/get itchy about poems, use his essay “Reflections on Vers Libre,” and make a case for the existence of ghosts. Regardless of the piece you imitate, the point here is to change the implied and/or explicit narrative while simultaneously trying to sustain the style. What happens?

2)      Take a passage of especially precise, luscious, expressive writing – something where every word seems perfectly chosen and absolutely necessary – maybe something from Joyce, or Nabokov, or Dickinson, or Elizabeth Bishop. Circle 3-5 words from the passage. Now try to recreate the emotional or expressive arc of the passage – its highs and lows, its crises and resolutions, etc., etc. – using only those 3-5 words. Trust me: you will see just how and why the author used those words, and you’ll learn how to wring every last drop out of them in your own work. (Added bonus: you might actually begin to appreciate Gertrude Stein.)

3)      Another, perhaps, for good measure? Switch genres. Take a passage of science-fiction exposition and try to manipulate only the syntax and order of phrases in order to reform the passage into a Dear John letter. Or take the lyrics from a rousing country song and recast them as the first-person introduction of an unreliable narrator, like the one in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Take any of Dickinson’s poems and try to turn them into greeting cards. (Ooooh, that one would be tough. I doubt Hallmark has a “Success is counted sweetest – by those who ne’er succeed” card.)

Whatever you do, don’t worry about corrupting or burying your own voice. In fact, you just might discover it, lurking there between the lines of someone else’s efforts.

Happy hacking,

Allie

P.S. Check it out! Perhaps a visit to the Emily Dickinson Museum followed by some tasty fried pickles? Don’t say I never gave you anything: http://www.amherstbrewing.com/appetizers.html