Write Well

The Premiere of Grigori Efimovich

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:16:27 -0600

Andrew Paul Jackson's Grigori Efimovich: The Memory of Liars premieres this month at the Boston Conservatory in Massachusetts. The one-act opera, on which I served as librettist, details the shaky connections between Felix Yusupov, a bumbling traitor to Russia's last Tsar, and his co-conspirators in the death of Rasputin. The monk from Siberia, Grigori Efimovich, has been called a sexual deviant, the devil incarnate, and the downfall of imperialist Russia. He was also a father, a mystic, and the beloved guardian of Alexei, the Tsarevich, a sickly boy and the heir to the throne of the Russian Empire

The story of Rasputin's death achieved near-mythic status because, in part, of Yusupov's Gothic-Horror account of the murder. Yusupov's word is not to be trusted; the memory of liars is a flexible thing.

Based in part on the scholarship of Andrew Cook (To Kill Rasputin), the opera attempts to detail the murder's participants -- including Rasputin himself -- as historical men who lived and died at the onset of the twentieth century. As opposed to caricatures, that is. If you're in Boston, and interested to see the opera, please be advised that seating is limited. The curtains go up Tuesday, April 28th, at 9 pm in Senlly Hall.

John Updike in The Moon City Review

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:01:37 -0600

Although it has nothing to do with me personally, I'm happy to announce that my short story "The Lexicon of the Sword," which will appear in The Moon City Review, will be placed in the same volume as unpublished letters and manuscript fragments from literary master John Updike. This is a terrific honor, one I never would have expected.

John Updike attended Harvard with a man named Robert Wallace, another writer and poet, from Springfield, Missouri. Updike once called Wallace "the smoothest typist" ever to come out of Springfield. Throughout their lives, they stayed in contact, and when Wallace died, he left his literary estate to the special collections department at the Meyer Library.

I am told the correspondence might be as much as fifty pages of typed material, including a fragment of Updike's famous novel, Rabbit, Run, which was ultimately cut from the final manuscript.

I will be an alumnus when the book appears, but if you're interested in the volume, The Moon City Review is an annual anthology published by the Moon City Press at Missouri State University (distributed by the University of Arkansas).

The Lexicon of the Sword

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:22:10 -0600

My short story The Lexicon of the Sword will appear in the Spring 2009 Moon City Review. The MCR is rebooting its image with a whole new look, so I'm flattered the fiction editors thought enough of the story to include it in this inaugural issue.

If you'd like a copy of the journal when it comes out, send your name and mailing address to

ben [at] benpfeiffer [dot] net

Rules for Old Men Waiting: Book Review

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:26:09 -0600

Lately I've been reading more. I finished Dan Simmons's Drood, for example, the Gothic re-imagining of Charles Dickens's last five years of life. This was a very long book, and, I must say, quite good. It certainly held my attention.

After Drood, I finally picked up a slender book I've been meaning to read, off and on, for years.

When released in 2005, Peter Pouncy's Rules for Old Men Waiting won numerous awards, including the American Academy of Arts & Letters' Howard D. Vursell Memorial Award. I came across the book one day at Barnes & Noble, where it had been selected as part of their Great New Writers series (or whatever they call it).

The book is short, especially compared to mammoth works like Drood, but carries something I love about short novels: An incredible concentration of feeling. The book is only 208 pages. Yet the compassion is so thick it almost leaks out of the pages. Each sentence is written and polished and perfect. As well they should be. Peter Pouncy took his time writing the book: Twenty-three years, to be exact.

For those who are math-inclined, yes, that is nine and a half pages per year. The pace doesn't bode well for a sequel, and more's the shame, because Pouncy is a terrific writer.

Rules for Old Men Waiting was worth the wait. The story centers around Robert MacIver, an old widower, who has come to his house on the cape ("older than the Republic") to die. The ensuing 208 pages are a patchwork of creation and death, two different but ultimately entertwined aspects of life. As he waits for the end, MacIver recalls his life and his love for his wife, Margaret, and for his son, David, who have both preceded him in death.

While he waits, MacIver struggles with the violence inside him. He recalls his work as a World War I historian and scholar; his own service in World War II; and his son's service in Vietnam.

Since he is losing his life, MacIver, a grizzled old Scot, finds it hard to focus. So he formulates a list of rules: Hence the book's title.

The last rule, Rule 10, is this: Tell a story to its end.

I can't go on right now; I don't want to ruin the end of the book for those of you who might read it. But suffice to say that Rules for Old Men Waiting should be a classic piece of literature along with other great novels about love, creativity, death, and war, including Tolstoy's War & Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Ask the Writer with Pamela Smith Hill

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:00:04 -0600

Pamela Smith Hill is the award-winning author of Ghost Horses, The Last Grail Keeper, and Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life. She lives in Portland, Oregon, although she grew up in the Missouri Ozarks 'on a steady diet of Bible stories and old TV westerns.' Last Fall, I was fortunate enough to have her come and speak with my class of creative writing students at the university.

If you're interested in Pamela's writing, you can find out about her latest projects, workshops, and more at http://www.pamelasmithhill.com/.

Q: Who is your favorite author and why?

A: I don't have a favorite author, but there are several that I reread periodically: Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Barbara Pym, Charles Dickens, Laura Ingalls Wilder, T.H. White, and E.B. White. I find inspiration, artistry, and the pure joy of reading in their books.

Q: You mentioned you started your career in newspaper journalism. What do you see as the future of print news? How is the newspaper industry connected (if at all) to reading, fiction, and entertainment?

A: Unfortunately, traditional newspaper journalism seems to be a dying profession. Younger readers prefer to get their news online-- it's faster, more timely, and delivers fast-breaking stories better than television. I'm not sure, however, that online news is as reliable or thorough. And will it support the dying art of investigative reporting? Ultimately, I worry that the American public will be satisfied with superficial reporting, that major stories will go under- or unreported, something we've already seen during the last eight years.

As a writer, my background in print journalism strengthened my career as a writer of fiction and biography. The skills and techniques I used to research newspaper assignments and conduct interviews prepared me for the exhaustive research needed for historical fiction and biography. I also believe that interviewing strengthened my ability, years later, to write good dialogue. So for me personally, my training as a newspaper staff writer related directly to my later career as a novelist and biographer.

Q: John Gardner once wrote that the question he was most asked was, "Do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what?" He said he thought this question delved into the mystical aspect of writing, and questions, at its deepest level, whether there is in fact any hope for the young writer. So I have to ask, do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what? Is there any hope, and, if there is, what is your best advice to students and aspiring authors?

A: I write in Word Perfect (I despise Microsoft Word) at my computer. Other than to jot down notes to myself or random insights about a work-in-progress, I rarely write with a pen or pencil, perhaps because of my reporting background, where I wrote all my stories on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Reporters didn't have time to write their stories in longhand. That said, I always carry a pen and/or pencil and paper with me; I keep yet another set of writing supplies by my bed. You never know when you'll need them.

And I think that, in itself, is hopeful. Be prepared for the unexpected because the best ideas usually arrive unannounced.

My advice to student writers is to continue to write, to perfect your craft, and to read as if your life depended on it. Because as a writer, it does.

Q: You recently published a biography titled Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life. What drew you to the author of the Little House on the Prairie books? Is there a specific reason you chose to tell Wilder's story?

A: I was commissioned to write the Wilder biography. Frankly, if I hadn't been asked, I probably wouldn't have had the courage to take on a subject like Wilder. What could I possibly say that hadn't been said before? But once I began to research Wilder's writing life, I discovered that I had plenty to say.

Wilder's career as a professional writer and then later as a successful novelist was far more complicated and extensive than most of her readers recognize. She struggled to find her voice, her subject, her genre, and even her publisher. This intrigued me-- along with the sheer beauty and simplicity of her prose. Furthermore, the tension between the facts of her life and the fiction of her "Little House" books reveals Wilder to be a far more interesting and masterful novelist than the literary legend she's become.

Q: If you could tell an aspiring writer one thing, one piece of advice, what would it be and why?

A: Have faith in your own work and your belief in yourself as a writer. As novelist Eloise Jarvis McGraw once said, "Nobody but you really cares whether you write or not. Never mind that, keep at it."

Thank God Almighty, We Are Free At Last

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:26:41 -0600

Normally, I refrain from posting any political commentary on my blog, but I have made a few exceptions in the past. Although politics makes it hard to empathize with each other, I suppose it is a necessary evil, since we must talk to one another in the spirit of getting things done. The world has problems and America is part of the world.

When I do post something vaguely political, I prefer uniting, not dividing, stories. For example, fans of John McCain and Sarah Palin need not click away. We can be friends. And, unless you're a raging racist, we can agree that today marks another milestone on a long journey for the U.S.'s most famous (and disenfranchised) minority.

Let's be clear: Barack Obama is not just the President of Black America, as some news organizations might have it. He's the President of the whole U.S. He's my President, too. Really I don't even like thinking of him as black -- I just think of him as a Constitutional Lawyer from Harvard. The clip below is not to give any other impression. Likewise, the title shouldn't mislead: racism is not dead in America, just like sexism is not dead. The journey to equality for minorities and women continues.

But, I have to say, it is so interesting I had to post it. And to take a minute to celebrate. Can't we do that, before we start on the road again? Just relax. Take a break from fighting. Look at how far the United States has come.

In honor of this historic day -- the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. President -- I thought I'd post a video I found on the BBC.

BBC World News America has unearthed a fascinating clip of Dr Martin Luther King speaking to the BBC's Bob McKenzie in 1964 in which Dr King predicts an African-American president "in less than 40 years."

Ask the Writer with Brian Kiteley

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:41:06 -0600

Brian Kiteley is the author of The 3 A.M. Epiphany and The 4 A.M. Breakthrough, books on writing fiction, and the novel I Know Many Songs, But I Cannot Sing. His newest book, The River Gods, is forthcoming in September 2009. He is also a professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Denver, in Colorado. You can find his books in the Amazon Store by clicking the links above; in addition, you can visit Brian Kiteley's homepage for more interviews, essays, and writing by clicking here.

Q: You write in The 3 A.M. Epiphany that "the American workshop is a lazy construction." You go on to explain your reasoning, which I agree with. Could you briefly tell me a few things you do differently in your classes at the University of Denver? How do you teach enthusiasm for stories, and why is it that so many people believe writing can't be taught?

A: I promote useful accident-production in my fiction workshops. I convince students to generate a lot of fragments about a coherent set of problems and characters, so that they may find, in this mess of fragments, a couple of possible stories or even an idea for a novel. In my intermediate workshops for undergraduates, students write any four exercises from my book The 3 A.M. Epiphany (or its follow-up, The 4 A.M. Breakthrough), and then they write another four exercises. I never tell them which exercises to write until they've finished a draft of a story, when I might suggest a couple of exercises to open up or helpfully derange the story. We look among these eight exercises and make suggestions to the students about stories that lurk in the bits and pieces. Before my students write their exercises, I tell them not to write a story--that they try not to finish anything but only produce questions and possibilities.

Here's one example of an exercise, from The 4 A.M. Breakthrough: Take a bunch of tag lines from cartoons, say, from the New Yorker, such as: "It has great refracted light." "Beverly, brief me on my 11:15 duel." "Are you even listening to me?" "And then he turned the tranquilizer gun on himself." "Look, making you happy is out of the question, but I can give you a compelling narrative for your misery." "That was one strange and confusing competition." Put them together. Type up 10 or 15 tag lines and study them for a long while until they no longer seem connected to the comic strips they originally came from. Rearrange their order a few times until you can see a possible story between the tag lines. Write some kind of narrative to link together these fragments of talk or description. 500 words. The word-limits on these exercises, by the way, are crucial. I prefer to have small pieces of prose to wrap our minds around as we discuss the larger problems of potential stories or novels.

The last question you ask--why so many people believe writing can't be taught--has frustrated me over the years. I had great teachers--Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, Wayne Carver, Fred Tuten, and Mark Mirsky, and they all taught me and my fellow students how to write. Their approach to the workshop was to ask us to bring full drafts of stories to class without any guidelines or suggestions for how to write those full drafts. A few of them offered exercises. Mark Mirsky asked me questions about myself and my family, outside of class, and he guided me toward a different subject matter for my fiction than I was exploring at the time, and this was a very good thing.

Genius can't be taught, but what can be taught is ambition, craft, subject matter, an understanding of the vocabulary of an art form, and a readiness to experiment with your own skills and limitations. Enthusiasm can be provoked. In my workshops, I've found a system that spurs undergraduates to poke around in their conscious and unconscious minds and create very different voices and methods than they would have created if they'd simply been told, "Write a story and bring it to class." I am fond of asking questions like "What do you write about?" "Why do you write about what you write about?" Or simply, "Who are you and how should that affect the fiction you write?"

Q: Following up on the previous question, how do your lives as professor and writer coexist? Is it sometimes difficult to find time to write?

A: I find being a writer and being a teacher of writing fairly similar activities. It has taken me a while to learn how to integrate the two professions, but I began to realize a long time ago that teaching was also effectively a process of writing, and I could use that process to propel my fiction writing and essay writing. I tell my graduate students to save everything they write for teaching, to rewrite syllabi, course notes, and handouts, and to take these pieces of writing out of the context of the classroom and turn them into other forms of writing. I've also assigned so many of these exercises over the years that I was bound to do some of them myself, often in the classroom with the students, and occasionally outside of class to provide samples of my own flailing away at the same edicts and commands.

I have learned to be patient about writing long projects. The difference between me as a writer now and when I was 28, say, is that I can see beyond the frustration of composition to the possibility of success. I know that what looks bad several days after the moments of inspiration may look a lot better in six months. I put things away, and I work on many different layers of a book, without the restlessness I used to feel when I was young. Then I wanted to be finished with a chapter or a novel much sooner than it was ready to be finished. I've always been a slow writer. Before I began teaching full-time, my first novel took five years to finish. My third novel, The River Gods, seems to have taken 11 years, but I also wrote two other books in the mean time (The 3 A.M. Epiphany and The 4 A.M. Breakthrough) and part of a book of travel memories, as well as a memoir about my brother that I never finished. Patience is crucial for any writer, but particularly for a teacher. I have learned how to wait for the writing to make sense to me, which I didn't always do in my 20s. I have also learned how to write when I have only 15 minutes here or there. Writing all the time (intermittently), as if it were a normal part of your waking life, is very important for staying in the mind of any writing project.

Q: Your new novel The River Gods is written as a series of short, first-person narratives (for example, one bit is told from the point of view of William Carlos Williams). Each story deals with a particular time and place around Northampton, Massachusetts. Can you tell me a little about the book? Is there any reason you chose to form the book this particular way?

A: Traditionally, historical fiction writers use research to flesh out the story, to add colorful detail, and to achieve verisimilitude. Research is what's done early in the process of writing most historical fiction. My approach in The River Gods was to use the research to trigger the narratives at any time in the process--I continued to do research until the last few months I was working on the book. I was interested in accuracy, but the historical fiction I wrote was more concerned with the mood and experience of the past. When writing about the distant past, one is essentially translating from another language, losing great chunks of idiosyncratic detail and idioms of the moment. But something can also be gained in this translation of the past: prose styles erupting out of close readings of primary and secondary texts, and a healthy rethinking of the relationship between the past and the present. When a writer rewrites history, by taking over other texts and elaborating on them, the result is history reread and revised. Much contemporary innovative historical fiction takes a simple idea--of reading the past--and complicates the process in surprising and imaginative ways.

The form of the book grew out of the research. It also grew out of a sense of the function of the storytelling I wanted to employ. I did not want to write a sweeping historical drama of the town. Nor did I want to use a frame device--a contemporary or historical figure--to anchor the book in a narrative structure. I wanted the history of the town to spill out and over the usual boundaries of a "novel." I believe history is writing--what is written, not just by one author on paper, but by many voices and other forms of "writing," like architecture, town planning, or civil engineering. This is a book of fragments of history. The only narrative frame I've constructed is the one the reader brings to organizing the vignettes and storylets in his or her memory. I tried several different orders of the 75 or so short pieces that make up the book. First I put them in chronological order, beginning with the earliest human (or European) encounters with the place, Vikings, around 1000 A.C.E. That didn't work. It seemed arbitrary, and it privileged my own family stories, which came at what would have been the end of the book. Then I tried a reverse chronological order, going backward in time. This version of the book began with my brother's death in 1993. It was fun to work backwards this way, but it also felt, finally, constructed. The last version I came up with was to tell my family story more or less in chronological order and intersperse the family tales with other historical tales, echoing something in the family story. But I do not begin the book with a story about "Brian Kiteley" or anyone else in my family.

Q: I found a lot of wisdom in John Berger's Ways of Seeing, a book of art criticism that deals with oil painting in particular. Although I often thought of it, I had not heard anyone mention the book in connection with writing (until I read The 3 A.M. Epiphany). You even title one of your chapters "Characters and Ways of Seeing." What is it about Berger's essays that you find important or relevant? How does that relate to your own writing?

A: John Berger is a novelist and a very good commentator on art and art history. This in itself is unusual. I do not know another fiction writer who writes books about painting, off hand. Berger's essay on Cubism in The Sense of Sight is a wonderful history of that moment in time, and I've found it a useful model for thinking of twentieth century fiction as well. Perhaps because I am married to a painter, Cynthia Coburn, and many of my good friends in my late twenties were visual artists, I have sought out parallels between the arts. I can see more clearly what I want to do with fiction through theories and descriptions of the act of making visual art. I lived among painters and sculptors in 1984 and 1985, when I was at the Fine Arts Work Center, in Provincetown, Massachusetts (an artist colony for twenty young writers and visual artists). The art that impressed me was new to me at the time--the paintings I watched come together on canvases. I was unable to witness the other writers' work and revision as satisfyingly as I was able to witness (and learn from) painters' revisions and, heartbreakingly, erasures.

Q: Who is your favorite author (and what is your favorite story he or she wrote)? What resonates with you in that particular story?

A: Bruno Schulz and "August" is a very important story in the history of my influences. "August" is about that month, the heat associated with that time of year, the emptiness of time in the summer at eight years old. In Schulz's stories, his family members, named only "Father," "Mother," "elder brother," etc., are legendary figures rather than fictional characters. This story does not play by the rules of fiction--with characters created for the reader in a careful manner, even if we're not aware they're being created or proposed. The family in these stories, Street of the Crocodile and Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, seem to exist before the narrative, as our own parents pre-exist us. The stories are feverish evocations of late childhood and adolescence. "August" is a very simple story that explores the way a child sees the world, not logically or rationally, but by means of association and mythology. There are traces of Kafka in Schulz, who translated Kafka into Polish. He writes as if he were inviting us into his life and world, not as if he has to explain or abstract his life and worldview. He wrote many of these stories to one person, in a series of letters. The philosopher in Warsaw who was his correspondent had taken a liking to his work. She pushed Schulz to publish the stories he was sending her. I prefer to read and write fiction that feels overheard, private, always on the verge of being embarrassing or inadvertently illuminating. I don't enjoy fiction as much that behaves as if it were fiction.

Q: I end all of my interviews with this question: John Gardner once wrote that the question he was most asked was, "Do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what?" He said he thought this question delved into the mystical aspect of writing, brought up the "kinds of things compulsive gamblers are said to worry about," and questions, at its deepest level, whether there is in fact any hope for a writer. So I have to ask, do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what? Is there any hope, and, if there is, what is your best advice to students and aspiring authors?

A: There is hope. Writing is an act of faith in the future (and faith that there is a past that can be examined, if not understood).

I used to write by hand with Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens. These pens are used by draftsmen and sometimes by artists doing very fine drawings. According to Koh-I-Noor's own ad copy, the pens "lay down dense, even-flowing ink lines of controlled and predetermined widths." I used these pens because I'm left-handed, and when I wrote with a ball-point pen or even a fountain pen the fleshy part of my outer palm would smudge the writing I was doing. Rapidograph pen lines did not smudge like this--their ink dries very quickly. I wrote both on paper and in journals. I can't recall the last time I wrote anything with one of these pens--perhaps six or eight years ago. I also can't recall when I switched to composing my fiction (and every other kind of writing except postcard stories) on the computer. I did notice the transition from type-written letters to letters composed on the computer (and later email). Each medium changed the process completely. When I first began writing letters to friends on computers, I realized I had begun to write in circles, rather than in a straight line. I'd write a couple of paragraphs, and then I would go back and rewrite those paragraphs or delete one of two of them. Sometimes I'd see a sentence that needed to be a paragraph. These letters felt more constructed and less seat-of-the-pants recordings of my consciousness. This is also true of composing fiction and nonfiction on the computer. Because it is so easy to edit and revise work on the computer, I've discovered I am not nearly so concerned about the invention phase. I write away without any editor on the shoulder. I let loose whatever wants to come out. That's a good thing. The constant revision is not necessarily a good thing. I feel I am maybe too patient now. I have only just begun another novel, which I am writing in a beautiful Italian-bound blank book. My rule for writing this book is to write by hand, never look back (well, not too much), and never revise. I allow myself only to comment on what I'm doing, outside of the story, and those comments may end up in the book I finally do type up on my computer (at which point I'll probably revise and reorganize drastically). But I do plan to write this novel in one draft, filling the 300-page book. I've never done this before.

Prolific Times

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:41:24 -0600

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

A quick visit to Barnes & Noble reveals the depth and insight of Cicero's crotchety quote. Shelf after shelf of books. No end in eight. Not to complain, because most of these books I love. I don't believe in high and low art. Some people decry the poor writing; I think it's fine. But how could Cicero have known, so long ago, that this would become a problem? The sheer amount of text is staggering. A person could never, ever read it all. Did Marcus Tullius foretell the advent of laptops, blogs, desktop publishing, and the democratization of technology?

In this prolific age, Amazon, book reviews, and the recommendations of friends have become more important than ever before as we slog through a never-ending tide of information.

Smoke and Cinder

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:47:00 -0600

Last night, in desperation, I turned the dial on my radio to a station that plays old country music. From the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s. I heard the end of a song by Johnny Lee called "Cherokee Fiddle." It's so funny, the pleasure an old melody can bring. The same goes for "Looking for Love," which played next. I hadn't heard Johnny Lee in almost a decade, but I downloaded the songs and now I'm listening to the sad story of the train station fiddler.

Some folks say they'll never miss him,
Old fiddles squeal like the engine brakes.
Cherokee Fiddle is gone forever,
Just like the music of the whistle
That the old locomotive made.

So when you smell
The Smoke and the Cinder,
Just slick back your hair
And open up your case.
Play Cherokee fiddle,
Play for the whiskey.
Good whiskey never
Lets you lose your place.

On a related note, the other night I picked up a copy of On Killing, which is a treatise on the psychology of killing by a soldier-psychologist named David Grossman. The book contains, among other anecdotes, a fascinating real-life story about a CIA agent and a Soviet defector in a West Berlin safe house (towards the beginning of the Cold War). I was rivited. In my mind, I smelled the smoke and cinder... A story was buried here, I was sure of it. This happened to me twice more that evening as I read through Grossman's final chapters. Three stories? Two? I couldn't tell. I've been too busy to write them yet. That is, I haven't been able to slick my hair back and open up my case.

I have to write something now. I haven't got the time. But, as Johnny Lee reminded me last night, when the train pulls into the station, if you want to make a living, you got to put on a good show.

Writing Therapy

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:57:29 -0600

Sometimes, when I don't have time, I like to write a story. Not just any story. A narrative that has nothing to do with anything else. What isn't going on through my mind like a song repeated endlessly. With so much to worry about, so many pressures, I find it helpful to try and tell a simple story, to really focus on writing a well-crafted sentence.

Call it writing therapy. Story therapy. And don't wait too long. If an idea strikes you, write it down right then. Go to your desk, your computer, or your typewriter. Whoever you're with will understand, if they love you, even if it's late at night. Don't focus on what anyone would think. Don't over analyze the implications of the characters with literary theory. Just tell the damn thing, but only for as long as you know what's going to happen next. Maybe that's 300 words. Maybe it's 3,000. Either way, you'll have written something you can revise later.

And, if you're lucky, you'll feel better, too.

Know the Meaning of Every Word

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:21:17 -0600

As a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes's adventures. At the time I knew nothing of Holmes's drug habit. I wasn't aware of the revisionist criticism that Holmes and Watson are homosexuals. I enjoyed the stories, I like to think, as Arthur Conan Doyle intended them. As good fun, interesting puzzles, and escapist literature.

Speaking of revisionist criticism, there's a funny poem at the beginning of The Lost World, which I beg you not to read too much in to, and to consider seriously, even earnestly, which is how Doyle must have written it:

I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who's half a man
Or the man who's half a boy.

In any case, I did enjoy Doyle's writing, and his books gave me countless hours of entertainment, if not joy. He was a master, I think, of creating characters quickly, in just a few lines, although he rarely dipped into stereotypes.

In A Study in Scarlet, one of the first words to describe Sherlock Holmes is "ascetic," as in, he possessed an ascetic countenance. I didn't know the word, but I looked it up, and most definitions take it to mean "severe." I took this to mean, as my fiance might say, that Sherlock Holmes was rather intense-looking.

However, today, while writing a paper for my historical linguistics class, I decided to look up the word "ascetic" in The Oxford English Dictionary. Don't ask me why. Anyway, the first hit has nothing to do with severe anything, but rather refers to monks and "extremely rigorous self-discipline," i.e. "Ascetics," which is related to the word "exercise."

So I learned the meaning of a word, the true meaning, which I was ignorant of. Now I can read the Sherlock Holmes stories with a little more accurately, and, in my own writing, if I use the word ascetic, I can use it correctly. There are things worse than a writer who doesn't know how to use words properly (war, famine, terrorist attacks), but I'm hard-pressed to think of something just in the general realm of literary criticism.

Invitational Reading & Intro Journals Awards

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:33:56 -0600

I have been invited to read my short story 'The Lexicon of the Sword' on Friday at Missouri State as part of the Moon City Invitational Reading Series. The writing is chosen by faculty from students in the graduate and undergraduate writing programs. I'm reading with Caleb Stokes and D. Gilson, among other talented writers and poets.

The same story has also been nominated by our department head, W.D. Blackmon, for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Journals Award, which only accepts one story per department for submission. That's by no means a guarantee of anything, of course, but I'm honored and a little surprised faculty chose 'The Lexicon of the Sword' to send in. I hope my writing can stand with all the other talented writer's stories coming in from around the country.

This Friday, if you want to come and watch me read the story, click here for directions, contacts, and more information.

Telling True Stories

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:40:13 -0600

I bought a book last week called Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide. The book is decorated in beige, white, brown, orange, and olive green; it is filled with essays by writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Orlean, Tom Wolfe, Tracy Kidder, and many more. The collected essays are talks that were delivered at Harvard University and edited by Mark Kramer and Wendy Call from the Nieman Foundation.

I prefer writing fiction, but generally the writing I publish is nonfiction: narrative journalism. I had never studied nonfiction writing, but what I found that writing fiction and creative nonfiction (this genre has many names) is essentially the same.

Some may cry foul at that. How can it be the same? Narrative nonfiction tells the truth; fiction is a lie. Maybe some writers will disagree with me, but I believe, despite the artificial boundary, that these two types of writing are the same. For starters, both fiction and nonfiction deal in truth.

As Stephen King says, "Fiction is the truth inside a lie." By that standard, then, nonfiction only slightly different: "Nonfiction is the truth inside a fact."

For starters, the advice for writing is similar no matter the genre. Put yourself in the background. Observe those you want to write about. Follow them, listen to them. Be mindful, put yourself in their shoes. Take your time. Don't force it. Write when you can and write about what you think is interesting. Do your research. Let the subjects talk for themselves.

In fiction, then, you take what you've researched and you make a lie out of it. John Steinbeck tried this to great effect in The Grapes of Wrath. He took a common plight (Oakies fleeing the Midwest as banks foreclosed on their farms) and turned it into a personal, fictional story (of Tom Joad and his family). Despite the artifical nature of the story, readers feel a connection to these specific, made-up people. They feel it intensely, as readers do in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or Anton Chekov's short story "Kashtanka."

In nonfiction, such as Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City (or Jason Roberts's A Sense of the World) readers feel engaged for the same reason they do in fiction: for example, they relate to the characters, enjoy the plot, or marvel at the events. Of course, some will say, events in creative journalism are true, which makes them more interesting. To think a blind man circumnavigated the globe! To think Dr. H.H. Holmes lured unsuspecting girls to their deaths in the shadow of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago!

Yet I've often had this experience after finishing a novel, too. For example, when I finished The People's Act of Love, I quickly read the author's note at the end. James Meek's research was just as meticulous as any nonfiction author's. The cold facts about Siberian cannibalism (not to mention the self-castrating cult) are every bit as moving in the novel, because you sense, as you read, that Meek isn't just making this stuff up. You know, on some level, that there is a kernal of truth inside the lie.

Black Friday

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:47:57 -0600

My stomach is still full of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and the other usual Thanksgiving Day treats. And I have to leave in a few minutes to go eat lunch. I've been reading Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. The book is extremely well written and interesting.

I'll post a review of it on here as soon as I'm done.

I'll be very busy (and happy) this next week: finishing an article for Signature, presenting papers on historical linguistics and city-as-text narrative, reading my short story The Lexicon of the Sword at the Moon City Invitational at Missouri State, interviewing Brian Kiteley for Ask the Writer, and, finally, working on a nonfiction narrative book proposal.

To everyone who might stumble on this brief note: Happy Thanksgiving!

Manic Tuesday

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:21:03 -0600

I've been working nonstop since last week on four or five different projects. Some for school, some not. In any case, I haven't had a chance to post on the blog, so I thought I'd update readers on what's new. I can't post all of the stuff I'm doing here (I don't want to spoil any surprises) but, since you're on a need-to-know basis, I'll tell you what you need to know.

The Read Well Store - Whenever I can I add books and authors to this Amazon-affiliate bookstore. For example, I just added some books by Brian Kiteley (under A Writer's Toolbox). The Denver University professor will answer questions for Ask the Writer soon, so be sure to look for that, too. And, if you're going to be buying books for Christmas presents, please consider buying them through our store to support the site.

Ask the Writer with Brian Shawver, Part 1 - A few months ago I did a sit-down interview with Brian Shawver, author of Aftermath and The Cuban Prospect. I haven't had time to transcribe our talk, which was long and involved, but I will probably type up the first part over Christmas. Be sure to look for it then. Brian's novel Aftermath already appears under the ATW section of the Read Well Amazon Store.
Ask the Writers, Coming Soon - Besides the interviews with Mr. Shawver and Mr. Kiteley, I have several more ideas for author Q & As. Be sure to keep an eye on the RSS feed this holiday season.
Midnight Writing - I'm announcing a new series on my site based on writing exercises. The recurring series will feature creative ways to find story in your own fiction and nonfiction. Best of all, readers will be able to write along. Many of the exercises will come from Brian Kiteley's The 3 A.M. Epiphany.