On Revising

It's the season for revision. While I've been doing the final phases of revision of my linked collection "Talismans," my writing students have been revising their own work for the end of the semester.

I came across an essay in Narrative Magazine by Tom Jenks titled "A Brief Handbook of Revision." It's really worth a read for all writers, but especially those resistant to revision.

To quote Jenks:

"In essence, writing is revision. What separates merely talented writers from truly accomplished ones is the successful pursuit of revision. And while each writer has personal methods of drafting and revision, there are general stages of revision that most writers practice, whether deliberately or semiconsciously."

To read more about those stages and the rest of the essay go here..

The Writer's fantasy life?

What's your writer fantasy? I don't mean the bestselling author millionaire fantasy--I mean when you think of yourself as a Writer Writing, what do you conjure?

For me, I love the coffee shop fantasy. In that, I'm sitting in a cool eclectic coffee shop--probably on an over-stuffed chair--and I've got a manuscript printed out. I'm sipping from a very large ceramic cup (probably cappucinno or a latte), jazz or alternative music is on in the back ground. And with my nice blue pen, I read my manuscript and make tiny edits to it. Change this to that. Red to rouge. Clasped to grasped. I am of course dressed like an artist--perhaps a scarf or a black turtleneck, boots.

Definitely not sweats.

Wouldn't that be cool to do that every day?

Well, in my world it almost never happens. I'm at home on my laptop sipping tepid coffee in the cup beside me. I do write at a tiny wooden desk that looks out onto the neighbor's yard. But there's just not much romance with my laptop.

Back to my coffee shop. I did it twice this year. I printed out the manuscript for my novel-through-stories-collection "Talismans" and took it to a coffee shop. The publisher C&R Press wants my final manuscript by the beginning of December. I ordered my coffee, grabbed a comfortable sunny spot, and began reading and marking. It was so much fun!

But now I'm having to take the written edits and put them in the MS Word file. I have to work from the kitchen table--it can accommodate my computer and the loose pages of the manuscript scattered around me. Too much stuff for a coffee shop experience.

So, what is your "writer's fantasy"? Are you in a cafe in Paris scribbling in your Moleskin? Or are you at your desk breezily typing on a sleek MacBook? Or in your bed wearing a silk robe? Wine or coffee or tea? Mountain view or a rainstorm? Mont Blanc pen or just a sharpened pencil? And how often to do you actually live that fantasy? Could you do it more often?

The real truth about best sellers

This is a bit of a downer for the weekend for those still out there hoping to make easy money writing a best seller. But this post about someone who did write a best seller and still made only

$2500 above the poverty threshold is much more in line with what really happens:

http://www.straightgoods.ca/2009/ViewBrief.cfm?Ref=187&Cookies=yes

Writer's Block?

I have a confession. I've never had writer's block, if writer's block means you sit in front of the computer or page and have nothing to write. My problem has always been the opposite--I have too many ideas and have to decide how to order or prioritize them. And find the time.

I'm not a person who can work on multiple projects at once, so I have to decide what to focus on. Right now I'm editing my short story collection, but before that I'd started a new novel that I'd really like to get back to. I also have a handful of essays and short stories I'd like to write or revise. And after I finish that novel, I have an idea for another.

What would happen if I woke up one morning with no ideas, nothing to write?

I wouldn't write. I'd do other things--take more classes at UTC, learn a language, learn to paint. The life of a non-writer has a lot of appeal to me actually and if one day I wake up with nothing else to write or say, I'd like to think I'd happily embrace it.

Sometimes students ask me about writer's block or how to get ideas. I tell them to just write anyway, even if it's the same word over and over. But I wonder if there is a better answer to that?

Patricia Henley did give me good advice that I often tell my students. Make a list of your top ten obsessions at this very moment--that can be something mundane (for me it's the gossip website www.laineygossip.com) or something very deep and lasting (for me that would be death, and our denial of death in particular). Those ten things on your list are what you should be writing about.

But I'm curious--have you had writer's block and what do you do to overcome it? What advice would you give to someone who has writer's block?

Transnational Literature "Literary Migrations" Available

From the editor:

"Volume 2 no. 1 of Transnational Literature, with the special 'Literary
Migrations' feature, including 6 articles, short stories, creative writing,
poetry and more than 30 book reviews, is now available online at
http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/home.html"

I was very happy to discover this journal, which comes out of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Adelaide was one of my favorite places when I visited there in January 2000--I can't believe it was that long ago! Went to some great wineries and I remember they also have very tasty olives there in addition to a great vibe.

My short story "Talismans" is one of two short stories published in the issue, whose theme is "Literary Migrations." The story takes place in Vietnam and is the title story for my collection coming out from C&R press in September 2010. I'm very excited to read the journal and will comment on some of the other work in there when I get a chance to read it--in about 2 weeks when our semester winds down.

A nice treat for the end of the semester.

Writer's habits

I remember going through a period when I was really interested in writers' writing habits. I'd jump to the part in the Paris Review interviews where the author revealed if she used pen or (at that time) typewriter, wrote in the morning or evening, etc.

I also read books of letters, memoirs, and biographies of whatever writer I was immersed in at that time: Flannery O'Connor, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Bernhard just to name a few. Besides being fascinated by their lives, I also was curious what made these writers' tick.

For some reason, those questions--where do you write, what time of day, how many words, etc. don't interest me so much anymore--maybe because I feel comfortable with my own writing schedule, which is specifically suited to my life as a teacher.

What I do turn to my favorite writers for now is--how did she write that sentence? How did he get character A to the library? How did she handle that scene?

But for those interested in novel writers' habits, here's an article in the Wall Street Journal titled

"How to Write a Great Novel"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html

Here's the beginning:

"Richard Powers lounges in bed all day and speaks his novels aloud to a laptop computer with voice-recognition software. Junot Diaz, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," shuts himself in the bathroom and perches on the edge of the tub with his notebook when he's tackling a knotty passage. Hilary Mantel, whose Tudor drama "Wolf Hall" claimed this year's Man Booker Prize, jumps in the shower when she gets stuck. "The number of pages I've got that are water marked, I can't tell you," Ms. Mantel said."

More stuff

A lot happening these days.

In addition to the Dames of Dialogue interview I posted yesterday, I have an article in Writers in the Sky ezine titled "What Kind of Traveler Are You?"

http://writersinthesky.com/ezine/news-nov09.html.

Two stories out. One "Moles" takes place in South Dakota and has a male POV. It's in The Otter Tail Review, Volume III available at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Otter-Tail-Review-Three-Minnesotas/dp/1440178321 .

Here's a description of the journal:

"Otter Tail Review, Volume Three continues in the tradition of the first two editions by featuring fiction, poetry, and essays from writers with connections to the Upper Midwest, with special emphasis on Minnesota authors. The anthology features the works of such well-known writers as Robert Bly and Bill Holm (including some of his final work), as well as a wide and talented array of previously unpublished authors. Focusing on physical and metaphorical "landmarks" of daily life, Otter Tail Review, Volume Three is a rich and lovingly-edited Minnesota heirloom. Profits from all volumes of the Otter Tail Review are dedicated to library and literacy programs in the Upper Midwest."

Another story, "Talismans" will be out at Transnational Literature this month for their Literary Migrations issue. I'll send the link when the journal is up.

And finally, I'll be on a panel at South Atlantic MLA with Michael Martone, Amy Wright, and Renee Gladman in Atlanta on Saturday Nov. 7

"One and One are Three: The Creation of Character, Self, and the Singular, Many-tailed Bird of the Sentence
Advanced Writing" for Saturday—1:00 to 2:30 pm in Georgia Ballroom West. (http://samla.gsu.edu/convention/convention.htm)

And for those who missed the Meacham readings, please check them out on Podcast--all are worth checking out. Just click on the visiting writers name to get to a link for their reading:

http://www.meachamwriters.org/schedule.htm

I read an essay about my dad this time.