I'm baaaaack...as a Thief

...what better way to get back into the blogging saddle than sharing a most excellent blogpost:

The Thief and the Soloist: A Very Brief Taxonomy of Writers

In this fella's (Lev Grossman) taxonomy I have to declare myself a Thief. Whenever I find myself writing-blind, I'll open up a source text: Ron Carlson, say, or Yi Yun Li (The Vagrants, in particular), Michael Byers, Barry Lopez, etc and see how they do it. How they open a chapter, how they weave details and dialogue together, how they create echoes and harmonies with objects and places, how they construct such marvelous sentences, how they end the damn chapter. You'd think I'd end up with a clunky mish-mash of unrelated styles and disparate techniques, but what I find is that these out-sources just serve as a jumping-off place and through revision after revision, the bumps and lumps are smoothed out, the sight lines tightened and it all distills into my own approach.

However. I'll also use Tarot cards, throw the I Ching, sneak in a Chinese Fortune Cookie fortune, roll dice (those Dungeon and Dragons dice are great -so many sides, so many options!), steal plot lines from Dear Abby and otherwise grasp at straws. But whatever helps me survive the draft (as Ron Carlson says), right?

And if I can't write a blogpost myself, I'll piggyback off someone else's brilliant post.

One Ron Carlson, One Story

Don't know how many folks out there are One Story fans.... but I love 'em. It's like getting the New Yorker without all the ads or the extraneous non-fiction stuff. Just the story, ma'am, every three weeks. Check it out.

But wait, there's more.

For the 99th and100th issue (a few years back) they published one of Ron Carlson's stories, Beanball, as a deluxe, hand-press issue.  Yes, our Ron Carlson, who's on faculty with the Napa Valley Writers Conference.  Pretty darn cool, eh?

Ron Carlson - "The Signal"

Speaking of Ron Carlson (previous post, down at the bottom), I was so impressed with his latest novel, "The Signal." (Of course, I am an RC fan, so not soooo much of a surprise there.) Still. The man can write.

(Although dedicated to local indie bookstores, I've included the link to Amazon above, simply for the excellent Washington Post review posted there. Read that, then log off and order/pick up the book at your LIB. )

The Washington Post reviewer, Ron Charles, notes that Carlson "writes like Hemingway without the misogyny and self-parody." Amen. It is one of the Carlson's qualities that I most admire (aside from his prose, that is). He writes both men and women characters with full respect for their humanity, rather than privileging one over the other, or parroting the cultural baggage of being male in this society. His stories that involve parenting are gems for revealing the depth of emotion and reality of being an engaged father.

Carlson's prose has a poetically tensile strength that is at times simply amazing; it defies description and must be read to be truly appreciated.  In "The Signal," he brings all the skills he's honed from crafting short stories, cutting out all the fluff usually acceptable in the form, so that it reads almost like a novella and yet.. it isn't quite. The prose is absolutely complelling; once I dip my eyeballs in the pool, I have to be yanked out by some obligation standing in front of face and shouting, "Hey, Mom, hey, Mom, hey, over here!" or the smoke alarm wailing because I've left the toast in the toaster way too long or the teakettle boiling to the point of a flamed and red bottom. And few authors can write the mountains the way he has in story after story, in "Five Skies", the previous novel, and now "The Signal."

And, even more fun, Carlson is one of the faculty this summer at the Napa Valley Writers Conference, the Best Little Writing Conference in the West, imho. So, folks, get your keyboards running: applications open March 1st and as Fiction Director this year, I'm waiting for your submission, yes, I am!

Objects of Significance, Objects that Signify

The Significant Objects Project rocks on. They're now at the end of the second round (the last object is up, folks, time to start bidding) the proceeds of which benefit 826 National, the writing program that Dave Eggers and crew began in SF and now has gone, umm, national. Sig. Obj. has now raised over $2,000 by  e-baying various thingamabobs, doohickeys and tchotchkes after they've been value-enhanced by a pertinent albeit invented history.  Rob Walker chats more about the project here at More Intelligent Life.

This past week, Sig Obj has been dedicated to objects collected by Underwater New York, which...well, to get the whole story you'll have to go there, but suffice it to say, these evocative objects have another whole layer of meaning sloughing off them; they've been underwater before being salvaged by the intrepid band of New Yorkers dedicated to seeing what is under their water. (hell yeah, they're brave! or... foolhardy?)  Yep, hop on over there, it'll all become clearer. But -- remember: come back!

So the Sig Obj project is looking at how a story enhances an object. It's fascinating that once we've engaged with an object, once we've attached value, symbolism, meaning to a thing, that thing becomes precious to us, even though it itself hasn't (usually) changed one iota and is probably, on the grand scheme of things, inherently worthless. Although Jamie Madigan's blog is about gamers and why they do what they do, this particular post considers the assigned vs absolute values of objects and he quotes some very interesting research about what happens when objects carry an emotional charge. Go there for the research...come back here to find out what the hell I think I'm talking about.

Okay, a story making objects valuable, we got that. But it got me thinking about the role of objects in fiction; how they carry meaning for the story. Not just symbolically, though that can happen. I'm thinking more like the inventory that Ron Carlson talks about: the stuff that arrives at the start of the first draft, the objects, attitudes, names, weather, etc., and how these things both define the story and can be used later in the draft to keep the story moving along. But the idea is that these specifics bring significance to the story, they give it life. To me it is the reverse of story granting significance to things; it's things granting significance to the story.

Yet Another Writing Blog

Skipping around from blog to blog (a fabulous writing avoidance technique) has its own damn rewards. And this is one of them: Words in Place. It's written by Gay Degani who has some cogent thoughts about the process of writing, mainly that it's all about the seat-time. She refers to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers and his contention that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to succeed in any venture. She also refers to Ron Carlson's book Ron Carlson Writes a Story, one of my absolute-can't-get-much-better writing bibles. Carlson has a version of the 10,000 hours concept; for him it's getting to your tenth short story. Not that you'll be an expert at that point, but you'll have wrestled with most of the elements of fiction. And aren't so nervous about the whole process. There are other neat things and links on the blog; check it out.

But now I gotta get Outliers. Thanks the goddess of indie bookstores for the two Gift Certificates the merry little elves left under my pillow for me. Yeah, they were a little confused this year. Could have been the punch and rum balls we left out instead of the milk and cookies.