Significant Objects Volume 3

Significant Objects is doing it again, yep, yep,  Volume Three, proceeds to benefit the organization Girls Write Now. A great line-up of writers, too, for a worthy cause...including Charles Baxter (yes, the Charles Baxter) whose story is already up. So excuse me, I'm on my way to bid on the meteoric paperweight he so brilliantly created out of whole cloth.

Writing Lysacek Style

Watching the Olympics these past nights, suffering from Olympic Narcolepsy all the next day...man, it starts late here on the West Coast and then goes later.  Doesn't make sense, since we're  pretty much in the same time zone as Vancouver, but there you have it.  Media playing yank-the time-zones.

Still, it's worth the sleep deprivation, as long as you're not one of my co-workers, who have to bear the brunt of my Olympic-sized crankiness the next day.

The Men's Figure Skating Shoot Out at the Pacific Coliseumn...omg...Lysacek! * What a stunningly beautiful five-minute eternity on ice. The perfect flow of energy, grace, power, control. Nothing broke my attention on his flawless execution; I wasn't caught up in how high he leaped or how many times he spun. I was enthralled, enraptured, transported to those moments of lost-to-the-world concentration. It hit me then: we want this same sort of focused, breathless attention from our readers; we want them  to be so caught up in our world that they are not aware of how high we leap or how many sentences it takes to construct the scene and setting; we don't want them to see any clunky transitions or biffed landings.  We just want them there, an engaged witness to the story.

So I went out to the woodshed and began revising. Again.

But I work with hope in my heart and a somewhat clearer vision of the way forward: ditch the un-essentials, streamline,  streamline, streamline and weave in about eight triple axels.



* Because NBC controls all video coming out of the Olympics, this link takes you to YouTube of Lysacek's 2009 Championship Free Skate. Pretty amazing stuff, but his performance at the Olympics was even more so.

Napa Valley Writers Conference - Summer 2010

And speaking about the Napa Writers Conference ...  it looks like another bang-up summer of writing and workshops for what I (personally) consider the Best Little Writing Conference in the West.

Okay, so yes, I'm involved (Fiction Director this year), but I was a workshop participant for two years and loved it just as much then. This summer, check it out: Ron Carlson,  Lan Samantha Chang, Curtis Sittenfeld and Michael Byers as fiction faculty; C.D. Wright, Arthur Sze, Brenda Hillman and Major Johnson as poetry faculty.  Spending the last week of July in one of the most beautiful valleys in California, working with fabulous writers...really, what's not to like?

Rolling admissions worked well last year, so we're doing it again, which means we'll be accepting applications beginning March 1st  (in one week -yowzers! -- better get my eyeballs oiled and tuned up.) Scholarship deadline is April 1st....so, writers, grab your keyboards; send me some apps!

Some photos from last year, courtesy of participant Charlene Kwon:

Some plein-air workshopping with ZZ Packer's group

  After the workshopping and writing, come the readings.

Gathering for wine and conversation before the Robert Boswell and Jane Hirschfield reading at Rubicon Winery (previously known as the Niebaum-Coppola Winery).

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.

Professions that Require Large Shoes

Anyone up for a new curious list (as described in previous post) ?
Let's roll!
Professions that Require Large Shoes:

Father
Carpenter
Carpenter's son

Winter trapper
Shepards
Mythical Characters with a seven-league stride


More suggestions needed!

Lucia Galloway: "Venus and Other Losses"

Great news! My friend and fellow-Antiochian Lucia Galloway's new book of poems, "Venus and Other Losses," has just been published by Plan View Press. I don't have copy to quote from yet, though I will soon. I've always admired her poetry; she has a great feel for formal structures, using them to her advantage, all the while messing around with them in most delicious ways.

I do have a link to a recently posted poem of hers, Seasonal, that will give you a taste of the delights to be found in her work. And if you go to her webapage, Lucia Galloway, you'll find other poems on her Portfolio page as well as links to other published work.

But wait, wait, update! Lucia generously sent me this poem, found on page 32 from "Venus and Other Losses," to post for you all.  Enjoy!

Poem without the Piano

Even if you’re expecting

just notes—

in tunes and rills

chords and counterpoint—

you may get minnows silvered

darting in little schools

or sumo wrestlers panting

groaning with the contest.

You may get Chinese acrobats

stacked up in pyramids

or paddle balls

or yo-yos

whirligigs

Pick-up-Stix

painted turtles

crawling from fissures

between the keys. Things

whose happening

takes shape in spaces

between the sounds.

~ Lucia Galloway

Breakfast for Dessert, anyone?

You know those mad, rushed, over-the-top days when breakfast-for-dinner is the best thing going?

Well, today I had dessert-for-breakfast. That's the sort of day it's been. You'd think things would have calmed down a bit at work, now that we're into the second week of the semester. But no.  Students are still duking it out for classes, and in my office, no less.

So I had my dessert first today, just in case. And besides which, a home-made eclair will get you though times of Big Trouble better than anything I know. Thanks, Gran'mom Marilyn!

Breakfast is the handiest, most satisfying meal there is and it never hurts to have two or three of them in a day. Guess lots of people had that urge when the forecasters called for a few feet of snow last week in the mid-Atlantic states. See the results: Snowpocalypse

Or as one commenter from Philadelphia said, when observing that stores sell out of bread, milk and eggs before a storm,"Why do people in Philly feel the need to make French Toast whenever it snows?"

As one who grew up in very Upstate New York (Potsdam and Buffalo), two feet of snow, well, it's snow, but I doubt we would have had a snow day. Of course, we were prepped for it with snow tires, winter woolies (down and fleece these days) and our pantry was kept topped up. No one rushed anywhere in the winter.  Unless they were on skis.  And then when we came in from a bit of cross-country or other snow-play, ahh, the  aromas of warm maple syrup and hot chocolate. And French toast. Fast, simple, hot.

So maybe it's an atavistic thing.

Diagram A

Two weeks ago,  my dentist (yes, he's mine, he's too good to share ;-} ) drilled out a huge hunk of disintegrating silver amalgam from a lower front molar in preparation for yet another manufactured tooth. I think that gets me down to just a crooked little picket fence of bottom teeth, and maybe about 4 others, that are original issue from the gum up. All the other teeth are gold crowns or porcelain caps cemented onto some mighty stubborn roots, although most of those have been gutted by root canals. (see diagram A). By the time I'm done, my genetically worthless teeth will have become the best part of me, sturdy and hale, while the rest of me falls apart. 

I began my life terrified of dentists. In the fourth grade, whenever my mom told me I had an appointment after school, I'd run away from home. Not so far that my father couldn't find me by driving around the block a few times and ordering me into the car when he spotted me hiding behind a tree. My panicked escape was understandable. At the time, Novocaine was just beginning to make its way into the profession and our dentist didn't believe in using it. Yes, way back in the mists of time.  And there was so much work to be done; Dr Hart had a long list of cavities to tackle.  Dr Hart, my mom would say, flicking an inch-long ash off her Chesterfield, I'm not sure he has one.

Perhaps Dr Hart wasn't comfortable about being able to administer the proper amount to children, or maybe I was just too wiggly for him to get a good purchase on me with a needle in one hand. Anyway, the body memory stayed with me for a very long time, even after I went to many (hundreds, it seems like) other dentists and Novocaine became an essential of the procedure. All my adult life I've avoided making appointments, missed them, reset them. When I did get into the chair, I made sure I was numbed to my eyebrows. 

Today, I got the double-crown glued on (without Novocaine, too -- no drilling!) and I feel ready for another 50,000 miles. I bless the advances of the dental profession and the excellent technique and skills of my dentist.  But it's only the first installment, And so, bit by bit, the re-build begins. 

Wordless Wednesday: Windows and Doors

Curious Lists: Unlikely Ice Cream Flavors

One book acquired over the holiday, "Curious Lists," is basically a bunch of suggested Lists to make, in any way you'd like. So, yeah, its mostly blank ... but what great lists!

For instance: Knots Used for Sailing or Declarations of a Furious Chef or True Things About Cats or Hiccup Cures or Unlikely Ice Cream Flavors. These can be taken seriously or whimsically, depending on mood or any surrounding mayhem you might find yourself in.

Kinda reminds me of the "Pillow Book," the Japanese book written around the year 1000 by a Sei Shonagon.  Part of its charm are the lists the author included, though this current book is more, uhh, interactive. (God, that word is becoming, like, poison.)

So I thought I'd throw one of those lists out there and see what folks come up with. Post any suggestions in comments and remember, fictional or literal suggestions equally acceptable (just not overly scatological or un-family friendly; those can go on your personal list you keep in your car's glovebox for the times you need to convince an officer of the law that you're more wacky than drunk and should simply be delivered home into the waiting arms of your patient but worried spouse).

So how about the last one mentioned:

Unlikely Ice Cream Flavors 

1) Aloe Vera

2) Spaceship Exhaust

3) Copper Shavings

4) Fairy Dust

5) Belly Button

Send me more!

Good News from the Publication Fairy

More good news for the New Year (and beyond) from our buddy Paul Lisicky:

1) SmokeLong Weekly chose his story, "Palo Alto," as their kick-off publication piece.
SmokeLong Weekly—"Palo Alto" by Paul Lisicky—January 4, 2010

BUT, even better! his novel, The Burning Man, will come out in Spring 2011! Yahoo!!!! Major, major congrats! If you want, you can wish him your own congratulations at his blogpost.

Feckless Frazzled Furlough Friday

First working Friday of the year and it's a Furlough Friday. Fah! It all seems rather feckless to me--a half-assed, ineffectual band-aid to a problem that requires systemic change and some big-picture thinkers up in Sacramento. Fancy that! But I'm not even going to attempt to crack that nut today. Don't want to ruin a perfectly fine Friday with frazzled and fried brain cells and a bad, sizzling attitude. 

What I want to do is get beyond the fecklessness, go past the fulminating and even facetiousness and develop something more .... fortuitous, forthright, fulfilling, maybe even frothy. I've decided they'll be Fiction Fridays. Instead of going to the office, I'll go out to the my little garden-shed-turned-into-studio and crank out some scenes on the novella. What the hey. Maybe by the end of the Economic Downturn, I'll have the dang thing finished. 

Wordless Wednesday

I took the two pix above at work on the last Wednesday before the end of the semester, and the one below on the first Wednesday we came back (today).

Wandering the Interschnitzel

Being home for ten days gave me with plenty of time to wander the grassy plains of the Interschnitzel. When I should have been working on my novella, yes... but. Sometimes you gotta take a break.  And the weather was too rubbishy (rain. cold. more rain.) for a comfortable meandering, humming actual walk.
Anyway, thought I would share some of my discoveries.

Miss Buckle...love her photos and sensibilities.

Staircase Writing... the blog of a bonafide follower of my blog, not kith or kin!  A nice take-off from stairway wit (as opposed to the elevator pitch), that includes lots of tidbits about candy. All due to research for her  novel "True Confections." May we all be blessed with such sweet research.

ohfortheloveofblog ... love reading Molly's blog, lots of spirit, lots of compassion, lots of sass. And she's got a good reading list. Plus, she makes some stunningly yummy-looking food.

That's it for now, folks. Back to work tomorrow, in the vacant, echoing halls of academia, in Darwin Hall, to be exact, where evolution is not so much a theory as an under-funded concept.

To the Persistent, Go the Rewards

Good news for the new year! My friend and grad-school compadre, Cecilia Ward Jones, had her essay, Art of Perseverance, published in the latest Poets and Writers (Jan/Feb 2010). Three cheers, hip-hip-hooray and a thousand kudos!

The link, unfortunately, will not take you to her excellent essay, just the listing on the P and W website noting that it's available in the print edition.  But I think most of you are already subscribers,  a few of you can come by the house and read my copy (in the back room by the computer, kids), and as for the rest of you, there's the library, or lingering at the newstand or loitering at your fav indie bookstore. Just don't get arrested and try to blame it on me.

You could also buy it.

Cecilia's essay addresses that age-old conundrum: why we write, and particularly why we write when, even after years of fighting our own doubts, working against everyone's expectations (she has some personal doozies to tell you about), and slaving away in isolation, improving story by story through sheer finger-sweat, brain abuse and neglect of human relationships, there are such meager crumbs of recognition, i.e. publication. Like, usually, none.  As her (putative) friend said, and I quote from the essay: "' but that's like a hobby, right? Your writing. Since you don't publish.'

"Okay, everyone, in unison: GRRRRRRRRRRR! 

Cecilia wonders, "I'm not published, ergo I'm not a writer?" which leads her to that question in the back of so many of our minds:  If I'm not getting published, then why do I do it? 

The irony is not lost on Cecilia, no siree bob, that her published essay is about her not being published. 

Struggling with that same question, a bloggin' buddy, Kathleen O'Hanlon posted this on her blog Southern California is My Desk :

" It is my pleasure and my burden to get to spend time inside my head everyday, to the detriment of exercise, professional development, home-cooked meals, going to movies with friends. This is what I do for better and worse. And most days it feels like this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Don't know why. Don't know if I ever will know why. But there it is." 

It's similar to Cecilia's conclusion: "a normal person probably would have gone on to other things, but I continue to write. Stubborn? Maybe. But it's what I do. I write. I get up every morning, sit in front of my computer and work away."

Cecilia and Kathleen have nailed it: we don't know why, but we do; we write. For better or worse, we write. In sickness and in health. In rain, snow, sleet, dark of night and bright of day, under blue moons and during monsoons. We write, ergo we are writers. So there.  

So Many Books, So Little Time

yes, yes, absolutely, you're right: lame-o blogger, haven't posted in weeks. Though, between the end of the semester and the whole holiday thing, those were some pretty intense weeks. Lots of things went by the wayside: correspondence (email, FB, LinkedIn, and otherwise), tidyness around the house and office, excessive attention to grooming, etc. Don't get me wrong, I took showers - almost everyday, in fact. Just wasn't rat-tailing the bangs or buffing up the nails. Course I don't do either of those things anyway, so that didn't save me so much time. Let's just say that I kept myself presentable, just not dolled up.

So the blogging suffered. But my family is happy and I'm still employed; what more can you want? Time, of course... mostly for various writing projects. Which is another reason the blogging is on the back burner. This week off  has been an opportunity to woodshed, as the jazz-cats say, out in my garden-shack studio. Helps that it's been raining, too. Easy to stay inside.  It's been raining in my novella, too, come to think of it.

The library project is on hold for now. In an attempt to meet their slashed budget, the Sonoma County Libraries are closed all this week. I know they have little choice, but these are sad times.

On the upside, I've been able to indulge in some fabulous reading: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery (translated from the French), a book that had been recommended to me several times. And with damn good reason. This is some book. I haven't finished quite yet, but almost; I'm at that point where I'm slowing down, so it lasts just a teeny bit longer.  I'm completely impressed with the author's ability to mess around with philosophical ideas and yet keep a compelling tale going. Not only that, but there's been few words I had to look up in the dictionary, like incunabulum. I  love it!  The French can be like that, though. I highly recommend it; has anyone else read it yet?

This is Barbery's second novel but the first to be published here. Her first novel, Gourmet Rhapsody, has subsequently been published on this side of the pond and it's next on my list.

Some of the rest of the list:
The Help by Kathryn Stockett...I want to see what the fuss is about.
Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, 'nuff said.
A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore, ditto
Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro, ditto, ditto.
The Art of Subtext, by Charles Baxter as suggested by Cliff Garstang on his blog Perpetual Folly, a blog to check out if you're of the writing clan.

Prep, The Man of My Dreams and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. One of the faculty at Napa Writers Conference this summer; I like to be prepared. It's that Inner Scout thing.
Long for This World, and Coast of Good Intentions, by Michael Byers, for the same reason.

Woman's World, by Graham Rawle, a novel written using text (words, phrases) entirely cut out from women's magazines. This is an Xmas gift from my bookseller daughter--she knows her stuff.

Well, that's a good start. Here's some links, if you're interested in other good book lists.

KList...by Kathleen O'Hanlon
S.Krishna's Books  authors from South Asia and a whole bunch of places not America; includes book reviews and reading challenges. A great place to be introduced to unfamiliar authors.

With that, I think it's time to pack 2009 away and get ready for 2010.

Significant Mention

So today, Significant Objects commented on my comments about them and posted a link to my blog and the story I had created from one of their SO's. How cool is that?  Yep, just about that cool.

No matter, here's the link...you might have to "read more" to find me. Then cruise around and check out their current project, Significant Objects 2, which is raising funds for 826 National, which I realize now, duh, is 826 Valencia gone national.

And then, writer-ettes, find an object of significance and write its story.

Significant Sauce

Sooo ...apropos the previous post about Significant Objects and their usefulness as writing prompts, here's the narrative I wrote using the pictured object as a prompt, which was originally posted here.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

She brought it back from Kansas City, because he loved bar-b-que so much. A token of gratitude for being so agreeable about her mandatory sales managers conference scheduled on the weekend of their third anniversary.

"Doesn't hold enough sauce to cover a chicken wing," he growled. He stood up, grabbed his beer, went to watch the news, leaving the jar, barely three inches high and the dour color of baked beans, on the kitchen table where he'd unwrapped it.

Soon, however, he didn't have enough scruples to come home every night or hide the emails or even pretend he was looking for work anymore.

She left for good after coming home early from a horrendous day at work to hear a voicemail from the third girlfriend in as many years, accusing her of being the "other woman," of wrecking his happiness, of holding him back. He was nowhere to be found, maybe out buying more beer, maybe just out. With sudden swift arcs of her arms, she swept everything off the kitchen table, reveling in the clatter and crash of the breakfast plates, coffee cups, empty beer mugs, catalogs, cutlery, a jelly-jar of pens, the chipped cow-shaped butter dish his mother had given them for a wedding gift.

Only the miniscule bar-b-que jar survived, dancing around in the middle of the table, the top off and rolling, the brush-bristles stuck to its underside describing wacky circles. She grabbed it, put the top back on and placed it in the exact middle of the empty table. She stuck this message to it: "This holds just enough sauce to coat your teeny-tiny heart as I roast it over the spluttering flames of your entrails on a spit made from the long bones of your legs."

He boxed the jar up and mailed it to her at her sister's house, a scrawled note rubberbanded around it. "This will hold all the money you'll ever get out of me."

She folded an SASE envelope in half and rolled it around the bristles, stuffing it all back into the jar, and mailed it back: "One check for half your gross worth in the enclosed envelope? Good enough for me. Never seeing you again? Priceless!"

He returned it: "You'll see me, alright - in court."

When the new keys to their old house arrived, she put them in the Bar-B-Que jar, tucked upright around those bristles that had never seen any sauce.

A few months later, she put the hefty check from the sale of the 3BR/2BA, vault ceils, hrdwd floors, gd neighborhood (and nicely appreciated) house into her new bank account.

At least that's the way she'd tell the story at our Single and Sassy meetings.

Lazy Blogger & the Significance in Objects

Yes, it's been weeks, almost a month, something like that, since I've dropped by my own blog. I've become that bane of the bloggerdom, an irregular correspondent. Some of that was due to having a good time: a short trip with friends to the mountains (close to Donner Summit, well before the snow flew), and after that, a longer, more solitary visit to Wellspring (in Philo, CA) for a writer's retreat.

And then some of it's due to the pile-up of work: registration for the Spring 2010 semester started last week and it's been a wang-dang doozie from the get-go. In between was the Thanksgiving holiday, with folks hanging out here, food prep and a day or two of recovery, and so there you have it.

Meanwhile I've been playing around with S.O. (Significant Objects, honey, not Significant Other, this is a family-friendly blog). Significant Objects, as noted in previous post, is a coalition of folks who ran an experiment in the value of desire, as I interpret it.

These folks decided to discover if increasing the significance of an object would increase that object's desirability, as measured by an increase in price on eBay. The set-up was to purchase tchotchkes on eBay for a song or a song-and-a-half, then ask writers to provide a narrative that created and illuminated significance for that particular object. They then reposted the object on eBay, accompanied by the narrative and kicked back to see what happened.

Boy, did it happen. They've completed one such project of 100 objects and you can see the results at the website, as well as checking out the objects, stories, charts and figures.  It definitely shows the power of narrative.

I, of course (you did, too, I bet), thought right away what cool writing prompts these objects would make for a malingering writer, looking for a jump start. But that's the gist of another post.