Readers,
In the interest of time, I will keep this brief. I'm sure some of you know we recently released our first chapbook, Cosmonauts. This chapbook by William Winfield Wright is, in the words of Keats, is our Bright Star. I know, this is cliche and overly romantic; however, to some extent, this manuscript has set an amazing standard of excellence we will certainly hold on to.
With that being said, I have a request. For all you poets, professors, editors, publishers, and anyone involved in the community of the arts, I invite you all to purchase this chapbook. The chapbook can be found by going to www.wormwoodchapbooks.org and clicking on the "store" tab.
Once you've bought and read this book, I invite you to take an extra step forward and review this book. The best of the reviews will be published on AFL and Wormwood's main website. Moreover, if there is a knock-out review of Cosmonauts, we will consider publishing it in the fifth issue of A Few Lines Magazine.
So please, consider my request. Cosmonauts is an amazing piece of literature, and it certainly is worth the two dollars for a PDF. Support us in our endeavor to bring you all the best of the underground literary world.
Thank you all for your time; I hope to receive your reviews. To submit a review, please e-mail me, Jack Foster, at jfoster.editor@gmail.com
Regards,
JF
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Some Minor Thoughts on Art and Snobbery
A student in my Freshman English class has been absent from the last few class meetings. After class tonight, as I was getting him up to speed, for summation, he offered, "so what we've been doing lately is basically common sense, right?"
Let me back up a second so as to explain why I was not at all insulted by this remark.
Over the last couple days in the course, I have been guiding my students in the process of visual analysis in the hopes that the techniques used to dissect a largely visual medium will smoothly translate for them to analysis of written works. Last class meeting, we looked at advertisements, picking apart the elements that appeal to ethos, logos, and/or pathos and determining whether or not each example was truly effective or not.
So, when I summed all this up for my previously-absent student in a brief rundown, he responded with the above question. My response? "Right!"
I have to say that I was thrilled that this guy sees what we are doing as "common sense." If more people could feel that way about reasonably complex rhetorical concepts, what an easy job I would have. Well, let's be honest, what a pointless job I would have!
I see the necessity of my job when it comes to guiding students toward writing better, more coherent, more focused, more effective papers; but, often I feel a certain level of rage at the concept that our college students need to be taught how to look at something in a critical manner. The worst part is, of course, when even after an extensive explanation and comp check as to how to conduct the steps of critical/logical thinking, groups of students (varying significantly in size and number depending on the particular level of the class) stare at me as if I am some kind of alien who has just asked them to watch random acts of sodomy.
So, when a student informs me that what I'm teaching him makes perfect sense, I'm practically beside myself. I wanted to give him a gold star for already knowing what basically everyone should be able to figure out all by their little selves.
But, before I ruined this little moment for myself with negative thoughts, I decided to do something uncharacteristically humble and compare myself to my students. I have a bit of a checked academic past. As I have confessed to you, our reader, before, I was not the greatest of students, and I only really got my act together as a result of being bullied into doing so. Even when I did get my act together and started doing well in school, I really only put true heart and concern into my English and literature classes, which is why I became a totally badass student by the time grad school came around.
All of this is to say that I know how it feels to not get (and not care all that much about getting) certain academic subjects. Subjects I was less than enthusiastic for included biology (101), anthropology, and statistics. The subject I just happened to kick ass at and truly enjoy was English. I get that every student has his/her true interests and then the subjects that he/she couldn't care less about.
While I can explain away the rhetorical appeals, employ Stasis Theory to dazzle any freshman, and identify the audience for a particular advertisement down to a T, I don't know shit about chemistry. And I have to remember before I get all high and mighty and annoyed with the majority of my students for not getting rhetoric, that a hell of a lot of them know more about chemistry (and math and sign language and various elements of life in general) than I do.
The whole reason I personally find literature and art to be fascinating is because I see them as THE ways for answering the questions of the universe and what it means to be human; I love to dwell in the struggle for meaning and art is all about that and these are the realms that make sense to me.
Some people will agree with me, like my student earlier tonight did, and say that seeing the world through a lens of argument and writing is "common sense," as I'm sure most of us here agree as this is a blog site for a literary magazine. But let's not get so caught up in the way we view the world, in the beauty that we've found, to forget that many people happen to be wearing an entirely different set of prescriptions.
Building your Writing Toolkit: Part Five – Pounding it Together: Making Narrative Work
Humans are a social species, and what that really means for our society for the last 80 thousand years or so is that we’re a vocal species. We talk constantly. We frequently talk out of necessity – from a need for information, acknowledgment of instructions, informing others of danger, and so on – but conversations that we enjoy the most are centered around arguing and storytelling. These kinds of talking translate into two fields of study (with a fair amount of overlap) that we work with in English classes: rhetoric and narrative. Rhetoric is a complicated field of study with lots of rules and schools and scholarly schisms that I don’t have the degree to get into – I’ll leave that to Jack, Eric and Ryan to hash out when they feel like getting into a drawn out debate. Narrative, though, is a frustratingly diverse concept that stymies the writers of everything from novels to haiku – and that’s what I’ll be talking about here.
Think of your friend who tells great stories. Everyone has one of these friends. He’s the guy who makes his anecdote about going to the mall on Christmas Eve into a forty-five minute tale that is alternately hilarious and harrowing, enthralling throughout, endlessly amusing and worthy of reiteration for years to come. She’s the girl whose stories about high school make you choke with laughter and burn with shame, effortlessly plunging you into memories of your own high school experience. These are the friends who never lamely wind down from a monologue with “well, I guess you had to be there,” because listening to them talk convinces you that you were there. These people are blessed with an unusual (sometimes learned, sometimes native) understanding of narrative. All that narrative really means (literally, when you get down to the Latin root) is “to recount.”
So how do you make narrative work in your writing? Well, there are lots of ways - there are all kinds of different voices and perspectives and chronologies that you can get into in order to make your work work, the trick is figuring out what works for your specific piece.
One of my favorite examples of the power of narrative experimentation is Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction is a wonderfully entertaining movie, but only because of the non-linear storytelling – if you watch the whole thing chronologically (maybe leaving the Christopher Walken scene as a flashback instead of the start of the film) Pulp Fiction is actually really boring. There’s no mystery to it, everything (except for the freaks in the pawn shop) makes sense and you end up with a pretty dull day-in-the-life flick with Butch as an interloping antagonist. But because Tarantino screwed with the order you end up with an intense ball of oddities an a wide range of intriguing antiheroes whose lives touch on and affect each other as a result of divergent motivation and the unifying element of Marcellus Wallace.
Now, just because it works for Tarantino and Pulp Fiction doesn’t mean that non-linear storytelling will work for your short story (or your poem, or your essay, or even other Tarantino films – his biggest critics in the last few years have been complaining that he’s come to rely on the non-linear gimmick to tell stories that are dull even when they are chopped to pieces.)
But if your work is missing something, consider what might happen if you re-order chapters or pieces to present aspects of your characters outside of the chronology of their story. It won’t work for everything, but it will make you consider what works in the story you’ve got, and what you need to add some more polish to.
But linearity is only one tiny aspect of narrative. Voice is a bigger part, and a more complicated one. We’ve all heard about the first-person omniscient voice, third-person narrators, and a whole slew of other bullshit that is primarily discussed in high school or lower-division college English classes. In upper division classes and serious writing groups focus less on the actual “proper” names and types of voice and more on the more literal “voice” of the narrator: who is talking to the reader? Do you tell your story through a character? Is that character trustworthy? Do you tell your story through your voice? Or through an unnamed narrator who might be you? Does your audience trust you? Should they? These are the questions that really matter when you’re working on narrative.
One of the best historical examples of this is The Canterbury Tales, which is not only written by Chaucer but is also narrated by the character of Chaucer the Pilgrim, and the potential distance between Chaucer the author and the character of Chaucer the Pilgrim has been the subject of Academic debate for centuries, with good reason: Chaucer the narrating Pilgrim is untrustworthy as a narrator which casts interesting light on the stories he tells in the Tales that might otherwise be devoid of interest (especially the essentially stolen tales that feature virtually no changes from their folklore origins) and gives the whole work a wonderful recounting air – by including himself as a character Chaucer tells his audience “I was there, so listen and hear what I saw” and by making his character untrustworthy (but more trustworthy than the other narrators in the tales) he creates drama and intrigue in a very contrived frame story.
But looking back over this blog so far I see that I’ve said a lot of words without saying very much about writing, so I guess I’m going to break off now, leaving you with a condensed history and definition of narrative, and I’ll be back next Sunday with some actual advice for you about making narrative work in your writing.
Thanks for reading, sorry I’m late, and I’ll see you next week.
Cheers,
Alli
Think of your friend who tells great stories. Everyone has one of these friends. He’s the guy who makes his anecdote about going to the mall on Christmas Eve into a forty-five minute tale that is alternately hilarious and harrowing, enthralling throughout, endlessly amusing and worthy of reiteration for years to come. She’s the girl whose stories about high school make you choke with laughter and burn with shame, effortlessly plunging you into memories of your own high school experience. These are the friends who never lamely wind down from a monologue with “well, I guess you had to be there,” because listening to them talk convinces you that you were there. These people are blessed with an unusual (sometimes learned, sometimes native) understanding of narrative. All that narrative really means (literally, when you get down to the Latin root) is “to recount.”
So how do you make narrative work in your writing? Well, there are lots of ways - there are all kinds of different voices and perspectives and chronologies that you can get into in order to make your work work, the trick is figuring out what works for your specific piece.
One of my favorite examples of the power of narrative experimentation is Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction is a wonderfully entertaining movie, but only because of the non-linear storytelling – if you watch the whole thing chronologically (maybe leaving the Christopher Walken scene as a flashback instead of the start of the film) Pulp Fiction is actually really boring. There’s no mystery to it, everything (except for the freaks in the pawn shop) makes sense and you end up with a pretty dull day-in-the-life flick with Butch as an interloping antagonist. But because Tarantino screwed with the order you end up with an intense ball of oddities an a wide range of intriguing antiheroes whose lives touch on and affect each other as a result of divergent motivation and the unifying element of Marcellus Wallace.
Now, just because it works for Tarantino and Pulp Fiction doesn’t mean that non-linear storytelling will work for your short story (or your poem, or your essay, or even other Tarantino films – his biggest critics in the last few years have been complaining that he’s come to rely on the non-linear gimmick to tell stories that are dull even when they are chopped to pieces.)
But if your work is missing something, consider what might happen if you re-order chapters or pieces to present aspects of your characters outside of the chronology of their story. It won’t work for everything, but it will make you consider what works in the story you’ve got, and what you need to add some more polish to.
But linearity is only one tiny aspect of narrative. Voice is a bigger part, and a more complicated one. We’ve all heard about the first-person omniscient voice, third-person narrators, and a whole slew of other bullshit that is primarily discussed in high school or lower-division college English classes. In upper division classes and serious writing groups focus less on the actual “proper” names and types of voice and more on the more literal “voice” of the narrator: who is talking to the reader? Do you tell your story through a character? Is that character trustworthy? Do you tell your story through your voice? Or through an unnamed narrator who might be you? Does your audience trust you? Should they? These are the questions that really matter when you’re working on narrative.
One of the best historical examples of this is The Canterbury Tales, which is not only written by Chaucer but is also narrated by the character of Chaucer the Pilgrim, and the potential distance between Chaucer the author and the character of Chaucer the Pilgrim has been the subject of Academic debate for centuries, with good reason: Chaucer the narrating Pilgrim is untrustworthy as a narrator which casts interesting light on the stories he tells in the Tales that might otherwise be devoid of interest (especially the essentially stolen tales that feature virtually no changes from their folklore origins) and gives the whole work a wonderful recounting air – by including himself as a character Chaucer tells his audience “I was there, so listen and hear what I saw” and by making his character untrustworthy (but more trustworthy than the other narrators in the tales) he creates drama and intrigue in a very contrived frame story.
But looking back over this blog so far I see that I’ve said a lot of words without saying very much about writing, so I guess I’m going to break off now, leaving you with a condensed history and definition of narrative, and I’ll be back next Sunday with some actual advice for you about making narrative work in your writing.
Thanks for reading, sorry I’m late, and I’ll see you next week.
Cheers,
Alli
Monday, February 20, 2012
Art affirmation at its best
In the movie Hugo, the title character is an apprentice clockmaker and he speaks about the world and people in clockmaker's terms; he says that everyone has something that they are meant for and that a person who is not doing what he is meant for is broken and in need of fixing. Some may be resistant to this notion, especially as it is coupled with a comparison of people to machines, ya know those manmade things created with a purpose in mind? However, the initial simplicity of Hugo's metaphor has a striking resonance that likely causes many audience members to quietly ponder, "am I broken?"
This element is just one of many that make Hugo a beautiful masterpiece. After the curtain came down (not that that literally happens anymore), I was left contemplating the nature of our "purpose" as individuals. Many think of this concept as a sort of religious one, as in a purpose bestowed upon us by a high power. The sort of purpose the film left me contemplating, however, is not one involving a deity; rather it is the sort whose origin is all but beside the point. Every one of us does at some point or another feel a sense of purpose, a sense of direction in life, a drawing towards one thing over another, a calling of sorts, and it really does not matter where that feeling comes from because it certainly exists.
Hugo explores what can happen to a man, in this case Georges Melies, when he completely follows his passion or, in the words of Joseph Campbell, his "bliss" only to have the world and life shit all over him (sorry, I couldn't think of any more eloquent way to put that). I won't say much more about the details of that for those who have not yet seen the film. Suffice to say, Melies, as played by Ben Kingsley, is broken in his bitterness and his belief that everything he created is now gone, burned up by a cruel world.
Melies' plight calls into question the belief that people become bitter and complacent in old age and that there is no defensible reason for the onslaught of these emotions. No one who sees the movie could say that he does not have a good reason for feeling the way he does and for lashing out at the world. He has not simply turned his back on what he once loved; rather circumstances, such as war and suffering, have torn him away from it. Melies' suffering is not, as you may first suspect when watching the film, self-inflicted.
This got me thinking about a lot of things, one of them being the fact that so much art and expression has been either lost or prevented all together as a result of war and suffering. A concept that is beautifully conveyed, and I think undeniably true, in Hugo, is the notion that the creation of art gives us our most profound sense of self and purpose. What happens to the people who, for any number of terrible reasons, have their creations seemingly obliterated with time? When Georges' art is destroyed, a part of himself goes with it.
So Hugo posits that if the world is like a machine, then, like all machines, every individual has some purpose in the running of the machine. Whether you believe that or you find that a bit too lovely to take seriously, it is difficult to deny that each of us either has something to create or something to fix. Every aspect of Hugo, down to its setting (
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Building your Writing Toolkit: Part Four – Building Material for your Material.
Starting off with a quick recap, so far I’ve covered starting a project (knowing how you start to write), clearing off your toolbench (knowing what environment is best for you to write in), and finding your level (understanding what type of writing makes you happy). Now I’m going to start to talk about the actual mechanics of writing – what you’re working with and how to shape it. This blog is about what you’re working with – the buying two-by-fours part of the toolkit metaphor.
When it comes to the material that you’re writing about, pretty much everyone has heard the words “write what you know.” Yes. Well. I have to agree with that at least a little, because it’s awfully hard to write about something that you know nothing about (i.e. Bio majors writing about Milton’s Lucifer or English majors writing about water transfer in plant cells), however I disagree with the idea of writing only about things that you know all about.
Let’s say that you know all about cats. You know their eating, sleeping, mating and fighting habits. You can name every breed of housecat on sight and can tell anyone willing to listen which big cat is that particular breed of housecat’s closest genetic relative. You scoff at the pedestrian knowledge parceled out in Cat Fancy and are writing your dissertation on the role of cats in folklore from the 7th century. Good for you.
Here’s the problem: no one is going to read your dissertation. Your dissertation committee isn’t even going to read your dissertation. You’re so knowledgeable on this topic that no one can argue or disagree with you – and where’s the fun in that?
However, let’s say you know a little about cats. You know what they’re like around strangers, you know that they’re picky eaters. You know that they tend to be the chosen companions of lonely, introverted people. You’re toying with the idea of writing a story that combines your limited understanding of cats with your somewhat more comprehensive knowledge of people in order to explore the dynamics of loneliness in modern cities.
I’d read it. And I’m sure a lot of people (probably people who like cats or who are lonely or both) would read it too.
Writing what you know is a trap. If you write only what you know well, you’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to become an expert on something so that you can write about it.
Here’s a quote from Robert Heinlein that I like to share whenever someone tells me that I need to focus on a single interest: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
As a writer you don’t want to be a specialist: you’ll only end up trapped in a genre, age group, era or field that you don’t want to be stuck in forever. So what do you do to avoid the trap?
Do everything. This is how you build material to write about.
I’m not talking about going to med school, getting a Ph.D. in Political Science, learning seventeen languages, running for Mayor, working at a coffee shop, starting a law firm and running marathons. I’m talking bout the little things all around you.
Too many writers fall into the habit of cloistering themselves in their chosen writing habitat at around the same time they finish college and never going outside again. You can’t get stuck there – go outside.
Change your oil, ride a bus, go to the zoo, take a train ride, walk down a street you haven’t before, take a different route to work, learn how to fix your sink, browse Wikipedia, go into a new bookstore, take up rollerblading, go to Home Depot, talk to strangers – lots of strangers, go to a dive bar, go to a nice bar, go see a Ska band, go to a symphony, take a metalworking class, sign up for dance lessons, dig a hole, draw a picture. Do something that you don’t normally do. Come up with something new every day.
Sure, it sounds trite as hell, but knowing a little about a lot of things is frequently better than knowing a lot about a few things. At the very least you’ll be able to fill in more details when you’re writing, like what kind of wrench you use to remove an oil filter or what kind of paper a watercolor artist is likely to buy. At the very most you’ll find a hobby that interests you enough that you know it well enough to make it the basis of your next novel.
When you hear the phrase “write what you know” it is important to understand that you don’t have to know everything about an incredibly narrow topic; you do, however, have to realistically know about and understand the world that you’re writing. The only way to effectively know about the world you’re writing is to know about and understand the world you’re living in. And the only way to do that is to go outside and play in it.
Writers are a blessed, cursed, complicated kind of person. They have to be flexible enough to learn from any situation they find themselves in but firm enough to know when they’ve learned enough. If all you know is college kids and drugs, have fun trying to edge in on Brett Easton Ellis’s market. If all you know is falling into fantasy worlds, Neil Gamian’s got you beat. If all you see is the mundane becoming terrifying, Stephen King is sticking his tongue out at you and going “neener, neener, neener,” though Kafka was doing it better and earlier. If all you know is gentle, handsome men mildly coercing strong-willed women into lasting, passionate relationships please stop writing because romance novels are awful, and we already have enough of them in the world.
What I’m trying to tell you – and all writers – to do is to go out somewhere on this great, big, spinning deathsphere into the sunshine and find something to write about. There’s a story everywhere, a poem waiting to be written in every instance of human contact, and a novel in every new thing you encounter. So go find it! If you don’t, someone else is certainly willing to.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next Sunday, Feb 26th, with part five of your toolkit: Pounding it together – Making Narrative Work. This is going to be a big topic, and might be broken up into a couple of blogs. Until then, I’m going to shamelessly self-advertise: last week I mentioned my silly poem “My Homework Ate My Dog,” this weekend I sat down, made some crappy illustrations online, and organized them into a video of me reading the poem. If this is the kind of thing you are likely to find amusing, you may go and amuse yourself with it here.
Have a great week, and I’ll be ranting at you soon,
Cheers,
-Alli
When it comes to the material that you’re writing about, pretty much everyone has heard the words “write what you know.” Yes. Well. I have to agree with that at least a little, because it’s awfully hard to write about something that you know nothing about (i.e. Bio majors writing about Milton’s Lucifer or English majors writing about water transfer in plant cells), however I disagree with the idea of writing only about things that you know all about.
Let’s say that you know all about cats. You know their eating, sleeping, mating and fighting habits. You can name every breed of housecat on sight and can tell anyone willing to listen which big cat is that particular breed of housecat’s closest genetic relative. You scoff at the pedestrian knowledge parceled out in Cat Fancy and are writing your dissertation on the role of cats in folklore from the 7th century. Good for you.
Here’s the problem: no one is going to read your dissertation. Your dissertation committee isn’t even going to read your dissertation. You’re so knowledgeable on this topic that no one can argue or disagree with you – and where’s the fun in that?
However, let’s say you know a little about cats. You know what they’re like around strangers, you know that they’re picky eaters. You know that they tend to be the chosen companions of lonely, introverted people. You’re toying with the idea of writing a story that combines your limited understanding of cats with your somewhat more comprehensive knowledge of people in order to explore the dynamics of loneliness in modern cities.
I’d read it. And I’m sure a lot of people (probably people who like cats or who are lonely or both) would read it too.
Writing what you know is a trap. If you write only what you know well, you’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to become an expert on something so that you can write about it.
Here’s a quote from Robert Heinlein that I like to share whenever someone tells me that I need to focus on a single interest: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
As a writer you don’t want to be a specialist: you’ll only end up trapped in a genre, age group, era or field that you don’t want to be stuck in forever. So what do you do to avoid the trap?
Do everything. This is how you build material to write about.
I’m not talking about going to med school, getting a Ph.D. in Political Science, learning seventeen languages, running for Mayor, working at a coffee shop, starting a law firm and running marathons. I’m talking bout the little things all around you.
Too many writers fall into the habit of cloistering themselves in their chosen writing habitat at around the same time they finish college and never going outside again. You can’t get stuck there – go outside.
Change your oil, ride a bus, go to the zoo, take a train ride, walk down a street you haven’t before, take a different route to work, learn how to fix your sink, browse Wikipedia, go into a new bookstore, take up rollerblading, go to Home Depot, talk to strangers – lots of strangers, go to a dive bar, go to a nice bar, go see a Ska band, go to a symphony, take a metalworking class, sign up for dance lessons, dig a hole, draw a picture. Do something that you don’t normally do. Come up with something new every day.
Sure, it sounds trite as hell, but knowing a little about a lot of things is frequently better than knowing a lot about a few things. At the very least you’ll be able to fill in more details when you’re writing, like what kind of wrench you use to remove an oil filter or what kind of paper a watercolor artist is likely to buy. At the very most you’ll find a hobby that interests you enough that you know it well enough to make it the basis of your next novel.
When you hear the phrase “write what you know” it is important to understand that you don’t have to know everything about an incredibly narrow topic; you do, however, have to realistically know about and understand the world that you’re writing. The only way to effectively know about the world you’re writing is to know about and understand the world you’re living in. And the only way to do that is to go outside and play in it.
Writers are a blessed, cursed, complicated kind of person. They have to be flexible enough to learn from any situation they find themselves in but firm enough to know when they’ve learned enough. If all you know is college kids and drugs, have fun trying to edge in on Brett Easton Ellis’s market. If all you know is falling into fantasy worlds, Neil Gamian’s got you beat. If all you see is the mundane becoming terrifying, Stephen King is sticking his tongue out at you and going “neener, neener, neener,” though Kafka was doing it better and earlier. If all you know is gentle, handsome men mildly coercing strong-willed women into lasting, passionate relationships please stop writing because romance novels are awful, and we already have enough of them in the world.
What I’m trying to tell you – and all writers – to do is to go out somewhere on this great, big, spinning deathsphere into the sunshine and find something to write about. There’s a story everywhere, a poem waiting to be written in every instance of human contact, and a novel in every new thing you encounter. So go find it! If you don’t, someone else is certainly willing to.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back next Sunday, Feb 26th, with part five of your toolkit: Pounding it together – Making Narrative Work. This is going to be a big topic, and might be broken up into a couple of blogs. Until then, I’m going to shamelessly self-advertise: last week I mentioned my silly poem “My Homework Ate My Dog,” this weekend I sat down, made some crappy illustrations online, and organized them into a video of me reading the poem. If this is the kind of thing you are likely to find amusing, you may go and amuse yourself with it here.
Have a great week, and I’ll be ranting at you soon,
Cheers,
-Alli
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Letter To The Leaves: ENG 340 REDUX Myth in Television
My Fellow Contributors,
I was relaxing, exhausted after playing in my high school's annual alumni Baseball game, when Odysseus: Voyage to The Underworld, came on the Sci-Fi Channel. In the info box was written:
"Odysseus and his warriors encounter Persephone and her deadly shadow beasts"
Now, granted it has been a year since I've taken ENG 340 Myth as Literature, but when I was going through my mental rolodex of classical myths, this combination of characters didn't fire off any synapses. I this must have been that part of The Odyssey that scholars tend to forget when discussing this epic. So with the hope of learning literature thru television, (a very slippery slope) I watched on.
But by the middle of the movie I began to realize that this wasn't a story either Ovid, or Homer had written, and the most interesting thing was that it didn't seem to matter.
What mattered was that Persephone, Odysseus and Homer were all on my Television screen going through an adventure; fighting and planning and just trying to get home.
Even as the original myths were ignored, bent or even changed, I found myself captured by it just as Odysseus was captured by the Siren's scream. This made-for-TV-movie, although at times rough, was enjoyable.
Not a bad couple hours spent recovering from a day of baseball.
But why bring this up Bermuda?
Because we must remind ourselves that there are plenty of myths still to be written. And we here at A Few Lines magazine, want to read, hear, and publish yours.
As Always
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
PS
Be sure to check out our Facebook profile and add us to your friends, search "A Few Lines". Our Facebook is more than just a way to stay connected to the magazine. Think of it as "The Word of the Day" but instead of words we bring you epic moments of literary history.
I was relaxing, exhausted after playing in my high school's annual alumni Baseball game, when Odysseus: Voyage to The Underworld, came on the Sci-Fi Channel. In the info box was written:
"Odysseus and his warriors encounter Persephone and her deadly shadow beasts"
Now, granted it has been a year since I've taken ENG 340 Myth as Literature, but when I was going through my mental rolodex of classical myths, this combination of characters didn't fire off any synapses. I this must have been that part of The Odyssey that scholars tend to forget when discussing this epic. So with the hope of learning literature thru television, (a very slippery slope) I watched on.
But by the middle of the movie I began to realize that this wasn't a story either Ovid, or Homer had written, and the most interesting thing was that it didn't seem to matter.
What mattered was that Persephone, Odysseus and Homer were all on my Television screen going through an adventure; fighting and planning and just trying to get home.
Even as the original myths were ignored, bent or even changed, I found myself captured by it just as Odysseus was captured by the Siren's scream. This made-for-TV-movie, although at times rough, was enjoyable.
Not a bad couple hours spent recovering from a day of baseball.
But why bring this up Bermuda?
Because we must remind ourselves that there are plenty of myths still to be written. And we here at A Few Lines magazine, want to read, hear, and publish yours.
As Always
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
PS
Be sure to check out our Facebook profile and add us to your friends, search "A Few Lines". Our Facebook is more than just a way to stay connected to the magazine. Think of it as "The Word of the Day" but instead of words we bring you epic moments of literary history.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
"Poetry Exists in the Valley of its Making" - W.H. Auden
On Saturday, February the 25th, William Winfield Wright will be coming out to California for the first Wormwood Chapbooks poetry reading. This is an incredibly special event. Not only will Cosmonauts be, finally, unveiled for the public to obtain, but Wright himself will be orating sections of it as well as portions of Bird Feet, his second chapbook -- slated to release in the summer of 2012.
Now that you all have some background, I'd like to take some time to give thanks to the English Department of Cal Poly Pomona. The poetry night will be taking place in a room called Orion C, which is located in the Bronco Student Center. Cal Poly does not allow rooms to be occupied free of charge to people or associations who are not affiliated with Cal Poly-run clubs; however, the English Department of Cal Poly has agreed to front the room rental (which would have come out to be about half the cost of a print run) and will be providing beverages and other accommodations for the night. So, on behalf of the AFL staff, I'd just like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts; we could not host this special night without your support. As Liam Corley has said time after time -- taking from the words of Auden -- "poetry exists in the valley of its making." The Cal Poly English Department -- especially Liam, Alison, Maria, and Liliane -- have provided a valley for which poetry can exist. Thank you all so much.
So, please, if you live in Southern California, stop on by and support us and William Winfield Wright. It's going to be an amazing night of poetry.
Regards,
JF
Now that you all have some background, I'd like to take some time to give thanks to the English Department of Cal Poly Pomona. The poetry night will be taking place in a room called Orion C, which is located in the Bronco Student Center. Cal Poly does not allow rooms to be occupied free of charge to people or associations who are not affiliated with Cal Poly-run clubs; however, the English Department of Cal Poly has agreed to front the room rental (which would have come out to be about half the cost of a print run) and will be providing beverages and other accommodations for the night. So, on behalf of the AFL staff, I'd just like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts; we could not host this special night without your support. As Liam Corley has said time after time -- taking from the words of Auden -- "poetry exists in the valley of its making." The Cal Poly English Department -- especially Liam, Alison, Maria, and Liliane -- have provided a valley for which poetry can exist. Thank you all so much.
So, please, if you live in Southern California, stop on by and support us and William Winfield Wright. It's going to be an amazing night of poetry.
Regards,
JF
Monday, February 13, 2012
So we beat on…borne back ceaselessly to our literary loves
We all have literary idols who we feel we have a connection to and who speak to very specific aspects of ourselves. As I'm sure I've mentioned on here before, one of my literary idols is Sylvia Plath. When I spend a couple hours reading her poetry, I am creatively ready to go in a way that nothing else could spark. Her poetry makes sense to me- the tone, the themes, the structure- and my understanding of her work gives me a confidence to write myself. Her writing is a friend to me that I sometimes feel I would be completely lost without, and like a good friend, I am immensely thankful for her.
Reading Milan Kundera has a similar effect on me. His very French aimless narratives that verge on babbling almost cause me believe I can make something of my disjointed abortions of short stories and commentaries that currently sit disconnected from their potential fate in a file folder on my desktop. He reminds me that art cannot always be categorized.
But neither Plath or Kundera necessarily bring out the best in me. Plath, though creatively inspirational, certainly does not encourage my best mind set. In fact, I tend to get downright depressed and just a touch hopeless when I read her too much. And Kundera causes me to jump ship on my attempts at structure, fancifully following his lead down a rabbit hold that sometimes leads to unproductive writing.
And then there's F. Scott Fitzgerald.
A few days ago I started reading Fitzgerald's autobiography, and, so far, it has been an interesting experience. It had been quite awhile since I'd read anything new to me by Fitzgerald. If you know me at all, you know that he is a favorite of mine and that I reread The Great Gatsby often, consulting familiar passages like a devote Protestant would a bible. And, in some ways, this ultimate devotion to that novel has obscured Fitzgerald in my mind; he has become only a name attached to one very meaningful book. Such has been only more so the case as I have not picked up another of his novels or short fiction in the last couple years.
Reading his autobiography now is reminding me of something to me that has been easy to forget in my frenzied love for Jay Gatsby. In fact, it could be said that Scott popped my literary cherry at the age of fifteen when I first read The Great Gatsby for an English class. But, it wasn't Gatsby that mattered- there was not and still is not anything particularly life changing about the story of a tragic young man who cannot accept that not all dreams are attainable. It's Fitzgerald's absolutely outstanding prose that I fell in love with all those years ago. He had me at "In my younger and more vulnerable years…" His was the first literary voice I fell in love with on my own accord, long before the Plaths and Kunderas that would come along later.
I'm somewhat shocked to find now that Fitzgerald's voice still speaks to me in a way that no one else does. His dry humor, his level yet uncertain perspective on life, his delicate annoyance at neediness, his assurance that he is an old man at the age of 25, his disillusionment at attaining everything he wanted, and most of all his candor and seeming lack of shame. This is probably the aspect of his writing that I with the most- he gives the impression that he'll tell you anything you'd want to know about him- his life is not a secret to be guarded and presented in a certain way. This impression is most strongly felt as a result of his romantic vulnerability, more Jay Gatsby than one might initially suspect. His famous declaration to be the greatest writer who ever lived and his contention that "every great poet had written great poetry before he was twenty-one" so he better get on it, he explains, at the age of twenty. Some people, such as Hemingway, have read this as a sign of weakness or desire for approval. I've never seen it as that. He just doesn't give a shit because he knows none of it- society, money, people's expectations- means anything. This critique and that hint at the absurdity of it all are imminently present in The Great Gatsby. And it is this very mixture of hopeful naiveté and utter lack of sentimentality that is endlessly fascinating and oddly comforting about Fitzgerald's writing.
Before I leave you to continue reading that masterful prose I've so gushed over, let me give you the point of it all: our literary icons are not abstract to us, even if we have spent much time away from them; they are old friends. And the effect they have on us often does not fade with time. So, if it's been awhile since you've read your "favorite," make sometime to do so soon and let me know what the visit's like.
Until next time,
Leena
F. Scott Fitzgerald. A Short Autobiography. Scribner.
Building your Writing Toolkit: Part Three – Substance and Substances.
I loathe the phrase “the so what factor.” I kept butting heads with professors in my lower division English classes who would bring up this idiotic idiom every time I turned in an essay. Two things about this attitude piss me off: first, a reader should care about my opinion because it is well researched, well argued, and eloquently presented; second, there’s always someone out there who will say “So What?” and frankly I don’t give a shit about that segment of my potential audience who isn’t going to hear what I’m trying to say – if they don’t get what I’m writing because it isn’t relevant to their view of the world, they don’t matter to me.
I don’t think that authors (or essayists or poets) should sit down, look over their delicately crafted work, put themselves into the mindset of a fourteen-year-old and ask “so what?” about their writing. There’s always someone who won’t care, there’s always someone you won’t reach, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
But before you can communicate with any audience you need to know what you’re writing and why you’re writing it. One of my professors had another question he frequently tossed at his classes, and this question is one that I have no problem with: What Does it Do?
Many writers have trouble reading over their work for the sake of their work – it’s hard to read a short story you’ve written as an outsider and simply enjoy it as fiction, which means that it’s hard for writers to see what their work does in someone else’s eyes. A lot of what I write entertains, and that is all it does. It doesn’t answer big questions, it’s not intended to teach lessons, and it’s not typically solemn and grave: I’m snarky as hell and if I try to write something too serious I generally sound either pedantic or emo. It took me a long time to understand this, and an even longer time to accept it, but since I’ve accepted that sarcasm and wit are more present and pleasant in my writing than sincerity and gravity I’ve had a lot more fun writing.
I’ve taken a rather long time to make the tool parallel for this blog but what I’m talking about here pretty much equates to a level. I tried for a long time to write poems about how I really felt and how the world made a difference in my life that was relatable to the lives of my readers – but it was all bullshit. I wanted so badly to be serious in all that I wrote that I skewed my writing. When I entered the Sigma Tau Delta writing contest at Cal Poly a couple of years ago I tried to write a serious horror story, something realistic and gritty and angry and deeply terrifying. All of it was utter crap, and so in a moment of desperation I wrote a poem that started with these lines: “On a night run thick with mystery/and choked by swirling fog/I made a travesty of chemistry/and my homework ate my dog.” The poem, “My Homework ate my Dog” won first place in the contest and opened up a new world to me as a writer.
When I was writing based on the “so what” factor I was convinced that all of my writing had to be deep and meaningful – my essays had to speak to everyone and strike my readers dumb with the majesty of the ideas they communicated; my poetry had to be grave and deep and dark and mourn the human condition; my fiction had to be intense and real and target core issues of morality and reality to be considered worthy, and I was miserable when I was writing because nothing I wrote communicated what I wanted it to. When I changed my perspective on writing from asking “so what” to asking “what does it do” I was able to write essays that were informative but wry, poems that were silly and relaxed even when they were serious, and fiction that tends toward the fantastic more than the fatalistic and is easier to read, write, and appreciate as a result.
“So what?” is a question that convinces writers that everything they create has to be substantive – that your writing HAS to say something meaningful and insightful and original or it’s not worth the paper that it’s printed on. “What does it do?” is a more honest question that encourages writers to really examine their writing and ask what THEY are doing and how it works for them.
Some writers are better than others at writing substance and some writers are better at writing lightly. You wouldn’t expect Cormack McCarthy to publish a three-act comedy for the stage and you wouldn’t expect to unearth an Oscar Wilde novel about humanity in the face of the apocalypse. It’s up to you, not your professors, not your parents, not your society, to determine what kind of writer you are. In truth you’re probably somewhere in the middle, like most writers are, but you need to determine where you fall in the silliness to substance continuum. Don’t beat your head against the desk trying to write like Proust if it doesn’t make you happy; don’t try to light-heartedly prance through writing comedy dialogue if it makes you miserable – take a good, hard look at what you’ve written, figure out what you like the best, what you were happiest writing, and what topics you’re comfortable handling. Do this with your academic writing, your fiction, your poetry and you’ll learn a lot about what you should be writing as opposed to what you think you should be writing. Grad Students, I’m talking to you too – don’t start a thesis on Swift if you’re more knowledgeable about and comfortable with Austen. Look at all your writing, ask yourself honestly “what does it do?” answer yourself honestly about what it does, and get down to the business of getting comfortable in your writing skin.
Don’t get complacent, though. Challenge yourself and experiment, write things that make you uncomfortable but write them your way. Practice, practice, practice and grow as a writer, as substantively or silly as you need to be.
Now finally a quick note on the other half of the title of this blog. Many people feel that to write substance they need the aid of substances – this is bullshit.
You’re a fucking writer. You are a writer sober, you are a writer drunk, you are a writer tired, you are a writer rested. You are a fucking writer. You don’t need to be drunk, high, amped on caffeine, jittery from nicotine, or hideously lonely to write. Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Ginsberg and Hemingway are dead – most of them died too young – and dead men shouldn’t be your guides. Write. Just write. Rely on yourself alone to get you through the pages and stanzas that lie before you. You are better than the need for some substance to give you substance, and if substance isn’t something you do well naturally then no substance will help you pour it out on the page. We don’t need another generation of young, dead poets – we need people with the strength to keep poetry alive.
I’ve once more run too long but I’ll be back next week in spite of that, and I’ll be discussing Building Material for your Material. Until then, Cheers, and be excellent to each other, Dudes.
- Alli
I don’t think that authors (or essayists or poets) should sit down, look over their delicately crafted work, put themselves into the mindset of a fourteen-year-old and ask “so what?” about their writing. There’s always someone who won’t care, there’s always someone you won’t reach, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
But before you can communicate with any audience you need to know what you’re writing and why you’re writing it. One of my professors had another question he frequently tossed at his classes, and this question is one that I have no problem with: What Does it Do?
Many writers have trouble reading over their work for the sake of their work – it’s hard to read a short story you’ve written as an outsider and simply enjoy it as fiction, which means that it’s hard for writers to see what their work does in someone else’s eyes. A lot of what I write entertains, and that is all it does. It doesn’t answer big questions, it’s not intended to teach lessons, and it’s not typically solemn and grave: I’m snarky as hell and if I try to write something too serious I generally sound either pedantic or emo. It took me a long time to understand this, and an even longer time to accept it, but since I’ve accepted that sarcasm and wit are more present and pleasant in my writing than sincerity and gravity I’ve had a lot more fun writing.
I’ve taken a rather long time to make the tool parallel for this blog but what I’m talking about here pretty much equates to a level. I tried for a long time to write poems about how I really felt and how the world made a difference in my life that was relatable to the lives of my readers – but it was all bullshit. I wanted so badly to be serious in all that I wrote that I skewed my writing. When I entered the Sigma Tau Delta writing contest at Cal Poly a couple of years ago I tried to write a serious horror story, something realistic and gritty and angry and deeply terrifying. All of it was utter crap, and so in a moment of desperation I wrote a poem that started with these lines: “On a night run thick with mystery/and choked by swirling fog/I made a travesty of chemistry/and my homework ate my dog.” The poem, “My Homework ate my Dog” won first place in the contest and opened up a new world to me as a writer.
When I was writing based on the “so what” factor I was convinced that all of my writing had to be deep and meaningful – my essays had to speak to everyone and strike my readers dumb with the majesty of the ideas they communicated; my poetry had to be grave and deep and dark and mourn the human condition; my fiction had to be intense and real and target core issues of morality and reality to be considered worthy, and I was miserable when I was writing because nothing I wrote communicated what I wanted it to. When I changed my perspective on writing from asking “so what” to asking “what does it do” I was able to write essays that were informative but wry, poems that were silly and relaxed even when they were serious, and fiction that tends toward the fantastic more than the fatalistic and is easier to read, write, and appreciate as a result.
“So what?” is a question that convinces writers that everything they create has to be substantive – that your writing HAS to say something meaningful and insightful and original or it’s not worth the paper that it’s printed on. “What does it do?” is a more honest question that encourages writers to really examine their writing and ask what THEY are doing and how it works for them.
Some writers are better than others at writing substance and some writers are better at writing lightly. You wouldn’t expect Cormack McCarthy to publish a three-act comedy for the stage and you wouldn’t expect to unearth an Oscar Wilde novel about humanity in the face of the apocalypse. It’s up to you, not your professors, not your parents, not your society, to determine what kind of writer you are. In truth you’re probably somewhere in the middle, like most writers are, but you need to determine where you fall in the silliness to substance continuum. Don’t beat your head against the desk trying to write like Proust if it doesn’t make you happy; don’t try to light-heartedly prance through writing comedy dialogue if it makes you miserable – take a good, hard look at what you’ve written, figure out what you like the best, what you were happiest writing, and what topics you’re comfortable handling. Do this with your academic writing, your fiction, your poetry and you’ll learn a lot about what you should be writing as opposed to what you think you should be writing. Grad Students, I’m talking to you too – don’t start a thesis on Swift if you’re more knowledgeable about and comfortable with Austen. Look at all your writing, ask yourself honestly “what does it do?” answer yourself honestly about what it does, and get down to the business of getting comfortable in your writing skin.
Don’t get complacent, though. Challenge yourself and experiment, write things that make you uncomfortable but write them your way. Practice, practice, practice and grow as a writer, as substantively or silly as you need to be.
Now finally a quick note on the other half of the title of this blog. Many people feel that to write substance they need the aid of substances – this is bullshit.
You’re a fucking writer. You are a writer sober, you are a writer drunk, you are a writer tired, you are a writer rested. You are a fucking writer. You don’t need to be drunk, high, amped on caffeine, jittery from nicotine, or hideously lonely to write. Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Ginsberg and Hemingway are dead – most of them died too young – and dead men shouldn’t be your guides. Write. Just write. Rely on yourself alone to get you through the pages and stanzas that lie before you. You are better than the need for some substance to give you substance, and if substance isn’t something you do well naturally then no substance will help you pour it out on the page. We don’t need another generation of young, dead poets – we need people with the strength to keep poetry alive.
I’ve once more run too long but I’ll be back next week in spite of that, and I’ll be discussing Building Material for your Material. Until then, Cheers, and be excellent to each other, Dudes.
- Alli
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Aristotle is Dead...But I Think We All Knew That
Later today I'll be meeting up with Rainamoinen to do some writing. I bring this up because we're writing for a purpose. We're going to be drafting a story for what might one day be a video game. Yes, nerdy -- I know, but bear with me.
We're doing this because we've noticed a trend in the video game market. As Rainamoinen has pointed out time after time, especially in a few of his earlier blogs, the video game landscape is drastically changing. What once relied on story-line and characterization has now morphed into a different sort of beast -- a best relying primarily on aesthetic and cosmetic value. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm the first guy to jump at a good aesthetic. I think, as a writer, I'm quick to comment on the role a certain aesthetic plays in an overarching story; aesthetic, after all, is a conscious choice one makes in order to implicitly add to a narrative. However, aesthetic is a mode - a vehicle, if you will. Aesthetic cannot carry the weight of artistic value, alone. Aesthetic needs to be married to a rich, lustrous text in order to play a significant role in any form of writing, multi-modal or not.
This is something that has been bugging me lately -- this strange shift in thinking where story and character are secondary to the way something looks. I understand that the "attention span" of Americans has become somewhat shorter, but one must consider the people who still need substance in order to enjoy a text. This trend extends past video games, I'm afraid, and now the literary landscape of modern America has, too, shifted towards more shallow works. If one is not looking for valueable, artistic merit such as the works of small literary magazines, the readily available contemporary literature -- this is a sweeping generalization, I know -- tends to be works like Twilight or Clive Cussler novels. Rarely do I see anything of substance on the top 10 lists in bookstores such as Barnes & Noble.
Before this becomes a rant, though, I'll stop myself. I want to know what you all think about the declination of values in literature. Why has popular literature become so empty? Why don't we see great works on the best-seller lists? I know the answer is not simple, but I think it's something worth addressing. Apparently, Aristotle is dead -- figuratively, I mean. How could this shit have happened? Let me know your thoughts, people.
Regards,
JF
Thursday, February 9, 2012
$50.00 to every person that comments (if that doesn't get your attention, nothing will)
Hello, all
I hope things are treating you as you deserve. As for me, things have been quite busy juggling jobs and school and writing, but I'm sure I've heard some sickening platitude about idle hands, so I suppose things are as they should be.
I have been thinking recently about how writers go about structuring longer pieces of work. I don't mean to exclude poets in this post, so I will do my best not to. Although, I find that, unless a given poet is writing the next epic poem this discussion may be found to be a bit irrelevant. The topic is how writers see longer projects to fruition. I'm sure we have all heard about the writers who outline every single detail of the story before actually laying pen to paper on the narrative, and I'm sure we are all, also, aware of the writers who say they just let the story dictate itself. Surely there are other ways to go about this, but for the sake of concision, I find it in our mutual interest to only outline the extremes. Personally, I find that having a good majority of the details regarding the piece (that is plot, character growth, intended symbolism, etc.) planned out keeps me on track. I have done some experimenting with the "let the text write itslef" way of wrting but I usually find that, although some interesting things may come from it, I fail to see the piece develop in a way which satisfies my expectations. Now, maybe someone would say that we shouldn't have expectations for our work, and that by establishing set parameters, we are limiting our scope, but I find that a clear sense of direction aids in the creation of a unified work.
On a seperate note, I have been troubled recently by how many creative writers, mainly English majors, who, upon my prompting that they should submit work to the magazine, become wary and self-defeating about their work. Now, I understand that even the most sure of us out there are still a bit anxious as to whether our piece will succeed in "hitting its mark",as it were, with an intended audience, but the difference is that we don't let it hold us back from submitting. I do realize that it doesn't help to say that the worst thing that can happen is that you get rejected, because that line of reasoning never really motivated me with women either, so all I am able to say is, imagine where your literary idol would be if he or she never took a risk . . . simply put, they wouldn't be your literary idol, because their works would have ended up lining a bird cage somewhere. So, in short, if you are worried about the editors shitting on your paper, just think about the alternative . . . some mindless creature could be shitting on it . . .and by that I mean members of Sigma Tau Delta. Hey-oh!
As respectfully as I deem necessary,
Eric William Strege
I hope things are treating you as you deserve. As for me, things have been quite busy juggling jobs and school and writing, but I'm sure I've heard some sickening platitude about idle hands, so I suppose things are as they should be.
I have been thinking recently about how writers go about structuring longer pieces of work. I don't mean to exclude poets in this post, so I will do my best not to. Although, I find that, unless a given poet is writing the next epic poem this discussion may be found to be a bit irrelevant. The topic is how writers see longer projects to fruition. I'm sure we have all heard about the writers who outline every single detail of the story before actually laying pen to paper on the narrative, and I'm sure we are all, also, aware of the writers who say they just let the story dictate itself. Surely there are other ways to go about this, but for the sake of concision, I find it in our mutual interest to only outline the extremes. Personally, I find that having a good majority of the details regarding the piece (that is plot, character growth, intended symbolism, etc.) planned out keeps me on track. I have done some experimenting with the "let the text write itslef" way of wrting but I usually find that, although some interesting things may come from it, I fail to see the piece develop in a way which satisfies my expectations. Now, maybe someone would say that we shouldn't have expectations for our work, and that by establishing set parameters, we are limiting our scope, but I find that a clear sense of direction aids in the creation of a unified work.
On a seperate note, I have been troubled recently by how many creative writers, mainly English majors, who, upon my prompting that they should submit work to the magazine, become wary and self-defeating about their work. Now, I understand that even the most sure of us out there are still a bit anxious as to whether our piece will succeed in "hitting its mark",as it were, with an intended audience, but the difference is that we don't let it hold us back from submitting. I do realize that it doesn't help to say that the worst thing that can happen is that you get rejected, because that line of reasoning never really motivated me with women either, so all I am able to say is, imagine where your literary idol would be if he or she never took a risk . . . simply put, they wouldn't be your literary idol, because their works would have ended up lining a bird cage somewhere. So, in short, if you are worried about the editors shitting on your paper, just think about the alternative . . . some mindless creature could be shitting on it . . .and by that I mean members of Sigma Tau Delta. Hey-oh!
As respectfully as I deem necessary,
Eric William Strege
Monday, February 6, 2012
Where do the artists dwell?
Everywhere that is inspired by art and culture is expensive and thereby often excludes the very makers of said art. Think of
This fiscal limitation leaves the artist, presumably, to settle in more affordable areas. In
I can only assume, and consult my limited experience of growing up in anti-intellectual settings myself with little to no art to speak of, that this lack of community or home base among artists must be damaging. Art is of itself an isolating endeavor and to push onward with its production without even the regular respite that consultation with other artists can provide is all the more depressing a notion.
But communities are formed from this very need even in a place as seemingly culturally barren as
However, this positive thinking is not enough for me to put to bed the notion of how wonderful it must have been to be an artist in 1920s Paris, at the center of the cultural world and of production of meaningful art (I just watched Midnight in Paris again so pardon the momentary daydream). I realize that that setting has been glamorized and the extent to which many of the famous 20s writers were living the romantic yet impoverished life in fabulously rundown apartments is exaggerated and misunderstood. But one fact remains indisputable, they were real artists and expats living in
And why aren't the artists dwelling in
Plenty of brilliant artist have come out of culturally-needy communities. However, that said, all artists, desire to experience the satisfaction of a more artistically aware environment. But the choice to live the life of an artist often is one that diminishes or all together excludes the income required to live in such a setting. The alternative- of creating, in the case of A Few Lines, our own literary community in the face of a seeming lack of one- has proven to be a satisfying one. Can't live in a literary center? Create one.
Now if we could just get Ontario Mills to show some decent movies.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Building your Writing Toolkit: Part Two – How do you Write Best?
For this blog I’m talking about the environment you write in – some people require complete silence to write while others require the cozy hum of conversation around them, some people like to listen to classical while others like to write love sonnets to the dulcet tones of black metal, some people write outdoors, some people write indoors, some people write best on a computer while others prefer a notepad – so what works best for you and how do you achieve it? Think of this blog as a way to help you set up a studio space – a method of creating an environment where you can write peacefully, but also an environment that you can hopefully take along with you. The last blog was about initializing a product; this one is about organizing the toolbench where your toolkit will see most of its work accomplished.
As an artist (when I’m painting in particular) I’m very picky about my environment – I set up a towel and an easel, lay out my paints, put my brushes easily within reach, and lock the door, opening it only (and I do mean only) to use the restroom or get more water for mixing paint; I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t talk to people – I don’t even change the music – before I start painting I make a CD with ten or so songs that I like, set it on repeat, and when I realize that I’ve heard the same song four times I take a minute to stretch. It’s not a social environment, it’s not a friendly environment, and I don’t take kindly to people intruding on me for silly things like noise levels or food or the house burning down.
While I don’t need as sterile an environment to write effectively do find myself incapable of writing after putting out a fire, or in a moving vehicle, or even with the sound of a conversation behind me buzzing in my ears – maybe you can, and that’s fantastic, but is it the best place for you to write? Probably not. So let’s examine that.
Noise:
People tell me that when I’m painting or drawing, I make the face that I’m illustrating. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that when I’m writing I tend to reflect the music I’m listening to. Classical is completely out for me when I’m writing fiction – Mozart, my favorite composer of all fucking time – messes with my writing; I start to hear the notes and enjoy the music and class up my writing to match what I’m hearing, which is fantastic if I’m trying to write a period drama or a sonnet or something like that, but which is utter crap if I’m trying to write a horror story or Science Fiction. Similarly, I love Rammstein but I find that I become a little too … abrupt … if I’m listening to Rammstein when I’m writing an academic paper. Now, I know this sounds dumb but it happens – if you listen to music when you’re writing read through your writing and figure out if the music had an impact on it. If not, cool, but if it did change your tone you either need to change what you’re listening to or cultivate that tone – I’ve found that Mozart is good for essays for me, and that Rammstein helps me write angry German characters. However, the best noise environment for me is with some music, preferably the extremely ignorable kind – synthpop, mild techno, Sigur Ros and nineties teen comedy soundtracks are all amusing and unlikely to distract me with complicated instrumentation or profound lyrics.
So play around and figure out what works for you – even if you don’t find the actual words you’re writing are influenced by the music you listen to, you may find that you’re more productive when listening to a certain kind of music, or that you write emotions better when you’re listening to music that captures the essence of that emotion (seriously, I dare you to write something totally depressing while listening to “Ode to Joy.”)
Now about other kinds of noise: I don’t like hearing people talk when I’m writing – I start to write down what they’re saying or I get distracted and just start eavesdropping on them (which is great when you’re working on dialogue, but less great when you’re writing a poem about coyotes.) Some people work best with people talking around them, some people hate it – figure out what works for you and include that in your writing regimen. Natural noise is a tough one – waterfalls and waves and wind can be incredibly soothing and can help some people write, but are an irritating background sound for many others – again, figure out what works best for you and try to stick with it.
Locale:
Three times now I’ve tried to go on “writing weekends” by myself, check into a hotel room, and just sit down to write for three days straight. All that came of these experiments was an amusing story about bedbugs (which I’ll retell some other time) and a firm resolve to never again stay at a Motel Six. I write well in parked cars, in libraries, at the beach, on camping trips, in quiet classrooms, and I write very well in my garage with a cigarette and a cup of coffee. My luck at coffee shops is spotty and requires A) Some music to drown out people talking and B) A coffee shop where I’m not a regular and therefore won’t be constantly interrupted by people I know asking what I’m writing. I do not write well in hotels that I’ve checked into with the specific intention of writing, moving vehicles, in front of a television, in crowded classrooms, at sporting events, or when I’m at work at my “real” job. Everyone is different, and you as a writer will be different from day-to-day when it comes to where you’re comfortable writing. I tried the writing weekends because I have a friend who swears by them – he’s a fantastic poet, but he’s easily distracted and so he needs to get away from his friends and his life to finish a series, but they didn’t work at all for me. I have another friend who doesn’t understand how I can write in a dirty garage with washers and dryers going and my husband working on the car behind me – she needs a clean, empty desk and a constantly re-filled pot of tea to get words out. Just like you’ll need to figure out what noise level suits you best for writing, you’ll have to test yourself to find out where you write best; maybe you’ve only ever written in your bedroom at night – see what happens when you go to a coffee shop at noon; maybe you’ve only written when you’re around a lot of people – find out what happens when you write alone in your car.
Platform:
Okay, I touched on this in one of my “Tips for Writers” blogs but I’m coming back to it – what do you write with? Physically, in your hands or on your lap or at your desk – are you holding a fountain pen? A Quill? A laptop?
I write most of my blogs on a laptop – it’s handy for research, I can take it almost anywhere and it forces me to take breaks when I forget my charger. That’s great for blogging, because I give myself time to check my blogs over and because they’re generally short pieces that don’t require five re-writes.
Poetry is another story entirely – I write most of my poems in notebooks before I type them because I’ve usually written them in my head before I write them in the notebook. In my head I write for sound, in the notebook I write for structure, and on my laptop I re-write them for sound before I re-write them again for vocabulary. When I compose a poem from start to finish on the laptop it generally stays a first draft forever – I’ll occasionally change a word here or there, but I never re-write it (read: take the time to improve it) the way that I do when there’s that intermediary between my head and the paper.
I strongly recommend writing anything that’s longer than 2000 words by hand, at least in part. Why? Typing is too fast and if you’re writing more than 2000 words you’re less likely to re-read what you’ve written than if it were 100 words. Take the time that hand-writing a piece requires, and take the time to transcribe it, again at least in part, so that you’ll have a greater familiarity with the wording and heft of the piece.
Well I’ve once more written substantially more than I had planned so I’ll cut myself off here, but I will give my final thoughts about developing a writing workspace before I go.
Build a comfortable space for yourself. Isolate yourself or immerse yourself as much as you need in order to write comfortably. Create an ideal environment and write in that environment as much as you can – but don’t come to depend on it. Always have a notebook handy just in case you’re struck by inspiration in the worst writing environment possible, and take as much advantage as you can of any situation that you’re in.
I’ll be back on Sunday, February 12th with the next part of the toolkit – Substance and Substances, a two-for one about writing content and the stimulants writers sometimes depend on to achieve contentious writing.
Until then, Cheers,
Alli.
As an artist (when I’m painting in particular) I’m very picky about my environment – I set up a towel and an easel, lay out my paints, put my brushes easily within reach, and lock the door, opening it only (and I do mean only) to use the restroom or get more water for mixing paint; I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t talk to people – I don’t even change the music – before I start painting I make a CD with ten or so songs that I like, set it on repeat, and when I realize that I’ve heard the same song four times I take a minute to stretch. It’s not a social environment, it’s not a friendly environment, and I don’t take kindly to people intruding on me for silly things like noise levels or food or the house burning down.
While I don’t need as sterile an environment to write effectively do find myself incapable of writing after putting out a fire, or in a moving vehicle, or even with the sound of a conversation behind me buzzing in my ears – maybe you can, and that’s fantastic, but is it the best place for you to write? Probably not. So let’s examine that.
Noise:
People tell me that when I’m painting or drawing, I make the face that I’m illustrating. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that when I’m writing I tend to reflect the music I’m listening to. Classical is completely out for me when I’m writing fiction – Mozart, my favorite composer of all fucking time – messes with my writing; I start to hear the notes and enjoy the music and class up my writing to match what I’m hearing, which is fantastic if I’m trying to write a period drama or a sonnet or something like that, but which is utter crap if I’m trying to write a horror story or Science Fiction. Similarly, I love Rammstein but I find that I become a little too … abrupt … if I’m listening to Rammstein when I’m writing an academic paper. Now, I know this sounds dumb but it happens – if you listen to music when you’re writing read through your writing and figure out if the music had an impact on it. If not, cool, but if it did change your tone you either need to change what you’re listening to or cultivate that tone – I’ve found that Mozart is good for essays for me, and that Rammstein helps me write angry German characters. However, the best noise environment for me is with some music, preferably the extremely ignorable kind – synthpop, mild techno, Sigur Ros and nineties teen comedy soundtracks are all amusing and unlikely to distract me with complicated instrumentation or profound lyrics.
So play around and figure out what works for you – even if you don’t find the actual words you’re writing are influenced by the music you listen to, you may find that you’re more productive when listening to a certain kind of music, or that you write emotions better when you’re listening to music that captures the essence of that emotion (seriously, I dare you to write something totally depressing while listening to “Ode to Joy.”)
Now about other kinds of noise: I don’t like hearing people talk when I’m writing – I start to write down what they’re saying or I get distracted and just start eavesdropping on them (which is great when you’re working on dialogue, but less great when you’re writing a poem about coyotes.) Some people work best with people talking around them, some people hate it – figure out what works for you and include that in your writing regimen. Natural noise is a tough one – waterfalls and waves and wind can be incredibly soothing and can help some people write, but are an irritating background sound for many others – again, figure out what works best for you and try to stick with it.
Locale:
Three times now I’ve tried to go on “writing weekends” by myself, check into a hotel room, and just sit down to write for three days straight. All that came of these experiments was an amusing story about bedbugs (which I’ll retell some other time) and a firm resolve to never again stay at a Motel Six. I write well in parked cars, in libraries, at the beach, on camping trips, in quiet classrooms, and I write very well in my garage with a cigarette and a cup of coffee. My luck at coffee shops is spotty and requires A) Some music to drown out people talking and B) A coffee shop where I’m not a regular and therefore won’t be constantly interrupted by people I know asking what I’m writing. I do not write well in hotels that I’ve checked into with the specific intention of writing, moving vehicles, in front of a television, in crowded classrooms, at sporting events, or when I’m at work at my “real” job. Everyone is different, and you as a writer will be different from day-to-day when it comes to where you’re comfortable writing. I tried the writing weekends because I have a friend who swears by them – he’s a fantastic poet, but he’s easily distracted and so he needs to get away from his friends and his life to finish a series, but they didn’t work at all for me. I have another friend who doesn’t understand how I can write in a dirty garage with washers and dryers going and my husband working on the car behind me – she needs a clean, empty desk and a constantly re-filled pot of tea to get words out. Just like you’ll need to figure out what noise level suits you best for writing, you’ll have to test yourself to find out where you write best; maybe you’ve only ever written in your bedroom at night – see what happens when you go to a coffee shop at noon; maybe you’ve only written when you’re around a lot of people – find out what happens when you write alone in your car.
Platform:
Okay, I touched on this in one of my “Tips for Writers” blogs but I’m coming back to it – what do you write with? Physically, in your hands or on your lap or at your desk – are you holding a fountain pen? A Quill? A laptop?
I write most of my blogs on a laptop – it’s handy for research, I can take it almost anywhere and it forces me to take breaks when I forget my charger. That’s great for blogging, because I give myself time to check my blogs over and because they’re generally short pieces that don’t require five re-writes.
Poetry is another story entirely – I write most of my poems in notebooks before I type them because I’ve usually written them in my head before I write them in the notebook. In my head I write for sound, in the notebook I write for structure, and on my laptop I re-write them for sound before I re-write them again for vocabulary. When I compose a poem from start to finish on the laptop it generally stays a first draft forever – I’ll occasionally change a word here or there, but I never re-write it (read: take the time to improve it) the way that I do when there’s that intermediary between my head and the paper.
I strongly recommend writing anything that’s longer than 2000 words by hand, at least in part. Why? Typing is too fast and if you’re writing more than 2000 words you’re less likely to re-read what you’ve written than if it were 100 words. Take the time that hand-writing a piece requires, and take the time to transcribe it, again at least in part, so that you’ll have a greater familiarity with the wording and heft of the piece.
Well I’ve once more written substantially more than I had planned so I’ll cut myself off here, but I will give my final thoughts about developing a writing workspace before I go.
Build a comfortable space for yourself. Isolate yourself or immerse yourself as much as you need in order to write comfortably. Create an ideal environment and write in that environment as much as you can – but don’t come to depend on it. Always have a notebook handy just in case you’re struck by inspiration in the worst writing environment possible, and take as much advantage as you can of any situation that you’re in.
I’ll be back on Sunday, February 12th with the next part of the toolkit – Substance and Substances, a two-for one about writing content and the stimulants writers sometimes depend on to achieve contentious writing.
Until then, Cheers,
Alli.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
And Jack Said, "Let There Be Discourse," and it Was So. And it Was Good. (Walt 1:1-2)
A few quarters ago, I enrolled into a class called "Bible as Literature." I jumped at the chance to take this class - not only was it taught by Liam Corley, but I've said time and again that English majors need to know their bible. Going into this class, I was a bit apprehensive, despite my enthusiasm. I was raised in a Christian household, but never really felt that Christianity was something aside from a story. Sure, I sang the songs and memorized bible verses, but that was about it. That, though, is irrelevant; what is relevant is that the bible is an interesting document that everyone, I think, should read.
First of all, the bible is in everything. I mean seriously, tale as old as time - Chaucer and Dante to Whitman and Dickinson. It's in just about everything in the canon as we know it. The bible holds a wealth of stories from a variety of story tellers, and it certainly keeps the active reader on his/her toes; however, there was one thing that I was left with after I read it.
It's fucking insane.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I said something like "oh shit" or "oh my god" when I was reading the bible actively. There is some seriously questionable shit in that book. At some parts, it almost felt like it was written by Brett Easton Ellis. Furthermore, it's confusing as all hell, and it makes little to no sense at parts.
Now before you go get your torches and pitchforks, please realize that I am looking at the bible as a piece of literature. All I want to say is that it is a very complicated text, and the events throughout the bible add to its almost cryptic qualities. The bible, to me, is one of the most important literary documents in the history of written word. It's up there with the Iliad, and anyone who would disagree would have to argue his/her ass off in order for me to take them seriously.
But enough of that. I want to hear what you folks have to say about the bible. And, please, don't bring religion into this conversation. I want to actually have a conversation, and bringing religious baggage to the table doesn't do anything but stop a potential meaningful conversation.
Note: You can talk about the bible without bringing religion into it.
Anticipating your comments,
JF
Friday, February 3, 2012
Letter To The Leaves: The Process of Sharing or Better Than Sex
My Fellow Contributors,
I want to find out from you what motivates you to go to an open mic. And if you don't go, whats stopping you.
Personally I enjoy public speaking (ahhh!) because of the feeling I get once I'm off stage. Being up in front of others puts stresses on my body that get my heart racing. What's interesting is I have noticed that my body goes through a certain cycle every time I step out in front of people.
1. Heart starts beating quickly.
2. My mouth begins to move.
3. Heart beats quicker.
(It should be noted that the heart also beats this fast while having sex)
4. Mouth still moving.
5. Eyes make contact but fail to register faces.
6. Mouth ejaculates last utterance.
7. Heart slowing down.
8. Feet walk off stage.
9. Heart slows down.
10. I smile.
After each time I can't help but feel like a little part of me is missing, like I have died a thousand little deaths. Like a piece of my soul is still on the stage with the mic firmly grasped in its hand.
It's the calm after the storm, the spring of new life after the lightning strike of nerves, that I crave. We can only grow when we venture out of our comfort zones. It's not sharing my work with the audience, but the process of sharing my voice that I find most rewarding; the chance to get more comfortable with you.
What I love about our open mics is the sense of a room filled with goodwill and open hearts. Everyone who performs who grabs the mic and shares a few lines is a success. Because we know the courage it takes to step in front of the mic (even in front of family) and speak.
REMEMBER: Saying something small, feels better than saying nothing at all.
As always
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
I want to find out from you what motivates you to go to an open mic. And if you don't go, whats stopping you.
Personally I enjoy public speaking (ahhh!) because of the feeling I get once I'm off stage. Being up in front of others puts stresses on my body that get my heart racing. What's interesting is I have noticed that my body goes through a certain cycle every time I step out in front of people.
1. Heart starts beating quickly.
2. My mouth begins to move.
3. Heart beats quicker.
(It should be noted that the heart also beats this fast while having sex)
4. Mouth still moving.
5. Eyes make contact but fail to register faces.
6. Mouth ejaculates last utterance.
7. Heart slowing down.
8. Feet walk off stage.
9. Heart slows down.
10. I smile.
After each time I can't help but feel like a little part of me is missing, like I have died a thousand little deaths. Like a piece of my soul is still on the stage with the mic firmly grasped in its hand.
It's the calm after the storm, the spring of new life after the lightning strike of nerves, that I crave. We can only grow when we venture out of our comfort zones. It's not sharing my work with the audience, but the process of sharing my voice that I find most rewarding; the chance to get more comfortable with you.
What I love about our open mics is the sense of a room filled with goodwill and open hearts. Everyone who performs who grabs the mic and shares a few lines is a success. Because we know the courage it takes to step in front of the mic (even in front of family) and speak.
REMEMBER: Saying something small, feels better than saying nothing at all.
As always
Undoubtedly Yours,
Bermuda
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Writing The Personal Epic
Most texts need to be read. Some texts just need to be written.
The end game for most writers is getting published, which is a valid goal. Writers aren't often payed very much for being published but they are rewarded with a different kind of currency within the literary community: authority. It's important to be published and establish your place as a writer in the world, but some things need to be created for your own benefit.
Often times, writers are plagued with themes, recurring ones that they can't seem to do away with, or personal anecdotes that really only hold power to themselves. These things can't always be marketed to an audience who is not yourself, and thus, they are abandoned, left to flow in the ether. So what does one do with these things? Write them. Try not to write to an audience and write for yourself. I mean, writing is inherently an egotistical matter right? Though you may not produce a publishable text, you can still learn a lot about yourself like style, themes, and the goals of your literature. More importantly, you can observe the absence of certain devices that you use when trying to please a wider audience. By contrasting, you may just find that your "mainstream" writing is more contrived than you once thought.
Once you finish writing a few of these self serving pieces, you just might find that you have something publishable between the elements of all of them.
Another fun activity to do is go back and read your journal if you keep one (maybe start one if you don't). You may be surprised at the narrative that you unknowingly establish from day to day. Life carries as many themes as fiction. This is also a great way to see your development as a writer over time and to observe what your writing is like in a "natural" setting. And, quite frankly, sometimes it's just fun to reminisce with yourself.
These are both great activities to keep your writing skills tight and the creative juices flowing. Just knowing that you don't have to take part in some great endeavor every time you pick up a pen is enough to keep your stuff new.
All this being said, I can't help you sit down and write.
That's what Alli is here for, so check it out.
-Rainamoinen
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