The Process of Production Guest Post from Nath Jones

The Process of Production
by Nath Jones

A friend of mine is a bona fide success. So. I asked him, “What is that? Success? What do you do?”
He said, “I’m not smarter than anybody else. I don’t work harder than anybody else. I just finish things.”
Man. Finish things. Yeah that probably does make a difference, doesn’t it? So. After this conversation with him, I set about the business of polishing some of the writing projects I’d started. And. It really wasn’t that hard to get a few things done. I finished three books in about a year and a half:

The War is Language: 101 Short Works 
2000 Deciduous Trees: Memories of a Zine 
Love & Darts - Stories 
How to Cherish the Grief-Stricken (coming soon)

These are the first three books in a four-book series On Impulse. I’m interested in why we have this urge to tell our stories. In many ways the storytelling impulse is a damnable grace. So. I took some time to explore it from catharsis to craft. The first book is raw and experimental. The last, which will come out next year, is more what you’d expect a traditional collection of literary short stories to be.

Success is all well and fine. Finishing things is great, in theory. But. In the day-to-day grind, how often do we finish a book? There may be no more rare occurrence.

With writing, there is so rarely a sense of accomplishment. The projects never seem finished. So. What’s to be done in the meantime? How on earth does anyone keep writing, especially when we’ve been so conditioned to instant gratification?

Books take years. Short stories can take as long or longer. And. Just because you finish a piece doesn’t mean it will get published; just because it gets published doesn’t mean it will be read. And sales? What? Whatever. So, for me, I really had to develop a gratifying production process for traction through all the ups and downs, ins and outs of this work that so many of us love most.

I provide access to my writing process. I thought about my friend’s father. He makes pizzas in front of a window in our hometown. So. I adapted that model for my Facebook author page. And. I write books in public. To me, it’s a comment on artistic accountability, on solidarity with workers, and on our insistence for corporate transparency. Because how many of us are really open about what we do?

With all the social media changes, the process writing will migrate to a notebook on my author page. It will become less of a comment on what the pre-set forms of Facebook and Twitter do to a cogent train of thought.

But being transparent about how the work is progressing is a challenge. It’s often an embarrassment. Because many days there is very little progress and I am not always accountable to my goals made in the morning. But. Over time it works. It helps me keep going. I really appreciate being part of the community as a working writer instead of feeling cut-off from others in my solitary hermitage.

The work is what it is. The process writing I share on my author page is what would normally go into a pile of spiral bound notebooks. I objectify all those thoughts and emotions that are the raw material for my work.
The result is an unpresentable hodgepodge: Quiet rumination. Brainstorms. Proving grounds for disparate ideas. Character sketches. Perspectives on conflict, on culture. Pontification. Book reviews. Reaction. Response. Planning. I have board meetings where various departments of the enterprise come and make presentations. It’s absurd since I’m the one doing everything. But it’s entertaining. I dabble in different styles, different voices, various kinds of syntax. And. Sometimes the author page is a text that captures the pure joy of life. Because writing on Facebook can curate both real-time and transience in a way that finished books and stories cannot.

In this way, the meta-narrative scaffolding that surrounds and supports a piece of writing can come out of the text. Postmodern play has a space on the author page and the work can stand alone without those distractions that call attention to the writer. Also, and at the same time, those narcissistic tendencies call social media into question. Because certainly we all make choices in how we represent ourselves online. And. Where there is choice, there is fiction.
--
The War is Language: 101 Short Works: http://www.amazon.com/War-Language-Short-Impulse-ebook/dp/B004FV58Y8/ref=la_B005EZ0A3I_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1350402275&sr=1-4

2000 Deciduous Trees: Memories of a Zine: http://www.amazon.com/2000-Deciduous-Trees-Impulse-ebook/dp/B0054EQ8ZS/ref=la_B005EZ0A3I_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1350402275&sr=1-3

Love& Darts – Stories: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Darts-On-Impulse-ebook/dp/B0071GKYKW/ref=la_B005EZ0A3I_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350402275&sr=1-1

On Impulse: http://www.scribd.com/collections/2757189/On-Impulse-eBook-Series

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/NathJonesWriter
author page: www.nathjones.com

Time and Chaos in a Writer's’ Life - Guest Post from C.V. Hunt

Time and Chaos in a Writer's Life 
C.V. Hunt

Things are crazy here. Not just a little crazy. Like over the top chaotic. And there’s this precious thing that seems to be becoming more and more scarce… time.

Writers struggle every day for a sliver of time. You know… they get up early, get the kids off to school, work a full-time job, go to the kids’ soccer game, fix dinner, spend quality time with the family, tuck the kiddies in at night, and then finally, forfeit sleep so they can create something the world might enjoy.

I don’t have children, but I do have a full-time job. I’m like the majority of the population. And I work a swing-shift to top it off. My schedule is hectic. A lot of times I’m not sure if I’m coming or going. Or even what day it is.

Now add life. You know that thing that happens and you have no control over. Yeah, that’s the one. A separation from your spouse. Your house goes up for sale. Relocation. Things get crazy and time has become a valuable resource.

I’m in this weird limbo now. I travel back and forth between two residences. The housing market isn’t great for sellers. I’ve been waiting with my fingers crossed since June.

But somewhere amid this chaos I found time to do the thing that I enjoy – writing. I didn’t think it was possible. I wasn’t completely sure I should be writing. My mind was in constant turmoil. I kept thinking, What kind of story would I produce if my head wasn’t on straight?

I hadn’t taken a break from writing since I started publishing a few years ago. But I was terrified to stop. What if I lost it? What if I stopped writing and couldn’t start up again. I think anyone who’s truly passionate about writing has this exact same fear. Or at least some do. I know some writers who intentionally take breaks, but I had never done it.

So I kept going.

Time and I have been playing a good game of hide and seek since all of this started. A half hour here… only twenty minutes there… And what was the end result from this?

How To Kill Yourself.

Yeah, I know. The title seems to throw people on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Some are offended immediately. Others find it funny. I’ve been sitting back and watching the chaos it’s created among readers. It reminds me of the chaos my mind was in when I was writing it. (And here’s something most readers don’t know. When a book is picked up by a publisher the title and cover design is almost always chosen by them.)

The story was created when resources were low (time). Moral was low. Life was crazy (chaos). It still is crazy. Nothing’s been resolved, yet. But I felt time was of the essence when I wrote How To Kill Yourself. How? I offer you a quote:

“Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.” - Katherine Anne Porter

If you’re interested in finding out what kind of story I produce when time is precious, and life is chaos, you can check out How To Kill Yourself at http://www.amazon.com/How-Kill-Yourself-C-V-Hunt/dp/0988348403/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350401941&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+kill+yourself or visit my site www.authorcvhunt.com

Falling – and Staying – in Love with Your Publisher - Guest Post from Sandra Hunter

Falling – and Staying – in Love with Your Publisher
Sandra Hunter

Your manuscript has been rejected so many times there must be a rubber band attached to your mailbox. What now? What about a publishing party? Poets do it in droves, assembling their tiny, beautifully crafted chapbooks together, joking about paper cuts, and awl-stabbings. How long does it take to print and bind a 300 page novel anyway?

And then it happens. The email lands in your inbox: a publisher wants your novel. Not only that, they praise your writing for its integrity, its beauty of language, its breadth of vision.
After a quick web-search you establish that this publisher is not only strong and handsome, but comes fully-loaded with a reputable publishing track record. You’ve found your publishing Bugatti. You sign a contract. A contract!

And then, there comes the email asking for revisions. It’s like your new sweetie honing in on your personal hygiene. Honey? You need a different mouthwash.

A deep breath, okay, several deep breaths, and you can deal with it. You follow the instructions carefully. You edit ruthlessly, you tie up unexplained ends in fairy bows. You re-order or even delete a few chapters. You send off your rewrite, feeling bruised but good and virtuous.

Silence for a week. Doubt. Should you have pruned more? You develop severe plot anxiety. Was it clear that Esmé was dating Lyle before she shot Marcy? Did you tidy up that business about the disused well?
You send off an email: Just checking to see if you received the …

A cheery reply: They’ve been busy but they’ll get right back to you.

Three more nail-biting weeks later, another email arrives. They love what you’ve done. It’s clear now that Esmé was dating Lyle before old Marcy got hers (sad she had to go that way, but amazing tension). And such a wise move to remove that disused well cliché.

And then there’s white space and a new paragraph: So some of the following comments are just to finalize a few things…

Don’t tear your hair out. Don’t burn the contract. Don’t say you’ll never write anything again. Or, do say that, as you pour yourself a large glass of whatever makes you feel less inclined to throw the laptop through the window. And breathe. Big gulps of oxygen. A second glass of whatever, etc.

Many new novelists—and I feature prominently on that honor roll—think that, once the manuscript is accepted by a publisher, they’re done. Hands in the air, break out the champagne, prepare for instant fame or at least a lot more hits on the Facebook page.

Revision is what editors do. It is the celery stick they poke into their Bloody Marys to stir up whatever lurks at the bottom of Bloody Marys. They know their markets, and they also know that the critics are waiting to chew up your novel like a fresh Krispy Kreme.

Okay, mixed food metaphors aside, publishing editors have vested interests. They have their reputations to consider. But they’re also doing you a favor by insisting on the rewrite. You may be a dab hand at short stories but, as far as the market is concerned, you’re a brand new novelist.  You get one shot at establishing yourself and your publisher wants to make sure it’s your best.

Swallow. Breathe. Gird up your loins or whatever you like to gird, and accept that signing the contract is just the next step in the entire process. Because after publishing comes selling the  book!
And if a publisher accepts your novel and doesn’t ask for a rewrite? You’re either a genius, or you should be really, really nervous!

My novel, Losing Touch, will be out in 2013 – after many rewrites! The publisher, OneWorld Publications, is based in the UK. And my editor, Juliet Mabey, is wonderful!

The novel follows Arjun, a South Indian immigrant adapting to 1960s London. An excerpt can be found here: http://www.ninetymeetingsinninetydays.com/Hunger_and_Thirst.html

Online short fiction can be found here: http://www.vagabondagepress.com/10301/10301.html (page 137).

Sandra Hunter’s fiction has appeared in a number of literary magazines. In 2011, she won the  Arthur Edelstein Short Fiction Prize, and received finalist awards from Black Warrior Review and Zoetrope All-Story. In 2012 she won the Cobalt Fiction Prize. 

Some Comments on The He and She of It - Guest Post from Barry Spacks

Some Comments on The He and She of It
Barry Spacks

This novella about graduate students in a Midwest English Department might seem to some readers a bit raw as to its sexual scenes even in our own raunchy times, and in such regard rather counter-traditional in that it is set back in the supposedly prim 50s.

The piece started out as a notion for a novel, but as I played with its voices, it kept tightening. I'm a follower of Baudelaire in believing that one should think as a poet while writing prose (while doing anything, for that matter) so I liked the fact that the events I had in mind clipped along briskly in  short chapters that gave me the chance to tuck in examples of the poem-work of the two main male characters. Cutting and tightening has always been for me the key working habit in messing with poetry drafts, and that's what happened here. I love the novella form when it captures the gist of the cross-country slog of a novel in its own condensed, more sprint-like way.

The writing allowed me to press against the false notion that sex hadn't been discovered by American young people before the revolutionary period of the 60s-early-70s. I'd lived a rather rowdy life as a university student in the supposedly placid, Leavitt-town decade of the 50s, and reflecting this became the heart of the tale. All the details are invented, of course, but in the way of fiction they carry the writer's own experience, made more dramatic.

My life has primarily been a history of women, my thought and writing an effort to understand and celebrate them. My problem with the work on this novella -- or long story -- was to come clean with a threesome-plot's sexual material -- some of it maybe shocking to more Puritanical taste -- without slipping into the ugliness of pornographic miasma. The solution, I feel, was the creation of a rather arch, literary feel to the piece, Nabokov's solution to the same problem in Lolita.

This emphasis on writers and writing serves also to bring the period more faithfully alive as an ongoing evocation of  what "English-majoring" felt like, sounded like, in those self-important days.

For more news on my recent work and interests, please click on: http://www.barryspacks.net/

Some Thoughts about Writing - Guest Post from Robert Wexelblatt

Some Thoughts about Writing

Robert Wexelblatt

There is nothing so difficult as writing, at least from one point of view.  Even when I yearn to do nothing more than to write, there is hardly anything I won’t do to avoid it, from swabbing down the bathroom to looking up the definition of enfilade. One reason I write is just that it is so hard for me to do.

From another point of view, writing is easy.  Anybody can do it; in fact, almost everybody does.  My one stint as judge of a national poetry contest persuaded me that far more people write the stuff than read it.  The late Carlos Fuentes had something like the same idea.  He once complained that Mexico suffered from having a million poets and scarcely a single critic. What I suppose I mean is that bad writing is easy and can be accomplished almost thoughtlessly, like sneezing.  The words tear across the computer screen, encountering no resistance, appearing almost of their own accord, without mass, quite weightless.

I use a computer too, for everything except poems, essays, novels, and stories.  These I have to begin with a large black fountain pen, my chief link to tradition.  The Pelikan slows me down; to form a verse, a sentence, a paragraph is a physical enterprise.  Each word has a weight that must be lifted then set down, indited, inscribed.  Writing is like thirst and drinking:  the pleasure is simultaneous with, inseparable from, the pain.

Maybe it is true that anyone can write; but I imagine the true writer will agree with Thomas Mann.  Asked to define a writer, Mann replied:  “That’s simple.  A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”  In the same way, dancing is more demanding for a dancer than for those of us who throw ourselves clumsily around the floor.

One of the surest tests of a true writer may be his or her capacity to endure Not Writing.  It is no easy matter to stare at a page white as Moby Dick’s flank, to hold your pen over it—barely an inch over it, yet an infinite inch.  Not Writing can make a writer desperate and superstitious.  You begin to wonder how to propitiate the gods, what to do to waken the Muse.  Would a blood sacrifice do the trick?  A burnt offering?  Should the proposition be made, would you sell your soul for a first sentence?

Writing may be the only sin that can be redeemed by being well committed.  It takes some nerve to write, sheer chutzpah, and it can feel like a type of vanity.  But the urge to write is not always impure or egoistic; there is also a mystery about it and inspiration—having been breathed into—can justify it.  When the writing is going exceptionally well and it feels more like taking dictation than invention, this is because invention is proceeding beneath the level of consciousness. . . or perhaps, on a really good day, above it.

As an undertaking, writing is ambiguously private and public.  For instance, to write a poem or a story is initially a solitary act, wholly interior.  One writes first to satisfy or relieve oneself, or to do what the heroes who have consoled you in your solitude have done.  The spectacularly well-adjusted and gregarious seldom take up writing seriously.  And yet writing is also an undeniably social act.  The 3700-year-old Akkadian letters unearthed at Zimri-Lin all begin “To my lord say. . .”  From the first, then, writing has been a way of projecting a voice over space and time, obliterating both.  Any writer could say with the reclusive Emily Dickinson, “This is my letter to the world.”  Do I write for myself alone?  Yes.  Do I need a reader?  Again, yes.

Ex nihilo?  Yes, a good deal of writing proceeds out of nothingness, not from knowing what to report but from an emptiness stirred up by the urge to write. In the beginning was the Word, but before the Logos, there was nothing.  A character, a place, a fight, a scheme, a variety of weather, a philosopher, the texture of silk, the meaning of a parable —I cannot know these things until I have imagined my way inside them.  And yet it is also true that one writes in order to free oneself from what one has imagined. For a while the story, the poem is the focus of everything; but when the tale or the sonnet is completed—and especially if it is published—you may feel liberated from it.  Often I can’t even remember what I’ve written, which can be embarrassing, but it is only because I have moved on.

How much do the opinions of others matter?  It is always nice to receive a sympathetic and positive review, unpleasant to read the opposite, because the former encourages one to go on writing, while the latter does not.  But do these judgments really count?  Should one’s emotional chart move much either way?  Here the old Socratic distinction between appearance and reality can be helpful:  good reviews and bad ones are both appearances; either way there remain the same words you wrote, and in the same order too.  For novelists there is the comfort of Randall Jarrell’s mordant definition of their genre:  “. . . a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it. . . .”

I have published a novel called Zublinka Among Women and something over nine score short stories.  The novel is long, the stories short and, no doubt, both can have something wrong with them, but their size matters.  In fiction, length determines form.  In the short story plot tends to prevail over character (albeit not always), while in novels character dominates any particular action (again, not invariably).  Henry James called what lay between the novel and the short story “the beautiful and blest novella.”  Why beautiful and blest?  I think it is because, ideally, the novella can achieve a precise balance between action and character. This is what I strove for in Losses, a short novel that probably has a good deal wrong with it.  It has been published this year by Vagabondage Press.

http://www.bu.edu/cgs/2012/10/07/robert-wexelblatt-losses/
http://www.bu.edu/cgs/faculty/humanities-faculty/wexelblatt/
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Wexelblatt/e/B001KHPP98

Staying Honest While Reading and Writing - Guest Post from Sandra K Woodiwiss

Staying Honest While Reading and Writing
Sandra K Woodiwiss

I enjoy nothing better than to read and to write.  The problem being – I enjoy nothing better in exactly that order.  The problem?  A long, unrecognized form of conformance in my writing due to the over love I have of what and who I read.

Reading  is inspiration to write and I try very much to read what challenges me and what frightens me. My favorite subject matter – women.  The novels of the Bronte sisters’ right down to the everyday, written life of a suburban house wife, fascinates me.  I love to read words written by women, about women; George Eliot, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Barbara Pym.  I want to read the essay, short fiction, novels and poetry that challenge my belief system, challenges my comfort in Christian traditions and gender stereotyping.

It dawned on me one day – if I crave the challenge in reading, then that desire should move into my writing.  Rise to the challenge of different. Take what I know I can accomplish as a writer and move it into a genre or format that forces my ingenuity, pushes my creativity.

Easier said than done.

In reaching for a book, I take a deep breath, say a pray for an open mind and start in.  Now, I’ll be frank, reading for the cause of self-challenge rather than escapism causes problems.  I am a firm believer that only a sick mind can read alone – so when I read a well-crafted piece of work – I ask questions.  I’ve discovered that even my longest and most enduring friendships suffer when the question of why is asked too many times.  With that fact stated, anyone can imagine the inner conflict in trying something different in writing. Writing is a solitary endeavor and trying to convey to a fellow human, even a fellow writer the self-inflicted challenge of say genre jumping is difficult to convey – and lonely.

In my younger years the blank page was nemesis enough – now at the age of 48, I pick up the pen and tell my creative, writer, muse, self – write fantasy.  Write erotic.  Write what challenges your belief system, your comfortable Christian traditions, your gender stereotyping.

So I walked away from the short story and wrote flash fiction.  I stopped running from poetry and its intimidation of me and started to write poetry.  I stopped being afraid of the electronic world and started a blog…and then another…and then another…and yes then another.

No, it wasn’t that I couldn’t get my worked published (believe me I’ve had enough rejection, I’m not afraid of more) but I’ve taken this past year to fill my blogs; my poetry blog, my fantasy blog, flash fiction blog, my essay blog.  Very rarely in the past year have I submitted my work for consideration – simply because I’ve been pushing myself to write what makes me uncomfortable.  That takes practice.

There is a drawback – criticism in these venues is rarely productive.  Sure you might receive a comment or two several likes, even a following but I’ve found that what is desirable in the blogging world is not necessarily healthy for the writer.  As a writer, an editor’s rejection may become that vibrant illumination that later results in an acceptance letter.  There is no pat-on- the- back feeling from a cheering section – nice as that is - better than the job-well-done relief, when an acceptance letter appears in my inbox.

So why this frantic year of blogging?  To push myself – to try the fantasy genre, the romantic, even erotic poem and daunting as it may be the swing at essay – which right now still ends up sounding like a soap box dirge - but improving.

Will I stop?
Yes.
Will my blogs go away?
No.

The thrust and drive in the challenge of words on paper is smoldering back down to time spent, serious time spent on writing what I think may be publishable and what I love to write.  I love to write about the moment, to turn on a dime.  I love the here and now, I love to write about women from all walks of life and focus on who they are as individuals, however my horizons have widened.   The same tired woman trapped in an affair for years may now be the subject of an erotic poem.  Or the woman burdened by poverty may now be the heroin in a world of dragons and witchcraft.  The heart and soul of her must never change – yet in changing the scenery the story of her may soar beyond my own wildest imaginings.

Sandra K. Woodiwiss
http://lydiaink.com
http://skwoodiwiss2.wordpress.com/
http://skwoodiwiss.blogspot.com/
http://northwesterritory.wordpress.com/

The Rules (and Lack Thereof) of Writing - guest post from Gabriel R. Valjan

The Rules (and Lack Thereof) of Writing

by Gabriel R. Valjan

 

Write what you know. Write what you don't know. Obey the laws of grammar and syntax. Break the rules of grammar and syntax. Speech is what you hear. Dialogue is what you imagine between fictional characters. A beat is time in the corner for the boxer to rest or time for the boxer to deliver the punch. Characters live and breathe by how they act, however flawed or noble they are, and not because someone tells you they do. Point of view is a camera; change the lens and you change what you see and whence you see it. Visual is in the mind and it is also white space on the page. Edit for copy, for structure, but always have someone else do it because you won't see it. Criticism is always constructive, never personal. Voice is yours and only yours, as unique as your fingertips, your earlobes, and your handwriting.

As you can see, there are rules and there are no rules. Writing is about creation and expression; it is a function of the intangible human spirit. The act of creative expression, be it oral or written, nearly always involves the person who is doing that creating through words to be sitting down. Spoken or written, the story is created from a seated position. Tell the story that you have inside you. You have no control over whether you’ll make money (or not), be famous or forever obscure. Read widely other authors and genres to see how they “work” and why what they did did work. Should you be fortunate to meet your readers, stay until you have met every last one of them. You’ll be the better person. Don’t compete with other writers. Somebody will always be better at something than you. Just be you. Respect the time your readers spend with you and be grateful that they chose to spend that precious time with you.

Wasp's Nest, the second novel in the Roma series, will be out in late November 2012 from Winter Goose Publishing. A renegade accountant, hacker in hiding, Alabaster as Bianca is in Boston this time to investigate Nasonia Pharmaceutical for her former employer, Rendition, a covert government agency. She'll discover a conspiracy that spans two continents and learn that there's an assassin following her. Catch up with the Roma series if you like a strong female protagonist, food and culture, unique humor, and riveting suspense. Don’t miss this sequel to the first installment, Roma, Underground. The third installment in the series, Threading the Needle, will be out in summer 2013. The Roma series is available in trade paperback or in digital format at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Interested reviewers can request a copy through Net Galley.

My blog is at gabrielswharf.wordpress.com

My Winter Goose page is at wintergoosepublishing.com/authors/gabriel-valjan

Follow me on Twitter @GValjan

WHETHER THEY WORK TOGETHER OR APART - Guest post from Scott Owens

WHETHER THEY WORK TOGETHER OR APART

By Scott Owens

So I had this character named Norman, an abused child who despite his best efforts had grown up to be an abuser himself, horribly self-conscious, well-intentioned but incapable of redirecting his fate. He had been around for more than 15 years and had figured into a couple dozen poems and been the "centerpiece" of The Fractured World, in which the only resolution to his problem is his own death.

I had no intention of letting Norman slither his way into the psyche of another writer, but then I ran across a poem online by Pris Campbell. It was very nearly a good poem, and more than 3 dozen people had commented on it, but they all missed the mark and merely proclaimed how wonderful it was. I took a chance and left a comment suggesting a couple of significant changes that would make it better. Pris liked the suggestions and wrote back to tell me so.

We began to exchange poems online, and we grew comfortable being honest with each other. She read several of my Norman poems, and I read several of her poems on her character, Sara, a sexually-abused child who despite her best efforts never learned how to love herself or to see intimacy as anything other than a tool.

Unexpectedly, as Pris and I grew closer together as writers, Sara and Norman grew closer together as characters. Pris, or perhaps Sara, made the first advance, writing a response to my earliest Norman poem, "Norman’s Enormous Thing." That response, which became "Resizing Norman," humanized Norman in a way I had never envisioned. It was as if Pris, by imagining the influence Sara could have on Norman, was able to see the potential for good in Norman.

Similarly, by thinking about how Norman could help Sara, I felt I understood potentials in her character that Pris had not yet become aware of. So, I wrote a response to her response. We continued this way for about a month, one or both of us writing a new poem each day to expand upon the story of this surprising relationship between characters that had been created without any knowledge of each other.

Initially I wrote the Norman poems, and Pris wrote the Sara poems. As we also helped each other revise, however, it became easier to cross characters, such that after the first couple of weeks, I was just as likely to begin a Sara poem, or Pris to begin a Norman poem. The revision process had also become so dynamic that often neither of us was comfortable claiming authorship of particular poems.

By the end of the month we had about 2 dozen poems that taken together formed a pretty tight narrative of this relationship. For the first time, we consciously saw these poems as a unit and this process as a collaboration. We decided to work on a few more poems to fill in the empty spaces. Upon completion of those poems, we sent off the manuscript to Scott Douglass at Main Street Rag, and a few months later, in 2010, the collaborative chapbook The Nature of Attraction with its 28 poems was published.

Norman and Sara were not, however, finished with the poets who created them. They found our record of their relationship too incomplete to be satisfied. Thus, over the course of the next two years, Pris and I continued to write and revise new Norman and Sara poems, occasionally to fill in a specific void in the story one of us had noticed, but more often just to record some nuance one of the characters revealed to us without any specific authorial intention.

The end (at least for now) result is Shadows Trail Them Home (Clemson University Press, 2012), a novel told in 71 poems about the relationship of two characters created by two different writers who have themselves never met, nor even spoken on the phone.

Scott Owens

So I had this character named Norman, an abused child who despite his best efforts had grown up to be an abuser himself, horribly self-conscious, well-intentioned but incapable of redirecting his fate. He had been around for more than 15 years and had figured into a couple dozen poems and been the "centerpiece" of The Fractured World, in which the only resolution to his problem is his own death.

I had no intention of letting Norman slither his way into the psyche of another writer, but then I ran across a poem online by Pris Campbell. It was very nearly a good poem, and more than 3 dozen people had commented on it, but they all missed the mark and merely proclaimed how wonderful it was. I took a chance and left a comment suggesting a couple of significant changes that would make it better. Pris liked the suggestions and wrote back to tell me so.

We began to exchange poems online, and we grew comfortable being honest with each other. She read several of my Norman poems, and I read several of her poems on her character, Sara, a sexually-abused child who despite her best efforts never learned how to love herself or to see intimacy as anything other than a tool.

Unexpectedly, as Pris and I grew closer together as writers, Sara and Norman grew closer together as characters. Pris, or perhaps Sara, made the first advance, writing a response to my earliest Norman poem, "Norman’s Enormous Thing." That response, which became "Resizing Norman," humanized Norman in a way I had never envisioned. It was as if Pris, by imagining the influence Sara could have on Norman, was able to see the potential for good in Norman.

Similarly, by thinking about how Norman could help Sara, I felt I understood potentials in her character that Pris had not yet become aware of. So, I wrote a response to her response. We continued this way for about a month, one or both of us writing a new poem each day to expand upon the story of this surprising relationship between characters that had been created without any knowledge of each other.

Initially I wrote the Norman poems, and Pris wrote the Sara poems. As we also helped each other revise, however, it became easier to cross characters, such that after the first couple of weeks, I was just as likely to begin a Sara poem, or Pris to begin a Norman poem. The revision process had also become so dynamic that often neither of us was comfortable claiming authorship of particular poems.

By the end of the month we had about 2 dozen poems that taken together formed a pretty tight narrative of this relationship. For the first time, we consciously saw these poems as a unit and this process as a collaboration. We decided to work on a few more poems to fill in the empty spaces. Upon completion of those poems, we sent off the manuscript to Scott Douglass at Main Street Rag, and a few months later, in 2010, the collaborative chapbook The Nature of Attraction with its 28 poems was published.

Norman and Sara were not, however, finished with the poets who created them. They found our record of their relationship too incomplete to be satisfied. Thus, over the course of the next two years, Pris and I continued to write and revise new Norman and Sara poems, occasionally to fill in a specific void in the story one of us had noticed, but more often just to record some nuance one of the characters revealed to us without any specific authorial intention.

The end (at least for now) result is Shadows Trail Them Home (Clemson University Press, 2012), a novel told in 71 poems about the relationship of two characters created by two different writers who have themselves never met, nor even spoken on the phone.

TO BOLDLY ALLUDE… Guest Post from Alex Woolf

TO BOLDLY ALLUDE…

by Alex Woolf

Last year I was writing a horror story called ‘Soul Shadows’ and I needed a couple of characters whose purpose was essentially to provide fodder for the monster. As well as furnishing my sacrificial lambs with rudimentary personalities (to give their deaths some level of meaning in readers’ minds), I had to come up with names for them. To help me in this task, I started thinking about the role of these two characters in my story, and I was immediately reminded of those 1960s Star Trek episodes, when, if you wore a red shirt and were beamed onto a planet, your death was pretty much a foregone conclusion. It occurred to me that there would have had to be a whole stable of bit-part actors in those days whose sole purpose was to get blasted, vaporised or eaten within ten minutes of materialising on the surface of Exma III (or whatever the planet happened to be called). It was the work of just a few minutes on Wikipedia to dig out the names of a couple of these extras, and guarantee their immortality by affixing them to my own pair of bit players. As well as enjoying this arcane nominal coupling for its own sake, I also felt I was, in my own small way, honouring these young actors of yore for their gallant, unheralded contributions to my Saturday evening entertainment all those years ago.

I love planting obscure references and allusions in my fiction – the obscurer the better. I don’t know if anyone will pick up on them and that’s not really the point. In fact, that may be the opposite of the point. I actually like the fact that I may be the only person in the world who knows why Character A happened to be honeymooning in Hotel B in the summer of 19XX. Many of my allusions are to other works of mine. A major character from one story may make a cameo appearance in another. She may not even be named, but I know it’s her, and that’s enough to give me a tingle of satisfaction. As it happens, quite a few of my stories, when they’re not set in an alternative London, are located in the fictional county of Wintershire – though I rarely mention the fact in the text. With this in mind, it’s less surprising, I suppose, that characters from different stories sometimes run into each other.

There’s no name for this disease of obsessive cross-referencing. Some may view it as unhealthily incestuous, maybe even cannibalistic – but I simply can’t (or don’t want to) help it. And occcasionally it can prove useful. Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of middle-grade stories about a pair of young time travellers. Right at the start of the first story, a German World War II fighter plane crashes into an English church in August 1940. The incident had no bearing on the plot, and seemed pointless at the time, even to me, except that it served to give the story a dramatic opening. The publisher was fine with it, but I wasn’t. I was determined to find some significance in this event, and eventually I did – in the second story. It turned out that the entire motivation of the second story’s main antagonist hinged on the plane crash. A trivial incident in the first story became a pivotal one in the second. So sometimes this disease of mine bears unexpected, creative fruit.

Incidentally, ‘Soul Shadows’ (mentioned above) is due to be published in paperback in April 2013 by Curious Fox. It got brilliant reviews from readers during its first incarnation on the web last year. Here’s a little flavour of what it’s about…

Estelle’s therapist has prescribed her a dose of solitude. So she’s staying in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, trying to come to terms with her traumatic past. But there’s more going on in the quiet nearby woods than she knows.

An army of unnatural shadows lurks among the trees. Unlike those that harmlessly follow our footsteps, these shadows can rise up, they can touch … and they can kill.

Estelle and her old friend Sandor must battle this shape-shifting army and the sinister forces that have called them into being. But how can you defeat your enemies when you’re afraid of your own shadow?

You can read more about me and my work on my website: http://alexwoolf.co.uk

How To Improve Writing Skills Coaching Video

Watch this Videojug movie to get a quick overview on how to improve your writing skills. It starts from finding out your weak areas in terms of writing and strengthening them through a variety of ways. The dictionary and thesaurus are two great friends of a writer. It's nice to have a mentor or to be part of a writing group as you develop your skills, too. Some nice tips on character development and plot development are also shared in this video.

They'll Never Get It At Goodreads - Guest Post by Dennis Mahagin

They'll Never Get It At Goodread
by Dennis Mahagin

 
I need a plan. My poetry collection has just been published, and I've no idea how to promote it.

"The poet chooses his fate," said Gregory Corso, once upon a time; yet Gregory certainly never mentioned anything about Social Media! How does a writer shift into a new set of gears after chasing the chimera of book publication for many years? Is there such a thing as "Writers' Post Partum Depression?" Can I save my book from the "Remainder Bin?" Where do I begin?

*

"Are you on Goodreads?" an editor friend asked me on the phone a week or so before my book was to be released. "Tumblr, too," she said, "don't forget about Tumblr..."

"What the heck's a tumbler?" I asked her.

It seems of late, the many fast flux iterations of the Internet are quite passing me by.

It wasn't always this way. Eight or so years ago when I first began working on my poetry collection in earnest, I made my reputation (such as it is) publishing on the Net. This led to landing an unlikely book contract with an independent press; I started a blog and joined several online literary communities as an obsessively obsequious, aggrandizing way to keep my semi-burgeoning Bio in the public eye. I was more than a bit caught up in it all — looking forward, ever forward, to my book's launch, which at that time was slated for late 2008.

Then came the recession. My publisher went out of business; my contract was canceled. To say this turn of events took the "wind out of my sails" would be an understatement. I got pretty despondent, in fact, and my book went on the back burner. I languished in a hiatus of hiding and not writing. I tried to stay off line most of the time. Self doubt was having a field day in the forefront of my consciousness. I began questioning my motives, my talent, my prospects: in short, everything I'd been working toward, for half a decade.

In the end, I just couldn't bring myself to throw in the towel. In early 2010, I returned to my manuscript with a fresh set of eyes. I saw that it was still good, in spots, but it required a great deal of work yet, too. So I went about revising it... and revising some more. And more. I began to see my setback as an actual opportunity to make the book better. Then I sent a version of the book, which barely resembled its origins, to a dozen publishers. Nine of them said no. Time kept its brutal vigil.

Then, late in the year, my book was accepted for a second time.

 *

Two more years would go by before the eventual publication of the book. During this period, I continued to tinker with the work, firing off new version after new version over the transom, until finally one day about three months ago, my publisher sent me an email that said. "We have a release date for you now. Please stop sending revisions!"

It seemed that the dream had caught up with the self; I breathed it in and left it alone. What remains, of course, is the future. One of my biggest fears, aside from the book "flopping" in a commercial sense, is that I will examine the book in its finished form after a year or so and lament that I didn't have enough time to make it better.

"Alrighty then," I tell my friend on the other end of the phone. "Explain this Tumbler thing again to me, like I'm a four year old?"

Yes, I need a plan, but I'm not terribly worried. As Gregory Corso would no doubt concur, self promotion is the nasty chore we writers endure, before returning to the "work" — as nothing but a reward: Thank goodness creation (whether it be poem, essay, story, or novel) takes place blissfully, mercifully, and only in the present.

Goodreads may not be ready for me; but I've got another book to write.

　

Dennis Mahagin is the author of a debut poetry collection entitled "Grand Mal," published by Rebel Satori Press. The book is available on Amazon at the following URL: http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Mal-Dennis-Mahagin/dp/1608640515/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350263902&sr=8-1&keywords=dennis+mahagin

How To Write Well Coaching Video

Do you want to write a book, but don't know how to do it well? Writing coach Jurgen Wolff shares some of the essential advice for making your story work.

Plot? Who needs it? - Guest Post from Phil Tate

Plot? Who needs it?
by Phil Tate


I can crank out short stories in three weeks or so, from inception to final polishing, and I’ve had some success with publishing them, too, including in the final issue of The Battered Suitcase. But I’ve always wanted to be a novelist, and I’ve had nothing but trouble writing one agents like. It’s taken a few years, but I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong. It has to do with the way I write, which is influenced to some degree by the software I use. I write on a Mac, and anything will do for short stories, but I wanted something more sophisticated for novels, so I bought Scrivener, a wonderfully complex program that makes child’s play of organizing and reorganizing chapters and scenes. I love it, and I wouldn’t use anything else, but here’s how I use it. I write a scene. I click a button to create another one. I write that. This goes on an on, hundreds of scenes, all of them wonderful and polished and profound. Each one is self contained (kind of like a short story) and invariably shows character development and growth, introduces or reinforces symbols, continues motifs, etc. But what I have had trouble with is the overall arc of the story, the big novel-sized story. The increasing tension, the climb toward a climax, an overall thrust or momentum or whatever you call it. Maybe you call it plot. That’s where my trouble is. Voice? You got that down. Character? Realistic, authentic, interesting. Dialogue? A real knack for that. But plot? Oh, my.

Some years ago I was at a workshop led by Natalie Goldberg, and she told a similar story: "Natalie, you have to have a plot!" her friends told her, and everyone laughed, including me, because it was so obvious. How could anyone write a novel without plot? Ha, ha. Well, I’ve found out. It’s pretty easy, actually. Just keep writing those wonderful scenes, one at a time, and forget that people want something simple. They want, as in Winter’s Bone, a girl who desperately needs to find her father, or as in Moby Dick, a man who must kill a whale. Readers want a reason to keep turning pages. They want to find out what happens. It’s not enough to watch them grow up.

So I set out to write Winter’s Bone and Moby Dick, only I started with two teenage girls fighting for survival. Their mother dies, their father left them years ago, and the girls set off to find him. But they never do. I mean, after all those flawless, enlightening scenes, including beer and sex and perverts, who needs him?

Tate’s stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Narrative, Black Warrior Review, and others. He has three novels packed with great scenes (and a little plot). See more at http://www.philtate.com

One-Million People Pre-Order J.K. Rowling's New Book

Famed author J.K. Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter series is releasing her first non-Potter book, "The Casual Vacancy" on Thursday. The publisher has already set aside more than a million copies for pre-orders. Vanessa Yurkevich tell us why some are saying it will be the biggest book release of the 21st century.

Author Insides: E.S. Parkinson

E.S. Parkinson is a writer and historian interested in and inspired by the lives of "ordinary" people. She has worked as a social historian and as a midwife, and these roles impact on everything she writes, in direct and indirect ways. She is fascinated by people’s stories; their ways of making sense of their world and their ways of getting through. She likes cricket, tea, and old books about cooking and housecraft. She lives in Nottingham, United Kingdom with her partner and teenage children.

Her short story "The Red Shoes" appeared in the July 2008 issue of The Battered Suitcase, and her LGBT historical coming-of-age novel, Somethin' Else, was published by Vagabondage Press in March 2012.


When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

‘Writer’ seems a very strong word – I probably shy away from it a bit. I do write, I have always written, but there is no particular sense, I don’t think, of wanting to take on that persona. I couldn’t tell you when I first wrote a ‘story’ that wasn’t for school. I scribbled a lot in my teenage years – diaries and manifestos and letters and fragments of places and of people. I struggled with characters though – it seems to be abrogating so much power to create someone. I think I’ve got over that a bit now and maybe it’s because I’m older but I suppose I no longer feel that I can write only about me.

Why do you write?

Because I have to. Which sounds really stupid, or egotistical at the very least, but the stories itch in my blood and it’s a relief and a release to get them down on paper.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

I’m not a writer, I’m just someone who writes so I’m not sure I can comment. I don’t even feel that I have a particular idea of what a writer should be or how they should live.

What do you think makes a good story?

I don’t know. I can tell you what works for me, but writer, written and reader are so individual. That is one of the things that fascinates me about fiction – the fact that what I see, what is in my head is so clear, so obvious, but I have no control over what other people will see or even, weirdly enough, how the characters I try to write about will develop and behave. Once you have written a story, once it is out of your head, it begins to breathe on its own. It’s hard to get your head round, and sometimes I panic, but mostly I like that aspect.

I need characters I can care about. That's the bottom line for me I think.

What's your favorite genre to read?

When I was a teenager and in my early twenties I read a lot of fiction. Now days I find I don’t at all. In fact I hardly read anything for ‘pleasure’, I don’t watch television and I don’t go to the cinema.

Who is your favorite author or poet?

Larkin for poetry, PG Wodehouse and James Joyce for everything else.

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?

Probably Wodehouse, which sounds daft given my current writing, but he has had a huge influence on me. It doesn’t show except in small ways I suspect; I certainly couldn’t plot like he did. But his writing seems to me to have economy and elegance, and he had the most delicious way of turning a phrase. He’s fun and the best answer to stress and gloom.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person?

I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve lived my life through books at all.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

In the everyday. In the people on the streets, in snippets of conversations on buses or in shops. I have, for my ‘real’ working life read and used a lot of oral history and that has been very significant to me. I’m interested in ordinary things.

What does your family think of your writing?

Writing is very much part of my working life as well as my being this itch in my blood. I write all the time, so I think they’ve got used to it.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

This question makes it all sound very grand! I work full time so fiction gets squeezed around this and family life. I write very fast and I write long hand in pencil in A4 notebooks, and then type it up. I tend to work like this because it does mean I can write anywhere – on the sofa, at the kitchen table, in bed, on trains or in cafes. It also works for me because although I can scrawl very fast, nearly as fast as I can think, my typing is very C3. I type one handed, generally using one finger, though I’ve recently graduated onto using my thumb for the space bar. Although I find I have become more adept at writing directly onto a keyboard when its work related, it does impact on my flow of thoughts. Writing long hand and then typing also gives me a first pass at corrections.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals?

I don’t know whether typing one fingered is a quirk or a handicap! I’m not particularly ritualistic because my writing time is opportunistic and time limited.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Possibly all of it.

What are your current projects?

When I first wrote Somethin’ Else I envisaged it as primarily a two-hander between Jim and Edward, with quite a limited and claustrophobic palate. To a certain extent it stayed like that, but I was caught unawares by how strong a character Jim’s sister Dorothy became. I am currently trying to tell her story, which has overlaps and parallels with Jim’s in terms of the themes of entrapment and escape.

What are you planning for future projects?

The idea, possibly, maybe, is that Somethin’ Else will be the first part of a trilogy told backwards.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

None at all I’m afraid.

You can find E.S. online at her blog at http://esparkinson.wordpress.com/ and purchase Somethin' Else at Amazon, B&N, Powell's or other bookstores both in print and ebook.
 

Author Insides - Mitchell Edgeworth

Mitchell Edgeworth was born and raised in the cultural wasteland of suburban Australia. He graduated from Curtin University in 2008 with a double degree in Professional Writing and Creative Writing, which has somehow failed to secure him a career. After teaching English in South Korea in 2009 and backpacking across Asia and Europe in 2010, he has returned to Australia.

His debut publication, short story "The City," appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.


Mitch, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 

I have no idea; it extends beyond my youngest memories.

Why do you write?

Escapism and creation.

Is being a writer anything like you imagined it would be?

It’s hard. It used to be a lot easier, when I was a kid, and didn’t care about what other people would think of my work.

What do you think makes a good story? 

Intrigue. It has to have a fascinating premise. As a reader, if my attention isn’t grabbed in the first few paragraphs of a short story, I’m gone.

What's your favorite genre to read? 

I’d prefer a really good sci-fi novel over a really good literary novel, but really good sci-fi novels are a lot rarer than really good literary novels.

Who is your favorite author or poet?

David Mitchell, hands down.

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?

Hard to say. I read a lot and I think I’ve developed a writing style that’s fairly generic and can’t be traced to any one author. I know that as I was growing up I certainly tried ripping off John Wyndham, John Christopher, Philip Reeve and Philip Pullman a lot. Reeve would definitely be the author whose descriptive style I try to emulate; he’s a fairly low-profile author of young adult fiction, but as a former illustrator, his ability to paint a picture with words is amazing.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person? 

That’s an easier one. My understanding of human nature was hugely influenced by Calvin and Hobbes and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. By the time I read David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas I was all grown up, but it lays out a manifesto for altruism that I greatly admire and would try to live by if I wasn’t so lazy and selfish.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

Other writer’s stories, and daydreaming.

What does your family think of your writing? 

It rarely comes up, which I’m fine with. I’m pretty self-conscious and I generally keep my writing to myself. My best friend is a musical composer and often gets annoyed at me because I’m the only other creative person he knows, but I feel uncomfortable discussing creative endeavours.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I’m a night owl and tend to be most productive after midnight, when there are fewer distractions.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals? 

No. I’m a pretty lazy writer and can’t really afford to have a set of requirements in place before getting some work done.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Motivation, especially in the last few years. I have plenty of ideas for stories but never the desire to sit down and write them. Now that I’ve received the sweet, sweet validation of a published story, I’m hoping that will change.

What are your current projects?

For the last five or six years I’ve been working on an online serial novel. It’s an objectively terrible novel (which I won’t link to here) and because I’m a stubborn person it’s also the albatross around my neck distracting me from working on better projects. When I can ignore the albatross, I’m writing a series of short stories revolving around the crew of a dilapidated spaceship two hundred years in the future. Not the most original idea, but there’s something really fun about that Star Wars/Cowboy Bebop/Firefly idea of collecting an oddball crew of misfits and criminals on a ship and sending them off to have swashbuckling adventures.

What are you planning for future projects?

I do intend to eventually expand “The City” into a full-length novel. I also have faint ideas about a young adult adventure set in an alternate universe Australia.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Bookmark Duotrope’s Digest (www.duotrope.com), a searchable database of pretty much every fiction journal and magazine. Way easier than trawling through Google and Wikipedia.

Where can we find your work? 

This is my first published story (thank you, by the way!) but I keep a blog at www.grubstreethack.wordpress.com. It’s mostly book reviews but there are also a few stories lying around there. I also kept a travelogue of my trip around Asia and Europe at www.gentlemenoftheroad.wordpress.com.

Author Insides - M. Shaw

M. Shaw has eaten two books in the course of its life: The Things They Carried and Little Women, in each case because it hoped to gain their powers. It has burned a number of others because it hoped to gain insight from their sacrifice. It is taking applications for a third book. Books are not to be eaten lightly. It is very hard to do.

Shaw’s surreal and hilarious short story ” Toccata and #&%$!!” appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.

So, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 

I don't want to be a writer. I really have done my best to avoid it, and have actually succeeded at giving it up for periods of time, but it keeps coming back like a smoker's cough. What I want to do is sit at home in my pajamas, eat cookie dough and splatter paint all over the walls, but I don't see that this scenario is forthcoming.

Why do you write?


Let's stick with the smoking metaphor. Being a writer is like being a smoker: those who aren't one consider it an offensive habit, but for those who are it's barely a habit at all. Just something you do, almost passively.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

The way things have gone, I honestly can't remember how I imagined my life would be when I was younger. I know that when I talk to people about being a writer, their conceptions of what it entails are almost never in any kind of line with reality. I asked a friend of mine how much he thought writers were paid for short stories and he said $20,000 (I told him, try $500 for top-shelf periodicals). I don't reckon my preconceived notions were much different back before.

What do you think makes a good story? 

*I think* the most important thing for a good story is for it to feel in some way organic. A lot of stories strive toward a certain point, a certain moral, try to tie up all loose ends and make everything have a point and purpose and be understood by the end, but that doesn't really work for me. They feel skeletal, like they've had all the meat picked off and been edited right down to the bone. Besides which, they just ring false: life doesn't work that way. I want to be reassured that life doesn't make sense, and I want to read stories that don't exactly end so much as leave me to think. My favorite joke goes like this: A severed head rolls into a convenience store and says (the joke doesn't end here but that's the best part so it's better to just imagine how awesome the rest must be).

What's your favorite genre to read? 

Does short story count as a genre? It's definitely what I read the most of. If I'm going to spend time on a new book, I figure an anthology with one good story will be better than a novel with one good chapter. Almost all of my favorite authors are ones I first encountered through their short stories. As far as which shelf it's on in the bookstore, most fictional genres do just fine, except that I'm very hard to impress with mysteries. I read historical fiction if I'm hanging out with historians and want to make them laugh. In nonfiction I enjoy psychology (but not pop-psychology) and social sciences.

Who is your favorite author or poet? 

Kelly Link. See also: What do you think makes a good story?

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?

Joanna Russ' The Female Man. Freud, mainly “The Uncanny,” “Totem and Taboo,” and The Interpretation of Dreams. Barthelme's ambitious 40 Stories and 50% more ambitious 60 stories. Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus. Kelly Link again, particularly “The Girl Detective.” Kouhei Kadono's Boogiepop and Others. Angelica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person? 

Any number of biographies of Queen Elizabeth I of England. The 1818 version of Frankenstein. A certain book of poetry, This Brevity by Gianmarc Manzione. The writings of Munenori Yagyuu. Gaiman's The Sandman. Once again Kelly Link, particularly “Magic for Beginners.” Also The Communist Manifesto. Oh, and Susan Faludi's Backlash.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

Through sacrifice. Through striving toward harmony with nature. From involving myself in conversations but not saying anything. If you want to learn a lot about people, shut up.

What does your family think of your writing? 

They don't. I came from a puppy mill.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing? 

More like what's my writing schedule like when I'm working. I work second shift and my only form of transportation is a bicycle. But the thing is, my best writing gets done when I have very little time to do it and during the time I do have, I need to do it secretly, as if I were sitting in public looking at porn (when people see you writing they will sometimes want to talk to you about it and OH MY GOD). I sweat all the way downtown, hop into a cafe and scratch out a few pages, go to work for 8 hours, freeze my ass off back to the 'hood, scratch out a few more pages in a bar, edit on the weekend. Stuff gets done pretty slowly. “Tocatta” took 5 months just for a first draft.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals? 

Ever seen Mystery Men with the invisible boy who can only turn invisible when nobody is looking at him, including himself? Yeah.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

What you need to understand is that I'm not really a person; I'm a dog. That I can write to begin with is a miracle.

What are your current projects?

Emigrating to England. Also I'm hot for meta-fiction and frame stories these days and experimenting with such, reading as well as writing. Plowing through Catherynne Valente's Orphan's Tales and finding a lot of good stuff.

What are you planning for future projects?

I want to try illustrating my own stories. I want to have a dream in which I kill one of my recurring nightmares.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Try the patch. I'm not saying it will necessarily work, but at least you'll have tried. Write a story longhand and burn the only copy, to help yourself get used to letting go. You can save your rejections if you want to, but this strikes me as rather silly. Like they're some kind of currency or something.

Where can we find your work? 

I think people who enjoy “Tocatta and #&%$!!” should definitely check out “And Points Beyond” in the 2010 Semaphore Anthology (published by the e-zine of the same name, where the story appeared in June 2010) and “Uncle Rick” on the Nil Desperandum podcast. More of my work appears in the anthologies Sick Things (Comet Press) and Daily Flash 2011 (Pill Hill Press), or online at amphibi.us, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and Bloody Bridge Review. I keep an up-to-date list of publications on my blog.

Author Insides - Michael Lee Johnson

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet from Itasca, Illinois who lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era.  His work has been published in 23 countries. His published poetry books are available through his site as well as Amazon.Com, Borders Books, and Lulu.com.

His poems "Kansas" and "Mexican Street Children" appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.

Michael Lee, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I have been scribbling at paper and later restaurant napkins (while in Canada referred to as serviettes) since I was 16 or 17 years old.  When I was about 11 or 12 walking toward the wooded area in rural South Bend, Indiana,  I "saw an Easter bunny" that I was convinced that it was as tall as the telephone pole it was beside.  Before I understood that completely, I wanted to write about it, long before I really knew what writing was about?  Due to a severe disease as a youth, I barely made it through grades two, three, and four in grade school, thus missing basic phonics, grammar, and syntax.  So I have struggle throughout my life with these elements of writing.  I also failed creative writing class in university.  Fortunately, my conceptual skills and imagistic mind, coupled with the eccentricities of poetry have allowed me to survive these shortcomings.

Why do you write?  Why not? 

I think it has something to do with life experiences and interpretations of those experiences, plus locating where my conceptual and imagistic ability derive from:  right or left hemisphere of the brain.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

I think from a relatively early age I realized an ability to imagine things in a big, different, and diverse way.  I didn’t realize they were meant to go on paper till later.  I didn’t realize how poor a poet could be.

What do you think makes a good story?

A good story is good mental cinema; use of common words in a creative way; the ability to see an incident or photograph in an isolated way and expand upon everything around it.

What's your favorite genre to read?

I write primarily imagistic poetry free verse with storytelling elements, some limited form poetry such as Japanese poetry since I love the short imagery and lingering feeling.  I tried fiction a few times but so far have failed miserably; which is unfortunate since fiction does pay.  “The Lost American:  from Exile to Freedom,” was originally intended to be a novel but evolved into a book of poetry.

Who is your favorite author or poet? 

I have been heavily influenced by:  Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg; especially Carl Sandburg.  I was able in 2010 to visit Galesburg, Illinois, his birthplace and the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site.

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?

Jesus Christ, the new testament of the Bible; The Fight of the Eagle, by J. Krishamurti; Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea.  Also a little book of poems entitled The Little Tin Soldier, author forgotten, but I carried this book with by clothes hitchhiking on the highways of Ontario in exile during the Vietnam War.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person?   

Most are above, but I’d say over all the influence and astonishment of acts in the Bible by Jesus Christ, and the promises there within.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

For me inspiration is often found in nature and expanded to reflect a human condition of sunshine or rain.  Sometimes it is a few moments lying in bed before sleep and recording on a tape recorder; sometimes it is driving along with that tape recorder and re-listening over and over making changes.  Sometimes it jumps at me over a few shots of Vodka.

What does your family think of your writing?

I have very little family to share with anymore, most are in heaven with their wings or roasting their pitchforks in hot ashes.  I share my works with fellow small press editors, local long term friends, and drive acquaintances nutty with the occasional email−most remember poetry as their most contemptible subject, this included me when only the “Masters” were read.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I don’t think I have a schedule: in between running a small demanding little promotional business (www.promoman.us), that affords me the luxury of writing time, sliced between editing four poetry sites and averaging about fifty to eighty five emails a day.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals?

Yes.  Knowing full well of my numerous shortcoming, swearing, impulsive behaviors, sometime difficult to get along with, I read the following to start each day:

Today there is peace within me.

I trust God, revealed through Jesus Christ,

that I‘m exactly where I’m meant to be.

I have given this control of my life over to God,

through Jesus Christ,

(all the fears, anxieties, self-doubts)

and taken it away from myself.

This is the gift of faith.

His presence and healing

settles in my bones.

It’s basically recognizing and realizing there is more to life than me.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

That is simple:  my life time struggle with phonics, grammar, and syntax.

What are your current projects?

Right now my only current project is to catch up with everything lingering.

What are you planning for future projects?

A long term project is to gather all my initial works with all the new ones hitting the market now plus many not exposed to small press yet, collecting them all into a large book of poetry likely called “Electric in the Sun.”

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Yes I do. It is imperative you support local and international small presses, without them, poets and others would be screaming in cornfields and no one would be answering. They are a God sent, support them! The editors work hard to edit, format, select, review, emails many hours each day. They are like writers, and many of them are or were writers. Since poetry pays little, requires much, I see my personal story writing poems since 16 years of age, now 63 years old as an example of determination. Most of my publishing has come in within the last four years-I had/have poems dating back as far as 1967. Now, forty seven years later, by poems are getting published all over the world, and most of them came from yellowed papers, wrinkled napkins and such, they wait for the hand of revival. Never give up hope and always remember a power greater than self is driving the life vehicle home.

Where can we find your work? 

Just type “Michael Lee Johnson” into Google search and you will find me everywhere.  My new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7.  New Chapbook:  Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems, by Michael Lee Johnson:  http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/challenge-of-night-and-day-and-chicago-poems-%28night%29/12443733.  I have 2 previous chapbooks available at: http://stores.lulu.com/poetryboy.

I have been published in 23 different countries. I’m also editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his Web site: http://poetryman.mysite.com.  All of my books are now available on Amazon.com:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+lee+johnson. Borders:  http://www.borders.com.au/book/lost-american-from-exile-to-freedom/1566571/.  Now on You-Tube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih5WJrjqQ18.   E-mail: promomanusa@gmail.com.