Platform First, Book Second - Guest Post from James H Duncan

Platform First, Book Second
James H Duncan

Whether you’re a poet, a short story writer, or a budding novelist, creating an effective platform is a vital aspect of turning your passion into something that might someday blossom into a career. You may think you’re the next J.D. Salinger or Charles Bukowski—holed away somewhere working on your masterwork—but the truth is that even Buk had to do readings, had to “blog” via free underground newspapers, had to network with other writers, publishers, and editors via the social network of the time—the post office. His volumes of published letters prove as much. So you may be a tough guy poet from the streets, but if you want your work to be read and, if luck is with you, purchased by readers and fans, you cannot afford to be so romantically hermetic in your habits.

And the key to building a platform is to do so before you release your chapbook or novel, not the same month you do, and most certainly not after. If you are on Facebook or another social medium, look at your page and ask, What would potential readers think of the way I present myself? If you want to share your writing with the world but maintain total privacy, you might be better off creating a specific “page” for your writing, although I do not suggest creating a page for a specific book. Some writers do that and it’s a classic example of PR overkill. People want to communicate with YOU, not just one aspect of your artistic arsenal.

Once you have a page or a profile at your favorite social media site, post often, at least a few times a week, even a couple of times a day, but not incessantly or you will annoy your friends and fans. Make sure your comments are diverse—literary news, your book’s progress, important life changes, and give shout-outs to other writers you enjoy and follow. It’s all about being part of a community.

It is also vital that you create a presence for yourself outside of social networking sites. Have a website and make sure it is easy to update from wherever you are. Have a blog aspect on the site so you can write about your writing. This should be your main means of communication with readers, and use Facebook to drive traffic to your page, not vice versa.

If you cannot afford a professional website, there are many slick-looking free blog websites out there that are designed to look just like regular websites, and many are easily customizable. Wordpress and Blogger are two, and these sites have become common amongst writers, poets, agents, small-press publishers, magazine editors, critics, etc. Everyone is blogging these days, and you should too. Again, keep your posts diverse. Offer updates about your book, share techniques and tips that work for you, maybe add a few book reviews you’ve written, anything to keep a fan interested in who you are and what you have to say.

You should begin creating your platform months and even years before you think about releasing a book, or else you will have no base audience for when your book hits the shelves. Other steps you may want to take include starting a Twitter account, regularly attending local readings and open mics, offering to do free chapbook reviews for online ‘zines that you like (with a bio/link to your website), or even starting an online radio show—all of these depend on how much you want to interact with readers. But remember to strike a balance. You don’t want to dedicate too much time to this, because after all, there is a novel or a collection of poems that needs your attention, right?

James H Duncan is a poet, writer, and the founding editor of Hobo Camp Review. He currently resides in New York City and is an editor at Writers Digest Books. His latest book, Dealing With the Devil in the Middle of the Road: New & Selected Poems, is now available at Amazon.com and his website, http://jameshduncan.blogspot.com.

Reflections on Necessary Roughness in Fiction - A Guest Post from William J. Jackson

Reflections on Necessary Roughness in Fiction  
William J. Jackson

The problem I’ve been wrestling with is this: there is a great divergence of audiences, with different standards. The spectrum runs from the prim and proper audience viewpoint, not too different from the mainstream ‘50s of Ozzie and Harriet, all the way to extreme movies and cable TV shows and novels with many four letter words and complex situations, like HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Sopranos.” Even CBS and NBC TV shows now regularly use more realistic spoken language, curse words, funny slang, street banter. There is a spectrum in audiences for short stories and novels too.

I've been a writer for 50 years now. I write both fiction and non-fiction.

I often think of my fiction writing as sort of rough-edged. I've spent 50
years acquiring an eye and ear for certain colorful rough-edged materials to include in my fiction compositions. (I do the same in my collages—I like to compose visual art with found objects.) This element of roughness includes rough-edged language, which people often use when speaking unselfconsciously in private conversations, and also quirky rough and rude actions, which are later repressed by forgetfulness or denial. Unpolite, informal, spontaneous, emotional off-the-cuff reality. Controversies. Textures of everyday life. Not the slick veneer of nice ordinariness, but vivid bits of life that are unforgettable. Fifty years later you’re still haunted by some phrases and gestures—now that’s what I call vivid.

For example, in my novel Diving for Carlos, toward the end there is a graveyard scene, in which a gang of teenagers are drunk and in a destructive mood. In the darkness they stumble among the tombstones and curse, fight among themselves, using the harshest language they can think of. I wanted that scene to stand out as one full of funny adolescent obscenities. I wanted that high school graduation night scene to be wild and memorable, the climax of a phase of the characters’ lives. I used strings of slang insults and curses, vile language liberated from everyday life and captured in art.

I have encountered some editors who seem determined to remove all rough edges from texts. They seem unsatisfied until everything they've never heard of, everything they disapprove of, and everything they are embarrassed by and disagree with, is deleted and the text is smooth, with no rough edges of real life left, a cartoon book of safe conventional words being all that remains. They assume that if a writer uses harsh language it is because he is not aware that polite society forbids it in conversation. They assume it was not a conscious choice made by the writer to give life to a scene, but a lack of knowledge about how to write a proper conventional scene.

They try to make the work conform to their sense of what's right and neat, to turn it into a consumable confection, standard inoffensive fare, the expected and acceptable. Meanwhile, using realistic slang is a conscious choice in my aesthetic. I deliberately composed it to be wild, jarring, outrageous, compelling, full of life’s rough and tumble dynamism. It is through the elements of the wild and grotesque, and the power of untrammelled spoken language, that I seek to give daring vitality to my work. In the aesthetic I like to work with there are spots of rough reality, cinema verite, with tell-it-like-it-is flare, irrepressible vitality breaking through the curtain of conventions. I think these elements help keep people honest, and prevent being lulled into bamboozlement.

I'm not talking about editing to make thoughts clearer, because that is always desirable, but about the removal of language and issues that are not polite, and risk being always politically correct. I like roughneck imagination--the rugged shocks of dream images, surrealism and grotesques--Swift, Rabelais, Charlie Chaplin, Marx Brothers,  Bob Dylan. The weirdness of brothers Grimm folktales. I like art weird as Rimbaud and Beckett, Kafka and Burroughs. The oddness of e.e. cummings’ lower case poetry, the weirdness of Finnegan’s Wake, where it’s all familiar but dreamily mixed up—the collective unconscious is like that, so roll with it. I like a page or two composed of lists, as in a novel by Gunter Grass, and the incredibly long sentence, as in some of Faulkner—all inspired and consciously constructed, deliberate, artfully woven, intriguingly weird. In my experience anything like this is what most editors have knee-jerk reactions to. They assume it’s an unconscious mistake, and they break it down to boring correct forms they know. I always wonder, when I see any experimentation, any fun exploration, such as Gertrude Stein’s repetitive cubist statements, or Padgett Powell’s works, how did they get this past the editor, the publisher, the owner, the censor, the grammarian, the reviewer, the conventional guardians of what prose should always look like?

Those who capture something of the vitality of reality, and then try to approach the marketplace often experience philistinism. Did you ever read what happened to The Catcher in the Rye at the places where it was first submitted? Salinger must have been frustrated, to have his novel rejected by conformist drones and cowards. How did Hieronymus Bosch do it? If you don’t go along with the authorities—the buyer, the agent, the editor, you lose your voice, because they don’t publish you. But in some places, like on HBO, and in recent months in The New Yorker it’s a different story. Mrs. Grundy retires, and a new crew loosens things up. So you adapt, get away with as much as you can, hoping to get more of your vision and nuance to an audience next time.

If an artist makes a representation of the collective unconscious, people not used to encountering that may project their fears and anxieties into it. They miss the point and take it personally. So it takes an advocate, an intermediary, to make the unofficial novelty part of the mainstream. Mary McCarthy stood up for William Burroughs—then he was able to be seen for what he was in a positive light. Richard Eberhart and Lawrence Lipton wrote about the Beat poets, gaining respectful recognition for them. Allen Ginsberg served as an agent for Kerouac’s On The Road. Every original writer with creative daring using vivid language and accessing the collective unconscious needs an advocate who has faith in him, I would say. The charismatic unknown artist needs a discoverer. As Elvis needed Col. Tom Parker, and Bob Dylan needed Albert Grossman, James Joyce had to be championed by Sylvia Beach, and James Baldwin needed supporters too.

See more at my Red Room blog. http://redroom.com/member/william-jackson/blog/researching-diving-for-carlos
Find Diving for Carlos on amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Diving-Carlos-Heroes-Welcome-Blues/dp/1466435674

Author Insides - Ben Heins

Ben Heins is currently teaching accelerated composition at Rosemont College, putting the finishing touches on his thesis, and will be graduating　this spring with an M.F.A. in poetry. He holds a B.A. in professional writing with a minor in English literature from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Though he currently resides in Greater Philadelphia, Ben was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he studied under the late Dr. Len Roberts.

Ben's work has appeared in several local and national journals, including Lehigh Valley Literary Review, Wild Violet, White Pelican Review, and The Battered Suitcase, among others. His poem, "Stone's Weight," won first place the Lindsay R. Hannah Poetry Contest in 2007. He also has been meeting bi-weekly with his close-knit poetry group, the Winged Poets, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, since 2005.

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

I started writing around third grade, but did not catch the poetry bug until 2005, when I was a freshman in college. There, I met Len Roberts and realized, "Hey, I can do this!" After my baccalaureate years, I went on to study poetry more seriously at Rosemont College. Now, this is my ultimate hobby.

Why do you write?

I write because I believe there are many things in this world that cannot be fully understood. So poetry, for me, helps to cut through all the calamity of the outside world and come to terms with the honest truth of the matter. It is a compressed form, and therefore, can contain infinite meaning in very few words. To dig through every wonderful and terrible moment I have experienced would take weeks of thinking, so instead of just sitting silently, I sit silently and let my mind talk through writing.

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

Being a poet is by far the best occupation. Start-up costs? An idea and a laptop! Hours of operation? Any time! Labor-intensive? Maybe mentally taxing, at times. Really, the only setback I find with being a poet is not having enough time to write. However, after graduation I plan to create the time I need to write more.

What do you think makes a good story?

A good story takes a gripping, coherent plot, fantastic characters, and a stellar beginning, middle, and end. A good poem, however, requires none of those. A good poem will effectively tell the full story from a small moment in the middle. Alternatively, a good poem could abandon any element of story and narrative and sing forever. Really, that is what I love about poetry: its "otherness."

What's your favorite genre to read?

My favorite genre is poetry, without a doubt. A close second is compressed prose – mostly short fiction and creative non-fiction.

Who is your favorite author or poet?

My poet-of-the-moment is Andrew Hudgins. The things he can do with a poem simply amaze me. Reading his collected works, American Rendering, one could turn to any page in the book and be wowed.

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

The book that influenced me most as a writer was The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. At age four, this was the first book I read, and the one that has the most memories attached to it. When I started writing in elementary school, I would mimic Seuss’s rhythm and it let my imagination run wild. Reading it now, it reminds me that those are two qualities a poet should never forget: rhythm and imagination.

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

The single defining moment of my life occurred when I finished Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. After reading that play straight through and studying it, I realized I could not live the "American Dream" – or even the dream that my parents had for me. I will forever forfeit excessive amounts of money if I can have personal and spiritual satisfaction.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

Most of my inspiration comes from new experiences or new revelations. So, if the creative well is running dry, I stop writing for a few months and force myself into new experiences. If a memory sits in my head for a few days straight, I know there is enough inspiration swelling to start a poem.

What does your family think of your writing?

Most of my family could care less about poetry; however, they love me unconditionally and will read anything I write. I remember I brought my first publication credit to my father’s house and he stood in the kitchen, reciting it like he was quoting the Bible.

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

I find that most of my writing is done between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., and can go on for hours, depending upon how much I dig the material. The poem has to keep my interest, and when it does, I am hooked. If it does not, I shut off the computer and try again a different day.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals?

A quirk about my writing process is that I cannot read anything for at least 48 hours before writing. Also, I cannot listen to any type of music while writing – even if it is in the next room. Both of these quirks speak to my need to have my own internal rhythm when I sit down at the keyboard. Oh, and that’s another quirk – I can only write a poem in its entirety at a computer.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

My biggest challenge is that I am nowhere near being a prolific poet. In fact, I may only write one poem every few weeks. This was previously something I tried to repair, and the more I tried to nestle into some sort of regimen, the more I realized that this is my natural pace. It just happens to be slower at this point in my life.

What are your current projects?

Currently, I am putting the finishing touches on my thesis, which will ideally morph into my next chapbook of poems. Also, my poetry group is working on an anthology – our very own Greatest Hits, so to speak – and I am tremendously excited about both of those endeavors.

What are you planning for future projects?

In the future, I would like to try to write a book-length manuscript, though I have no idea where to begin. Some poets suggest writing with a book in mind; some say it should be a compilation of your best individual poems. But really, in the end, I just want to continue writing poetry and try experimenting with the "accepted" poem, pushing my own limits, exploring the world through writing. Then, if a book emerges, fantastic. In the meantime, though, I have to keep picking at my ideas and diving deeper into my work.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

In a word, honesty. Be honest with yourself, your subject matter, your form, your peers. Be honest and spare no details. If there is that one burning spot in the back of your brain that is too difficult to write about – write about that and see what comes out. Artistic honesty is hard to achieve, but infinitely rewarding.

Where can we find your work?

You can find my work here, at Vagabondage Press, and elsewhere on the Internet.

The Psychological Suspense Novel - A Guest Post from Laury A. Egan

The Psychological Suspense Novel: Jenny Kidd 
Laury A. Egan

Many of my novels and short stories fall into the “psychological suspense” category, which was epitomized by Patricia Highsmith’s claustrophobic plots wherein the protagonist is unable to keep himself from falling into dangerous webs and we, as readers, watch with growing alarm at what happens next. To heighten this effect, I often create settings that are, or will become, tightly enclosed so that the action and characters are trapped in the manner of traditional “cozy” mysteries created by Agatha Christie and others. This containment intensifies the interactions between the characters, much as a half-size pool table would cause the balls to carom more often and violently against the sides. I also have spent a great deal of time studying human behavior and psychology, particularly the darker aspects, and analyzing how best to strike the cue ball so that the action drives forward to maximum effect.

In my novel, Jenny Kidd, a young American painter tries to escape the shadow of her manipulative parents and establish her independence as a woman and as an artist. She travels to Venice and is inspired by its beauty—the first web—and then is captivated by a mesmerizing noblewoman, Caterina Barbon—the second web. Creating plausible psychological reasons for her behavior was one of my major challenges; showing her growth as a character was another. Jenny could not be too naïve because the reader would become impatient and lose identification with her. She could be sophisticated but not emotionally sure of her attractiveness or self worth. Giving her an ambivalent sexuality was an additional way to illustrate this dichotomy, as was placing her in a city that is ephemeral: romantic and shimmering, then ominous and dark.

One of the primary differences between this kind of novel and a true suspense/thriller is the development of the characters, the time spent on crafting their uniqueness, their history, and the nuances of their personality. A thriller is a very complex construction containing myriad details, plot switches, and diverse characters—most superficially sketched, all moving at a dizzying speed through time and multiple locations. Although I enjoy reading these novels, my preferred goal as an author is to create a protagonist who feels deeply, is hurt, cries, and experiences joy, who pulls herself out of the web and survives as a stronger, more enlightened person.

A danger of centering a story on a semi-unformed narrator is that it can produce inner weakness in the book’s core, a kind of donut-hole vacuum. Despite this obstacle, I keep returning to this structure because it allows me to bombard the protagonist with thrusts and shocks, the pushes and pulls of more dominant secondary players, thus forcing a reaction, a movement when there was little or no initial dynamic activity when the book opens.

As in Highsmith’s plots, there usually is one moment when the reader cries, “Don’t do that!” But even so the character does, hopefully for reasons that make sense because of his or her personality. I’d love to hear from readers of Jenny Kidd about when they believe Jenny makes that critical decision and what they imagine Jenny will do after the conclusion of the book.

Laury A. Egan’s website: www.lauryaegan.com.

Jenny Kidd is published in paperback and eBook formats by Vagabondage Press http://www.vagabondagepress.com/bookpreviews/jennykidd.html#.UHL5ScUUbCY
Her collection, Fog and Other Stories, is available at StoneGarden.net Publishing http://stonegarden.net. Both books may be purchased through local bookstores and on-line retailers.

Author Insides - Jack R. Johnson

Jack R. Johnson currently lives with his wife and daughter in Richmond, Virginia. His short stories have appeared in U.S. and foreign literary magazines and his novel, Arges, was top listed in the Fish First Novelists literary contest out of Ireland. He produces a local radio module called Hidden Histories which can be streamed at WRIR.org or can be heard via local airwaves every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 a.m. on 97.3 FM in Richmond, Virginia.

　

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
Probably when I was editor for a college newspaper back in my early twenties. My entry point to serious writing for public consumption was journalism; but for fiction, which is a different creature, it may have been earlier when I developed a series of comic strips about my family. I kept them hidden for years for fear of ticking off someone; but they were loads of fun.

Why do you write?

It depends on the type of writing. For the non-fiction work which includes my radio show [Hidden Histories], and radio interviews, a lot of that is putting scripts together for on air discourse or commentary. These are usually heavy on facts, and historical references, light on dramatic effect. For fiction, the purpose of writing is not to regurgitate what I've read or think in some easily digested format, but to discover what I know. The effort is all about discovery. Discovering characters --who they are, what they'll do, what their lives will look like. Without characters, there is really no point to this, outside of some financial benefit--and, my accountant informs me that writing may not be the easiest route toward early retirement.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?
In some ways, sure! I drink a lot and tend to have a good time with my friends--but I'd probably do that even if I didn't write. At the end of the day, it's just work. There are no great writers, hell, there aren't any good writers, who don't spend a large portion of their life perfecting the craft. A few poets--Rimbaud, for instance--may get away with a burst of creativity that carries them into posterity, but for the rest of us, it's a daily chore. Now days I think what limited recognition comes our way is something akin to an act of grace.

What do you think makes a good story?
I am remembering a few of my favorite stories -- Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo series (the seasons of the city), Nathaniel West's Miss Lonely Hearts, Gogol's The Nose, Faulkner's Old Man. They all have highly dramatized situations. In a few, there are surreal elements, and with Gogol, of course, a deadpan absurdity which is wonderful--and much funnier than anything Kafka wrote.

I think there is a poetic sense of voice. Frequently, a story will recommend itself based on a single line: Salinger's A Perfect Day for Banana Fish has the memorable 'She was the type of woman, who, for the sound of a ringing phone, would drop exactly nothing.' Nearly every one of Faulkner's works contains a jewel or two. Other stories have little vignettes, or parables that stand out. One Southern writer I know wrote at length about candies they received on Valentine's Day promising 'VD'. That is an anecdote worthy of Harry Crews. Those are the bright spots that make a story stand out. However, channeling Gertrude Stein, there still has to be a there, there--characters changing at some level, conflict, as Faulkner said, 'the problems of the heart in conflict with itself'. Some of the avant-garde types might argue against this. Robbes-Grillet for example tends to write descriptions of rooms as stories with potentially manifold meanings, but I do not have the patience for that -- and I am not so sure the reader does either.

　
What's your favorite genre to read?
I'm all over the map. Recently I've been reading Richard Russo's Empire Grill which is a hefty novel that feels really light while you're reading it and contains memorable blue collar characters. What kind of genre is that? Romance, family drama, comedy? It's somewhere in between or a conflation of all of these. I also like Carl Hiassen's enviromental/comic novels about Florida politics, TC Boyle's historical dramas and his comic short fiction, Gore Vidal's political/historical fiction, William Faulkner when I am feeling sad or a glutton for rhetorical excess, Vonnegut's shtick which is some strange amalgam of science fiction, fantasy and social commentary. I tend to stay away from the heavily typed genres--romance, adventure, science fiction, mystery; although I have once or twice dove into a John Grisham novel and thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

Who is your favorite author or poet?
I don't think a reasonable person can answer that question without cheating somehow. For poets, I really love Rumi & Rilke--I'm not sure if they are my 'favorites' but I tend to turn to them more often. Rilke can be so incredibly tender, it is heartbreaking. Mayakovsky is also excellent and fun, as is e.e. cummings. For authors, the sky's the limit, it probably would make more sense to talk about a favorite set of works: Gogol's Dead Souls, Delilo's White Noise, West's Miss Lonely Hearts, Dostevesky's Notes from the Underground, Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, Nabokov's Lolita etc...

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?
Stylistic influences are hard to gauge, not because they don't exist, but because I consciously try to avoid imitating anyone. I suppose, if I were to look at my fiction, I'd say it's more like a John Irving or Anne Tyler, though I haven't read that much of either. My daughter, bless her soul, compared some of my writing in An Animal's Guide to The Great Gatsby, which I found wildly off the mark, at first, and then she pointed to some obvious symbolism, especially of East Egg and West Egg and the use of the Sauer's Seasoning Chef and I thought, well, what do you know? But, truth is, she probably just wanted to use the car on Friday night.

I do tend to favor the pared down narrative, distrust strong adjectives without sufficient emotional distancing. It probably has something to do with being raised Catholic.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person?
What we're really asking is which books have moved me to change my life? Or changed my view of life? I think those books tend to be more philosophical in intent -- Dostevesky's Brother's Karamazov, for example. Passages of Rumi where he yells at you to get rid of the nafs! (we Christian types would call them temptations); and then, of course, the writings of Henry David Thoreau especially On Civil Disobedience. In that vein, there are also a slew of environmental writers that have affected me -- Edward Abbey, whose Monkey Wrench Gang is delightfully transgressive, Annie Dilliard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek with it's echoes of Thoreau, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams and finally, Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?
Mostly true life stories, bent just enough to keep them interesting; although of late, I've been doing some non-realistic stuff that seems viable. We'll see.

What does your family think of your writing?
They're generally supportive, but a bit suspicious. After Animal's Guide, my mother thought I spent too much time pontificating. Especially, I suspect, the parts where I deliberated on the impiety of Christians and their general lack of philosophical consistency. In the novel I'm currently trying to put together, there are no family members, just friends. By the time I finish my writing career, I may be the most hated man on earth.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?
I have an insane work load--40 hour work week for bread and butter stuff and then I do three radio modules each week for Hidden Histories, plus my fiction writing. I try to carve out about two hours every day for fiction, usually first thing in the morning. I'm happy to squeeze out 3-4 pages a session. If I miss a page here or there, I usually make up for it on the next go around, but there is no denying the need for a routine.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals?
Right now, I'm happy just to have a straight two hours of relative silence. In my undergraduate days, I used to be able to write with people partying in the room next door, U2 wailing from the speakers, drunks in the bathroom, etc... I even used to be able to write a synopsis of Kierkegaard in that kind of environment. No more. Now, I really value just a little quiet so I can hear my own thoughts.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

I think some of my more esoteric leaps into what a philosopher thought about such and such might be off putting in the context of fiction, but I always remember that the etymology of novel isn't 'story' or 'narrative': it's 'new' ...

What are your current projects?

I have three big projects in the works. Two novels I want to roll out shortly--one is a kind of hybrid Edward Abbey /Miguel Cervantes with environmental concerns. The other is actually more of a novella that I've been toying with for years about a Roma girl (gypsy) who avenges her family's massacre in Romania during the fall of Ceausescu. Finally, I've a novella or collection of thematically related stories I'm fine tuning entitled Decalogue which will be a re-telling of the ten commandments through more or less contemporary parables set in the United States.

What are you planning for future projects?

I'm currently half way through a novel on a 'Beckian' radio personality, a men's dream group and a would be shaman that get caught up in a catastrophic hunt for the archetypal CNN 'missing blonde' -- this is the novel with a few of my friends in it. If/when it gets published, I'm moving to Greece :-)

Do you have any advice for other writers?
Spare no one, least of all yourself.

Where else can we find your work?
Vagabondage Press, Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobles, plus local bookstores and art galleries in the Richmond, Virginia area--especially the Fountain Bookstore in Shockoe Bottom, God bless them. For audio work (Hidden Histories, Interviews, etc.) listen to 97.3 FM, locally, streaming at http://wrir.org, or the podcast at http://www.radio4all.net.

Writing and Mourning - Guest Post from Adriana Paramo

Writing and Mourning
Adriana Paramo


I tried to give birth to this book seven years ago but the darn thing refused to come out. I had had it in me way too long, it had run its due gestation course. It had reached full term. Yet, I couldn’t write the last chapter and the thing remained unborn for a long time. It wasn’t a simple case of writer’s block, or disinterest, or lack of time. I mean, I have been chasing an undocumented woman, with a compelling story of loss, up and down the Florida peninsula for almost two years. Along the way, I found other undocumented women, other equally compelling stories, who also lived extraordinary lives in the underbelly of the Sunshine state.  I thought, dreamed, breathed, read and wrote about nothing but women. Soon after finding Esperanza, my mother died and that was it. I hit a wall and my project became rapidly stale. I lost hope in having the book finished, let alone published; I lost confidence as a writer and purpose as an anthropologist. Continuing my research, focusing on other women seemed an act of betrayal, a disloyal negation of her death, an insult to the memory of the bravest woman I’d known: a single mother of six after my Dad walked out on us when I was seven. I would sit in front of my laptop, heaps of hand-written interviews on each side of it, cups of half-drunk Colombian coffee on my desk and window sills, our dogs lying somewhere at my feet. I waited for the nagging feeling to finish the project. Instead, I would get sucked into a cosmos of trivialities. I listened to the kitchen faucet; it had been leaking for weeks. I wrote down on a post-it: Plumber’s tape for kitchen. One of our dogs developed a rash on her tummy. She licked and scratched uncontrollably. Another post-it: Get Hot Spot for Honey. I turned the computer off. Saw my reflection in the black screen and noticed two forming folds on each side of my nose running down to the corners of my mouth. I turned the computer back on and Googled, Is Botox safe? One day, I opened the manuscript and searched for the word Esperanza. It appeared 263 times. I have never liked odd numbers. I went to the last line and wrote Esperanza, once more. There. That’s better. 264 times. I felt accomplished. I treated myself to a tall glass of Riesling. Went back to the laptop and I stayed with my fingers hovering above the keyboard until it was obvious that I would not write a single word. I turned the TV on, tuned in to the Cartoon Channel and watched two and a half hours of The Roadrunner. And I laughed. I did this for days which turned into weeks. I would not finish the project.

In the midst of this creativity stalemate, I started to write about Mom and growing up as the youngest in a household of women back in my homeland, Colombia: a country that in memory never changes, a country I can’t go back to because it exists only in a corner of my heart. It was only after “My Mother’s Funeral,” my manuscript about Mom, had been accepted for publication that I dared turn my attention again to the undocumented women. It would be fair to say that mourning’s rude edges were softened and humanized by the subtle grace of acceptance. I finished the manuscript, revised it, rewrote the whole thing and submitted it to the Social Justice and Equity Award in Creative Nonfiction organized by Benu Press, an indie publisher. And it won the contest, which meant, it was accepted for publication. “Looking for Esperanza,” is now available in print and as an ebook. It is a happy story with a humbling end.  Once I received my copies and held this stubborn baby in my arms, after I went around doing a celebratory dance and kissed my husband, once the high was over, I was left with the million dollar question: now what? How does a new writer sell copies of her books about suffering women?

Who wants to read stories of deprivation, loss and pyrrhic victories? For those who do, here is the press release: http://www2.dmpemail5.com/jenkins/dsc/collateral/Chappell_PR.pdf, the link to amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Esperanza-Story-Mother-Matter/dp/0984462988/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350313405&sr=1-1&keywords=looking+for+esperanza
Professional website: www.paramoadriana.com

Writhing at the Thought of Writing - Guest Post from Tommy Vinh Bui

Writhing at the Thought of Writing 
Tommy Vinh Bui

Writing is still a painful and sobering process to me. And I’ve been doing it for years. It wreaks havoc on the soul and kneads the brain to the point of malaise. I feel writing is something I won’t build a tolerance to. It won’t get easier as the years go by. I find the more growth you experience from producing reams and reams of creative output; the more reluctant you are to put yourself through the spiritual wringer. It’s a punishing process. To grow as a writer you strike out to unfamiliar territory. Push yourself out of your comfort zone because pain is growth, right? Uncharted waters. Here be dragons and so on and so forth. But there will be that voyage which will be one voyage too many. And you find yourself in a maelstrom of troubled waves. Oars about ready to snap. Compass needle spinning like a buzz saw. And you’re tied to the mast because only a rodent deserts a sinking ship.

When that impendent deadline is barreling down on me I find myself seeking solace in procrastination with shocking frequency. Thinking up new modes of procrastination is something of a knack of mine. Much creative thought goes into avoiding creative work.  And I get pretty excessive with my procrastination. One time I actually re-tarred my entire roof just to avoid writing a paper on Hamlet. And when someone quotes Shakespeare (to this day) I still get dizzy from those tar fumes.

Sometimes I’ll just crawl into a good book and roost for days. With that inexhaustible deadline looming large. And whatever I’m reading is going to inevitably pry its way into whatever I’m writing. I’m surprisingly impressionable and susceptible to outside influence. If I have to write an article on the Byzantine Empire (deadline tomorrow) and there happens to be a documentary on armadillos on television in the background, then that paper will be entitled “The Migratory Mating Habits of Constantinople: The Leathery Armored Shell of the Ottoman Empire”.

But even despite the haggard hours, the pittance compensation, and the fusillade of neurotic napalm that I shower upon myself throughout the writing process; I still do it. Because harpooning down that period key and finishing up a first draft of something is a sensation unlike any other. It’s deeply intoxicating. Almost narcotic. And the feeling all too fleeting and ephemeral unfortunately as you set that completed work aside and get cracking on the next project. Inexplicably you find yourself re-donning that steel helmet and charging up that next literary escalade.

Times are tough for writerly warriors. But, oh, those flying arrows make such a lovely whistling sound.

If you delude yourself enough, it sounds slightly of “Camptown Races”. And being a good writer is learning to jig to the sounds of your own impending demise.

Doo dah.

Doo dah.  


Tommy Vinh Bui is prone to concise confabulations and off-kilter katzenjammers. Growing up in soporific small-town Los Angeles he was quick to cast off the bowlines and traverse the world. His travels have taken him from the bonnie bucolic bryns of Wales to the vast and desolate steppes of Kazakhstan. Tommy will admit to being interested in antique timepieces, scrimshaw, and obscure cheeses. But he will staunchly deny an interest in McRibs, café racers, and Metal Gear Solid. He hopes to score a decisive goal for England in the World Cup some day. 

Tommy holds an MA in English Literature and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in Central Asia. 
Many can attest that he is mostly underwhelming.
Further ditherings can be found here: 
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-819814 
http://www.cynicmag.com/feature.aspx?articleid=4265 
http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com/reader-profiles/tommy-b/