Innehållsförteckning för July 2014 från The Writer

Do you admire people who use language in unusual ways? Chances are if you’re reading this, you do – or you are that person. I love when someone turns a phrase that makes me stop and reconsider conventions or expectations. I have a friend who never gets his verb tenses correct, but his mistakes serve to remind me: Break the rules and discover a new truth. Sometimes he speaks poetry without even knowing it. That’s not to say we should eschew the rules. We hate typos and misspellings when they happen in our writing (and when they happen in our magazine – egads). We strive for grammatical and syntactical perfection. And we’re pretty sure you do, too. But it’s that occasional typo or other mistake – for instance, the difference…

I have a lot of creative writing classes under my belt, but I feel compelled to take more. At what point are classes no longer useful? If you’re still challenged by the classes and you find you’re growing as a writer, why not continue? Generally speaking, good classes are a community of writers. They give you an opportunity to discuss writing with like-minded individuals who are thinking seriously about literature and the craft of writing. As a result, no two classes are exactly the same, even if they are lead by the same instructor. Participants bring unique insights and individual concerns. Of course, instructors can offer approaches and share individual knowledge gained from experience. If the class includes a significant workshop component – and most writing classes do – you…

The opening lines of Phil Klay’s debut story collection Redeployment give the reader an early glimpse of the dark, bewildered humor that will resurface occasionally throughout the book. “We shot dogs,” writes Klay, in a story about a marine serving in Iraq. “Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. I’m a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.” Before writing Redeployment, Klay served in the U.S. Marines, including in Iraq’s Anbar province during the troop surge in 2007 and 2008. He then earned an MFA at Hunter College, graduating in 2011 and landing a book deal the same year. Redeployment was released this year, earning him widespread acclaim, including The New York Times trifecta: a positive review by Michiko Kakutani, followed…

Natalie Goldberg’s path to becoming one of the bestknown and respected writing teachers is well documented Ð from her days in the restaurant business to her workshops in New Mexico, France and retreat centers around the world. Her Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within changed the way many people think about their ability to be writers. Published in 1986, it has sold more than 1.5 million copies and remains a seminal writing guide for inspiration and motivation. In her newest book The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language, Goldberg again combines her Zen practice and years of teaching to distill her accumulated experience. She’s known for bringing writing Ð as the title of her first book suggests Ð into the sphere of the body. She teaches…

Animals surround David James Poissant. At first, dogs, cats, birds, rats, guinea pigs and a team of reptiles filled his childhood home. Today, these animals – along with a few more exotic creatures – weave in and out of his short stories, echoing themes and serving as catalysts for the characters’ actions. Although he never set out to write an animal-themed collection, time and again, these creatures crept into his narratives. “I think it’s amazing the way we interact with animals in the natural world,” he says. “We relate to animals, but we also use animals and we abuse them, and I think we do that with people, too. We love people, but we often use them and take them for granted.” The stories in Poissant’s debut collection The Heaven…

I’d spent countless hours riding that half-pipe and was comfortable with tricks I didn’t try anywhere else. I started by riding down one side, up the other and doing a basic double-peg grind, turning my bike on the top of the curve so I landed sideways on my wheel pegs before dropping back down. I kept riding from side to side doing different grinds each time I hit the upper lip. I tried one involving my rear peg plus a 180-degree turn but I lost control and landed on my left hip under my bike. I stood up, shook my legs out, and climbed out of the trough. Looking down from the deck, Lauryn said, “Nice,” then dropped in and did a 360-degree air turn at the top of the…

A stranger comes to the village and delivers the news. Didi hears a woman’s voice in her yard. She’s upstairs, going through the boys’ old clothes, deciding which ones she wants to keep and which ones to pass down to a neighbor’s children. Her first thought when she hears the woman’s voice is that something has happened to her husband in the city. Then she knows it’s something else. She stands still, holding in her hands a pair of dark blue shorts, too tight for her older son, Amit. “Is anybody home?” the woman cries out again. Didi goes to the window. “Are you the woman named Sulochana?” Didi nods. “I have to talk about an important matter.” The woman identifies herself as belonging to the next village, then she…

By understanding basic plot structure, writers can stimulate new ideas, refresh their work and bring their talents to fruition. Script writer Dennis Whitcomb took readers back to the basics with his essay, “Anatomy of a Story,” published by The Writer in July 1968. “The writer of fiction must be as much a craftsman as he is an artist, as much an artist as he is a craftsman,” he writes. Stories are typically either dramatic or comical, beginning with a “disturbance of the status quo,” an incident that derails a character’s day-to-day life. The inciting moment leads to a crisis or dramatic situation, an “irresistible force meeting an immovable object” that the character must respond to with action. “Every story ever written is a conflict (every salable story, at any rate),”…

DOES WHERE YOU WRITE INFLUENCE WHAT YOU WRITE? Over the past several years, I have traveled throughout the country, particularly the northeast and the Appalachian region, with my husband. He conducts business while I focus on completing a middle-grade novel and writing op-eds for my hometown newspaper, The Charleston Gazette. I often find myself feeling like an early nomad, and the challenges of traveling from town to town and city to city fuel my creative endeavors until it becomes a welcomed anticipation to move to the next location to see how that area, culture and even climate will affect my writing. In the global economy that has emerged over the past few decades, many writers find themselves writing from wherever they happen to land: airport terminals, subway cars, commuter trains…

Although writing techniques vary from writer to writer and story to story, I consider four key elements essential for effective writing: accuracy, solid research, lively dialogue and concrete details. Aspiring writers can spend years studying the craft to master these essentials. Or work in a newsroom – a powerful place to learn more about the craft. Of course, newsrooms are dwindling, and opportunities within existing newsrooms are rare. You may have to seek out “virtual newsrooms” or connect with working journalists for tutorials. Or take the following tips from writers whose work is grounded in journalistic technique. 1 THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE “It doesn’t matter whether the story is set in the present day, 100 years ago, 100 years hence, or in a place that has never and could never…

Can a writer get something from a book group of nonwriters? Every page was a struggle. Not since grad school had I endured such an awful book. Paragraph after paragraph of inept dialogue and improbable plot slogged toward an unsatisfying end. In truth, I would have chucked it long ago if only it hadn’t been this month’s selection by the Men’s Only Book Club. I’ve been a MOBC regular for five years. Fellow members include doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, civil servants, scientists, urban planners, engineers, businessmen and one full-time writer: me. We writers, of course, are scrutinized, analyzed and even demonized by book clubs; folks generally don’t get together to critique professors, planners or physicians. Why, then, would anyone want one of us in their club? And why would we…

An excerpt from The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language by Natalie Goldberg I use the word practice all the time. Students nod, but after some time it became clear that different definitions were at work. On the first day of a yearlong intensive, where we meet for one week of silent retreat each season, I asked students to choose a feasible practice that they could do for the whole year. At the end of the week they read their choices aloud: to stop eating fries and lose twenty-five pounds; run five miles a day and strengthen their quads; do an hour of sitting, then an hour of writing, then finish their novel. The lists went on like this. Full of achievement, forwardlooking, industrious. I felt like a…

I rattle into the driveway around sunup and Cam’s on my front stoop with his boy, Bobby. Cam stands. He’s a huge man, thick and muscled from a decade of work in construction. Sleeves of green dragons run armpit to wrist. He claims there’s a pair of naked ladies tattooed into all those scales if you look close enough. He puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, but Bobby spins from his grip and charges. He meets me at the truck, grabs my leg and hugs it with his whole body. I head toward Cam. Bobby bounces and laughs with every step. We shake hands, but Cam’s expression is no-nonsense. “Graveyard again?” he says. My apron, rolled into a tan tube, hangs from my front pocket and I reek of…

THE FIRST FRAMES of Kristin Radtke’s video essay “That Kind of Daughter” show a lighted square projected onto a screen, reminiscent of 1970s home movies. In a moment, the black-andwhite cut-out shape of a finger appears, and then another; two hands materialize holding a baby chick. “My mother feeds them bananas out of her hands,” says Radtke’s voiceover in a dreamy, melodious tone. “And when they get sick, my father hits them over the head with the thick end of a screwdriver and throws their bodies into the woods.” Video essays, along with cinepoems and video fiction, offer editors of literary journals an exciting new way to engage online readers. Writers previously restricted to text have taken up cameras and microphones – and, in Radtke’s case, paper and scissors for…

Fiction writer Ellen Lesser never attended a conference before publishing her work. “Partly, I wonder, ‘What was I thinking?’ because a good conference is such a rich and transforming experience,” she says. After graduating with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, she devoted her professional life to the program, first as a member of the writing faculty and then as the director of the school’s Postgraduate Writers’ Conference. Beyond lessons of structure and form, she discovered that a conference allows writers to delve into the deeper relationships of a writing community. “It’s about the writing itself, but also about a humane and empowering method of teaching it and seeding its ongoing development,” Lesser says. While many conferences cater to aspiring writers, the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference only accepts writers…

Small presses and self-publishers are viable options for writers who want to break into the market. With no agent costs and an often increased return on royalties, independent publishers may offer authors less exposure but bigger payoffs. Many small presses also provide a niche for titles that don’t fit into the mainstream. Keep these tips in mind before submitting to an independent publisher. 1 Read other books published by the press. Sampling books will give you a taste of what the publisher offers and show you the style and quality of the publication. 2 Check the publisher’s current needs. For instance, although a publisher may have sought mysteries in the past, the focus may have shifted to science fiction. Always look up the publisher’s submission guidelines before sending a pitch…

Hemingway said: “Write drunk, edit sober.” Before there were blogs, tweets and text messages, there was a writer with a pen in one hand and (often) a drink in the other. Here is a collection of bars that writers made famous. The Ritz Bar PARIS THE WRITER Ernest Hemingway WHAT MAKES IT SPECIAL “When I dream of afterlife in Heaven, the action always takes place at the Paris Ritz,” Hemingway said. Visit the Bar Hemingway, named in his honor. Several pictures of places that inspired the author adorn the walls. There are rumors that the Bloody Mary was invented here…by Hemingway. DRINK Bloody Mary Woody Creek Tavern WOODY CREEK, COLO. THE WRITER Hunter S. Thompson WHAT MAKES IT SPECIAL If Thompson could have designed a bar, it would be the…

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A poet learns about the material of art by watching the craft in action. I don’t know how to make many things, but I am in awe of people who know how to work with materials. For the past 25 years, I have been director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, and have had the opportunity to watch people work with clay, textiles, metal, wood and glass. Some of these makers have mastered their crafts; others are just beginning. Whether someone is starting out or has years of experience, the work always goes beyond mastery. It’s about a relationship with the maker and the material. You may want the clay to move in a certain way, but the clay has its own way of moving,…

Creating a philosophical backstory for characters deepens the plot. WHAT MAKES A CHARACTER LEAP off the page and into readers’ hearts? If you’ve listened hard to your writing teachers and thought about the fiction you love, you’ll probably answer: detailed description (what they wear, how they look, where they live, how they talk), emotional connection (loves, hates, fears, joys, despair) and what happens to them (growth and change, rise and fall, challenge, defeat and victory). I’d like to add something to the list: the philosophical meaning of their lives. That is: how they (and you) think about, respond to and express fundamental issues of meaning, being, truth, goodness, moral responsibility and justice. Many readers might say that (philosophy professor that I am) I’ve gotten it dead wrong. Fiction is about…

When publishers told Karen Avivi that her book Shredded about a girl BMX rider was too niche, she didn’t return to the drawing board. (She has a literal drawing board, a giant whiteboard on which she plotted out the book.) Sports had helped her find confidence as an adult, and she couldn’t let the stories of sporty girls remain untold. With the sense of determination gained from running triathlons, skydiving and rock climbing, she decided to take matters into her own hands and self-publish. Earlier this year, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators announced that Shredded, released in 2013, had won the Spark Award, which “recognizes excellence in a children’s book published through a non-traditional publishing route.” For Avivi, a freelance technical and business writer, self-publishing didn’t mean…

Novelist and short story writer Samrat Upadhyay toggles between two genres. Samrat Upadhyay is a writer who lives in one world and writes about another. He teaches creative writing at the University of Indiana in Bloomington and writes novels and short stories about teachers, tutors, mid-level bureaucrats, adulterers and survivors of the Maoist-Royalist civil war in Nepal. The New York Times recently placed him in the same firmament of South Asian writers as Mohsin Hamid, Kiran Desai, Monica Ali, Arundhati Roy and Siddhartha Mukherjee. The son of an administrative officer at the Agricultural Development Bank in Kathmandu, Upadhyay, 50, learned the English he writes in at American mission schools. His literary affinities growing up were with the works of Robert Ludlum, Mario Puzo, Nepali detective writers and, interestingly, Charles Dickens.…

Walk into the Skipping Stones office on a quiet street in Eugene, Ore., and you’ll find wooden racks displaying 27 years of back issues, most with color cover photos depicting children from around the world. A photo of Gandhi hangs near the front door. On one of many crowded bookshelves, two wooden frames display postage stamps from numerous countries – a gift created by a young intern responsible for opening submissions mailed from around the world. “If you want to have good fruit,” says editor and publisher Arun Toké, “you start by planting a seed and nurturing it. If you want to promote peace, you begin with children.” Toké began the multicultural children’s magazine, which last year won the Children’s Publication Award of the National Association for Multicultural Education, with…

Once upon a time, MK Asante might have been called a renaissance man. In present-day vernacular, the filmmaker, professor, hip-hop artist, essayist and memoirist might be called a multi-talent, multitasker or entrepreneur. Any way you look at it, he’s oozing narrative talent. He caught our eye (and ear) with his memoir Buck, a personal saga of self-reliance in the face of stark odds. Asante was born in Zimbabwe to Americans – a dancer mother, a professor father – and grew up in Philadelphia. In the book, his brother is doing time, and Asante, who goes by Malo, is grappling with the pull of the streets and the depths of his own smarts. The story combines a central narrative with entries from his mother’s journal, song lyrics, letters from his brother…