InkTank Writers' Salon Emporium

State of Letters

2008-07-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank Our Poet Heroes

In Why Poetry Matters (The Chronicle Review, June 27, 2008) Jay Parini argues that poetry doesn’t matter to most people. “They go about their business as usual, rarely consulting their Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Frost,” he says. “One has to wonder if poetry has any place in the 21st century, when music videos and satellite television offer daunting competition for poems, which demand a good deal of attention and considerable analytic skills, as well as some knowledge of the traditions of poetry.”

Parini goes on to argue that poetry only stopped mattering in the 20th century, when “something went amiss” and poetry became difficult. “That is, poets began to reflect the complexities of modern culture, its fierce disjunctions,” he says. Before that, poets such as Scott, Byron, and Longfellow, ruled the world. They were cultural heroes, as well as best sellers. And people loved their poetry because “it provided them with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings.”

When even articles that argue for the value of literature (Parini’s title is Why Poetry Matters, after all) situate the art form in a rhetorical battle that it can never hope to win, what hope does it have of asserting itself as a valid, useful, or even practical endeavor. Of course television trumps poetry in the popularity contest. Television trumps everything. But if it’s true that poetry is largely regarded as “too difficult” to be worth the trouble for the ordinary reader, it seems something must have indeed gone amiss. What is it? Why don’t people connect to poetry in their everyday lives?

Let’s make the question a bigger one about literature in general: What place does literature have in your life? Is it about entertainment? Inspiration? Emotion? How connected is your experience of reading to your experience of writing?

You Better, You Better, You Better
I recall being immensely irritated by my first assignment in my first graduate program: I had to write about the state of contemporary literature. And then the second assignment pissed me off even more: I had to write a paper addressing the question, “Why do you write?” I think I believed myself above these concerns. I felt they should be self-evident—I read what I like and I write because I’m a writer—but it turned out that not even I knew what I liked or why I liked what I liked or why I was doing what I was doing, which was existentially weird and a little depressing.

If you hate me as much as I hated my professors for asking you to write about these things, I can’t say I blame you, but I’m going ahead with it anyway. Worse, I’m going to ask you to do it in storytelling form. Answer one of the two questions (“What is the state of contemporary literature?” or “Why do you write?”) in the form of a poem, essay, story, play, or some strange hybrid. Write your piece from the second person perspective, or (in other words) from the perspective of a “you.” Go team!

The Line Breakup

2008-03-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Forms of literature are often defined in opposition to one another: Poetry isn’t prose because it’s lineated, and prose isn’t poetry because it runs to the margins. Of course, some poems aren’t lineated, which causes a rift in this trusty little system. But not only are line breaks a defining element in poetry, they’re also a powerful tool. We use line breaks to create rhythm and rhyming beats, to suggest meaning, and to create shape on the page. Knowing the power of the line break doesn’t make it any less difficult to harness, of course. Unless you’re working with a standardized form (like a sonnet or a sestina) the prospect of turning a block of “prose” into a block of “poetry” can seem like a pretty daunting task. What time is the right time to break a line?

Here are a few good reasons to break lines:
1. When there is a natural pause in the poem.
2. When punctuation marks a pause.
3. When the break causes a moment of interest or ambiguity in the next line.

See if you can use this basic system to break the lines in this poem by Matthea Harvey. Use a backslash ( / ) to denote a linebreak.

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Under its glass lid, the square of cheese is like any other element of the imagination--cough in the tugboat, muff summering somewhere in mothballs. Have a humbug. The world is slow to dissolve & leave us. Is it your hermeneut's helmet not letting me filter through? The submarine sinks with a purpose: Scientist Inside Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile I am not well. Don't know how to go on Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary about bees--yet another box in a box. The present is in there somewhere.

From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).

Now let’s look at how the poet actually broke her lines. Does she seem to be following this logic? Any logic? Let’s look at some specific moments in the poem. One thing about poetry: sometimes the moments that pull away from expectations are the brilliant sparks that pull us in as readers. Good poems use elements of form (like line breaks) to synergize language and meaning and that isn’t always about following the rules.

Break Dancing

Write a short paragraph of prose (use Harvey as a model, if you like) without thinking about line breaks. Then, re-write your piece with lineation, making any adjustments to language that prove necessary. What happens to tone? Meaning?

Poems by Matthea Harvey

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination--cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut's helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don't know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary

about bees--yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.

From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).

FIRST PERSON FABULOUS

First Person fumed & fizzed under Third Person’s tongue while Third Person slumped at the diner counter, talking, as usual, to no one.Third Person thought First Person was the toilet paper trailing from Third Person’s shoe, the tiara Third Person once wore in a dream to a funeral. First Person thought Third Person was a layer of tar on a gorgeous pink nautilus, a foot on a fountain, a tin hiding the macaroons and First Person was that nautilus, that fountain, that pile of macaroons. Sometimes First Person broke free on first dates (with a Second Person) & then there was the delicious rush of “I this” and “I that” but then no phone call & for weeks Third Person wouldn’t let First Person near anyone. Poor First Person. Currently she was exiled to the world of postcards (having a lovely time)—& even then that beast of a Third Person used the implied “I” just to drive First Person crazy. She felt like a television staring at the remote, begging to be turned on. She had so many things she wanted to say. If only she could survive on her own, she’d make Third Person choke on herself & when the detectives arrived & all eyes were on her, she’d cry out, “I did it! I did it! Yes, dahlings, it was me!

Originally appeared in Delmar.

Measure of Success

2008-03-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Many of the writers I know measure their own worth by the quality and quantity of the writing they’re doing. No matter what else they may accomplish in the week, if they don’t get good pages, they don’t feel good about themselves. (Somehow, it usually doesn’t work the other way around, perhaps because, when the writing is going well, all of the other fucked up things about life seem to come into plain view.)

If you think of yourself as a writer, your sense of self will inevitably be influenced by the success of your work, whatever that may mean for you, but judging your life by your performance in one small area is an almost certain recipe for depression and anxiety, which can wear on you until it becomes what Coleridge called “an indefinite indescribable Terror.” Coleridge considered himself a paralytic writer once he reached his thirties and he wasted much of the rest of his life on opium addiction. That’s probably a fate most of us would like to avoid, but how do we maintain a commitment to our craft if we don’t invest and invest fully? Where do we draw the line between ambition and masochism? Gertrude Stein said, “You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result.” In my darkest moments, I think that’s easier said than done, but I’ve also got a few tricks up my sleeve:

1. I try to have a few different kinds of projects in the works at all times. When the novel overwhelms me, I turn to one of the three or four short stories I’ve got in the works. And if those don’t appeal to me, I work on an essay or some prose poems. Or, I just focus on reading. I consider the time I spend with books, time I’m spending on my own work.

2. I let people make fun of me for my self-important writerly drama. No amount of earnest pleading with me will convince me to lighten up about the amount of work I’ve been getting done lately, but call me an asshole and I’ll probably drop it.

3. If I can’t get over that ten page hump (the obstacle that stalls most of my stories, even those that I finish quickly) I look for fragments of stories that might juxtapose nicely with the work I’ve already done.

Give It A Shot
Here are a few items that I’ve been keeping in reserve. Select one and begin writing on it, with a piece of your own work in mind. Don’t worry about the connective tissue between the two. Let the language itself lead you from word to word.

1. While having lunch at a neighbor’s house, a woman hears her own husband’s description on the news. When she sees his photo on the television, she has no doubt that it’s him.

2. Since the early 1990s, trillions of discarded plastic items have converged, held together by swirling currents, to form the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch that now covers an area twice the size of the United States and weighs about 100 million tons.

3. A 25-year-old woman was arrested for assault after fighting with her boyfriend in the shower over whether the his dog could join them. The boyfriend said that he hoped his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more.

Good Tools

2008-01-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Narrative Perspective
It’s often said that one good measure of a writer’s strength and ability is his or her handling of narrative perspective. Failures or breaks in point-of-view are problems common to the beginner; they’re also very noticeable because they disrupt the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. (When the perspective fails, we’re all suddenly very aware of the writer behind the writing, floundering.) As we develop as writers, we become more aware of the conventions. We learn by doing. And once we gain some fluency, it becomes less about screwing up and more about the ways in which we can make tools like point-of-view work even harder for us.

One of the most useful maneuvers a storyteller can master is the ability to offer the reader a look around a first person narration: No one in the office was talking to me. They couldn’t handle real fashion. Also, they were jealous little barn hens.

One of the most complex maneuvers in the storyteller’s arsenal is the use of free indirect discourse: Brie was wearing the black gown to the office again, despite the looks. Her grief costume, they called it. Could she help that the season’s lines were austere? Could she help that belted cell phones passed for accessories there? One day, they’d regret the taunting. They’d get down on their knees and beg her to reform them.

Dialogue
Good dialogue is a bit of paradox. When we say dialogue seems “real” what we really mean is that it’s an effective fraud. It’s free of the stink of artifice. If it were actually true to life, it would be wrought with backward sentence structures and littered with umm’s and err’s and ahh’s. When dialogue is informational, we know it’s fake—it’s advancing the writer’s agenda—and without some surrounding exposition or narration, dialogue can seem like a pair of disembodied voices in an empty white room. If dialogue doesn’t move the storytelling horizontally or vertically, it can feel clunky and out of place. And if we’re not invested deeply in the world of the story, dialogue can seem off or inaccurate or just plain wrong. A lot of folks think that writing good dialogue is about finding just the right thing to say. But maybe it’s really about timing and rhythm:

“I thought you weren’t talking to me today.”
“I’m not. I’m too embarrassed to be talking to you.”
“Well, I don’t know why you’d say that.”
“You know exactly why I’d say that.”
“Explain it to me.”
“You’d like that. It would give you a chance to feel justifiably hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right now you’re just fake hurt. You’re the kind of hurt people do when they know they’re wrong. It’s a kind of trap.”

X+Y=Style
People tend to think of a writer’s style as his or her voice and there’s no question that voice is an identifying factor, but even writers who use a “transparent,” rather than “voicey,” kind of language have distinct and recognizable styles. A writer’s use of narrative perspective and treatment of dialogue can have a whole freaking lot to do with the overall feel of the writing. Developing your style of dealing with these elements can be much more important than an especially brilliant turn of phrase. Just by taking a quick look at how different people deal with the same basic scenario, we can see how personal style can emerge from these kinds of choices. Take one of the perspectives at the top and a chunk of dialogue from the bottom and write a scene. Change the language as much as you like.

Dialect Coach

2008-01-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

“Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y’ de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel’s flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them?”
- George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

“I ‘uz mos’ to de foot er de islan’ b’fo’ I foun’ a good place.”
- Mark Twain’s Huck Finn

Let’s be frank: Eye dialect (which pretends to represent nonstandard speech by variant or phonetic spelling) is problematic. For one thing, it’s really distracting. It diverts attention away from what was said and places the focus on how it was said. At its best, it’s a shade gratuitous, if not a little insulting. At its worst, it’s racist, classist, and condescending; it implies an ignorance on the part of the speaker, or a lack of education, or both, whether it means to or not. Consider the examples above: Shaw attempts to represent the speech of a poor street woman and Twain attempts to represent the speech of a slave. Notice anything problematic about this scenario? Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style recommends that you use eye dialect with caution—“Do not use dialect unless you are a devoted student of the tongue you hope to reproduce”—for the obvious reasons.

We’ve talked before about how to signal dialects that are essential to the story without reproducing the peculiarities of expression: It’s often enough just to describe how a speaker speaks in order to imbue the character’s language with a dialect a reader will “hear.” Beyond that, you can evoke dialect through sentence structure—cadences of speech. Let’s see how this works: Imagine a scenario in which a father walks in on his teenaged son and a young girl in the garage.

Begin here with a cadence that might work to signal a dialect:
He buttoned his jacket up to his neck and kicked a flap of mud from his shoe. “I don’t care what the hell you two do, just as long as you’re not doing it here,” he said.

And now add information about the way the speaker speaks:
He buttoned his jacket up to his neck and kicked a flap of mud from his shoe. “I don’t care what the hell you two do,” he said, his low hollow drawl burning. “Just as long as you’re not doing it here.”

Where would you place this character in the world? What kind of guy is he?

Y’all Hear Now?
Begin with the same scenario and establish a different dialect through your word choice and your arrangement of words.

Bad Language

2008-01-14T16:27:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

What the fuck’s the problem with using a few fucking curse words in your fucking writing? The truth of the fucking matter is that people curse all of the fucking time in real life. Why the fuck shouldn’t they do it in motherfucking storytelling?

Profanity isn’t new to literature, of course. Even Shakespeare cursed, but Shakespeare was also censored, both in his own time and beyond. The most famous alteration of his works, Thomas and Harriet Bowdler's Family Shakespeare (1818), omitted “those words and expressions that cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family,” so as not to “raise a blush to the cheeks of modesty” and as recently as 1996, one of his plays (Twelfth Night) was banned in an American school on the basis of its obscene content.

The debate about the appropriateness of certain language in literature is often cast as just such a collision between conflicting standards of morality and propriety. It’s the censor prudes against the corruptor potty mouths. And, to be fair, this collision is a real one. It plays out in our publishing houses and our theatres again and again, but it’s most apparent in the perpetual squabbling over what you can and can’t say on television. These days, you can say the words bitch and shit but you still can’t say God damn, and holy fuck is out of the question. It all seems so silly and arbitrary and besides the point and maybe it is. The debate over profanity in literature is perhaps more accurately cast as a technical matter, at least for the practitioners of the art; it’s about earning the trust of the reader and keeping it. Some find gratuitous cursing in literature objectionable, but where is the line between gratuitous language and earned language? Where would you draw it? Why?

1. I never use profanity in my writing. It’s cheap.
2. I only use profanity when the moment absolutely calls for it—no more than once or twice in a selection.
3. I only use profanity in dialogue, never in narration.
4. I use profanity, but I try to use it sparingly.
5. If my narrator/character is the type of person who curses, I see no problem with bringing that language into the writing.
6. I use exactly as much profanity as I want to use. If a reader has a problem, he or she can stop reading.

Dirty Birds
According to George Carlin in 1972, the original seven words, you can never say on television were, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Write a passage in which you earn the use of one or more of these seven forbidden words. If you are morally or aesthetically opposed to the use of profanity in writing, write a passage in which you replace one or more of the seven forbidden words with a viable substitute.

We Are Famous

2007-12-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

The Salon features heavily in this InkTank film. Because we're gorgeous, I suppose. Check it out.

WRITE HERE: The InkTank Writing Competition

2007-12-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

COMPLETE RULES AND GUIDELINES:

* A 1st prize of $200 and publication in CityBeat, will be awarded to the best original and unpublished work written by a writer living in the Cincinnati area. The winner will also receive an invitation to perform the winning selection at the InkTank Writing Competition Reading in Spring 2008.
* Runner-up prizes will include publication on the InkTank website and official InkTank merchandise. Runners-up will also receive an invitation to perform their winning selections at the InkTank Writing Competition Reading in Spring 2008.
* Entrants must reside within 25 miles of the City of Cincinnati at the time of submission.
* The entry fee is $5 for InkTank members* and $10 for non-members, payable to InkTank by check or money order - DO NOT SEND CASH. *To find out how to become an InkTank member, please scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter.
* You may enter the competition as many times as you like, but you must pay for each of your entries. All proceeds from the competition will go to support InkTank, a 501(c)3 non-profit writing and literacy organization in Cincinnati.
* Entries must be typed-not handwritten-in 12 pt font, printed or copied on standard manuscript-grade paper. Please double-space your stories and essays. You may space your poems however you like. Please use a paperclip or staple to hold everything together.
* Submit stories or essays of NO MORE THAN 4,000 words, and poems of NO MORE THAN 100 lines. Please do not send material that has been published elsewhere.
* Don't forget to include your name and complete contact information (phone number, home address, e-mail address) on your submission(s). Submissions lacking this information will be disqualified.
* We are unable to return submissions-please do not send your only existing copy-and we also regret that we are unable to accept electronic submissions at this time.
* All entries must be postmarked by February 1, 2008, and sent via postal mail or hand-delivered to InkTank, 1311 Main Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202.

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

A few words about this year's judge:

BROCK CLARKE is the author of The Ordinary White Boy, What We Won't Do, Carrying the Torch, and the recently published and heavily praised, An Arsonists' Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. He has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Fiction. His work has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, the Believer, the Georgia Review, and the Southern Review; in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies; and on NPR's Selected Shorts. He teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.

An InkTank Event

2007-11-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

I hope to see you there!

Object Lessons: Part One

2007-11-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

We’ve spoken before about the ways in which place can become a character in storytelling. Here’s one area we explored: It’s not enough just to set the work there and it’s not enough to describe it in great detail, in order for place to become a character; the place has be a force in the story. It has to shape events in the ways that only it can. If that doesn’t happen, it’s merely window dressing. (There’s nothing wrong with window dressing, by the way. Look in any window—almost everyone has it.) If you want place to work as a force in a story, you have to actualize and individualize the power of that specific place. And part of doing that, is coming to a fuller understanding of what exactly you think that power is.

What is the force of this place?

I asked you to bring along an object this evening so that we might investigate some gut intuitions. But I don’t want us to regard our places as inanimate objects. Rather, I’m asking you to access the emotional associations your object possesses. What are they and what force have they had upon your life? Whether or not this particular force—or place—is the one you’d choose to investigate in your private work, try giving this material a spin. Write a paragraph or a stanza or two that gives this place a chance of impacting a story.

Showy and Telly

2007-09-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

The issue of filtering came up recently (thanks Mike!) and I wasn’t quite sure what that had to do with showing and telling, but after a little investigation, I now see what the story is. Here’s an example of what Janet Burroway calls filtering in her book On Writing. (Let’s assume that the following passages are drawn from the middle of a story about Mark, told in 3rd person limited POV.)

1. Mark could see the Ginkgos on his fence’s perimeter. He thought the leaves looked like loose hands flapping.

2. The Gingko leaves on the fence’s perimeter flapped like loose hands.

There are several differences between these two versions of the same scene, but the distinction Burroway would make has to do with the immediacy of the language. In the first version, the words he could see and he thought serve to slow down the storytelling. Phrases such as he could, he thought, he sensed, he saw, he looked, he watched, and he knew only tell us what we already know—we don’t need to be reminded that the narrator is telling the story from the character’s point-of-view—and thus they clog up the prose. They tell, when showing is the stronger choice.

The second version creates a more intimate cognitive experience for readers because it places them in direct contact with language we might reasonably assume is coming directly from the character. We’re seeing the Ginkgo leaves with Mark; that’s a different experience than seeing Mark seeing the Ginkgo leaves. You see?

I would add to Burroway’s assessment that sometimes a heightened awareness of the narrator/character relationship isn’t such a bad thing. If you want your narrator to editorialize the character’s behavior, for example, phrases like he could, he thought, he sensed, he saw, he looked, he watched, and he knew can come in handy. They inflate the distance between narrator and character and you become aware of one’s thoughts as slightly distinct from the other. Consider these passages from the same story about Mark:

1. Mark could see that Lara was starting to like him. It was in her face, he thought, the way it was less tight in the corner of her jaw. The shift was subtle, but he was sure of it. Soon he’d ask her again: Could she ever love a man like him?

2. Lara’s face was less tight than it had been the last time he’d asked for her heart. It was time to ask her again.

I think both passages work to convey an awareness of Mark’s ignorance to the reader, but the first version is more clear on that count. In one sense, the first passage is about what Mark thinks and what he thinks he can see. (It might also be about what he doesn’t see.) The point? When these kinds of phrases can serve a purpose, they may be worth inserting; otherwise, though, they tend to dull the storytelling. It’s the classic balance between showing and telling that we’re after. But now we have two new tools to take into battle.

Dilating and Contracting
Choose one of the approaches we’ve talked about today and go crazy with one of the four example passages above. Expand the distance between narrator and character in order to editorialize Mark’s thoughts and behaviors, or collapse the distance between narrator and character in order to bring your readers in close to Mark’s experience of the world. Aim for a complete passage.

Salon Writers Write

2007-09-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

by MaryKate Moran

No one living in their first apartment has bought much of their own furniture. Not anyone I know. Almost everything in my apartment belongs to my grandparents. Or, as I usually say because she's the one who lived longer, my grandma. I was proud to afford a cloth lantern, bookshelf and rug. The other rug is from her, as is the rattan chair, the coffee table, the desk, the floor lamp, the card table that acts as a breakfast bar and vanity,the leather loveseat, plus the silverware and cookware and toaster.

I used to sink into that loveseat when it was back in Grosse Pointe Farms, knowing I was supposed to visit with my grandma, but unsure of what to say. The leather would warm up quickly and the armrest was the right height to lie back.

When we were younger my brother and I couldn't wait to turn on her cable TV, something we usually had the decency to wait for until our first full day of each visit. As her hearing went, the television, set on any channel – there were no favorites – was pumped up louder. In the last years of her life, her reliable armchair, the one piece of furniture that wasn't doled out amongst the family but
instead sat in the room at the nursing home when she died, scooted closer to the screen. And she fell asleep a lot. And then I'd try to think of something to say for when she woke up.

Salon Writers Write

2007-09-04T14:18:00.001-07:00

It was the only thing I could find open along that highway that early.

It was a nice little eatery...30 years ago. Now there was grime between the floor tiles, and grime between the seat cushions. Grime worked itself into every crevice it could find.

And they made donuts just liked Tom's did.

It was something I hadn't smelled since I was 17 and dating Angie - a name I couldn't remember if asked for it without the smell of fried donuts, sickly sweet old jellies, and powered sugar in the air.

She was tiny and never ate them, but always had two waiting for me on nights I picked her up. Tom's Donuts were the smell of new love and summer sex. But after a few months passed it was just the stink of someone needing to shower after work.

The smell got to me. One day I missed a closing - then missed them all. Feelings were hurt, guilt was carried and buried deep unearthed by the smell of donuts.

Time to drive. It's five hours to Atlanta.

--
Howard McEwen, CFA

Changes

2007-08-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Please note the changes in the workshop schedule. I am, it seems, a less than talented calendar reader.

A Preface to the Prologue

2007-08-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Traditionally, the prologue is an explanatory first act or scene. It gives the audience information (a bit of backstory, for example) as they enter the world of the story. But it can also do much more than that. Let’s take a look at a very famous prologue:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The prologue of Act One of this play gives us the skinny on the Montague and Capulet feud (that’s the backstory) but it also summarizes the plot: It tells us that our young lovers are doomed and that their deaths will extinguish the ancient grudge between families. One might ask, Why see the play if you already know what will happen? And, in fact, that’s a frequent complaint lodged against prologues—that they stand needlessly between the audience and the story—but in this case, the prologue does more than just let the cat out of the bag. It generates interest and intrigue and it evokes the tonal darkness that will descend upon Verona. Besides, it’s just beautiful lyric writing, a stinging pleasure to experience. This is a prologue that does more than one job and does more than one job very well, and while we can’t all expect to be the Shakespeares of the day, we certainly can take this lesson from his work and bring it to our own.

Here’s a little ditty we like to call “Not Entirely Good Reasons to Write A Prologue.”
I’m not sure people will understand a word of my story, if I don’t explain it all to them first; I’m pretty sure no one will get past the boring first chapter/act so I have to attach something flashy and splashy to the start; I think prologues are pretty cool—everyone is doing them these days; My prologue is actually just my first chapter/act, I’m just calling it a prologue because they’re pretty cool; My story’s structure is so complex that no one will be able to follow it without a guide—that’s where the prologue comes in; I already have a first chapter/act, but I want to write what comes before that in the plot, so I’m calling it a prologue; the prologue seems like a good place to me to tell my audience a little something about myself/my wife/my dog/my take on the Darfur conflict; the really cool thing that happens on page 542 looks nice on page one too; I forgot about this one character, so I’m letting him narrate the prologue.

Bring It, Shakespeare
I’m going to give you a plot synopsis—you write the prologue for the story. You choose your own genre of storytelling and you choose the jobs you’d like your prologue to do and you choose the approach and level of

Family Ties

2007-07-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Many writers find writing about their families therapeutic—they’re able to exorcise their demons or honor their angels, so to speak, by putting the stories down. Some writers write about their families out of a sense of obligation—perhaps they fear the stories will die if they don’t tell them, or that the stories will remain unjustly suppressed. Some writers write about their families simply because it’s good material, and some do it because it’s simply material, and some writers do it because they can’t help it. Why do you write about your family?

It might be a good idea to spend some time meditating on the why before you begin to address the how because the answer can have a pretty significant impact on your approach.

There are (at least) two issues that make writing about family very difficult for some:
1. Telling the truth—or your version of it—can get you into trouble with the people you love. Or, even those you hate, or feel ambivalent about, I suppose. Even if you’re estranged from your family, you’re still connected. When it comes down to it, you have to make a decision: what is the value of telling the truth to you? If it’s worth potentially upsetting a few people, do it. If not, do something else. Either way, be as honest as possible. Whatever that means.

2. Telling the truth—or your version of it—does not always make for good storytelling. Just because your Mom (an absolute saint!) helped you through that awkward knee-boots phase doesn’t mean she’ll make for an interesting character. Nor does the fact that your terror of uncle explodes your pet frogs when he visits mean that he will make a compelling character. Characters—even characters who are also real people—have to have dimensions in order to be interesting to readers. The same standards of storytelling that apply to all of the other kinds of writing we investigate apply to family stories too.

Too Close for Comfort
Proximity can really mess up storytelling. Family is often hard to write about because it’s so close. But it’s also for this reason that family so hard not to write about. Wedging in a bit of distance is one way of getting around the interference. Whether you decide to go public with your family narrative or not, give a distancing technique a shot and see what happens. Here are a few to try today. Pick one and go:
Assume a collective perspective—a “we” perhaps.
Assume the perspective of a non-family member, an invented character.
Assume the perspective of an actual family member, who is not you.
Apply the tone and language of a fairy tale to the story.
Begin by writing seemingly innocuous moments instead of the big flashy ones.
Others you’d like to suggest?

It's Magical

2007-07-11T04:04:00.002-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Gabriel García Márquez: “My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic.”

One of our earliest impulses as storytellers is to fantasize. We imagine alternate worlds in which the seemingly impossible can happen or we imagine the entry of impossible elements to our own world. The magical realism so popular in literature today is not so different. It’s a kind of writing that performs a variation on a basic rhetorical maneuver: it melds the “real” with the “unreal” in order that one may reflect certain properties of the other in a meaningful way. By the end of Márquez’s short story, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” for example, the old winged man manages to seem more humane than the humans who trap and torture him; the “unreal” element casts a critical gaze on the “real” elements of the story. And in Percival Everett’s “The Fix,” the addition of the “unreal” element into the “real” world—a man who can fix anything, including death—has the effect of turning the “real” world into a disturbingly unreal and comically overblown place. Both stories can be read as kind of social critique, but the messages they may seem to convey aren’t as straightforward as you might think—they can’t be reduced into simple morals or lessons. At the same time, the sense that these stories aim to tell us something about ourselves is palpable. We’re compelled—directed by the storyteller—to think about the stories after we’ve left them.

It’s one thing to recognize how magical realism works and it’s another thing to pull off the trick of convincing readers to suspend their disbelief when fantastic or absurd elements come into the storytelling. After all, a good reader is a critical reader—one engaged enough with the story to ask the logical questions. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re attempting the absurd:

o All worlds, no matter how fantastic, have rules and boundaries. Once you establish rules, you can’t change them without jeopardizing your own authority as the storyteller.
o You’d be surprised how far you can get by simply adopting an air of authority in your writing. If you effectively treat a fantastic element as though it’s entirely ordinary in the world of the story, your readers will follow you. Or, if you simply predict their concerns and questions—perhaps by embodying them in an incredulous character—you’ll be able to assuage their concerns. Failing to answer pertinent concerns will loosen the story’s grip on the reader.
o Persuasive details need not be directed solely at the physical. In fact, leaving a little room for the reader’s imagination to become involved can enhance the world of the story dramatically. Many writers rely upon familiar (or traditional) stories to fill in the blanks for them.
o Choose your mysteries wisely. If readers feel as though the storyteller is withholding pertinent information, they’ll begin to lose trust. Always reveal, never conceal.

Let’s Get Fantastical

Many writers complain that they can’t write magical realism because they can’t think of anything interesting or fresh enough to write about, or because they can’t write about fantastic elements convincingly. Here’s what I have to say to that: Many of the most effective stories in this genre begin by depicting the ordinary and the everyday astutely. When they veer into the extraordinary, we may not expect it, but we’re inclined to follow because they’ve already established their authority. Even if you don’t trust your imagination to create something effectively “unreal,” you can probably trust yourself to recognize the real. Begin with what you know and then allow yourself to stray into the unknown. Let’s start with an average, everyday moment (one we’ll think of together) and then gradually introduce an “unreal” element.

Quickness

2007-07-11T04:04:00.001-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Calvino says that “a story is an operation carried out on the length of time involved, an enchantment that acts on the passing of time, either contracting or dilating it.” As surgeons, what kind of tools do we have with which to operate on time?

1. Modal writing allows us to talk about how things generally are. This creates the impression that time has passed, even if it hasn’t in terms of the progression down the page. We may begin in-scene, for example, and then talk modally about the consequences of that scene as they’ve played out generally for the characters. A short paragraph of modal writing can stand in for a few hours, days, or even years of time. It keeps readers at a bit of a distance, though, and I’d advise avoiding long passages of modal writing.

2. Simple time expressions allow us to move forward in large or small increments. Later that year, Wednesday, at 4 p.m. that evening—that’s all it takes at the opening of a paragraph or section to set your readers in time.

3. Space breaks can be used to suggest movement in time with the proviso that it’s a mistake to assume that your readers will know exactly how much time has passed after the break. It helps to rhyme events, as Calvino phrases it, if you’re using white space to signify the passage of time

4. Economy of expression is an idea that Calvino treats exceedingly well in his essay. The idea is that every detail has a necessary function in the plot. For many of us, that’s easier said than done. It helps to think of the details you’ve imagined as the negative space around the story. Your investment in imagining the world of the story will be communicated in the authority with which you are able to write about it.

Let’s do the Timewarp

Let’s begin where the excerpt of "The Feathered Ogre" leaves off and work together (or alone, if you’re so inclined) to create a fairy tale that employs some of the enchantments on time that we’ve discussed here today.

On Dialogue, On

2007-06-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
That’s What You Say

There’s a specific and ripe power in dialogue that can’t be matched by other levels of discourse in storytelling. In short, it’s sublime. Its delivery is pure and immediate, or at least it can be. When dialogue is working well, the barriers between our readers and our characters can seem to vanish. The marks on the page fall away and readers believe they’re witnessing people using their voices in the world—they hear the words spoken. It’s a powerful tool we’re dealing with here.

Readers look to dialogue to gain an unfiltered understanding of who characters are. Rather than trusting a narrator’s or another character’s estimation of a character, readers can see for themselves how that character responds in conversation. When readers sense the writer behind the dialogue, it fails. And it can fail massively. We’re going to work on ways to avoid that today.

Every direct utterance in a story is an opportunity to do at least two jobs. Dialogue should always work on the level of character development. (After all, the things people say and the way they phrase them can tell you a lot about them.) But it can also raise and lower tension, move the plot, and add significantly to the verisimilitude of the storytelling. Although dialogue can be used to reveal information successfully, informational dialogue is the kiss of death. Please oh please do not use dialogue to establish the setting or the detailed histories between characters—it’s so embarrassing. And try to get out of the way of your dialogue. Use tags that disappear, like “he said” and “she said.” Interrupt when you need to create pauses in conversation or to move someone around, but not because you want to explain how the reader should interpret something.

My sense is that dialogue should be used sparingly. It should come in when it can do more than one job and it should come in when it can do those jobs better than any other kinds of discourse in the story. Cut out words and phrases that aren’t absolutely necessary to create the tone and timbre of the exchanges you’re aiming to create. Think about the way people actually talk and then try to concentrate and streamline the speech. The first step in learning to write good dialogue is learning to listen. Remember, though, that dialogue isn’t transcribed speech; it’s storytelling that works to render the illusion of direct discourse. We’ll make this craftshop topic a two part deal. Here’s part one:

Listen to Me
Let’s partner up. I’ll give you simple directives with which to stage a conversation. This isn’t acting, exactly. (Try to restrain your inner hams.) It’s an experiment in real speech. After you have your conversation, write it down to the best of your memory. From there, try to create dialogue.

The Deal with POV

2007-04-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Perspective is an issue we’ve returned to fairly often in this group. And I think one of the reasons it keeps coming up, is because we’re so tempted by the siren song of the mobile third-person perspective. How nice, it seems, to be able to shift in and out of character’s minds and stories. And what’s stopping us from doing that if that’s what we want to do? Here’s where the conversation went the last time it was raised:

1. RULES: There is no rule against the use of an omniscient narrator—of course there isn’t—but it is true today that many stories written in the third-person perspective, are written in the third-person limited perspective. This means that the story resides near one character, though it may shift to another between chapters or sections or even paragraphs. You’ll find that stories that are written from an omniscient perspective generally have something in common: a very strong narrative voice that is the controlling force of the story. Think of One Hundred Years of Solitude. We follow that story from character to character because the narrator leads us there carefully. Each move that the narrator makes in that novel, is made for a reason that is clear to the reader. The voice is thick and big and easily identifiable and consistent.

2. READERS: Frequent shifts between characters in the third person that take place without an apparent system of logic irritate readers. They can become lost, they can feel violated, and worst of all, they can lose faith in the writer. Frequent shifts between characters in the third person can also prevent readers from fully entering the world of the story. Readers would rather understand the story from one character’s perspective, than know what everyone in the book is thinking about everything that happens, if it means that they can spend a little quality time getting to know that one character. In other words, rather than opening the story, frequent POV shifts often close the story to readers, restricting them to an unsatisfying surface level.

3. TRAPS: Many writers fall into the POV shift trap early on because they simply don’t know the stakes. But others fall in because (in truth) it is easier to tell readers what characters are thinking or hiding than finding ways to show it. For many readers and editors alike, shifts in the third-person are signs of laziness or sloppiness. Even if you’re making a deliberate choice, that choice may be interpreted in that way. You should know that before you decide to take the risk.

4. PREROGATIVE: It’s yours. But a little time spent deciding exactly why you’ve made the choice you’ve made in terms of perspective is a gift you should give yourself. You deserve it and so do your readers.

I wanted to revisit these ideas tonight because they bear repeating and because it’s time to move the conversation past them now. Let’s start looking at the issue of perspective in a more holistic way. Like choosing the genre in which to place your story, choosing a narrative perspective requires a bit of contemplation and meditation. While it’s true that sometimes the choice is instinctive and immediate—we know exactly how to tell the story as it comes to us—investigation can only enrich our choices. In other words, it pays to know precisely why a particular story fits a particular perspective. It’s information we can use to take the story to a new level of consistency and artistry and it’s information we can carry to the next story we write.

Different choices result in different effects, tonal and otherwise. The selection of the narrative perspective should have its roots in the needs and desires of the story itself, (which you must investigate in order to determine) and the selection should be an informed process. It helps to know the advantages and disadvantages common to each perspective first-hand, but we can summarize for you here because we’re so damn nice.

GROUP GENERATED LIST
1st person perspective:
2nd person perspective:
3rd person limited perspective:
3rd person omniscient perspective:

Let’s write a passage together, using the same story, but different perspectives and see how it all falls out.

You Are Not Me Are You

2007-04-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

The debate over whether or not we are entitled to write about experiences that are not our own is one that occurs often in workshops. It arises more often when men write from the perspective of women than it does when women write from the perspective of men. And it arises even more often when white men write from the perspective of people (men and women) of color. “What is the deal?” those of you who are white men among us might be thinking. Others of you might be thinking, “What is their deal” of the white men among us. Before we get too carried away with all of this thinking, here is the deal:

As writers (and particularly those writing from a traditionally dominant perspective) we should be aware and respectful of the history that problematizes stories that may appear to intend to voice the authentic and true experiences of a traditionally marginalized people as authentic and true. As the story. When a story tries to be about what it’s really like, for example, to be a black woman, the identity of the writer may justly come into play. If the writer is not a black woman, readers are often inclined to ask questions: What makes you think you know what it’s like? What makes you think you have the right to tell (or take ownership of) that story? These are good questions insofar as they engage us in a discussion about the politics of identity and their stakes in storytelling. But when they’re compelled first by a certain cloying tension present in the storytelling and second by the fact of the identity of the writer, they’re even better questions.

We’ve all read stories wherein we begin to feel the lining of the perspective pull from the storytelling surface and fray. The story suddenly feels less “real” because the details aren’t quite right or because the voice is off or because the storytelling is trying too hard to prove a point. We’re pulled out of the world of the story long enough to wonder about the writer behind the storytelling and sometimes that’s all it takes to devastate the experience for us or to call it into question. It isn’t wrong to write about experiences that are not your own, but it is sometimes hard. Most failures that occur in this regard occur on the level of imagination and investment. The worst of these failures occur as a result of a lack of respect or consideration for the perspective assumed and those are the stories that get everyone upset.

For those with concerns about how “real” the story can be when the gender, race, ethnicity, age, nationality, or class of the writer does not match the character’s, consider the challenges facing the fantasy writer. Can people who aren’t hobbits or dragons or aliens write from those perspectives? Of course they can. Just as you can write from any perspective you choose. But the choice should be INFORMED and CONSIDERED and the execution must be INVESTED. We can learn a good deal about others by writing from their perspectives. We learn about them just as we learn about those characters that are like us. To inhabit the world of the story wholly is our responsibility as writers, as well as our aim. If we can’t maintain that focus in our work, how can we expect our readers to do so?

The Old Switcheroo
Choose a perspective that is vastly different from your own. Imagine a character that inhabits that perspective. But instead of writing from that character’s perspective, write from the perspective of a character (very much like yourself) who is observing that (very different) character from a distance.

Salon Writers Write Conflict

2007-04-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

Joe's Approach-Avoidance Conflict
by Roger

The smell of freshly popped popcorn drifted from the basement up to the second floor. Joe's mouth watered and his stomach cramped. His mouth watering was real – he was hungry, especially for buttered popcorn. His stomach cramp might have been real, his diveriticulitis acting up. Or it might have been his imagination, a conditioned response, his gut reminding him how it ached after he ate popcorn.

But Joe couldn't close his nose; he couldn't avoid that fresh popcorn aroma. Maybe he'd eat just a little this time. Or eat it slowly, monitor his stomach's response, stop before it cramped up on him.

He got up and tiptoed downstairs, approaching the basement like a thief – a petty thief. A petty thief wondering if he'd get away with it this time.

Conflicted

2007-03-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

All of the handbooks and guides and professors and writers will tell you that conflict is important. Without it, the story is an anecdote without a turn. It’s as flat and as compelling as a paper moon held to a cardboard sky. But the blunt instrument isn’t the only tool in our storytelling arsenal. Conflict can be rendered with surgical precision. A mere tonal shift can be as compelling as a catfight in an alley, if not more so. The problem may be that the word conflict has some dicey connotations: battle, clash, combat, fracas, struggle, war, rivalry, brawl, fight, rancor, animosity. If we’re not interested in writing about those kinds of things, we may feel like we don’t need conflict in our stories. On the other hand, we may mistakenly think that inserting a fracas or two should fulfill the conflict requirement on our storytelling checklist. In order for the occasion of the story to be apparent to our readers, though, they must be able to sense (though not necessarily pinpoint) a certain pressure in the storytelling. They have to feel that there are stakes and the stakes have to be interior to the story—they can’t feel like they’re being imposed on the story from the outside.

The reason I resist the word conflict a little is because it tends to reduce all of the many pressures and forces possible in a story to the level of plot. It isn’t enough to say that a thing did or did not happen between some people. And it isn’t enough to say that the thing was or was not important. The storytelling must be expressive, perhaps even performative. The storytelling is what makes verisimilitude a possibility, not the events of the plot. The problem editors and teachers see most frequently in manuscripts is a failure to artfully manage and synthesize the tensions and pressures that result from the events and relationships at play in the story. Here’s a list of common problems in order of their prevalence:

1. The Poorly Selected Entry Point.
The story begins either before or after the true occasion of the storytelling. We leave the story before the impact of an event is felt (leaving us feeling high and dry) or we enter the story after the event of interest has passed (leaving us feeling like we’ve missed all of the action). The view needs to shift a little.
2. The Anecdote That Passes Itself off As a Story
If I told you what happened to me at the dog park the other day, you might listen because you’re nice. The exchange between reader and writer is different. Folks often mistake the interesting anecdote for a good story and attempt to write it as they’ve told it. The problem with the interesting anecdote it isn’t a compelling story. Invest in character and voice and let the plot evolve organically from there.
3. The Case of the Missing Occasion
If the reader must ask of your story, “Why is the narrator telling this story of all the stories in all the world?” you are in for trouble. There may be more than one answer to this question available in a good story, but if a reader has to struggle (or worse, extrapolate) to find it, your storytelling has missed the mark.
4. Bring It to A Head
Tension and pressure in a story must culminate somehow. If the characters in the story don’t respond appropriately or don’t respond at all to conflict, the impact of the story won’t be heard. (I’ll concede here that a non-response can be an appropriate and natural response if done well, but I’ll also say that confrontation is always more interesting than avoidance.) On the other hand, high drama doesn’t always fly either. Try to stay away from language that forces meaning on the reader.

Cage Fight
Conflict doesn’t happen on the level of the plot alone. In fact, if the storytelling is working well, it happens everywhere, from the level of the language up. Together, we’ll generate a list of word pairs. Then we’ll write a passage that stages one word in the pair against the other. The goal is to create an effective sense of pressure and tension without relying upon an event to direct the storytelling. Put these two words in the ring and let them duke it out.

Three Things Above All

2007-03-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Storytelling Structure

We all know a good story when we hear one. We’ve been hearing them all our lives, which makes us experts. When a storyteller takes a false step, we sense it immediately, instinctually, deeply. Writer Italo Calvino draws a comparison between storytelling and telling jokes—when the teller’s timing is off, the joke fails. Jokes have to be exact and precise to succeed and so do stories. Calvino says that, to his mind, exactitude means three things above all: “(1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; (2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable images; (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination.” Our topic of interest for this evening is the plan, but the plan can’t stand alone, as we will soon discover.

Some writers allow the story to evolve organically as they work. That means that they follow the words themselves, rather than a map they’ve conceived beforehand. But even those stories must follow a system of logic if they’re to be successful. The writer is always revising, pulling things into line. It doesn’t matter when the plan is formed, but how well-defined and well-calculated it is. It’s important to acknowledge here that the plan is ultimately for the reader—not the writer. Like you, your readers are expert listeners. If they sense you’ve made a false step, they won’t give you the laugh when you most want it.

What is a well-defined and well-calculated plan? This is the question that causes all (or most) of the drama. The idea that there is a sure-fire plan that fits any storytelling model is attractive because it’s easy. It turns a delicate art into a clunky equation: see graph on handout. You’ve probably seen this thing or things like it in the past. Many stories fit this model: they have discernable beginnings, middles, and ends; they have rising tension and conflicts; and they take place over a discrete unit of time. Not all successful stories fit this model, though, and having all the parts that make the whole does not ensure success. A lot of people find this out the hard way—after they’ve invested in novel writing software, for instance, or a course on manuscript marketing. A well-defined and well-calculated plan is one that guides the reader through the storytelling, using the structural patterns and storytelling conventions with which we’re all familiar. The reader senses the punch-line as he or she reads, senses the parts of the joke merging together. Part of the satisfaction for the reader is in using the story to imagine the punch-line (that engagement is probably more important than the punch-line itself) and part of the satisfaction is in the storytelling itself (meaning the quality of the language and the images invoked) and part of the satisfaction is in recognizing structural patterns. Success is contingent upon these things above all. The reason the graph doesn’t work is because it doesn’t take the complexity of the art into account. It tries and fails to stand alone.

What structural patterns do readers expect? This is a question any writer can answer just by reading. Open almost any novel and you’ll notice space breaks and chapter breaks—these are signs of an operating structure or plan. There is always a system of logic behind the breaks—a pattern—and the pattern leads the reader through the story. Chapters don’t need to be a specific length in terms of the number of pages, but they do need to be a specific length in terms of the advancement that occurs within them. Breaks within chapters don’t need to occur at specific intervals, but they do need to occur at regular intervals. Readers get nervous when the structure of the novel seems to determine the shape of the content, rather than the other way around. Structure evolves, it isn’t imposed. Let’s take a look at some novels and see if we can recognize any structural patterns.

Drama
In order to accommodate those who yearn every week for a writing exercise, we’ll use the pool of novels to conduct an experiment in tone. Select a passage with an apparent context and identify the tone of the writing with an adjective or two. Re-write that same passage (in your own words) so that the tone shifts dramatically.

Grit Nature Dirt Self

2007-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Nature

Writer Mary Gaitskill argues that the primary difficulty with sex in literature is our tendency to confuse and conflate reverence and politeness. It strikes me that if there is a problem with nature in literature, it’s probably similar: our tendency is to conflate respect and reverence. Nature writer David Gessner writes in “Sick of Nature,” “Too often when I flip through the pages of contemporary nature books the tone is awed, hushed, reverential. The same things that drove me away from Sunday School. And the same thing that drove me, unable to resist my own buffoonery, to fart loudly against the pews.” He reminds us that Thoreau’s book Walden has its share of bad puns and fart jokes too, including “references to Pythagrians and their love of beans.”

In attempt to convey the respect we feel is due the natural world, we’ve set it (and Thoreau as its writer-hero) above (ordinary, real, concrete) life. And by setting it above, we’ve set it beyond life in a sexless, humorless place, where (as Gessner phrases it) “nature becomes a kind of bland church.” We’ve inadvertently made it exactly what it’s not: untouchable and uninteresting. The point is, we need not treat nature with the stilted language of reverence and worship in order to demonstrate or evoke respect for it. In fact, we might better demonstrate our respect for nature by writing about its presence in and as ordinary life. Let’s write about it with the true grit and dirt of, well, true grit and dirt. Let’s bring it out of the exalted sky and back into our lives. Perhaps we can care better for it here.

Early Birds
Writers have long argued that the language we habitually use to talk about nature is problematic. Exhibit A: the word wilderness. It refers to untouched, uninhabited, uncultivated land. But the truth is that we’ve had our hands on nearly everything. Less than 5% of old growth forests remain in North America—we destroy 10,000 square km of ancient forests every year. We think of wilderness as other. We have to get away to get into it and once we’re there, we’re supposed to re-connect with it. But why can’t it be with us all of the time? Why can’t we stay connected? If we change the way we talk about nature, perhaps we can change the way we conceive of it and if we change the way we conceive of it, perhaps we can change its value and meaning on a larger cultural scale. In a very real way, many writers now see themselves as the most powerful (and necessary) tool in the environmental movement’s current arsenal. But whether or not you view your work as an instrument of change, you’re a person living in this world. We all have a history with nature. Think about your earliest experiences with it. I’m not necessarily talking about the first time you went camping. I’m asking you to look inside your everyday life. Write about it as you would any early experience, using the language of the personal narrative. Keep the inflated and elevated language of reverence out and aim for the true dirt and grit of ordinary life. Do your small part to change the lexicon.

Some compelling nature writers to investigate, should you feel compelled to do so: Joy Williams, Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Rachel Carson, William Cronon, Rick Bass.

Finding the Turn

2007-02-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
What A Character

The language we use to talk about character often has to do with movement and shape. We like characters to be dynamic rather than static and round instead of flat. We also talk about development, complexity, and psychological believability, but those might just be different ways of talking about the same thing. Some argue that plot is merely a way of talking about character. If we look at it through that lens, the character has to move in order to be. And if the character lacks depth, the events of the plot seem like facts narrated by newscasters. Put another way, the vertical elements of the story (character) and the horizontal elements of the story (plot) combine to create a believable being. But making an interesting shape that moves isn’t quite enough, is it? In order to be compelling, the character/plot has to take us somewhere, from one point to another; it has to take us to (or through) the turn. Understanding the turn is one big step. Executing it is another. Let’s start with one and see if we can talk our way to the other.

Does this story have a turn?

“Housewife” from Tumble Home by Amy Hempel

She would always sleep with her husband and with another man in the course of the same day, and then the rest of the day, for whatever was left to her of that day, she would exploit by incanting, “French film, French film.”

How about this one?

“A Man from her Past” from Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis

I think Mother is flirting with a man from her past who is not Father. I say to myself: Mother ought not to have improper relations with this man “Franz”! “Franz” is a European. I say she should not see this man improperly while Father is away! But I am confusing an old reality with a new reality: Father will not be returning home. He will be staying on at Vernon Hall. As for Mother, she is ninety-four years old. How can there be improper relations with a woman of ninety-four? Yet my confusion must be this: though her body is old, her capacity for betrayal is still young and fresh.

This one?

Untitled by Ernest Hemingway

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Turn
Try to take us from one point (vertically and horizontally) to another point with just a few words. Hemingway gave it a shot at six words. But he was a badass. Shoot for a few stanzas or a few paragraphs or a short scene. Take us to a turn.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

2007-02-12T09:33:00.000-08:00

Untitled
by Lynda Crane

We sat together on the stone wall we'd passed nearly daily those years-out-of-mind, quietly, without words, and knew that our lives had moved now onto rare earth.

A Valentine For Al
by Lynda Crane

Friends have told you
How I feel
Their impressions
Their projections
They are sure they know

This, my attempt to speak for myself, is for you:

Warm summer days
Suffused with energy and light
We are on the bike
The wind in our faces
A river, a park, sitting on curbs

Pretty words, a gentle touch
someone close, someone near
Ideas, disappointments
Bodies and music
Sharing—a beautiful word

The feeling of OHM when the chanter
Is one with the Universe
Our karma moves on
Ceaselessly—inevitably
Other places, other lovers, other dreams
My Soul is richer, my world is brighter.
Your's has been shared with me.

Irish Coffee and Sex on Valentine's Day
submitted by Kalman Kivkovich

An Irish woman of advanced age visited her physician before Valentine's Day, to ask his help in reviving her husband's libido.
"What about trying Viagra?" the doctor said.
"Not a chance, he won't even take an aspirin."
"Not a problem, give him an Irish Viagra."
"Irish Viagra . . . ?"
"Yes. Put it in his coffee. There is no scent and it's flavorless."
"But---"
"Give it a try . . . call me and let me know how things went."

A week after Valentine's Day the woman was back to see her physician. " 'T'was horrid. Just plain awful, doctor!"
"Really? What happened?"
"Well . . . I did as you advised . . . I slipped it in his coffee---the effect was instant. He jumped straight up---a twinkle in his eye . . ."
"Yes, go on . . ."
"His pants . . ."
"Yes . . ."
"They were bulging! Then . . . with one swoop he sent the cups and tablecloth flying. He ripped my clothes to tatters and took me right then and there . . ."
"And . . ." The doctor was amused.
"He made wild, passionate love to me on the tabletop! It was a nightmare, I tell you, an absolute nightmare!"
"Why so terrible? The sex wasn't good?"
"Oh, no, Doctor, the sex was great! 'Twas the best I've had in thirty years! The problem is that I'll never be able to show my face in Starbucks again!"

The Salon Reading Series Begins with A Bang

2007-02-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

Join as we welcome our first writer in our Salon reading series on final Friday (2/23) at InkTank headquarters:

Raised in Export, PA, Eric Schwerer attended The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. After working as a carpenter in Southeastern Kentucky, Louisiana, and Ohio, he earned a PhD in Creative Writing from Ohio University. He has taught poetry to people recovering from mental illness and now teaches in the Creative Writing department at Johnstown's University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of two books of poetry, Whittling Lessons (a chapbook, Finishing Line Press) and The Saint of Withdrawal (CustomWords, 2006). His poems have been published in numerous literary journals."Eric Schwerer is a young poet with a great ear (oh so rare!), an intense 'thought-felt' intelligence, and the ability to make his poems' mysteries lucid (oh rarer still!). /The Saint of Withdrawal/ is a stunning debut." _Thomas Lux

The Saint of Withdrawal
by Eric Schwerer

It bats four times, soars,
changes course—scrapes black on the milkish air
joined by three more.

Ascending over the trees the other side of Monro Muffler Brake,
hurled claws,
sooty tissues tossed in the dirty white.

These are not
those birds you’ve seen in the moving distance
inside a daydream, slightly rising left to right,

inspiring your real eye with real flight. No. These
four have been in the dark, wet woods all night
perched in a rotten pine, standing on needles,

wings outstretched, lifted like
stooped old men in overcoats who frighten
pigeons from the park. In the weak light

two tiny dots slide on the ice of the western sky
while down on the floor these guys begin to walk,
sway and stalk, throwing forth one claw, criminal,

yoked, lurching in the quiet cold to gawk
or cock a head, moving where nothing else does
in the fog.

When Waste Management’s fleet shudders
over the township blacktop, one takes flight.
It takes it

like the sick take time, taking all the air it can
each flap, coasting until it needs again, making
dashes, strikes on the sky, hooks,

burnt matches, whatever can’t be taken back.

To learn more about the writer and to read more of his poems, visit these websites:
http://www.pitt.edu/~schwerer/Poetry.htm
http://www.custom-words.com/Schwerer.html

I Heart You

2007-02-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Against Sentiment

In some literary traditions, emotional effusiveness and a big emphasis on the essential goodness of humanity are celebrated. In ours, they’re largely considered schmaltz. Sentimentalism is viewed with suspicion (and often derision) because its objectives are tainted: It aspires to sway our tender hearts by aiming low. We resist sentimentalism because we’re sensitive people, who are protective of our soft parts; because our taste in literature is just more complex; and because we simply don’t want to be told how to feel. We having no trouble telling you why our stomachs turn and our eyes roll when yet another heart starts soaring like an eagle on the wings of love. The problem arises when we begin actively struggling against sentimentalism in our writing. It can create an acrid psychology that infects our storytelling and inhibits our treatment of emotionally intense moments.

The struggle against writing scenes like this:
As the sun tilted over the horizon like a heart spilling its love-light in the valley, he leaned to her and whispered in her tiny ear. “I always knew I would marry you,” he said. “But I wasn’t always sure you would have me.”
“Forever, Charlie,” she said. “Forever and ever and ever.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
They went into an embrace that assured all those who witnessed it that there would always be love in the world and it would always be there for the taking. The trick was knowing when to fight for it.

May result in scenes like this:
He moved his hand across the table, near hers but not touching.
“Charlie,” she said.
They looked at the sun on the wall.

The language in our first scene over-directs. It talks about emotional bigness without actually delivering. The language in the second scene is subtle to the point of opacity. It’s impossible for us to know what is passing between these characters. We can guess, but we can’t know. Frank Conroy used to say this: “Good narrative puts the reader and writer in a position of equality. The text forms a bridge between two imaginations.” As writers struggling against sentimentalism, how do we control the language of emotion without strangling it? How do we build bridges between imaginations? Let’s begin with a conversation about words.

I Heart Love Stories:
We’ll generate a list of effusive words and phrases that circle around one emotion: Love. As many as we can. Half of us will write a passage using as many of these words as possible. The other half will write a passage that communicates love without usually any of the words or expressions generally associated with that word. Then (as though we’ll have time!) we’ll share our work and talk about the differences we see between our passages. With any luck, the pitfalls of each approach will become abundantly clear and we’ll catch a glimpse of a way across to our readers.

Salon Writers Revise

2007-02-01T06:38:00.001-08:00

Revision
by Jason Gallagher

Seven years ago things were different. At least to Maria. He had wrapped his existence up in her and all she wanted to do was fly. She wanted nothing to do with his Euclidian geometric musings, his symbolism, and his love of “nature’s own mysteruim.” Those were his words, not hers. She had lost her words. For all his talk of essence and truth she had lost her agency. When she was set adrift of her own will she felt like dandelion pollen, mushroom spores or some other mold caught listlessly in the wind. Caught in a wind but in reality not actually moving. This was his doing. It had only been three, four dates if you counted the day trip to Santa Monica pier, yet her answering machine light would still blink three times weekly. She remembered the gulls cawing at the sewage in the Venice canals as they walked toward the pier. She dare not touch his hand. He had been talking pop philosophy with a soothsayer near one the granite seahorses. Even the surfers couldn’t understand a word. The fortuneteller would roll her eyes, sigh, and murmur something about him being a Gemini. It was the look of the surfers that solidified their failure.

Musing

2007-01-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

It has always seemed to me that muses are more useful as subject of blame, than they are as guiding forces behind the writing. We can curse them when we’re stuck, hung up, or lost, and avoid the shame of knowing only we are to blame for the lack of inspiration in our work. Creative blocks stall many writers and even the psychologists agree that it’s a sticky matter. No one can confirm or deny the existence of writers block as a specific diagnosable condition and recently The New Yorker ran a piece suggesting our culture is at least in part to blame for its prevalence; it seems writers block is a modern invention, first appearing in the literary lexicon in the early 19th century. Once you have a word for a thing it become a real thing, doesn’t it? But surely this is a struggle as old as language, as old as old. And while we here at InkTank won’t offer you a quick fix or an herbal remedy, there is an entire industry out there ready to exploit you. For only $119 you can order unblocking software that will unlock your creative energies forever. You’ll never not write again.

When I’m stuck it’s usually because I’m not sure what I want to say, or because I’m worried that I don’t have anything to say. Writers like Elizabeth Bishop have cited their students’ lack of experience in the world as the cause of a certain frailty in their work (the Paris Review Interviews) and I can believe it. I try not to feel as though I need to trek through the Amazon in order to have something important or interesting to say, but I do value the experiences I have had—I don’t know where my writing would be without them.

We’ve talked about our writing wells, how we conceive of them and how to expand them. So far, the only advice I feel solid about giving is this: read more and write more. Most of the writers I’ve talked to say the same thing or something similar. Of course, there are things we can try right here. One is to memorize a Berryman or Bishop poem and then write from our memories on it. Another is to write about the very first moment we remember wanting to tell a story, and then write about what we’ve written. I’ll give you all the option. Pick one and run with it.

Casabianca
By Elizabeth Bishop

Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite ‘The boy stood on
the burning deck.’ Love’s the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love’s the burning boy.

Dream Song One: Huffy Henry Hid the Day
By John Berryman

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed

A List of Useful Texts in No Particular Order:

2007-01-19T06:17:00.000-08:00

You asked for a list of books and I've delivered. These texts are not required reading for the Writers Salon. But they are good books to have as a writer. Look for updates in the future. And please send recommendations if you have them.

The Story and Its Writer, Edited by Ann Charters, Bedford/St. Martin's.
I’d say any edition of this book would do, but I don’t know anything about the compact version. It’s always available used because it’s often a required text in college courses. I like it because it’s a good anthology, a good introduction to literary writers for those who are new to the genre and a good reference for those who are old hands. I recommend it because it includes a number of interviews and essays that expand the experience of the writing, some of which can’t be found elsewhere, and because it includes a useful list of literary terms, a solid history of the story, and interesting biographical notes.

Poems, Poets, Poetry, Edited by Helen Vendler, Bedford.
I like this anthology as an anthology, but I also like its plainspoken approach to matters of craft. Vendler explains what she means, which is nice as long as you agree with her meaning.

The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White, Longman.
Any edition of this book will do. You can pick it up used for under $10. Go here for the basic principles of composition, grammar, word usage and misusage, and writing style.

The Best American (Insert Genre Here), Houghton Mifflin, Any Year.
Of late, this series has been expanding exponentially. I can’t attest to the quality of all of them, but I can say that these books will give you a good sense of what’s going on in any given genre. The best work is selected from the top literary magazines and published every year in an affordable collection. If you can’t get around to buying many journals, this may be the way to go. By the way 2000 was a great year for the short story edition. I’m also a fan of The Best American Short Stories of the Century.

The Paris Review Interviews, Picador.
There are several volumes of interviews; I’ve got volume one and can attest to its usefulness. It’s great. Use it to learn what the writers you admire (and the writers who have escaped your attention) have to say about writing, about craft, about living.

On Moral Fiction, John Gardner, Basic Books.
If you’ve ever wondered about the source of this continuous dream business, here it is. I recommend this book because it engages us in a useful conversation about what art does and what it means. It informs much of my thinking about the teaching of writing and it’s a book many people know, which means it’s an easy reference.

Habitations of the Word, William Gass, Cornell.
I recommend this book as a way to continue the conversation that I begin with Gardner. If you’re upset by the notion that all art is obligated to mean, this book of essays is for you. It’s also a good place to begin a conversation about language.

Ariadne’s Thread: Story Lines, J. Hillis Miller, Yale U Press.
This is a tough book. It may kick your ass. But you will be ten times smarter after reading it. It begins with a story that becomes a metaphor for storytelling: the story of Theseus and his journey out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

Poets & Writers
This is the leading magazine for literary writers. I am not often impressed by the writing or the reportage, but it does list all of the contests, calls for submissions, and conferences. Of course, you can always look at those for free online: http://www.pw.org/mag/grantsawards.htm

Revising the Sky of Mold

2007-01-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
It’s Really Revision

Is it because you’re lazy that you don’t revise—because you’re okay enough with what you’ve written not to care if your readers must struggle through the weak spots? Or is it because you’re afraid it’s too hard to revise, too dangerous, or too time-consuming? Is it because you yourself have not carefully read what you’ve written that you don’t revise? Or is it because you’ve formed an unhealthy relationship with the words as you’ve placed them on the page that you don’t revise—because you think they’re so precious, far too precious to disrupt? Is it because you believe that writing is a mystical magical process and that revision is clinical and evil process that you don’t revise? Or because you believe yourself to be a writing deity, a genius for whom revision is synonymous with weakness? Perhaps you’ve made the mistake of conflating proofreading with revision. They’re not the same, you know. Perhaps you don’t trust in your own facility with the language enough to revise, or perhaps you’ve never revised simply because you’re not sure what revision is. If I sound upset, it’s because I’m being theatrical. Oh, there’s a point: you must revise. None of your excuses are good enough not to revise.

If you’re having trouble, it might be helpful to think of revision as re-seeing or re-imagining. It’s about clarity and it’s about an awareness of the reader as a meaningful presence. Of course, grammar and mechanics are a part of it—you’ve got to keep the page clean. But beyond that, revision is about ensuring that the reader is never disrupted from the continuous dream of the story without a damn good reason. Disruptions can occur every level—the sentence, perspective, character, plot, voice, or even time—and they cause the reader to leave us. Once we lose them, they may never come back. We’ll be alone and unhappy and our writing won’t be getting any better any time soon.

Workshops can give you what your own eyes often can’t: a view from outside the storytelling. But you have to be prepared to lose much (sometimes almost all) of what you have on the page in order to move forward with your writing. Writing is a recursive process, after all. You learn more as you go along and you employ what you’ve learned. It’s hard work that will get you there—not magic, not luck, not even booze.

Please Re-see Me
In order that we might put a spotlight on revision, let’s think about workshopping the following excerpt and determining its strengths and weaknesses. Based on our conversation, we’ll then revise it on our own as individuals. Take the good and lose the not so good, even if the good is only a single word or an image.

Existing is about being unique. Existence, reality, essence, cause, or truth is uniqueness. The geometric point in the center of the sphere is nature’s symbol of the immeasurable uniqueness within its measurable effect. A center is always unique; otherwise it would not be a center. Because uniqueness is reality, or that which makes a thing what it is, everything that is real is based on a centralization. Seven years ago, I was about to become centralized. I couldn’t have known where it would take me, but I could have guessed that it would take me to the center. To her. To Maria. Her hair was the kind of hair that moved without actually moving. Her eyes were the kind of eyes that saw without looking. We came together in nature’s own mysterium and our essences became a reality. I’d never experienced anything like that before. When she left, it was as though the sky were eaten through with mold. Now she’s the center of another’s existence and the sky mold is eating through me.

Workshop Schedule & Sign-Up

2006-12-29T06:02:00.000-08:00

Sign up for a slot you’d like to take and plan to submit work at least one week in advance of that date, if not two weeks in advance. You may exchange slots, if you change your mind or something comes up, but this must happen at about three weeks before the workshop date—otherwise, it may go to waste. If you miss your own workshop date without prior arrangements, you will lose your right to workshop in the future. Forever! Or at least until we forgive you. Choose wisely. This list will also be distributed on the yahoo group, where you can always find it by searching through the archives.

Jan 4 - Sujata

Jan 18 - Tom

Feb 1 - Jason

Feb 15 - Pierre

March 1 - Tom

March 15 - Elisa

March 29 - Kalman

April 12 - Sujata

April 26 - Lynda

May 24 - Marie

June 7 - Kalman

June 21 - Roger

July 5 - Sujata

July 19 - Alan

August 1 - Howard

Seeing and Believing and Acting

2006-12-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Last night's craftshop exercise was one of those had-to-be-there things. (There was some acting involved, a foam bear claw, a dead plant, and a box of kleenex.) But for those of you (and you know who you are) who might be curious about what you missed, you'll find the gist of it below.

Because our talk about formatting and submitting manuscripts is (let’s face it) never very exciting, I thought we’d do something with a little zip in it tonight. Experiments in perspective—and by that I mean the writer’s way of seeing, not the character’s or speaker's—are always interesting because they remind us of ourselves as unique seers. As artists we have a responsibility to see—and record—the news of the world. Sometimes we forget this because we’re worried about POV shifts and space breaks and all of those criminally irritating mechanical concerns. It’s time to be reminded.

I’ll need a few randy volunteers for this experiment—let’s say three—who are willing to sacrifice a little on-the-spot writing time. We’ll concoct a moment, which we’ll then present to the group. The group’s task will be to record the scene as though witnessing it in the “real” world and to imagine the world around the scene. Write a poem, a story, follow the event where you like. We’ll share our work and see a little more clearly (perhaps) how we see. Use the space below to record as many details as you can as the action is taking place or directly thereafter. We’ll share these notes too.

InkTank Writers’ Salon Guidelines

2006-12-15T06:24:00.000-08:00

Workshop Guidelines
Manuscripts must be submitted at least one week in advance of the assigned workshop slot. Otherwise, we’re all in trouble. Use our yahoo group and/or distribute copies by hand. Submit work that has been edited to the best of your abilities. Unedited work embarrasses everybody. We’re adopting (almost) professional formatting standards because it makes sense to learn them and work with them. We understand that e-mailing your work may disrupt your formatting—do the best that you can.

Titles: Pick one. Don’t italicize it, underline it, enlarge it, or type it in a wacky font. (It’s tempting, we know, but resist.)

For Prose: Submit no more than 25 double-spaced pages. Use 1-inch-or-so margins and a 12pt-or-so inoffensive font. (Most folks agree that Times and Courier are the standard.) Include your name and the date in a header and page numbers in the upper right corner. Your unadorned title should be centered above your first paragraph of text.

For Poetry: Submit no more than 10 pages. If the size or look of the font are somehow involved in your meaning making, they may vary to your little heart’s desire. Otherwise, keep it simple. Include your name and the date in a header and page numbers in the upper right corner. Your unadorned title should appear directly above your first lines of text.

For Everything Else: Use common sense.

Response Guidelines
Comment directly on the manuscripts up for workshop. Be nice, but don’t be so nice as to render your comments useless. Don’t ever be mean. Be critical, yet sensitive to the writer. If talking isn’t your style, make sure you offer more written commentary. If writing on the manuscript isn’t your style, make sure you give good verbal commentary. We’ll roll around the room and give everyone a chance to talk. Don’t use this as an opportunity to soapbox—keep it brief. It isn’t a bad idea to start with a positive. If you haven’t read the work, don’t comment—we won’t be offended if you leave at the break, but we will be offended if you huff off mid-workshop, or snooze.

Craftshop Guidelines
Craftshop topics are generated by group members. Speak up if you have an idea. The exercises give us a basis for a little technical or philosophical discussion and a chance to do some writing on the spot. If you’d like to share your craftshop results during the Salon, speak up. A little conversation about your work may transpire—nothing too serious. If you’d like to share your craftshop results later, send them to the yahoo group and they’ll be published on the blog. Anyone (even those who miss the meetings) is welcome to submit craftshop exercises for publication. Exercise sheets will appear on the blog after the Salon meets.

Salon Ethics
It’s simple: You’ve got to give at least as much as you receive. If everyone abides by this simple notion, the life of the Salon will be a dream. But if you don’t offer good commentary, don’t expect it in return. If you can’t abide by our guidelines, don’t expect us to be happy about it. Expect us to be sad. Expect us to think things about you. Remember that the Salon is free—it costs you nothing to be a member—but that does not mean it’s yours for the taking. It belongs to all of us and none of us; it is what it is. Please don’t try to make it something else and please don’t abuse it.

Salon Writers Write "Bad"

2006-12-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

Untitled by Jason Gallagher

George. His name was George. With a name like George how could he have such a throbbing piece of man meat? It was juicy, huge in its girth but with the right amount of length. Not too much, just enough. It would fit comfortably inside my tight box. Try not to think about your own pussy while it is taking in that glorious member. I remember the pinch as it entered but I didn’t turn my head, I didn’t grimace. It was differently not something to cry over. I knew it would be over soon. There was no reason to not let him go through the motions. The thrusting would be deep; there was no better word for it then penetration. Teeth grinding with the intensity of each pound. Yet gentle. Each movement was forceful and gentle. That is how the whole thing can be deceiving. You think that it will be more then it is.

MOANS IN THE NEIGHBORS' SHED by Kalman Kivkovich

I hear the groans coming from the neighbors' shed.
The heavy breathing sounds like something out of my dreams.
I'm fifteen and dreams I have---flood of wet dreams . . .
I glue my eye to a crack in the wooden wall.
My gaze pierces the soft skin that blocks my view.
The moans fill the enclosed space beyond.
What the hell is it? My mind gears in full speed.
I close my eyes.
Something is bulging inside my trousers,
Thrusting against the already dilapidated partition.

WET DREAM by Kalman Kivkovich

I submit to a deep sleep,
Or do I?
Millions of thoughts, fragments of unidentified reflections,
Rushing through my resting head,
Thumping inside my skull,
Like giant waves on shore, beating against the boulders.
My mind struggles to focus into the hazy twister,
To grasp the indistinguishable.
And there she is,
Slowly advancing, floating toward me,
Like a mirror image out of the Greek mythology.
A spark in my brain turns my body over---once, twice.
I feel warm throughout,
My tongue searches for moisture off my lips,
I utter from within.
The lids of my closed-eyes tighten evermore.
My breath turns heavy,
My blood pulsates in an unrestrained rhythm.
My body stretches and again turns over.
I am being transferred away.
Where am I?
Now I feel my bare feet, resting on smooth pebbles,
I am standing on a still, dry riverbed.
I hear something,
A faint but rising sound.
It's coming closer,
Now it is roaring,
Oh God . . . the water!
I am going to drown,
I am on top---I am under.
I am wet,
My eyes open.

SEX WRITING WORKSHOP by Marie O'nan

We always had to kick the dog out of our bedroom before being intimate.
We always had to call it being intimate because Sylvia didn't want to say
fuck and she didn't want to sound like an easy listening song. All she
could say was weiner. "Oh Richard," she'd say, "I love your weiner." Or,
"Oh, your beautiful weiner."
"Sylvia," I'd say, "It's your weiner too. We share it like how siamese
twins share whatever it is that connects them."
Last night, we started to get intimate. The windows were open a little
because it was warm outside. You could smell the rain. Virgil howled
outside our door. He must've heard thunder. "Richard," she said, "Give me
your weiner."
"Sylvia," I said, "Fuck me hard." I don't know why I said it. I was
scared she would slap me, but she didn't. She just kept going the same as
before. I heard the rain and the dog crying and Sylvia's breathing and I
felt lucky.

Dirty Bird

2006-12-01T06:06:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your Inktank
Bad Sex

I will confess I was dreading the prospect of writing bad literary sex scenes as examples for discussion. Thankfully, the Literary Review’s 2006 Bad Sex Award winner was announced yesterday. The judges say the award’s mandate is “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.” Here are their criteria for bad sexiness: “unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant sex scene in an otherwise sound literary novel.” Pretty vague, if you ask me, but otherwise maybe fairly sound. If you already know the winner, hold your tongue. Otherwise, read through these selections and see if you can pick it. A disclaimer: the following excerpts contain seriously graphic sexual content that may not be appropriate for some readers and may completely ruin our chances of ever having a grown-up conversation about the topic.

David Mitchell from Black Swan Green
“Now she made a noise like a tortured Moomintroll.”
Irvine Walsh from Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs:
“Skinner took his thick green slime and spread it like a chef might glaze some pastry…A ludicrously distended clitoris popped out from nowhere like a jack-in-the-box.”

Thomas Pynchon from Against the Day
“Ruperta had trained her toy spaniel to provide intimate ‘French’ caresses of the tongue for the pleasure of its mistress. …Reef followed, taking out his penis, breathing heavily through his mouth. 'Here Mouffie, nice big dog bone for you right here.’”

Julia Glass from The Whole World Over:
“And then before her inner eye, a tide of words leaped high and free, a chaotic joy like frothing rapids: truncate, adjudicate, fornicate, frivolous, rivulet, violet, oriole, orifice, conifer, aquifer, allegiance, alacrity…all the words this time not a crowding but a heavenly chain, an ostrich fan, a vision as much as an orgasm, a release of something deep in the core of her altered brain, words she thought she'd lost for good.”

Mark Haddon from A Spot of Bother:
“And it swept over her like surf sweeping over sand then falling back and sweeping up over the sand again and falling back. Images went off in her head like little fireworks. The smell of coconut. Brass firedogs.”

Will Self from The Book of Dave
“The confusion of their bodies—his hairy shanks, her sweaty thighs, his bow-taut cock, her engorged basketry of cowl and lip.”

Tim Willocks from The Religion
“He bent her across the cold steel face of the anvil...she called out to God and convulsed with each slow stroke, her head thrown back and her eyelids aflutter, and her cries filled the forge…until she squeezed him from inside and he exploded to a prayer of his own within her body.”

Iain Hollingshead from Twentysomething
“And then I’m inside her, and everything is pure white as we're lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles…I can feel her breasts against her chest. I cup my hands round her face and start to kiss her properly. She slides one of her slender legs in between mine. ‘Oh Jack,’ she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation. And then I'm inside her, and everything is pure white as we’re lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.”

The Challenge:
Write some bad literary sex. Attempting the worst can be as instructive as attempting the best. Use any of the above passages as a model, or create your own scenario.

Writing Violence

2006-11-20T06:59:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Extreme Violence

The conversation about violence in storytelling is often one about the writer’s intent. If the writer’s intent is to shock the audience with extreme violence for the purpose of mere entertainment, we tend to categorize the violence differently than we might other kinds of violence in writing—we call it gratuitous. But violence that is sneakily used for the purpose of teaching readers a lesson might also be accurately called gratuitous. In both cases, readers have cause to resist and cause to dismiss; in both cases the reader’s sensitivity to violence is subject to the writer’s designs.

That said, I do think there is a place in literature for crazy gonzo blood splat gratuitous violence, as well as preachy politico tearjerk baby bye-bye violence. But what I’m more interested in talking about tonight is storytelling. The fact is that violence happens in the world. And the fact that it isn’t pretty or pleasant shouldn’t keep us from writing about it, though it may make the task more challenging.

If you slow down the pacing of the story around the violence, embellishing it with lots of details, the word gratuitous may stick to you—you may even be accused of glorifying violence. But if you speed it up and race right past it, you may be justly deemed a scardey cat. If the violence in your stories always happens off screen, it may be that you are mistaking your own fear, for the desires and needs of the story.

Here’s some advice from Chris Offutt, a writer who knows a good deal about it. I’ve summarized things he has said on the subject in workshop and out: write violence if you must, because you must, but write about it with the same care you’d take with anything. Your prose should be energized, not hyper. If you decide to take a clinical distance, don’t make it so cold you disappear. Be there.

A writer who does this well, I think, is Denis Johnson. This is an excerpt from “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” from the short story collection Jesus’s Son:
And later, as I’ve said, I slept in the back seat while the Oldsmobile—the family from Marshalltown—splashed along through the rain. And yet I dreamt that I was looking right through my eyelids, and my pulse marked off the seconds of time. The Interstate through western Missouri was, in that era, nothing more than a two-way road, most of it. When a semi truck came toward us and passed going the other way, we were lost in a blinding spray and a warfare of noises such as you get being towed through an automatic car wash. The wipers stood up and lay down across the windshield without much effect. I was exhausted, and after an hour I slept more deeply. I’d known all along exactly what was going to happen. But the man and his wife woke me up later, denying it viciously.
“Oh-no!”
“NO!” In a minute the driver, who’d been slumped over the wheel, sat up and peered at us. His face was smashed and dark with blood. It made my teeth hurt to look at him—but when he spoke, it didn’t sound as if any of his teeth were broken.
“What happened?”
“We had a wreck,” he said.

A literary writer who is known for his extreme violence is Cormac McCarthy. No conversation about violence in the literary world would be complete without him. Here’s an excerpt from the novel Blood Meridian:
And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.

And now a little challenge:

In order that there be some correspondences between our work tonight, I’ll ask that we all write about the same scenario and that’s the scenario presented in the excerpt from “Car Crash.” In other words, let’s write about a car crash. Why didn’t I just say that? Write against the impulse to glorify violence and against the impulse to hide from it.

Salon Writers Write

2006-11-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

The following submissions are the happy results of our various craftshop exercises. We thank our Salon members for sharing their work with us and welcome others to do the same. Submit work for publication on the Salon blog by sending it violettuce@juno.com or via the Salon's yahoo group.

VIOLENCE, WORKSHOP
By Sujata Naik

There she was. weaving, for the past twenty minutes, ahead of me. Then gone. Tumbling down the left curb. I found myself speeding up to the spot. Then scrambling down. Where the steering wheel had met the driver, blood and some innards splattered man and machine. His neck seemed to have cracked. The head lay limp, hanging lose to one side. A toy. No groans, no moans. No moans, no groans. Looking back, it makes me sick. Then, then I only took what was given.
My thought was more to immediate myself than the driver. It could have been me. Thank God he's dead, I don't have to make the effort to extricate the mess. I remember being angry with the dead man. Angry that he had been weaving. Angry, like some religious fanatic, that he had been drinking. No, I had no time to feel sick. Or grieve for the stupid. Then, only then, did I call 911

THE CITY
by Sujata Naik

The city
is alive and kicking well , thank you.
Just discharged,
minor stitches.
Thankful that
its innards are not derelict,
desolate
crime-sneaking
(unlike Buffalo).
Here, it's
the very propah
who sneak in,
on the Washingtonparkers.
A glass of beer
camouflaged in a
coffee mug.
Everything
has a chamillion quality.
Even corruption.
Not cops shaking
you down for a fiver
But schools and providers
Kids is education
Kids is big bucks
Tomorrow sneaks in on the city
Tomorrow, robbed
even of its shadow.

FOUND POEM
by Sujata Naik

This world...

Mythical walk
down
The syntax street.
This world,
an instruction
in
my own devices.
Fractured, found
fractured.

(suddenly industrious Sujata
Suddenly
industrious
I)

HELL ON I-71
by Kalman Kivkovich

"Papa," I said, "I'll miss you." My throat was burning. Will I see you again? I thought. This thought had hit me many times lately. He was not doing so well since mother's departure---something to do with his heart.
"You'll see me again," he said with a soft smile, as if he read my mind. "Israel is just a flight away . . ."
"Sure," I said. I kissed his cheek just before he boarded the plane to New York. Would it be for the last time? The thought kept gnawing my mind as I was driving back to Cincinnati.
It was early afternoon, a pleasant spring day. I was sad to see Dad leave, but I was happy that at least he managed to visit me in Cincinnati. My parents always had promised to do that. At least he did.
My eyes darted from the road ahead to the empty seat beside me. He was just there . . .

I-71. North bound. Traffic is light. I am trailing on the slow lane. I guess thinking has something to do with my pressing on the gas peddle. The seat beside me is still empty.

BOOOM*** I was startled to my core. "What the . . ." BOOOM*** The explosive sounds came from my left side. A FORTY-FIVE footer obstructed my view. My hands were on the steering wheel, but my Monte Carlo was flying on an autopilot controlled by the fucking truck driver. My white vehicle was dancing on the highway. Don't ask me how, but after several zig zags, and I mean ZIG ZAGS, I found my car positioned perpendicular to the freeway. My hands at that point were off the steering wheel. I was helpless and hopeless for the ride. The front passenger seat was still empty, except all the glittering glass fragments that littered the maroon velvet upholstery. There was no window left intact. The GIANT was still obstructing my left view. This time it was the front of the MONSTER. I could have reached and grabbed the grill. The fucker-trucker was pressing on, pushing me forward . . . I grabbed the shiny chrome grill . . . "STOP!!!!"
For a freaking short second it seemed as if my adversary driver or God had listened to my plea. Somehow a gap of a few feet opened between us. I am still alive . . . maybe---
BOOOM*** The gap was gone. He was coming for the kill. I closed my eyes . . . I must have been praying. I could hear the screeching of the tires below; they were turning fast but taking me nowhere. Burned-rubber smell seared my nostrils. Is it over? Is it Heaven . . . it feels more like Hell . . .
BOOOM*** No, it wasn't over. My deformed car and I were airborne. My eyes were still closed, but I could feel the flight. It must be my last---
TAHHH*** It was a short ride that ended with a thunderous blast of metal-concrete collision. We hit the median. One tire exploded. We bounced off back to the center lane.
SILENCE. Am I alive? I got out of the wreckage. It wasn't a car. I don't remember opening any door or climbing though a window opening. All I remember was staggering away from a smoking thing and dropping to the asphalt.
"Are you okay? The ambulance is on its way. I'm a nurse . . ."
"What?"
"Don't move . . . you'll be fine," she said, gently wiping the blood off my face. "What's your name?"
"What?"
"Your name?"
"Papa . . . Papa, are you okay? Papa . . ."
"You were alone in your car," she said. "Your Papa must be okay. Relax. Oh, I can here the sirens."
"What happened?" I asked, trying to focus on her face.
"You were hit by a semi. You were so lucky."
"Where is he?"
"There," she said, pointing. The Devil was parking about one hundred yards ahead.
Traffic was lined up for who knows how far. The paramedics had arrived, trailed by the police and fire trucks.
I was on my way to Bethesda North. They wanted to clean me up and make sure that there was no trace of concussion. By that time I felt more alive, far more than I had felt a little while ago. I quivered at the thought that my father could have been sitting in that seat beside me. Oh God, thank you . . .

"I'm sorry, but I have to write you a ticket," the officer said, standing by my hospital bed.
"What?"
"There were witnesses."
"What witnesses? He just hit me . . ."
"I'm sorry," he said, handing me the orange paper. "You can fight it in court if you wish. Sign here please."
"Okay . . ."
"By the way, were you wearing a seatbelt?"
"I . . ."
"Never mind . . . you must have been."

"I-71 has reopened after Thursday afternoon crashes near Hyde Park.
A police dispatcher with the Ohio State Highway Patrol told 9News that two separate collisions involving semi-trailers occurred almost simultaneously on both North and South bound. Emergency crews took two people to the hospital. No names or conditions have been released. 9News, Hagit Limor reporting."
"More news after this . . ."

VIOLENCE
by Dick Mashburn

Basic facts: Loaded cement truck approaching intersection at bottom of steep hill. The traffic light for traffic coming down the hill is red. The truck driver apparently disregards the signal and crashes into the mid-section of the auto, killing driver and passenger in the car.

Our job is to figure out why truck ran red light.

The accident investigator later said that the truck could have stopped. Testing showed that the brakes were fully functional. That left intent as the only plausible reason for the wreck, but there was no motive, unless the truck driver had a reason or no reason at all, if worthiness of motive counts, for running the red light and vaporizing the sedan that was filled with a young man and young woman just a moment ago and is now filled with bloody body parts.

Wasn't the truck driver Rodney Smerling?, thought Officer Albertson

Didn't he graduate from high school in the same class as Bart and Molly, who only seconds ago were probably on their way to a class picnic? If I weren't working, I'd be on the way myself.

But I have no clue as to any motive involving the three of them.

Rodney and Bart and I played on the same high school football team, did't we? wondered Officer Albertson. Was there ever tension between him and me?

And what about Molly? Could Bart have intended to put her in the path of the truck? What if she was pregnant? What if she was carrying Rodney's child?

At Long Last

2006-11-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

Electric Queen City Boogalou
an InkTank Collaboration

Sitting in the Westin on the corner of Fifth and Vine, I am thinking about the old Sheraton Gibson that used to be in the same area. The Tyler Davidson Fountain, our famous piece of public art from the 1880s, has just returned from its brief trip to the Art Museum. While sitting here I realize all the things we only know about because we’re from Cincinnati. First off don’t tell a guest to go to Jack Ruby’s when they want to go to The Maisonette. Jeff not Jack, you’re acting like a tourist. All this talk of restaurants is making me hungry; my recommendations to a P&G exec would be Tucker’s anyway. Take them to Over-the-Rhine, show them how we survive, when most Cincinnatians are living meal to meal in the nation’s eighth poorest city. Then take them to an empty Great American Ball Park (GABP) and see how fair weather the suburban fans of the world’s oldest professional baseball team can be. So they haven’t won a championship since 1990; Wrigley packs them in with a team that hasn’t won since 1908. How about some flying pigs? What, you say pigs don’t fly? You have a better chance of seeing an avian heifer then a Democrat being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from around here. But then, it isn’t that people don’t try. They do. And it isn’t that people don’t care. They do. But when the Fountain returns to a square and there isn’t a damn thing different than the location, you have to wonder who picked her up and moved her. Was it us? Was it you? Is it that we don’t try? Is it that we don’t care? They’re putting an ice skating rink in soon, filling it with young professionals. But there is something that Cincinnati can be good for: chili, ribs, ice cream, unbelievable views of hills, hills and more hills. Come with me my honored guest and we’ll pass the Embassy, lavish in exterior and cold as a January Cincinnati midnight, bright day though it is. So much life on these city streets, electric energy aplenty to light this square and more like it. Because we are more than a square or a fountain we are every Margaret Garner, Pete Rose, Jerry Springer, Charles Mason, Carson Palmer and Andy Traves. We are the good and the bad of America. We are, have been, and still will be THE QUEEN CITY!

Paula Rego

2006-11-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

These are some of the Dog Woman paintings done by artist Paula Rego. I mentioned them and mentioned I'd post them. Learn about Rego here:

Paula's Playground

Against Reportage

2006-11-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Politic Politics Political Poetry

We’re living in a city that is (reportedly) one of the most violent in the country. So far this year there have (reportedly) been 68 murders; 273 rapes; 1,761 robberies; 879 aggravated assaults; 4, 475 burglaries; and 2, 248 auto thefts. We’re living in a state that is (reportedly) one of the most important in the upcoming elections. Over $170 million has (reportedly) been spent on campaign ads, the large majority of them negative. We’re a people who are (reportedly) fed up with politics. When we cast our votes, many of them will (reportedly) fail to be counted.

Reportage has its place in the world. As does political propaganda. But what place does poetry have in our politics? How do we contribute to the conversation without becoming lost in the white noise of political punditry? I asked Melissa Tuckey, a friend deeply involved in both political and writing communities in D.C., to help us to approach these kinds of questions and she very graciously agreed. Here’s what she said:

One problem with political poetry is when the writers are not open to the complexity of the problem they are writing about—or the complexity of language. It's easy with politics to reduce everything to sound bites and partisan thinking, but this is not poetry.

The poet should be open to discovering something new about whatever subject they are writing about. Sometimes it helps to come at it from a completely illogical point of view, or angle, to see something new again.

I also think its important not to fall into false dichotomies, “us versus them, self versus other” thinking. To recognize your own complicity in whatever evil you most abhor. To write from your conscience—to wrestle with it. CK Williams does this well.

Ultimately I think all poetry is political in that it causes the reader to recognize and appreciate the complexity of the world. It frees us from the world of slogans and invites us to think for ourselves. That’s political.

Many of the political poems I write end up in the trash, but it makes me feel better to write them.

I think poets should write about things that matter.

It’s helpful to look at poetry by poets who write successfully about such matters: some of my favorites are Whitman, CK Williams, Adrienne Rich.

Against Reportage:
For all that is said about us, we’re a very informed and aware people. And our knowing extends well beyond what the reports about us say. Whatever your politics, you’re a person with a voice. Like Melissa says, It's easy with politics to reduce everything to sound bites and partisan thinking, but this is not poetry. Let’s do the hard thing. Together, we’ll compile the reports about us. Individually, we’ll struggle to remain open to the complexity of the problem we are writing about—or the complexity of language. We’ll make an effort to see something new about the subject, or see it from a different angle. Even if it ends up in the trash, it might make us feel better to write it.

INFORMATION

2006-10-31T13:43:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
INFORMATION Glut

The trouble with INFORMATION is that its transmission often raises issues of credibility, believability, and trust. INFORMATION is heavy, angular, and conspicuous. It can be very difficult to manage as INFORMATION. Here’s what can happen when INFORMATION does not rise out the story organically:

“What’s going on here Susan? It seems like there are millions of Americans here on the shores of Lake Michigan,” said Mike. He folded his blue hat in his hands.
“It’s the World’s Fair, silly, an incredibly popular and immensely influential social and cultural event,” said Susan. She straightened her old-looking dress at the waist.
“We’re lucky to be here,” he said. He touched her arm—a little forward for the times.
“We sure are. The year of 1893 is turning out to be a good one.”

Here are some concerns I’ve often heard from group members, students, teachers, mentors, and colleagues alike:

I want to deliver the kind of INFORMATION that convinces my readers of my credibility as a writer and/or convinces my readers of my character’s credibility without seeming like that’s what I’m doing; there’s nothing less convincing than a writer who’s obviously trying to convince you.

I want to get technical INFORMATION into my story without turning away readers who may not be familiar with the terminology or seeming opaque.

I want to get INFORMATION about technology, geography, politics, history, into my story that my readers will need to understand in order to follow my story, but I don’t want that INFORMATION to bog down my storytelling.

I want to get INFORMATION into my story in order to entertain and hold the interest of my readers.

I want to get INFORMATION into my story seamlessly—I don’t want it to seem like INFORMATION.

Behind these concerns are very particular larger issues—issues we should talk about as writers. Right now. But the problem with INFORMATION is that it isn’t STORYTELLING. It’s INFORMATION. Working INFORMATION into a story is always going to be a challenge for that reason.

Here goes:
I’m going to distribute little piles of INFORMATION around the room. Choose any pile you like and investigate it. Next, write a segment (of a poem, a story, an essay, a scene or something in-between) that engages some of the ideas present in your pile. If your experiment is successful, your readers should not be able to sense the presence of the INFORMATION in your segment—they’ll be engaged in your storytelling, engaged in the continuous dream that is the world of your story. Even if INFORMATION isn’t a problem for you, this exercise will give you a chance to come into your writing at a different angle.

Political Poems Now

2006-10-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

FORSYTHIA WINTER
by Melissa Tuckey

First snap and daffodils nod off
they always look
so surprised

while here in D.C.
everything wants to bloom
at once a profusion
of highway exits
and war

I want off this crazy
interchange forward and back
illegal turns and still
the land refuses

Go ahead open your hand
what emptiness
will you offer

that wild impulse the rain

THE GENESIS OF TORTURE
by E. Ethelbert Miller

In the beginning
we will all wear black hoods

Our faces will be hidden from history and
someone will tie a cruel footnote to our genitals

It might be a neighbor disguised as God

TAR
by C. K. Williams

The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening to the news, wondering how to know a hundred miles downwind
if and when to make a run for it and where, then a coming bolt awake at seven
when the roofers we've been waiting for since winter sent their ladders shrieking up our wall,
we still know less than nothing: the utility company continues making little of the accident,
the slick federal spokesmen still have their evasions in some semblance of order.
Surely we suspect now we're being lied to, but in the meantime, there are the roofers,
setting winch-frames, sledging rounds of tar apart, and there I am, on the curb across, gawking.
I never realized what brutal work it is, how matter-of-factly and harrowingly dangerous.
The ladders flex and quiver, things skid from the edge, the materials are bulky and recalcitrant.
When the rusty, antique nails are levered out, their heads pull off; the underroofing crumbles.
Even the battered little furnace, roaring along as patient as a donkey, chokes and clogs,
a dense, malignant smoke shoots up, and someone has to fiddle with a cock, then hammer it,
before the gush and stench will deintensify, the dark, Dantean broth wearily subside.
In its crucible, the stuff looks bland, like licorice, spill it, though, on your boots or coveralls,
it sears, and everything is permeated with it, the furnace gunked with burst and half-burst bubbles,
the men themselves so completely slashed and mucked they seem almost from another realm, like trolls.
When they take their break, they leave their brooms standing at attention in the asphalt pails,
work gloves clinging like Br'er Rabbit to the bitten shafts, and they slouch along the precipitous lip,
the enormous sky behind them, the heavy noontime air alive with shimmers and mirages.
Sometime in the afternoon I had to go inside: the advent of our vigil was upon us.
However much we didn't want to, however little we would do about it, we'd understood:
we were going to perish of all this, if not now, then soon, if not soon, then someday.
Someday, some final generation, hysterically aswarm beneath an atmosphere as unrelenting as rock,
would rue us all, anathematize our earthly comforts, curse our surfeits and submissions.
I think I know, though I might rather not, why my roofers stay so clear to me and why the rest,
the terror of that time, the reflexive disbelief and distancing, all we should hold on to, dims so.
I remember the president in his absurd protective booties, looking absolutely unafraid, the fool.
I remember a woman on the front page glaring across the misty Susquehanna at those looming stacks.
But, more vividly, the men, silvered with glitter from the shingles, clinging like starlings beneath the eaves.
Even the leftover carats of tar in the gutter, so black they seemed to suck the light out of the air.
By nightfall kids had come across them: every sidewalk on the block was scribbled with obscenities and hearts.

It's Politic

2006-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

"The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche

What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.

False Start Re-Starts by Salon Members

2006-10-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Writing Group Speaks
by Dick Mashburn

What follows is original but not spontaneous or unprovoked. It’s a
response to one of the interventions of our moderator/chief instigator.
The idea for this game is that she gave us a bunch of scraps of writing
she found on or in the vicinity of her desk. There’s no telling if it
was part of a significant work or just words that somehow came to rest
on that shred of paper.

What’s not in doubt, however, is that being dutiful writing groupers,
we vied for the privilege of putting these would-be gems into a
context, that like a jewelers finest setting can unlock the complete
and true beauty that now lies passively as in a humble …

The President, for Christ sake, is up there in a helicopter, surveying.
“Our worst fears,” he says, “are heading South.”

“It was those bastard Democrats,” he continued (alteration from
original). “They roiled around making such a stink that that jerk
Señior Fox got the Mexican legislature to create a whole package of
benefits for Mexican workers. Now, instead of flooding into this
country to take jobs nobody else wants, and behave like angels because
they know that if they FU, we’ll send ‘em home in a heartbeat, they
shoot down the tubes back to good old Mexico.

“Of course somebody’s got to pay for this, and that bastard Fox got the
legislators to put huge taxes, it’s like Nucular War on all American
companies. By the time Ford adjusts for the new taxes, they have to
jack the price of a “nicely equipped” Focus to $32,000. That puts their
workers in this country out of work and they go scurrying off to North
Carolina to work in the textile mills. Raleigh-Durham is beginning to
look a third world country, and those S.O.B.s over there in Tsunami
Land don’t even appreciate us sending them shirts. Said they need
machines to make shirts, like they used to, not shirts, or worse yet,
us exporting shirts all over the world.

“Thanks a lot World. Thanks for the gratitude.”

Cicadas On Us
by Kalman Kivkovich

2004 was the most recent emerging time of Cincinnati-17-year cicadas. I was here, waiting in anticipation. I remember my father talking to me about those fascinating insects, more than fifty years ago. I recall him claiming to have captured fifty cicadas in some glass jars, just to free them later unharmed. "I can't kill anything," he had said.
Since my early childhood, those goldish-looking bugs had visited at least three times. But in 2004, they came in-force, never seen before. My heavenly-kingdom grounds were not spared. They came a little late, but they came-trillions and trillions of them. And their symphonic non-stop opus, MAN! They say it is exclusively-male stuff. They must know their stuff! The intense, high-pitched humming can harm your eardrums; it can be as loud as a 747 Delta Jet flying over Clifton; it surely fends off birds, sometimes.
I was brave, my wife wouldn't dare to come within a foot and even then I had to hold her hand. I collected a few specimens, housing them in an empty glass pickle jar. Yes, I did pierce the tin cover for breathing air---like my dad, I didn't want to kill them. I waited for them to sing, but they were not in the mood, I guess. All they did was crawl on top of each other. After a few days, there were fewer that still crawled . . . and then came the stench . . . and then came the second empty glass jar---this time it was from mayonnaise, just in case the new cicadas liked it better.
I observed my prisoners closely; my nose was touching the glass. I didn't bother to feed them; they say that cicadas don't eat anything, and that they have already stuffed themselves of tree sap underground. So I just looked at them carefully, I looked at their huge red eyes, one on each side of the head and at the other three little shiny eyes on top of their head. With their wings, they resembled common giant houseflies. The wings were fascinating---glassy and transparent wax-paper-like held by an elaborate vein structure---reflecting sunlight in shimmering rays. My eye traveled to their legs, And legs they have---three pairs of them.
After a two-day clinic, I decided to let my jailbirds go free. Only two were still moving, the rest were stock-still; a few sparkly wings littered the bottom of the jar. I had read that cicadas don't bite; they didn't harm me thus far, although they were everywhere: covering my trees, shrubs, grass, walls and even the windshield of my car. In most cases they simply took off and flew when approached.
I stepped out to the porch. "Okay, little fellows," I said, "your days are numbered anyway. Go find yourself a mate, have fun and die." I took the lid off and shook the jar. No takers. I tapped on the glass. "Go, go you . . ."
And off they went. I wouldn't know if it was a hop or a natural take off. The two creatures flew straight into my thick curly hair. I was startled; I jumped backward, my hands reached up, searching to grab the unforeseen attackers. "Sons of bitches!" I yelled, "Get off me, you bastards!" I ran back into the house and jigged my way to the dinning room.
Locks of hair dropped to the floor. The cicadas kept clinging to my scalp, burying their claws in my now rapidly disappearing hair. The place looked a lot like a barbershop, not a dining room. My screaming and jumping were in vain. By the time I managed to rid myself of those Devils, I was petrified to glance at a mirror; the floor spoke volumes. The two cicadas were still alive, still clenching to some strands of my past glory. In my anger I raised my foot to crush them . . . and then again I remembered my father. "Damn it, I can't!" I scooped the mess into a paper beg and emptied its contents in the woods behind my deck. When I returned, I barely gathered the nerve to peek at my image in the bathroom mirror. "My God, what will Sandi say?" I said to myself. I looked so much different. Heartbroken, I left the bathroom. I took off my sandals and headed to the bedroom. My right foot hit the doorjamb. "Fuck! Oh God . . ." In an instant, all my grief of loosing my hair had vanished---I was dancing, kicking my legs up and high. . . .

It has been a couple of years since my encounter with those terrestrial flying vermin. I still have some hair left, but not much to brag about. The important thing is that my wife likes it as it is, so she says. And one more thing: I have been told by many that my Jive has improved. . . .

CICADAS AND OTHER FANTASIES KEPT IN GLASS JARS
by Sandi Kivkovich

My father claims to have captured fifty cicadas in glass jars.
He also claims to have freed them.
"I can't kill anything," he said.
My father claims he can tell when it is going to rain.
His sisters tell how as a child he pretended to be the wind and the storm cloud.
"I can't hide my feelings," he said.
My father claims he can tell a story about anything.
He captivated my youth and beyond.
"Life is a story," he said.
My father claims that he understands feelings.
All are important.
"A child's problems seem as large to them as those of adults," he said.
My father claims he is fine.
He slaps his knee and laughs and sings songs in gibberish to me.
"What's your name little girl?" he said.

New Wheels

2006-10-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

The story goes that false starts can be useful failures—at least you’re writing, right?—but as useful as they are, they can also be demoralizing, frustrating, intimidating, exasperating, and annoying. Over time you may develop a sense for what has wheels and what doesn’t, but even the most experienced of writers have false starts. I know several novelists who have written several (one of them five) novels, before they’ve found the story they wanted to tell. They regard their novels-never-to-be in this way: it’s precious trash. Some writers cannibalize old failed projects, pulling a few lines, an image, or even a chapter into their current work. Some simply take what they’ve learned and translate it. But what do you do with those pages-that-go-nowhere sitting on your hard drive after you’ve scrapped them for the metal?

Here’s one idea: you give them away. My gift to you this evening is a collection of little fits and starts, all of Salon-workable length, all culled from my fail-files. See what you can do with them. Pick any one or two you like and revise it in any way you please. It’s yours now. I won’t need it back when you’re done.

1. Again it happens that I am terrible. It isn’t often that every face looks petulant. Even the ones I don’t know. And the meaning the world has to offer is ground down, a smart kick, or there’s merely the birds in their sheer numbers winding the cycle of the rooftops and me. You can look and there they are. And then that’s all there is.

2. I rent a cottage on a two-mile spread with another rental set up ten feet across a gravel drive from mine. The other place is a three bedroom house. Probably a hundred years old. I live in its converted shed. Probably once the site of an outhouse. It’s nice though, remodeled. The stove almost works, carpet’s stained, but you can work around these things, or over. The neighbors are boys, maybe eighteen, maybe still in high school. I did not know that this would happen when I moved in.

3. My father claims to have captured fifty cicadas in glass jars.
He claims also to have freed them. “I can’t kill anything,” he said.

4. I never wanted a good explanation for heat lightening.

5. I was little when my mother first told me not to get my hopes up. She said it would hurt more in the end if you went in thinking positive. And, if you went in expecting failure, think how good you’d feel about it if you had luck. I was an awkward girl and it struck me she was probably right. I went into womanhood expecting it would turn out poorly. My hopes were so low, good weather excited me. When I hit high school, I couldn’t get a date. Then it came out I was easy because who’d date a girl with a sack of bricks for an ass? I played that game and I wasn’t stupid about it. I knew about taking what you can get and what it can get you. I kept my eye off the prize. Once I’d had it done to me every way by most everybody, I figured life would get measly and lonely again. I figured at best I’d marry somebody cheaper than me and bury his complaints in my thighs. But then Walter showed up with his hands stroking my back like I was a little bird. Walter showed up and it was love, love, love.

6. The last thing the widow says to her keeper is, do not try to know how to say love. Many times we fail disbelieving. Is it you? Is it you? Are you the one? I don’t want you to tell me. It’s something we’ve already done. And so we must sleep. We must decide now that our living here is enough.

7. There is only as much tension in the finest disguises.
Otherwise, we would always be thieves.

8. All kids believe in God and sugar.

9. The President, for Christ sake,
is up there in a helicopter, surveying.
Our worst fears, he says,
are heading South.

As Promised: Three Prose Poems by Russell Edson

2006-10-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Grass

The living room is overgrown with grass. It has
come up around the furniture. It stretches through
the dining room, past the swinging door into the
kitchen. It extends for miles and miles into the
walls . . .

There's treasure in grass, things dropped or put
there; a stick of rust that was once a penknife, a
grave marker. . . All hidden in the grass at the
scalp of the window . . .

In a cellar under the grass an old man sits in a
rocking chair, rocking to and fro. In his arms he
holds an infant, the infant body of himself. And
he rocks to and fro under the grass in the
dark . . .

Accidents

The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
It wasn't, says the customer, it was always overly waxed.
I tried putting a wick in it to burn out the wax, thus to find my
way to music. But lighting it I put my whole head on fire. It
even spread to my groin and underarms and to a nearby
forest. I felt like a saint. Someone thought I was a genius.
That's comforting, says the barber, still, I can't send you
home with only one ear. I'll have to remove the other one. But
don't worry, it'll be an accident.
Symmetry demands it. But make sure it's an accident, I
don't want you cutting me up on purpose.
Maybe I'll just slit your throat.

Antimatter

On the other side of a mirror there's an inverse world,
where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the
earth and recede to the first slime of love.

And in the evening the sun is just rising.

Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon
childhood robs them of their pleasure.

In such a world there is much sadness which, of course,
is joy.
But it has to be an accident . . .

Found Poems by Salon Members

2006-09-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Please note: selections have been published in order of their submission. If you'd like to publish your found poem on the blog, please submit it via the Writers Salon yahoo group.

AN ANCIENT IMMOVABLE ARM

An ancient immovable arm,
Invisible, balanced.
An ancient immovable arm,
With prolong sound, merged people with pain, grief,
Energy, fierce pride and pleasure.

The words were borrowed from Webster, page 797 (Ms).

Kalman Kivkovich

A CONSTELLATION OF GROWTH

A constellation of days designated
for planting trees,
for flowing water, not restrained or limited,
style flavored with caraway seeds,
people growing, trembling or quivering with excitement.

Words taken from Webster's Dictionary Page 63 (A's)

Sandi Kivkovich

POPEYE'S "SMOKING GUN"

This new food fear
becomes inconvenient again.
71 percent were women,
after discovering
an opened bag of spinach.
Nine California farms
zero in on three
health authorities.
The "smoking gun"
has died.
Watch how the leafy green,
the tainted greens,
could be a crucial clue.

from the CNN article "Health chiefs find 'smoking gun' spinach" dated 9/21/06
Jason Gallagher

Find Found Poetry

2006-09-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Writing without Composing

If you’ve never heard of found poetry, you’re about to because:
1. It’s everywhere
2. Everybody’s doing it, whether they intent to or not (see Donald Rumsfeld)
3. It’s a good way to see language as language
4. Its critique of the way we use language is implicit (built-in)
5. Its critique of the culture in which the original text was created is implicit
6. You’ve decided to attend the Salon and there’s no escaping it now

The rules are very simple: using ordinary texts from the world around you, create a poem. Do not write. Compose. You may subtract lines of text and re-arrange them, but you may not add any words or phrases of your own. Your poem need not follow any formal structure (although it can, if you like) but pay close attention to what line breaks can do to the meaning and rhythm of your lines. A line as simple as the one I am writing now, can begin to look like a poem quite easily:

A line as simple
As the one I am
Writing now can
Begin to look like a poem
Quite easily.

Below you’ll find a few examples of famous (notorious) found poems. A simple Google search will provide you with a few thousand or million more. We’ll draw our original texts from a hat. Should no hats prove present or available to us, original texts will be drawn in some other equally exciting and totally random fashion. Feel free to write on your original text (maybe crossing out or highlighting words or phrases) and then transfer your found poem to the back of this sheet. Try to compose (not write) at least five lines. We’ll share them and then the best (to be determined by wild hooting and hollering) will be published on the blog.

THE UNKNOWN
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002,
Department of Defense news briefing

A CHALLENGE TO YOUR SPIRIT
Girls and boys of America Are the hope of the world! You can’t evade it, young America.
And are you going to go on dancing And spinning on your ear? What are you thinking about, sitting
There staring into the dark? Haven’t you been lying around long
Enough?
Shouldn’t you go to work?
Find as interesting a subject as possible. Write as vivid a sketch as you can Of a person who attracts you or an animal.

Annie Dillard from “Junior High English” from Mornings Like This: Found Poems

Take-Out Sestina

2006-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Take-Out Assignment for the week is to write a sestina with these six (Salon-generated) end-words: metrosexual, obtuse, crystal, equivocate, time bomb, terrorist. Take a look at the craftshop post for the formal structure the sestina follows. Consider shifting the words for variety and telling a story with a cohesive narrative. We'll take a look at these on Thursday -- we've already seen a few remarkable entries.

Orange saccharine Narcotics Orgasm Frosty Cascade

2006-09-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

A Partial Sestina by the Salon Collective on the Spot

Her eyes caught my gaze like fresh narcotics
An unattented hookah burned shisha so saccharine
Silvery water that roared nature's orgasm
Evaporating condensing perspiration turned frosty
Removing all memory of a world with colors rippling red ostentatious orange.

Better than narcotics are oranges
What the hell am I doing with these narcotics
They only make the rings in my nost frosty
It lingers on the lips of my love like an orgasm
Goose bumps down my back cascade

Down Main Street we cascade
To a room painted bright orange
Many colors in your mind like a mental orgasm
Stawberry fields forever these are great narcotics
Ripped out mouth smiles saccharine
Frosty

Formal Attire

2006-09-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Today we’re going to try on some formal constraints. That’s right. We’re getting conventional up in here. Maybe you’ve written some formal poetry before, a few pantoums or a villanelle, perhaps. Maybe you’ve written poems before but nothing formal because formal poetry is stale and frusty and/or absolutely terrifying. Or maybe you’ve never written a poem before at all. No matter your disposition or level of experience, the truth (and it’s not one I’m making up this time) is that formal constraints are a good way to free yourself from habit and to invite real invention into your writing space. You may find a new turn of phrase or a new image, a new story or a new voice, or you may simply find that a new form reminds you of what you valued in more familiar forms. At a minimun, you’ll leave today having written a sestina with your fellow Salonists.

The Suit
A sestina. Let’s talk about what that is first: It’s a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and one three-line envoy. The end-words (we’ll generate these together) in each stanza are the same, but they follow different sequences. Here’s the pattern the sestina follows:

1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet.
6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet.
3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet.
5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet.
4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet.
2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3) - Middle and end words of lines in tercet.

The Tailors
Who comes up with this stuff? In this case, the French. The sestina appeared in France in the twelfth century, initially in the work of a troubadour. Why are we here at InkTank writing a sestina? Because the sestina is one of the best poetic forms for storytelling. Its repetition and long line-length make it an ideal form for our purposes. What are our purposes? We’re all about storytelling here, no matter the genre. Why do we keep using forms the French developed? It is merely a coincidence, I assure you.

See Me/You/He, She, It Again

2006-08-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

Although we’ve worked with perspective before, it’s an issue that often re-appears in our conversations, and the sticking point is generally the idea of POV shifts in the third person. Why, you might ask, can’t I enter the minds of more than one character in the third person?

Here’s a response:

1. RULES: There is no rule against the use of an omniscient narrator – of course there isn’t – but it is true today that many stories written in the third-person perspective, are written in the third-person limited perspective. This means that the story resides near one character, though it may shift to another between chapters or sections. You’ll find that stories that are written from an omniscient perspective generally have something in common: a very strong narrative voice that is the controlling force of the story. Think of One Hundred Years of Solitude. We follow that story from character to character because the narrator leads us there carefully. Each move that the narrator makes in that novel, is made for a reason that is clear to the reader. The voice is thick and big and easily identifiable.

2. READERS: Frequent shifts between characters in the third person that take place without an apparent system of logic irritate readers. They can become lost, they can feel violated, and worst of all, they can lose faith in the writer. Frequent shifts between characters in the third person can also prevent readers from fully entering the world of the story. Readers would rather understand the story from one character’s perspective, than know what everyone in the book is thinking about everything that happens, if it means that they can spend a little quality time getting to know that one character. In other words, rather than opening the story, frequent POV shifts often close the story to readers, restricting them to a surface level.

3. TRAPS: Many writers fall into the POV shift trap early on because they simply don’t know the stakes. But others fall in because (in truth) it is easier to tell readers what characters are thinking or hiding than finding ways to show it. For many readers and editors alike, shifts in the third-person are signs of laziness or sloppiness. Even if you’re making a deliberate choice, that choice may be interpreted in that way. You should know that before you decide to take the risk.

4. PREROGATIVE: It’s yours. But a little time spent deciding exactly why you’ve made the choice you’ve made in terms of perspective is a gift you should give yourself. You deserve it.

In The News:

BEDFORD, New Hampshire (AP) -- A woman turned herself in to police Wednesday after a store surveillance video captured footage of two children sneaking behind display cases to steal thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, allegedly on instructions from their mother and grandmother.

Find a way to enter this story – it’s a real one, pulled from the headlines today. Your first choice should be narrative perspective. Think about why you’ve chosen to write from 1st, 2nd, or some variety of 3rd and be ready to talk about it. Then write a short short.

Styling A Style

2006-08-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

Some writers are known for their style. You know their writing as theirs when you read or hear it because the choices they make in terms of language are distinctive and unique to them. On one end of the style spectrum, you’ve got voicey writers. Think of Barry Hannah who, in describing a dream he once had (of a bar and after giving up liquor), writes, “pickled eggs in a massive jar at the end of a dark-wooded gold-wrapped bar, immense.” A writer with a more transparent style of writing might have described this dream differently, “there was a jar of eggs at the end of the bar,” for example. But Hannah is a writer who is interested in the way the sounds of words in combination can effect their meaning. Lots of folks cite writers like Hemingway and Hempel as standing firmly at the transparent end of the style spectrum. (You’ll see an excerpt from Hempel at the bottom.)

Both voicey and transparent styles have their merits, as do styles that land somewhere in the middle. And different styles serve different purposes. But how do most writers come upon their styles? Is it a choice? Something you’re born with? If you asked Barry Hannah how he found his style, I think he’d tell you it had something to do with learning to pay attention to the story he wanted to tell and then locating the right voice to tell it in. Read about it in his essay “Mr. Brain, He Want A Song.” It’s in a book of essays about writing called The Eleventh Draft, one which I highly recommend to you.

Finding your style might have a good deal to do with finding your voice, which is often regarded as a sort of essence of self, communicated through the writing. But it’s probably important to note that your style might shift considerably between projects and change over time. Writers make many stylistic changes, but the truth is likely that we can never quite escape ourselves. Even if we make serious changes in our approaches to stories, signs of our selves will remain.

What’s your style?

Maybe you feel you’ve already found your style, or maybe you’re still hunting it down. Either way, trying on different styles is a good way of sussing out some margins for yourself. Let’s do a little of that today, shall we? Spend a few minutes re-writing the following passage from Amy Hempel’s story “In A Tub,” using a very very voicey voice. Then, using your re-write as the template, re-write the passage using a different voice. You may add any details or ruminations that you like, but let’s keep it in first-person POV and stick with the basic scenario of a character standing on a deck.

At the back of my house I can stand in the light from the sliding glass door and look out onto the deck. The deck is planted with marguerites and succulents in red clay pots. One of the pots is empty. It is shallow and broad, and filled with water like a birdbath.

And You Say: What Is An Exquisite Corpse?

2006-07-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

One happy consequence of our last meeting was the composition of three Exquisite Corpses, all of them about Ohio. We each wrote a small paragraph on a sheet of paper and then folded the paper over so that only the last few words were in view. The next writer in line had only that last bit to work with and was challenged with the task of carrying the story along.

The idea behind the Exquisite Corpse (or the cadavre exuis, as the French surrealists who developed the technique would call it) is to allow the personality of the group to create a collective work of art. You'll see who we are in Ohio #1, #2, and #3 below. What do you think?

Interested in learning/doing more?

Visit a gallery of corpse paintings created by the famous French surrealists who created the exquisite Corpse technique here: Gallery
Visit a journal that fancies itself a literary corpse hotspot here: Journal
Visit a contemporary gallery of corpses here: Contemporary Gallery
And help people you don't know create a giant corpse poem here: Dada Poem

InkTank Exquisite Corpses

2006-07-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

Ohio #2
It's dark down here in the subway beneath Central Parkway. The only light that filters down here is from the holes in the sidewalk above. But that's okay. Being homeless, you can't choose where you live.

You can choose to live on the Banks of the Ohio River, except then you look at Kentucky, whose skyline is not as spectacular as Cincinnati's. Or camp out at the corner of Hopple and I-75 and tell people for three straight months that you are stranded.

I don't think they care. So why do you ask the people or tell them?

Let me tell you why. To make an effort. And even beyond that, to find out why they have these tired ideas about Ohio. That all we are is the big pawn in presidential elections. That Columbus is named after a guy who discovered a place where a whole culture already lived. That Cleveland is only good for a ball game and the Rock and Roll Museum. And Cincinnati is sooooo conservative. God. I fucking hate all of that. All those boxes. And especially that last one.

It's the last one that says the most about Ohio. It's the one that explains why Ohioans say "Huh?" so much.

"Huh?" I didn't get it.

Ohio#1
Ohio is the place of the Cincinnati Reds, the Cleveland Indians, and the Cincinnati Bengals. In Ohio we love our football, basketball, and baseball. Ohio is the home of P&G products. Cincinnati is the home of General Electric.

General Electric is but one of the many industrial companies that makes Cincinnati a marketable economic power spot. Cincinnati is a metropolis, just like Columbus and several other Ohio cities.

It's always hot, sticky, and cloudy in July along the muddy Ohio. Unlike Columbus, whose river gently cools the downtown streets, the mighty Ohio applies its charm across the region in sweat that drops but does not cool those it kisses.

Ohio is home of a diverse climate. Some regions are hot, others cool. Some so hot that people's faces precipitate with the perspirations of sweat.

The winters in Ohio can be very harsh. I remember back in 1977, it seemed that we had two feet of snow or more. If you come to Ohio just make sure you have winter gear. If you don't, you will be in for a rude awakening of frosty freeze. We eat ice cream in the winter-time in Ohio.

We eat Skyline all year long too. Depending on how you look at it, there's no particularly good or bad time to eat a chilli cheese Coney with mustard and onions.

Ohio #3
Ohio is never as simple as it sounds. Look at it there - Ohio - simple as grass. But when you start to listen, it turns in your ear. The river expands inside it and makes everything dark, as after a flood.

There was a flood, you know, in Cincinnati in the 30s and a smaller one in the late 90s that still landed a Cincinnati suburb on CNN and a flood kitty in my mom's house. I watched from NC which, with its hurricanes and days-long deluges, is nothing, or not a whole lot, like Ohio.

Just like Ohio...Round on the outside and high in the middle. Ohio meaning "Hello" in Japanese and some forgotten phrase in the forgotten language of a forgotten race who once knew this place only as "Home."

Ohio, the heart of it all. Where red and blue clash every four years and the scarlet and grey play marching fighting songs.

It all starts at the Findlay Market Parade. Opening day is a big event. You should come out sometime to opening day. There is no certain dress attire. Just come out and have fun. It's opening day with the Cincinnati Reds. You have to love those Reds. They were the world champs in 1990 from start to finish.

People talk about the big red machine. I don't know what that is. Or was. And I couldn't tell you what a met is, exactly, I just know that it has meat in it and they sell it at the ball games.

But it's not as good as what they serve at Izzy's. But then, nothing is.

Dialogue on Dialogue

2006-07-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

When I think about dialogue these days, I’m usually deciding how economical I want a scene to be. I want to give my readers a chance to hear my characters speak and to know their voices, but I don’t want to go so far as to flatten out the scene. The more fat I can cut away, the more potently the exchanges between characters will translate. That often means losing filler words like okay and alright and well, and I don’t know how many I don’t know’s. By the same token, though, I’m making an effort to push scenes through to their natural ends. I’ve been guilty in the past of mistaking my discomfort for the discomfort of my characters. That is, my investment in the moment becomes too great to discern the larger needs of the story, and I allow my characters to escape confrontation. Here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: the psychology of avoidance and denial is only as interesting as the psychology of avoidance and denial – collisions and connections between “real” people are what bring us back to stories again and again. The best bit of philosophical advice I can offer you about dialogue is to be brave, both about cutting and extending scenes.
“But what about some practical advice?” you say. “What about the nuts and the bolts?”
“I have some thoughts about that too,” I say. “Jesus. Get off my back already. As you can see, I don’t go in for complicated dialogue tags. I stick with say and leave it at that.”
“Do most writers make that choice?” you say.
“Yes,” I say. “I’d say so. It’s a matter of trusting the reader to correctly interpret the tone of the exchanges between characters.”
“What about quotation marks? Does everybody use them?”
“Not everybody. But I’d say that most folks do. It’s just a good way of keeping things clear.”
“What else have you got? Be brave, don’t use fancy tags. Is that it?”
“I’d also say that it’s a good idea not to use dialogue for exposition.”
“Care to explain?”
“Don’t use dialogue to deliver lots of information. It looks and feels funny. If I asked you how you were, you wouldn’t respond by telling me that you’ve been okay but it just hasn’t been the same since that back surgery in ’82 and even though when you became the town mayor and married my cousin Suzy you started feeling better about the world, you still have some pretty hefty misgivings. In others words, when writers cram background information into dialogue, readers sense the machinery at work. It isn’t real.”
“Okay, okay,” you say. “But how do I know when to summarize a scene and when to use dialogue.”
“That’s a good one,” I say. “I’d say when the dialogue can offer your readers more, when the way the characters talk can show them something about who they are. Or, when the scene is really important. People don’t want to hear that the big argument happened. They want to see it. They want to be there too.”
“I’d rather be anyplace than right here,” you say. “So I can relate to that.”
“Those sound like fighting words,” I say.
“They are,” you say. “They are fighting words. What are you going to do about it?”

Let’s Have Us A Fight
The exercise for this evening will be to stage a fight. A war of words, so to speak. Render this fight as completely in dialogue as you can, using only a few words here or there outside of the quotation marks. Just to make things a little more needlessly complicated, we’ll generate a few key words and expressions to work into our scenes. Include as many characters as you like, but two will probably do.

Where The Heart Is

2006-07-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

“The truth is, fiction depends for its life on place. Location is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of ‘What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?’ – and that is the heart's field.”
- Eudora Welty, “Place in Fiction,” Collected Essays, New York, 1994.

It seems like all we writers ever talk about is character. Character, character, character. As though there’s nothing more to stories than the people who occupy them. But characters have to have places to be, right? In fact, in order to be, they must be somewhere, unless (of course) they’re disembodied voices. Even if we don’t invest a great deal of attention to place as storytellers, there always is place in our stories. It’s inevitable. And it’s more important than folks might think. As Eudora Welty phrases it, “fiction depends for its life on place.” Without place, there is no story, and without the story, there is no storyteller. Our lives too depend on place.

When conversations about place happen, they’re often about regional classifications. Writers who write with a strong sense of place in their stories are often categorized by that place. Their work is often said to be in some sense about place, or the place is said to be a character in the story in the sense that it plays a significant role. Many people read regional writing in order to get a sense of that place – this places a good deal of responsibility on the writers. They have the power to determine the character of their homes in the minds of all their readers.

You’ve heard of that wily band of Southern writers and you know how those East Coast writers can be. Sometimes you hear about Midwestern writers and sometimes the talk telescopes in on a particular Midwestern city like Chicago. In the work of Stuart Dybek, for example, we find Chicago rendered in intricate detail. But have you ever heard anything about those Cincinnati, Ohio writers? Who are they? What are they doing? Let’s find out.

Who is Cincinnati?
Rather than beginning with an idea of character, we’re going to begin today with an idea of place. We all live in or around the same place and yet I’d wager that none of us see it in quite the same way. Just as our ways of seeing and experiencing are informed by our distinct senses of place, so will our characters be informed by the world surrounding them. Our rendering of our place and the people who occupy it will determine Cincinnati’s character in the minds of our readers. Think about it. You have the power to make Cincinnati who it is. You might begin by considering the ways in which Cincinnati has made you who you are. Begin with a specific location. Describe it. What details make that place who it is? Write a paragraph in which your sense of who Cincinnati is, is evoked.

Guys & Dolls

2006-06-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

When we talk about character description, we aren’t simply talking about what our characters look like. After all, the color of their hair isn’t often terribly important to our understanding of who they are, unless of course it defines or describes their experiences in the world somehow. An albino’s corn-silk sheen might be meaningful beyond the color itself, for example, and even a bald head can mean a certain attitude about age. But a straight list of physical details (eye color, hairstyle, figure) doesn’t really give us much in that regard. It may lead our readers to the water, but we’ve still got to coax them to drink, to believe that the water is real.

When we talk about character details, we’re talking about the details that give our readers (and perhaps even ourselves) a sense of who characters are in the world of the story. For that reason, physical details should do more than just fill in the blanks. Think of it this way: a story can conjure a vivid and effective sense of characters without ever once mentioning their physical appearances. If readers’ imaginations are actively engaged in the story, they will supply those details themselves, using their own lives and stories as templates. Some readers may even chose to supplant the physical details you’ve supplied with their own, if theirs prove more useful to their believing and imagining. It all boils down to a matter of trust and/or control. How much control do you wish to have over your readers’ imagining and how much do you trust them to see what you’re hoping they’ll see? A bit of advice: give your readers the benefit of the doubt and give them character details that do more than describe physical appearance. Let those details do two jobs at once.

So, here’s our girl. She’s a vintage cut-out doll. Let’s put a new dress on her and let’s make it one that means. It’s our job to bring Edith to life. I’ve given her a name. Now let’s give her a life. And finally, let’s generate some physical details that express that life most accurately. Write an introduction to Edith that would fall early in a story, establishing who she is for our imagined readers.

Return To This Place

2006-06-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

A blog-world reminder that our next Salon meeting is this Thursday (the 15th). All manner of exciting and informative and hilarious discussion will take place. Writers of all levels, backgrounds, and areas of expertise are welcome. And all signs point to an important Cincinnati literary event to remember.

Framed

2006-05-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Framed

One of the oldest forms of the story is the frame story, which makes sense given the story’s roots in oral tradition. Often the frame of the story involves the act of telling of a story. The teller narrates a story to a fictional audience, whether actual or implied. Eventually, the larger frame seems to fall away and the true story becomes the story that is told within the frame story, the story within the story.

In the best frame stories, we are always aware of the frame, though we may not focus on it. In the worst frame stories, the frame is a clunky device that merely bookends a story.

The telling of the story (or the frame) need not have primary or equal interest but it should certainly have an impact on the shape and character of the story within. The frame can determine the bent with which the story within is told, it can provide an occasion for the story within, it can even give the audience a glimpse of the world beyond the story within.

In establishing a good frame, we have to think about how we want the story within to be told; we have to think about audience. For our craftshop exercise today, I’m going to provide you with some criteria which should help you to establish a sound frame.

Here goes: Your storyteller is a character in the story within the story. Though not the most important character, she does have a story to tell. As a teenager, she knew a man who was later to become a highly respected and well known public figure. At one time, though, he was an ordinary high school student. They weren’t friends. They shared an evening together, both of them stranded (awkwardly) at a party in the woods gone haywire. There were others there and he wouldn’t have noticed her there, but she saw him do something extraordinary. Something that would make the story worth telling now, especially in light of who he has become. And perhaps also in light of who it is that she has become.

Your task is to find a way to let this character tell her story. Give her an audience within the story. Give her a voice. Ease us into the story within a story.

Sweet Emotion

2006-05-15T08:50:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Insides and Outsides: Telling A Good Joke

We’ve all heard the advice that showing is a better choice than telling, but if we always show what a character is feeling, our stories will likely collapse under the weight of a thousand meaningful hand and facial gestures. In other words, sometimes it’s necessary simply to say, he was mad, especially if showing him pocketing his hands or biting his lip until it bleeds disrupts the timing or rhythm or efficiency of the storytelling. Imagine a world in which characters can never say what they feel, but instead must find ways of otherwise revealing themselves. How cumbersome and how comical.

(A few provisos and sidebars: Of course, he was mad, can be written more interestingly. Word choice alone often seals the deal, brings the reader in like showing can. And of course some telling is always a terrible tire. Inflated dialogue tags, for example, or telling that is appended to showing, which is a sign that the writer does not trust the reader to make the proper assessment.)

How do we know when to say he was mad and when to send him stomping down some lonely corridor? Many writers will tell you that it’s a matter of instinct. We learn how to tell a good story when we’re children and we learn it by listening to the stories of others. We carry those same lessons with us as adult readers. We can remind ourselves of what good storytelling is by looking to what children want from a good story. According to Margaret Atwood, in “Reading Blind” children want these things: “They want their attention held … They want to feel they are in safe hands, that they can trust the teller … They will not put up with your lassitude or boredom: If you want their full attention, you must give them yours.”

Atwood also likens timing in stories to the logic of joke telling: “If we guess the riddle at once, or if we can’t guess it because the answer makes no sense – if we see the joke coming, or if the point is lost because the teller gets it muddled – there is failure. Stories can fail in the same way.”

Bringing it all together: If the writer’s desire to demonstrate/show what the character is feeling inside overwhelms the reader’s basic investment in the story by losing her attention, by betraying her trust, by seeming to lack urgency, or by muddling the story, the story will fail.

Let’s work on this by telling some really bad jokes and turning them into good ones. You’ve all probably got one joke, an old standby you’ve told a dozen times. First try inflating it to the extreme, omitting nothing and showing as much as possible. Next try paring it back. Keep some of your showing, but only enough to perfect the timing of the joke.

Time After Time

2006-05-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Time Management

When we talk about back-story in storytelling, we’re often talking about the revelation of information and it’s sometimes a tricky chemistry. The introduction of other stories to the larger story can create an evocative sense of depth or even a sense of verisimilitude. And when you think about it, it’s hard to imagine a story that only moves directly forward in time. Even if a story does not invest a substantial formal movement to back-story, it may often recall moments (here and there) in a character’s life that work to explain things like motivation. When we understand why a character behaves the way he or she behaves, we’re more likely to believe and to invest; we’re more likely to allow ourselves to be moved. Back-story is a tool with great power, but if we’re not careful how we reveal information, we risk disrupting our readers. They can feel manipulated, or betrayed, or they might just sense the machinery behind the story and lose faith in it.

There is (of course) no one right way to reveal information, but there are some less than respectful ways that tend to irritate the hell out of readers. Token irritating revelation: “And then she realized she’d been dreaming.” Token infuriating revelation: “And then she realized she was dead.”

Here’s a smattering of good advice I’ve heard over the years: By revealing necessary information too late, we up-end the reader’s investment in the story. A good reveal is one that feels earned and organic, not theatrical. Real suspense is not created by withholding. Always connect. A good narrator is one who wants to tell you everything. A good hint is undetectable. It falls out like any other bit of information. The pleasure the reader derives from piecing things together will be greater if the piecing isn’t the focus of the narrative’s energy, but a consequence of it. The reader must always know where the story is. Always set the scene first – don’t ask your readers to re-imagine it later. Don’t make the story explain the difficulties away – break the bone to re-set it if you have to. If the story hinges on a central revelation, reveal without a hint of smarminess. Nobody really likes to know the writer is there behind the writing. There are unreliable narrators and there are unreliable narrators.

Many stories devote large formal movements to shifts in time. Here’s some advice I’ve heard about that: Set and maintain a pattern. Hang the back-story on a strong enough line. Reliance on juxtaposition alone for the activity of meaning-making between segments or sections creates exhaustion rather than interest. Again, always connect. Formal shifts can be denoted in many fashions ( * * * or white space or italics or chapter breaks, for example). Size is often an issue when deciding between them, but also taste.

Here’s my big craft-shop idea for the night. I’m going to give you some back-story on a character. You find a savvy way of revealing it in your own little story:

Once, when George was a child, he confused his father’s lessons. During a fire he was to evacuate with everyone else to the yard. During a storm he was to take cover beneath the large wooden table in the basement. But while everyone else stood in the yard and watched the house burn, he sat beneath the table and wondered at the smell. He was unharmed, but shamed greatly. His father trusted him to do nothing alone thereafter.

Retro

2006-04-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Retrospective Narrative

The last time we met, the proposal was made that we work somehow with the idea of tense. This seemed fairly straightforward to me at first. Folks often argue, for example, that the use of present tense enhances the immediacy of the prose. But about an even number of folks also argue that using verb tense to invoke immediacy is overused and out of style. I guess what I’m getting at is that the matter of verb tense often comes down to a matter of taste.

We can see in our own telling of stories how tense shifts things tonally. When I want everybody on the edge of his or her seat as I’m telling my latest pool-hall fight story, I’ll shift into the present tense. As in, “There wasn’t a ball left on the table that was mine. And I’m telling her, ‘There’s no way I’m paying that cleaning bill.’ And she’s all, ‘You are too,’ and I’m all ‘I am not,’ and then we’re rolling around in the peanut shells on the bar floor.” Because I want you in the moment, I make that shift in tense, probably without even thinking about it.

A longer work rendered in present tense can present some interesting problems. One of them, fatigue. Most writers will tell you that they sometimes ease into the progressive verb forms, but that they don’t shoot for the present tense marathon. Again, it’s a matter of taste.

I thought we might also look at a kind of time in stories that is often overlooked: the distance between the narrative present of the story and the point in time at which the story is being narrated. The relative thickness of the retrospective narrative can have a distinct effect on the meaning that is made of the events of the story. If the narrator is a child during the narrative present of the events of the plot, your choice of distance from those events is a significant one. The further away you get, the more time the narrator has had to process what has happened. He or she may be an entirely different person now. There is no need in a narration like that for the character to speak like or as a child. It’s almost as if two consciousnesses occupy the same voice. A young one and an old one. Let’s see how this works.

Rewrite the following passage from the distance of your choice. Perhaps your narrator (she’s twelve years old, by the way) is telling this story the day after she experiences the events of the plot, maybe we’re right there in the moment with her, or maybe she’s twenty years older. Your choice of distance will effect the metaphors you use, as well as other choices you make in terms of language.

Fire required privacy, a place where no one could see you. It was no trouble finding such a place, the closet, and no trouble at all finding a candle and a book of matches. The trouble was that the fire moved so quickly beyond my control. It was my father’s Sunday coat that caught. I tried to stop it with my hands. There wasn’t any help and I was scared. I went into my head, stood there like my bones were fused together. The fire came from the inside of the walls and went down the outside of them. I watched it move, watched it lift things. From the open trunk of old clothes, bundles of scraps emerged in flame and fell. The bed went up in a big raft of light. The drapes seemed to collapse straight to ash. And then it stopped. As simply as it started, it stopped.

Perspectives on Perspective

2006-03-31T10:19:00.000-08:00

For those of you who missed last night's session, or for those of you who wish to re-live it in the privacy of your own home, here's the exercise in perspective we craft-shopped. The idea is to re-write the (admittedly kind of silly) selection from a different narrative perspective. The only restriction is that you adhere to the scenario established. The effect of the shift in point-of-view is often more dramatic than you may expect and the material you generate may very well prove useful to you in your own work.

Third Person Limited, Close

Martin went into the bank with purpose. Get in and get out. That was his aim. He needed to make a deposit, check his account balance, and then maybe inquire after the young blonde who usually worked the drive-up window. He was curious to know where she'd been, that was all. It wasn't important. He'd simply grown used to her presence and wondered after her. It would be a casual thing, his asking. He picked an old woman teller because they were easier to approach about these things and just as he was pocketing his receipts and she was thanking him for his business, he asked. The woman frowned. "Do you really want to know?" she said. Martin was really very busy. He'’d only allotted a minute or two in his day for this portion of the transaction and yet he found himself leaning conspiratorially into the marbled ledge of the teller window. "Yes," he said. "Of course I do. What'’s happened?" There was a flutter in the woman's face that suggested tragedy to him. He saw the young woman's body flung up and over a speeding car, he saw her mugged in the bank'’s parking lot and thrown limp into a dumpster. She had a boyfriend, he knew it, a lout. She should have left him long ago, but she was in love and it had been then end of her. If he'd met her sooner, he felt, Martin could have helped her. With the power of his love, he could have redeemed her of anything. Even heroin, maybe. At least smoking. "You're sure you want to know?" said the old woman, her hand dandying a bank pen on a metal string. "Yes," said Martin. He steadied the swing of the pen to demonstrate his seriousness. "She's out to lunch, you pervert," said the woman.

2006-03-28T12:50:00.000-08:00

So it's Tuesday and I totally blew the deadline I set for myself to post these by midnight Monday. I should have known better than to set myself up. But then the guilt got to me, so I guess it worked after all, just a day later than I said it would.

Here are the answers to the questionnaire. I thought they were more powerful lumped together and anonymous. Thanks to everyone who contributed your thoughts -- I'm looking forward to seeing you all again Thursday.

Best,
Stephanie

---

What is the gift you are offering this workshop today?

My vulnerability
My thanks, commitment, and fearlessness
Me. Um…I want to try to be engaging and compassionate, mostly.
The experience of a black male trying to make a difference by expressing his thoughts and teaching through example
Pizza and my presence
I am not sure yet
Time listening, helps
Networking from the ground up
Writing of poems, short stories, novels
My time, my thoughts, commiseration, encouragement

What do you hope to take away from this workshop today?

Energy and the impetus to write more
Always kernels of truth, whether universal, for the speaker, or for me
I want to walk out a better, more motivated writer.
I would like to take the experience of as many different people as I can
Inspiration for creating and a stronger connection to the community at the InkTank Writers Salon
Hope to find someone to answer my one-page questionnaire
Help in writing
Visions of others
Open ideas to cultivate a hidden writing skill
Whatever I can – new ideas, different viewpoints, specifics about how others write/view writing

Where do you get your writing ideas?

Walking, reading, listening: overhead snippets of conversation
Mostly from combining stimuli. My emotions, people I meet, things I see
Hate to say it, but my brain is videogame/fantasy/horror saturated to the point of busting.
Dreams, the people I meet at the coffee shop, characters in my family
Personal experiences and observations
Real life stories
Life, strangers, people, God, family
At this time spiritual?
Work, home, other novels, poems, people
Everywhere -- anywhere

What stops you from writing?

I wish I knew. The inner critic telling me that everything I write is terrible – or too mean
Self loathing
Videogames. On a deeper level, fear of failure.
Having too many ideas
Fear of criticism and self-doubt
Dinner on the table
Knowing I have a lot to write, or a sad experience to come.
Feel bad, and being on the run.
Time
Lack of discipline, internal editor (that negative voice sometimes cruelly intruding)

What stops you from sharing your writing?

Fear of hurting anyone, revealing too much, not being understood
Nothing. I ask everybody.
See above. (Fear of failure)
Finding the correct forum to share it
Thinking it isn’t good enough
Not good enough
Unknown at this time
Nothing. I want to share with everyone
“It’s not ready”

How do you stop procrastinating?

Plant myself in front of the computer, give myself space
The desire has to build up. If I don’t write, it’s because I must not have anything important to say.
By writing. It’s simple. There is no trick.
Like Nike, just do it
Action without analysis
Never do…
Do exercises in writing
Think I’m lazy
Just start doing what I am supposed to do. Sometimes by self motivating or setting goals
Sit down and write. Make the time. Remember how important writing is to me.

What do you hope to get from a critique?

Detailed, useful feedback, what works and what doesn’t
Reaction to the relatability of the material/characters. A reality check.
Insight in every aspect of my writing: story, character, diction, everything.
The viewpoint of others, I tend to be a bit biased about my own work
Constructive technical corrections, alternative approaches to a piece, and support for continuing to keep writing even if the presented piece is trash
Learn
Ideas
Depends?
A direction in which I am supposed to go and stick to it.
Constructive criticism. Gentle (I hope) honest assessment

What do you fear from a critique?

Vague feedback, disinterest more than rejection, stuff like, “you write like an angel”
People saying things just to sound intelligent. Posing.
I think I fear rejection, but I don’t really. Rejection would just make me defend my writing, grow closer to my work.
I fear that the critique would not truly express what the critiquer wants to say
Indifference
I don’t
Opening up. Being exposed
Depends?
That I might not like some of the things coming out. However I know it is for my own good.
I try to be open to what’s said – and not be afraid of opinions – it’s my choice to accept or decline what’s offered

Where are your favorite places to write and why?

My study – music loud as I want, big window; bars and coffeeshops – casual outside stimuli
Kaldi’s. Cafes. I like people, noise, energy, smells, fear, emotions – life. I block it out but soak it in and feel it.
In a coffee shop, away from TVs, computers
Coffee Emporium, Cooper’s on Main, crowded places. I love people watching
My apartment – I’ve got everything set up just the way I like it/anywhere with a structured group – it’s energizing to all be writing together
In front of my computer; tools help…
Around water, bedroom, being by myself helps me to write and for my thoughts to flow
Quiet places mind wanders
My room, work, parks, beaches. I can see clearer and my mind is free. My stories come from these places.
Home at my desk/wherever I am when ideas/words/thoughts come to me

What would you like in a communal writing environment? (For instance: music or silence?)

Music – but what kind?
Music
Silence. Availability
I would like an atmosphere that is not inhibited with embarrassment and that thrives off the vitality of each member. Whether that calls for silence or music, either is fine.
Depends on my mood or what’s being written about. I’d like to try various ways: Heavy Metal music and flashing lights. Quiet or soft music with candlelight with incense, and any others.
Sometimes I will do either or.
Silence, but I can adjust
Music, if it is mind flowing. Otherwise silence for it helps me to think clearer.
Silence

Other comments:

Like churches have prayer requests, maybe we could have a writing/reading request of some sort.
No intros except for new people. It’s up to us to welcome them in.
I want to motivate. I want to be motivated.
Started writing Nov. 2005
I am intrigued by the talent that is here at InkTank and I am enjoying the flow of energy that is here.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to be in community with other writers.

Workshop Nuts & Bolts:

2006-03-14T21:06:00.000-08:00

It seems very likely to me that we’ll come upon our own ideas of how we’d like our workshops to proceed, but for now let’s stick to something tried and true. I’m working now from the model most sound in my experience:

We will begin each workshop by listening to the writer, who will read from his or her own work. It’s helpful to hear the text vocalized according to the writer’s intent – it gives us a sense of voice we may not otherwise have had. The writer may choose to read the entire work (if it’s pretty short) or a few pages (if it’s pretty long). And that’s the last we’ll hear of the writer during the critique of the story. It is absolutely imperative that the writer listen to the conversation from that point on without participating. This will ensure that the members of the group feel safe entering the discussion. They simply won’t if they must worry about addressing the writer – the focus should always be the story. This may be difficult for some writers. The difficulty soon subsides. Trust me.

Next, a volunteer (perhaps someone whose work will also be up that evening) will begin the critique. It’s not a bad idea to start with a positive. Then, we’ll all join in. Try to explain yourself in a way that might allow the writer to understand your experience of reading the story and understand you as an earnest person. Details will assist you in achieving this goal. Mark freely but conscientiously on manuscripts. It is frequently the case that in seeing our stories we lose sight of them. That’s why comments and notes on manuscripts are so important. But let’s please not be petty. A word of advice: read the story through at least once before commenting upon it. Remember to sign or initial your copy of the story before returning it.

Finally, at the end of the workshop, the writer will have the opportunity to ask questions. (This time should not be mistaken as an opportunity to defend or explain the story.)

The Rules of the Game:

2006-03-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

When we enter the workshop, we agree to certain conditions. The most important is that we always give as much as we get. If we expect our work to receive the group’s attention, we must be certain to give an equal share of our time to the work of others. Another important condition is that we always maintain a courteous tone. Our conversations about the stories up for workshop will be casual, but invested. We will make an effort not to silence others and not to be silent ourselves. Learning to frame commentary that extends beyond mere matters of taste (as in liking one character or another, or being fond of a particular turn of phrase) in a way that reaches the writer as supportive criticism, rather than negative criticism, will always be a challenge. The struggle to do so will make a better writer and a better reader out of you. Of that much, I can promise you. Let’s agree now to these conditions. If we don’t, there will be trouble.

A Few Opening Remarks:

2006-03-14T20:57:00.000-08:00

That we are writers is a given. (Perhaps you don’t yet think of yourself in this way, but the fact that you are here demonstrates (at least) your affiliation for storytelling, if not also your good taste in company.) As members of the InkTank writing workshop, our aim will be to become good readers for each other. Much of our time together will be spent struggling to articulate in an honest and sensitive manner what it is that we understand to be taking place on the page. It isn’t always easy to say what you think you see. And it’s even harder to say it in a way that is lucid and helpful. But we’re all here because we’re writers, because we’re storytellers, because we have something to say. Let’s find the best way to do this. Let’s be generous of our attention and energy.

Here’s my plan: I want to say of this group that we have conversations that teach me something (large or small) about how stories work. And I want to say of your stories that they teach me something about the world, something I didn’t know before and probably wouldn’t. I’d like to know your plan. It matters that we be aware of our expectations here.

A Lot of Storytelling

2006-03-14T20:54:00.000-08:00

“The writer must persuade you that if you don’t listen, he’ll die, and if you listen, he’ll save your life, and if you don’t listen you’ll die a lot harder—there’s the exchange”
Gordon Lish

“I write out of a greed for lives and language. A need to listen to the orchestra of living.”
Barry Hannah

“The writer will go anywhere, say anything to get it said; in fact, the writer is bent on doing so. The writer is bent.”
Jayne Anne Phillips

“I think a lot of storytelling comes from ‘I want to tell you something.’ Almost all stories come from that. From the very first time you walk into a house and say, ‘I want to tell you something.’”
Grace Paley