the day after Dzanc Workshop Day/DC

I have no idea if it went well, but we filled up the time and made people write. There were about a dozen participants, most of whom could have run the workshop themselves--I was especially pleased to meet Rae Bryant of Moon Milk Review, and poet Kate Wyer, whose living book project And, Afterward is really fascinating.

It was a gorgeous day, so of course we convened in the windowless upstairs of the Wonderland Ballroom bar. The Barrelhouse lads like bar food and bar drink, but I did not see anyone taking up the waitress on her offer of free waffles. Apparently they used to have bacon days.

Mike Ingram started things off with a discussion of point of view, I did my flash thing, and Reb wrapped up with a guided tour through "Moves through Contemporary Poetry," an essay by Elisa Gabbert & Mike Young that appeared on HTMLGIANT.

For my segment I tried to talk about how tension occurs in vsf, and I shared Katrina Denza's "Soap," Scott Garson's "Captions," Joseph Young's "10 Point" & "Lethe," and Matt Bell's "How To Watch Paint Dry." After a quick browse of the readings I had the attendees write in response to one of the following exercises, all of which I adapted from Behn & Twichell's Practice of Poetry--my rationale being that the compositional mood for writing very short fiction is more akin to that of writing poetry than it is to writing conventional fiction:

A
Write one or two complete sentences in response to each of these steps.
The “You” in these prompts is the narrator, who is part of the scene.

1. Think of a person you know, or invent a person. Describe the person’s hands.
2. Describe something he or she is doing with the hands.
3. Use a metaphor to describe an exotic place.
4. Mention what you would want to ask this person in context of numbers 2 and 3.
5. The person notices you and gives a response that indicates a misunderstanding of your question.

B
Build or dismantle, piece by piece, an object, being, or phenomena that we don’t naturally think of as being constructed.

C
1. Write a paragraph to describe an intriguing event or object—avoid using comparisons, stick with the image.
2. Do the same to describe a powerful character.
3. Combine the paragraphs into one, alternating between the object and the person. Use transitional language to make the paragraph sound right, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense. Make the flow take priority over reason. (new reason will create itself)

Dzanc National Workshop Day: March 20

I'm very excited to be helping out with the DC Dzanc event for Dzanc National Workshop Day, March 20, 2010. So far it looks like there are 25 cities involved, running lectures, workshops, etc, with the proceeds going to support all those awesome Dzanc charities and initiatives. I'll be there as "flash fiction writer Laura Ellen Scott," with Reb Livingston, Dave Housley, Mike Ingram, and Dan Brady.

Strangely enough, flash fiction writer Laura Ellen Scott's only Barrelhouse pub is a 15 pager.

More news as we get closer to the event.

Hey Danny, isn't Wonderland Ballroom close to your house? Can we have a party there? Lucy won't mind . . .

38 minutes of my life

So happy to see Reb Livingston and Dave Housley at Mason today, paneling for a session about local lit journals. They did a fine job, despite the lack of structure and a shy crowd--20+ of us in a venue that seats 100+. Well, they were shy as a crowd, but swarmed Dave and Reb after, which was kinda weird. Wonder what they wanted?

A friend said to me about Dave: "He's good looking."
A different friend said to me about Reb: "Oh wow, she publishes non-linear poems? I'm home."

Up top on the plaza, Richard Peabody was selling Gargoyle and Paycock Press publications from a table. He always recognizes me, but never knows who I am. That must bug him. Especially when I wave and smile like a nutjob.

When Dave's "Ryan Secrest is Famous" story made the top 10 of StorySouth's Million Writers list, I taught it to my class. But it was months after I connected with Dave and the Barrelhouse editorial pod (at their conference they traveled together, I assume so they could sing barbershop songs when needed), that I realized he'd written that very cool story. Similar experience with Paula Bomer--we were net friends for a while before we realized that we had been reading each other's stuff for years. Paula's great, she still reads print. She's Amish. Her specialty is Amish erotica.

So the Barrelhouse Mixtape podcast marks my first willing listen to a podcast. I'd been ignoring the announcements fairly successfully until today when Dave described what was covered, and I suddenly thought, oh hey--THIS IS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS. It's quite good, and as promised, in the style of This American Life, right down to the swallowing sounds from the host. Adam Robinson sounds exactly as I thought he would. Michael Kimball does not (I thought he'd sound more like a cartoon bear). And Mike Ingram? He just sounds troubled. Dave.

WOO HOO! Barrelhouse Future! And Storyglossia!

Barrelhouse Invitational: The Future
The "contest" ended today, and I just got word that one of the stories from my Louisiana novel made it!!! When S read a draft he commented: "What a fun way to examine the grotesque desires of humanity"

And while I'm being undignified I might as well spill it--I placed a story in a future issue of Storyglossia as well. It has been a BRILLIANT week for me.