March 1-5 Everyday Genius line-up

Monday through Friday at Everyday Genius

Monday

I watched Thomas Pynchon lather himself with cologne samples from magazine ads

from Ravi Mangla’s “Visiting Writers”

Tuesday

Attention now count the damns/ Of remonstration the damn

from David Kaufmann’s “You’ll Poke Your Eye Out”

Wednesday

She developed a dappled scarlet rash and used it as a passport

from Kathryn Scanlan’s “Victorian Wedding Portrait”

Thursday

a book you will never write can only be read by people fluent in the English language

from Jimmy Chen’s “Potential Prologue”

Friday

I thought about stalking her children. Finding her daughter and learning of her dreams

from Barry Graham’s “13 Ways of Looking at a Road Trip”

Get out of that slushpile, what are you crazy?!?!?

Sure, these tips are gold, but they don't cover everything.

I give you

My 21 tips (apologies if I stole any)

1. Have you considered writing a sex scene or giving your protagonist large breasts?
2. Try adding Literary Ambiguity to your short story. If you are successful, your reader will always come away from your fiction with the ability to compare it to a film they once rented.
3. If your plot is too exciting or moving too fast, enhance realism by making your characters stop for a meal at an ethnic restaurant. Describe each course and allow your characters to re-cap the plot so far.
4. A well built character is one who refuses to change, regardless of the trauma he or she endures. Think: Rifleman or Mannix.
5. Do not write a single word unless you know how your story will end. You are the dungeon master.
6. Apply Epiphany directly to the forehead.
7. Trust your workshop peers. They aren’t in competition with you or anything, nor are they attempting to hijack your story to make it their own. Use all of their advice. Also, keep work-shopping a recalcitrant story for years.
8. Rashomon an insignificant event.
9. Heighten the emotional impact by making sure a kitten/puppy/baby is injured or killed by a Very Bad Person.
10. Leave it open-ended as to whether your point of view character is Insane.
11. Perhaps your story could use an erotic dimension involving a character with a very large penis.
12. Writing successful fiction is all about reinforcing separation between the classes: Definitely think in terms of Main Plot and Subplots. Organization is the key.
13. Write what you know, especially you white people out there.
14. Very Bad People are inherently interesting.
15. Last line=punch line. Seal that sucker off. Lock that story down.
16. Subtext means writing in code. Readers love to work hard at detecting what you really meant to say.
17. Italics, italics, italics. Especially for flashbacks.
18. Depression hurts everyone, so a story that is completely non-stop depressing—say a faithful chronicle of a terminal patient’s decline and death—is emotionally successful.
19. Children lead interesting lives and make wonderful point of view characters, mainly because they don’t know anything!
20. Make sure your readers know if your characters aren’t white.
21. Try writing a story from the point of view of an impossible object, like Dick Cheney’s hospital gown.

There is probably a better way, right?

How the reading went

Coming off the high of participating in the Cheryl's Gone reading series last Thursday at DC's Big Bear Cafe, I got a great start on three new stories this weekend. Thanks to Wade Fletcher and Joe Hall for inviting me, and special thanks to Adam, Mike, Tara, Emily, and Art for coming out. The place was packed, and I ready two pubbed pieces ("Dusty Bastards" and "Do you know what it means to miss") along with two in progress pieces from the ghost-y vsf collection I'm putting together. Very positive response to the the collection concept, which has got me juiced.

The Cafe is lovely, serving excellent hot chocolate which took the edge off of having to scale mini glaciers to get there.

I read with poets James Belflower, who runs the Potlach Poetry exchange project, and Maureen Thorson of the In Your Ear reading series. Maureen was a riot, and James (who traveled from Albany) is an amazing fit in the DC Poetry scene. His book is Commuter, from Instance Press.

Retort Magazine

Brentley Frazer is a Fictionaut chum, and he's republished my story "Rot" at Retort Magazine, which I never really explored before even though it's been around since 2001.

But I gotta tell you this thing is a toy box of lit and art. Very few of the usual suspects here, I imagine owing to the fact that it's an Australian operation. Go there now.


"Rot" has had a fine run, and anyone reading my blog has probably already encountered it. It originally ran in Identity Theory, also a fine venue when you can get a reply.

Everyday Genius for March: My 23

RDMLSEEIAKCOLEYPMDUGVILCSENTRSMGDYRISXRELKBLGSN
CRJLMATDMEANOLINHASRRTVFEMGNDGRBREOEEWYSWKEDIAV
GUHIATACWROHSMHKVAAAACTCMDEMRFIYRICERMNNEEINANN
NGTJYHELRCHLOSOBREALRUERBORINNEAIWTAAEAKEICKITT
WLEANINWOIAAIRNGRAAVYMWEGIENRADEMANHAEGPAHHKRAL
KNRWAIMONLOGEAJAZAEILRROSAYEIMLTA

Not Catholic

I'm reading some fiction for the "Cheryl's Gone" series this Thursday at the Big Bear Cafe in DC. I'll be reading with poets Maureen Thorson and James Bellflower.(Some guilt about this, as I was asked back in October, but for various health and weather reasons I have yet to attend any of the other Cheryl's Gone events.)

Brentley Frazer has suggested reprinting my short little "Rot" in Retort, which is lovely.

Got an acceptance from a journal that I forgot about. Feel weird.

Going back to the WORKPLACE today, after having been snowed in (out?) for the past week. My guilt there is that the week of inactivity is probably not going to make a big difference in what I do and when I get it done.

Progress and a Blind Item

So my selections for the March "edition" of Everyday Genius are just about complete, and I'm especially excited by the fresh work--that is, the stuff people have offered me from brand new projects. There's going to be a lot of funny and/or brain-folding prose and a little poetry, punctuated by a few moments of loss and despair.

I'm really happy that everyone I asked to contribute coughed something up, or tried to--that is, everyone except

BLIND ITEM

--This writer who wrote the TWO best flashes of 2009.
--Both flashes appeared at premier venues that have rejected you multiple times (once on Christmas day!)
--This writer loves EG, appreciates being asked, but must decline. Because those two flashes were the only ones this writer has produced.

There's only one word for this: CRIPES-OH-JEEZ-YER-KILLING-ME

Adventures in editing

I'm in the process of making my selections for Everyday Genius--I'm the guest editor for March, and I've probably got around 1/2 of my picks. Keep 'em coming folks, but sooner than later--I want to be able to spend time on the arrangement before I hand over the files to Adam Robinson.


I haven't done this kind of thing before (well, we all experimented in college, right?), so I wanted to take a mo to make note of a few unexpected surprises.

1) my normally slacker friends, in their paranoia, are giving me super-awesome stuff.

2) I don't really "get" some of the submissions. And I'm not talking about understanding what they mean. I'm saying I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about them.

not so unexpected surprises:

1) My tastes in poetry are obscenely narrow

2) lotta snow imagery. Hey you guys, please ease up on the snow. I'm genuinely concerned about turning off readers who, by March, will have no more tolerance for or sense of humor about effing snow.

Warmest Congratulations and Thanks

Congratulations to all those marvelous writers whose writing was selected for Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2010 production! And another congratulations to editors Kathy Fish and Matt Bell for being who they are. As far as I can tell from the chatter, the selections are magnificent. (Is there a master list yet?)

My sincere thanks to Adam Robinson and Cooper Renner for nominating my work (mind still blown by that)--the stories didn't make the cut for the anthology, but I'm still high from the recognition.

2009 was a sweet year for our kinda fiction, and I continue to be moved by the generosity of spirit that pervades the scene.

I-viewed by Erlewine at the JMWW blog

Thank you David Erlewine and Jen Michalski for letting me go on like I do. Wow, am I needy. And DE is an excellent enabler.

Everyday Genius! I'm the March editor

I am blown away by the fact that Adam Robinson is going to let me select everyday genii for the March 2010 issue of Everyday Genius! Seriously, I'm over-excited.

You know my tastes in fiction--I like the weird common and the common weird, well under 500 words, but I'm a sucker for anything with a killer first line. As for poetry, I'm a fan of the DC poetry scene and Language poets in general, and not really into straight narrative poetry. I like poetry that forges new paths in my brain. But you never know.

Official guidelines here.

civilization

This is a test post coming at you from the tech resistant mountains of the WV panhandle. After several weeks of disappointing attempts to get some kind of better internet access at the cabin in Great Cacapon, we discovered that an ATT laptop connect card works pretty well for my purposes, without the installation costs/destruction.

While I played online this afternoon, Dean went out in the freezing woods to try out the metal detector he got for xmas. He found another hunting knife. He's always finding knives, which makes me wonder just how many knives are out there. We may put up our wildcam tomorrow . . .

Wigleaf: "Bog Redaction"

So very proud to have my story "Bog Redaction" at Wigleaf. It is, so far, the major story of the collection of creepy vsf that I'm working on. It's also the best thing I ever wrote.

It's an interesting thing when the bar is set and you know it.

Thank you, SG.

The Graveyard

My several times removed cousin Ned Bennett Crislip put together the 600+ page book entitled, Ancestors and Descendants of Norris and Elizabeth Bennett, published in 2001. As you can guess it is a genealogy + anecdotes about one zig-zagging branch of our family, beginning in the 1590s.

There is so much to love about this book, especially the fact that the illustrations for the first third are all photographs of tombstones and snow covered farmhouses.

Let me just flip to a page--

p. 275: Concerning John Doane, ordered to "get a pair of stocks and whipping-post made for use of the town." Further down the page it says "In 1701 and 1702, he was one of the Negative Men." I'll look up what that means later, but for now I am content to savor the possibilities.

ps--my rough understanding of "The Negative Men"--a council with the power to veto/limit the sale or gift of communal land offered by popular decision.

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 . . .

Rambling through Mississippi Review 16.1

I'm reading through the Kim Chinquee edited volume of the Mississippi Review, entirely dedicated to Flash Fiction. There are two pieces I don't get yet--Carol Novack's "Quantum Physics" and Diane Williams' "Wrigglework"--and by "don't get" I mean I don't know why they wind up the way they do, but I'll give them another go tomorrow when my head isn't swimming with the words of everyone else.

My hope is that the volume will work as a reader for the flash unit of my junior level fiction workshop. Our first class meeting is Tuesday 9am, and I have yet to write the syllabus. But the first quarter of the issue has got me a little worried--most of the stories, while brilliant, are devoted to domestic and relationship subjects, sorting out into Mom, Dad, and lovers categories. While achingly beautiful and unflinching, the set is starting to make me--a writer of surreal, glib trifles--nervous. So when I get to Greg Gerke's "I Want to Write Flash Fiction" I get pretty paranoid and take his satire personally. However, relief comes quick from the marvelous weirdness of the Grandbois bothers, Daniel and Peter. I never read their work before, but already I wanna buy their books and watch their family on Thanksgiving-cam. But it isn't until I reach the stories by Holland, Landon, and Lisicky that the organization opens up to me--here are three stories about individuals attempting to escape life . . . So part one is about families and lovers, part two transitions into weirdness, part three is existential, and--

wait. Holland, Landon, Lisicky? Well, crap. It's alphabetical. I'm an idiot. I must give up reading for purposes.

An hour later, I can now attest to the excellence and variety of this collection, as well as its appropriateness for my students. I hope they plagiarize "Mr. Cat," "Interstate," "Rodney and Chelsea," and "Save Me or I'll Kill You." That would be fun.

I can see how hard Kim worked to represent the state of the art while putting together the strongest possible issue. That said, there aren't any pieces in the "shock first-story later" punk mode. I wonder it that was that on purpose or did she not get those kinds of subs? I'm curious, because some days it seems that self-obsessed rumination on blood/sex/feces is to flash what "my wife doesn't understand me after twenty-five years" is to conventional fiction--overdone and rarely original.

the eyes have lasers in them!

My husband made a wooden mallet today. He also disassembled a remote control dinosaur. But not with the mallet.

In other places we have discussed the bullshit of “process,” but as I’m coming off a successful revision—if our mallet wielding dino dissector is credible— the how of it is very fresh in my mind, and I kinda want to nail it down.

The problem was intention. The original idea came from a scene in my WV novel where the main character is in her remote cabin, and she’s freaked out by a late night trespasser. From there I was shaping something fairly conventional—a story of transformation that to fit into my spooky vsf project. The draft, having outgrown flash, teetered into Poe-like Gothicism. On those terms it needed more rational development.

Like a mercenary I started writing the linkage, which was easy-peasy. When I write fast without breaking an emotional sweat, I always think I’m phoning it in. But very often that writing turns out to be my best. And sure enough, one day later I reread the work to discover that the craven linkage was more clear-eyed and dramatic than any of the original work.

So I threw out most of the old draft and re-built from the linkages (now free from plot servitude). I think I ended up with something much cooler than I planed for. Editors? Start your bidding now. (I always make that joke).

RIP Duke

Duke belonged to my in-laws, and he was a hunting dog, crazy for rabbits. Yesterday he had a fatal encounter with an illegal trap, but at least he never knew what hit him. I wasn't close to him, but he was a decent, simple bloke. When he was a puppy he took a HUGE dump in the middle of all the presents we were unwrapping on Christmas morning. I don't think he ever did anything else that interesting again, but he was sweet. Career beagle, 100%.

From Laura's Pocket Guide to Eastern Europe: Poland and the Ukraine

First of all, Writer's Bloc (Rutgers), with its ever-changing format and constant wit, is one of the most engaging lit venues around. I'm super pleased that my "Pocket Guide" has found a home in the latest issue alongside the work of rock stars like Jimmy Chen and Ben White.

Another Pocket Guide was published over at Hobart a long while back--to Belize City & Beyond, and for a while there I thought I'd do a collection of pocket guides, but then three things stopped me-1) they're super hard to write. 2) the EasternEuro guide enjoyed double digit rejections. 3)Kuzhali Manickavel did it better.