the retractions are coming every few minutes now

okay, so I posted some snarky-butt things about the AWP conference and Zoetrope workshops on this blog, but now I'm writing to confirm that they are probably awesome. and I don't mean that in an eye rolling yeah-mom-that's-a-pretty-big-ball-of-twine kind of way. Clearly this year's AWP in Chicago was as sacred as it was profane, and I'm totally jealous of everyone who went. As for "Zoe" (people call it that, I'm not really so comfy yet), I've spent the last 36 hours obsessively reading flash drafts posted there, and it has been very exciting so far.

making bad choices

I joined flipping zoetrope. I feel sad before I have even started. Maybe it isn't as bad as I fear--

Local writing thingies, coming up

must be the season, but there are a number of small one-day events coming up. I'm paneling at this first event Feb 28, co-sponsored by GMU and American Independent Writers, and David Erlewine is paneling at the second--Conversations and Connections, April 11.

Fiction Writing Seminar Saturday, February 28, 2009
George Mason University, Johnson Center, Campus Cinema

8:00 a.m. Registration opens and continental breakfast available
8:45 a.m. Opening Remarks: William Miller, GMU and John Curry, AIW
9:00-9:15 a.m. Plenary speech-Jeffery Deaver
9:15-10:30 a.m. Literary Fiction versus Genre Fiction
Moderator John Gilstrap
Panel: Donna Andrews, Alan Cheuse, James Grady
10:45-12:00 p.m. Novelists who write Reviews and Criticism
Moderator Nandini Lal
Panel: Louis Bayard, Sudlip Bose, Art Taylor
1:00-1:30 p.m. Keynote speech--Marita Golden
1:30-2:45 p.m. New Media and Publishing Creative Writing
Moderator Reb Livingston
Panel: Mark Athitakis, Bernadette Geyer, Laura Ellen Scott
3:00-4:15 p.m. Second Novels
Moderator: TBA
Panel: Katharine Davis, Dallas Hudgens, Alex MacLennan

Registration info

Conversations and Connections, April 11 (most panelists TBA)
To be held at the Johns Hopkins University Advanced Writing Program campus in downtown Washington, DC.

8:30 Registration
9:00 Welcome
9:15 Session One
Writing Your Novel: Start to Finish
Money for Writers: Where it is and how to get it (Panel: Catherine Leila Emery, Gwydion Suilebhan, Dan Brady)
Creative Nonfiction: Where are the boundaries? Do they exist? (Panel: Kim Kupperman, Paul Maliszewski, Dustin Beall Smith, Kinda Underhill)
Craft Lecture: Sentence Power (by Ed Perlman)
10:30 Session Two
Poetry panel
The Digital Literary Landscape
Contest panel
Craft Lecture: Fighting Writer’s Block with Play and Experimental Prompts (by Matt Kirkpatrick)
12:15 Lunch and Speed Dating
2:00 Featured Speaker: Amy Hempel
3:30 Session Three
Agent panel
Flash Fiction
Voice in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry
Craft Lecture: Writing Sex Scenes (by Zachary Benivides)

Registration info

AWP-- a great place to hook up?

I'm sad I didn't go to the AWP conf. I'm glad I didn't too. I've never been, a fact made slightly awkward given that I teach fiction writing at the institution that houses AWP. By the time that AWP entered my consciousness (as event and body), I was solidly married, and even though we were hanging out with unmarried writers, there was a slow-train-leaving-the-station kinda thing pervading our social interactions, with Dean and I on the train, settling into our sleeper car, while our friends were piling into rusted Chevy Citations, chanting 'road trip! road trip!'

I guess what I'm saying is, AWP, like libertarianism, always seemed like a young man's game to me, with the conference providing an apparently wonderful opportunity to exchange powerful feeling, and my sense is that the conference produces more in the way of civil unions than artistic enrichment. Which is terrific, really. You don't want bachelor writers just out there in the population. Pair them up. Heck, triple them up.

All this is a load of BS, though. My real thing is that I dislike readings. I'm not crazy about people, either.

PS--I'm reading AWP round-ups now, and it looks like I'm full of it.

Barrlehouse 7: The Future will cost you $9, $11 w/shipping

so just as I'm being bitchy about other writers hijacking my dreams, the news of the Barrelhouse #7 is posted, which makes me HAPPY AGAIN.

Look for me in "The future" section, featuring:

Sacrament, Matt Williamson
The Ruined Child, by Blake Butler
Antiquity, by Sandra Beasley
Wish Tank, by Laura Ellen Scott
My Gun is Smart, by Flavian Mark Lupinetti
Cities of the Future, Kaethe Schwehn
Someday Soon, We Are Taking Over, by Kate Angus

But there are a TON of other awesome writers in the issue, including my Mason colleague, Wade Fletcher. Can't wait to get my grubby hands on a copy.

way to kick me in the pancreas, wigleaf

This is a fine story by Kuzhali Manickavel.

Forget that I'm trying to do a bunch of things just like it, as I am flirting with writing several "pocket guides" along the lines of the story I have in Hobart, and the draft of a guide to Poland and the Ukraine that I posted to fictionaut. I will.

congrats KM. This is as graceful as I get. actually that's not true, i get sweeter as my memory fades.

Stranger behind the cabin with a gun

So yesterday I made jokes about being alone in the woods in WV, ready for some Midnight Picnic action. As my husband and I are fond of saying, “nothing’s funny.” This morning I went up to enjoy the view from the 2nd floor window only to discover a man standing super still about 20+ yards away, facing the back of the cabin, smoking. He shifted a few steps to the side, and that’s when I noticed he was carrying a long gun pointed to the ground (I don’t know the diff between a shotgun and rifle). This is one of the few occasions when the addition of a gun makes me feel better; dude was a hunter/poacher and not some spooky creep.

The dogs, by the way, were oblivious to the trespasser. I went down stairs and planted myself in front of the glass doors, but the guy still didn’t see me, intent as he was on surveying the sloping, wooded strip of land between this cabin and the next. Finally, I took drastic measures. I cranked up the XM radio (Roxy Music’s “More Than This”) and opened the porch slider very noisily. Plus I coughed like you do when you’re embarrassed for someone else. That got his attention, and he carefully made his retreat, picking his way over the rocks and disappearing back down the steep mountainside. Good thing too, because my next volley would have been brutal. I was going to yell, “Hey, you look scary out there! Go away now.”

poss. final words

I am on a mountaintop in WV, in the woods alone with my dogs, no transportation, no TV/Radio/Cell reception, occupying a friend's cabin because our pipes burst. Also, this little 'puter just died hard three times. So instead of saving my files or calling for help, I think I'll post on my blog. Smart, huh? I might as well be in a SciFi Original Movie.

I have the new Joe R. Lansdale novel, though. And the will to live. See you soon?

American Independent Writers: Fiction Writing Seminar

I'm not going to AWP this year, but on Feb 28 I'll be on a panel for an AIW fiction writing seminar to be hosted here at Mason. The panel I'm on is "New Media and Publishing Creative Writing," and it will be moderated by the awesome Reb Livingston

other panel topics:

Literary Fiction versus Genre Fiction
Novelists who write Reviews and Criticism
Second Novels

This looks like a very cool event I just stumbled into, despite the fact that the links to AIW and the seminar have just gone kaplooey. Indie writers suck.

update: the links are fixed, for the time being. Here's the main site, and here's the seminar info

self doubt is hot

I'm suffering a bit of submission fatigue that I blame on how hard it was to get "Render, or to transmit to another" and "Do you know what it means to miss" accepted. These were both pieces that I was excited about and that Dean kept calling my best, but that editors rejected with little more than "not for us" comments. Getting the last piece in Juked felt like punctuation for the time being, and now I'm wondering if I shouldn't leave the discrete shorties alone to focus on more substantial projects. I have the novel to finish--I may be in the last 50-75 pages, plus I've been encouraged to try to do more with the 'Laura's pocket guide' concept.

I do not have the blues, but my attention is wandering. Enjoy this pic of Przemyśl.

required reading

I'm showing the wigleaf top 50 to my juniors to start the semester off. This is my 2nd time doing this. My students are enthusiastic about the form and technique on display, but they are not all on board with content, which is to be expected. They want The Funny. They want surrealism in heavier doses. They want Happy Sex if there's gonna be any sex at all.

But there was a lone voice complaining that the pieces were too literary, and that art was more important than honesty in the collection. I'm convinced the student was reacting to unfamiliar uses of compression and voice performance, or maybe the student resists lyric fiction in general, but we'll see. After class, I was delighted to discover Piers Marchant's "Deserve" just posted at WL. Piers' story is an example of a brief fiction that is rich, detailed, and unhurried. The entire arc is present, and the narrative unfolds with the measure and tension we come to expect from a longer, more conventional story. But more interestingly to me, Piers' story does what it does elegantly, without use of magicians or nostalgia for adolescence. It does feature the Sad Sex though.

How to be interesting.

abandon scholarship and creativity. Buy toys.

In other news, one of my stories has disappeared owing to the fact that Fiction Warehouse seems to have vaporized at last. "Name your next cat after a forgotten musician or a famous general" was precious and narcissistic, but the title was cool (Dean's title actually), and it did make it to the Story South notables list in 2004, even though it was too short to be eligible. It turns out I no longer have a copy of the story-that's how much faith I have in the web-so I pieced together a version out of rejection notices from Pindeldyboz and Smokelong. That's right, I save rejections, toss stories.

I'm Juked!!!

I'm in Juked with "Do you know what it means to miss"--this story comes from my New Orleans novel, and the timing is great since we are entering Mardi Gras season.

J. W. Wang at Juked is wonderfully kind, by the way.

What do Prez Obama and Tara Laskowski have in common?

They both had a good day.

Colors

I went to work today, thinking it was one of those "no classes, but university offices will be open" kind of crappy compromises, only to find the department all locked up. Whee! Back home in my pjs and slippers toot sweet, chiweenie writing partner at my side.

2/3 of the household went to the inauguration concert yesterday, returning battered, bemused (owing to the Garth brooks factor), and giddy. Everyone is still in high spirits today, except possibly the neighbor up the street is flying the Confederate Battle flag version of the Georgia State flag. We have our MLK poster on the door, and we're flying one of two flags we own: a rainbow striped banner that reads "PACE" (friend brought it back from Italy. Given the Rick Warren factor, we figure this covers a lot of bases. Dean might go out and get a US flag today, just because we're feeling it. Our other flag was also a gift, but apparently the colors are pro-bondage or something. Dean uses that as a curtain in his office.

excitements, distractions

While I was gone I got word from Barrelhouse just who all was going to be in the next issue with me, the 'future' issue, and it's a great list but I don't think I can spill it. I guess it isn't strictly private information, but at the same time the news isn't mine to deliver. They do promise that the issue will be produced at the end of the month. so in the mean time I give you Newton and the incredibly creepy Mr. Punkinhead. Mr. P lost his squeaker some time ago, so now he just sort of pants when Newtie gnaws on him. Worse though: sometimes Mr. Punkinhead lands standing up.

state of the union

It has been a harrowing week of workplace calamities/heroics and domestic terror. Judging by my facebook friends' miserable status updates, it has been rough for a lot of folks. One lesson I have learned:

HOW TO FIX A COMPUTER

1. Take it away from the person who pronounced it broken and berated you for not having a recent back-up of your novel draft.

2. Re-start.

read in annoying sing-song voice

erlewine has a blo-og.
bet he's afraid of it.

tan and fat

So this was our desperation in Nassau--a freaking Starbucks, just to get net access. we're so sad.

Back home as of yesterday, great trip, crummy email backlog, including a gloomy message from Richard Peabody of Paycock Press--Gravity Dancers: More Fiction from Washington Area Women is still a 'go', but it's the 2nd to last project he has in the pipeline, given the state of the economy. We're looking at May/June, with a possible launch at Politics & Prose. Frankly, this is better news (for me, since I have a story in GD) than I expected, given the ambitious nature of the anthology series.

Peabody's depression contrasts sharply with that of Barry Graham's enthusiasm from a recent interview .

Recessions suck, but it does seem like there are opportunities for small, very flexible enterprises that aren't available in better times.

forgot how I want to end it

happy new year! I did some writing on the New Orleans novel yesterday, only to discover that I have forgotten how I wanted to end it. My notes are no help either. We're off to the Bahamas this weekend, and I'm taking along Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn and possibly Benjamin Black's Christine Falls (if i can find it--misplaced upon purchase. probably packed away with the christmas junk). Maybe I can steal some ideas from one of those books. It'll be a nice confusion, writing about New Orleans in the Bahamas while reading stories set in Scotland and Ireland.