The Workshop: micros by Adam Martson and G. Walker

Heart's Desire, by G. Walker
G was a student from forever ago, now a very dear friend and an instructor at VCU. She has no time to write, but still manages to do so with amazing emotion and precision.

These People, by Adam Marston
Adam is from my current class. He just learned he's going to be in elimae. Cooper Renner's last issue as fiction editor, I believe. Kim Chinquee takes over January 2010 and beyond.

enjoy!

2nd worst Thanksgiving

Yesterday was bad--trying to cope with a bad cold without meds or caffeine because of the ulcers they found Wednesday. I missed out on a hot meal, and I was EVIL, but my friends sent a care package--thank you! Today is better, and I'm even thinking of getting dressed.

So crummy but boring , especially compared to my WORST thanksgiving. That was when I was an adolescent, and my older sister, Leslie, was fresh out of the mental hospital. In the middle of the meal, she stood on her chair and announced that God was going to come down in a space ship to marry her. I was appalled, but took my cue from the dozen or so other relatives around the table who didn't even pause in their chewing and otherwise pleasant conversations. Except for my brother Sam, who could never ignore anything. He just said, "No he isn't." Like it was a normal argument. But that was Sam. It may sound like he took folks on their own terms, but in fact he took everyone on his terms--one was responsible for what one said, and being addled or compromised was irrelevant.

Guess that's pretty classic.

wow. narcissism

so this weekend I read Joe Young's magnificent Easter Rabbit (a review later), wrote a few creepy vsfs, then was seized by overly dramatic side effects of my cold that required a trip to Urgent Care and scared the living crap outta Dean (think allotriophagy if you're in a Cotton Mather frame of mind).

My symptoms were really easy to misinterpret, and my grasp on consciousness was not always steady, so there was a moment there of me thinking, as I dizzily tried to clean up, "Hmm. Might die. I liked the drafts I wrote this weekend. Dean could finish them easy."

The workshop

Several of the contributors to the VIPs on vsf blog are curious about how my students are responding to the posts--the blog started two months ago as a friendly educational aid, and I received many generous, thoughtful mini essays and ruminations on various topics concerning the writing of very short fiction.

As we lurch into the last month of the semester, some of my students are eager to respond with product, so if all goes well, I'll be posting a new feature called "The Workshop," wherein I'll publish some of my students' micros, along with brief notes about how they came about.

I think the first one or set will come from Adam Marston, who will be burning up the scene quite soon. His story "Somebody Is Excited" appears in the current Dogzplot flash fiction blog and he's just had a piece accepted by The Northville Review.

Easter Rabbit is here!!

yay!!! can't wait to read it. but I will wait for the weekend.

creepies

hmmm. so far I have seven creepy vsfs, a few in better shape than the others, but I'm happy with the cross chatter amongst them, and I'm not bored yet, either. The piece that may or may not be coming out in Wigleaf (if technical challenges can be resolved) is currently acting as the control personality against which alters react or cope.

It's good to have several of these pieces not really nailed before I move onto other ideas in the series. That way I can resist sending them out. If these stories accumulate into a collection, I want them to depend on each other, and I think I want most of the material to be "new."

Frame of mind: very Nick Antosca, but not as juicy

not safe for facebook

The episode of "Friends" that never aired.

Why I don't write any more

blogging the so-far short life of the mind

I haven't posted much lately--we're gearing up to re-kitten our lives, so I'm obsessing about that.

But there is a new subject for the writing class to mull, introduced last week after one of my students got a flash accepted at Dogzplot and another got an acceptance at Able Muse.  The Writer's blog. Barry asked for a blog link for the DP bio line.

We always take a little time to talk about how to present oneself in a cover letter/message, or more fully in a goals statement, but those are closed forms. The writer's blog is a whole nuther animal.

and speaking of animals, we're getting maybe two kittens soon. I think.

Ghost Stories

I've been writing very short ghost stories lately. I have about four in the 200-300 word range, and I am really loving the experience as well as the product. Not re-inventing the wheel here, I'm just recognizing that the reason I love scary stories most of all has less to do with event sequence than it does with the raw material. I'm afraid of/disturbed by objects, not circumstance: toys, old paper, storage buildings, small Ohio towns, overheard questions.

Vsf seems ideal for me to showcase that sort of thing, and showcase is possibly an apt term. If I'm fortunate enough to produce a collection, it'll be like a little curio cabinet of American bother.

xTx's "Nobody Trusts a Black Magician"

I’ve just finished reading xTx’s chapbook “Nobody Trusts a Black Magician”--a jarring experience because “Nobody” is quite edgy, and I’ve just begun a project that feels very antique in comparison. There are no pieces in the xTx book about which I am ambivalent: half the book is hysterical, the other half disturbing. My faves: “Argentina Sunday,” “Saving the Meat,” “Scrambled Egg House,” “Christmas Eve,” “Black Friend,” “Wiffle Ball,” and “And You Can Wear Your Mirrored Sunglasses When You Are Scared.” I know xTx's fiction is known for its raw management of sex and desperate intimacy, but after reading this collection I’m most impressed by those stories that talk about 1) white anxiety or 2) long range partnerships.  I know, I'm old. 

giggle, snort

Just found out that one of my students has had a piece accepted at Dogzplot. No details yet, but I hope it was a flash. (update: yeah a flash, a durned good one)

Mel Bosworth says I'm "super nice" for having him talk about chickens at the vsf blog. I'd rather be super fine, but I'll take what I can get. Related to being ordained super-nice, my friend Danny forced me to choose a super power, so I'm going with "indifference to fragility and rarity of antique objects."

Finally, Tara Laskowski, Scott Garson, and I are newsletter famous together as we hog up 1/3 of the Fall 2009 "Between the Lines" Mason MFA alumni thingie with blather about how very short fiction is coming to your house to break your heart. I don't know if it goes online, but if I find it I'll post a link. You know how to find us, but did you also know that Tara is one of the hungry minds behind The Recipe Resolution?

work

Wrist pain

I just wrote the best story I've ever written, and it was accepted for publication at my absolute favorite fiction venue. My wrist became inflamed as soon as I read the message. Perhaps I'm done then.

Luckily, Erin Fitzgerald was available for IM based diagnosis. You can cram your public option, I got lit editors on call.

the lost story

Years ago I got it into my head that I wanted to write a Thurberesque story about a man who accidentally and unknowingly appeared in the DC-based stock footage of a free speech PSA that appeared at the beginning of pornographic videos along with the trailers for other productions. My idea was that he would arouse fear, lust, shame, happiness, etc, among many of the folks he encountered in his daily, routine life, and no one really understood why.

I tried that story dozens of times and never got beyond page 1 before it got too oogy. Finally I was able to incorporate it into a novel draft (as the deep, dark secret of the quirky neighbor), but the next draft won't have room for it. Or patience.

So I release it to the world. If you can write the story, have at it with my blessing. I'd like to see it, in fact.

shirts vs skins

Just posted Ravi Mangla's note, and after I post Barry Graham's entry to the vsf blog this weekend, I think the count will be 11 1/2 men to 6 women (counting joe young as 1 and 1/2 given his double appearance so far). This is meaningless, but I'm trying to goad those women whom I've already invited into action.

I'm more interested in the difference between the invitees who have made a priority of tending to their lives vs. those who are all too happy to drop everything to write for my blog.

Seriously, I thought this was a hoax when I first heard about it

But MSNBC actually interviewed David Erlewine, Robert Swartwood, and J.S. Graustein about the shortest of short fictions.

Of course this is wonderful for all of us in the vsf biz, and I have complete faith in Swartwood and Graustein to represent the form, but Erlewine may go power mad if we don't watch him closely.

Also, Nanoism is running a neato contest that has my brain smoking.

mess with me, very short fiction update

I had to go to Ohio for family business this past week. I hadn't been back for 12 years. Someone who has known me my whole life said he'd been reading my stories, that they were pretty good, but "kinda familiar." After which he said, "write what you know, huh?" I can't for the life of me figure out what he meant.

new, exciting stuff on the VIPs on vsf blog from Jason Jordan and Andrew Roe.

country life

First, I want to repeat the obvious: as soon as you think of fiction as a commodity, that's when the writing and innovation will slow down. That's when you will get scared.

Thinking of this as I read and re-read the 20 fictions given to me by Joseph Young and Kathy Fish for the vsf blog. These are two writers who have no fear that they will run out of stories, so it's no big deal to donate content to my teaching experiment. A writer who loves writing won't run out of stories. Or how about this? Maybe we've only got one story, and we just keep telling it over and over. Either way, there's nothing to protect. That said, as I prepare agent queries for my novels, I feel that fear. Big time. I would love to be brave enough to look into alternative models, but I'm not ready yet.

Not sure how this is related, but last week as I counted the sixth dead fox on the way back from our cabin in WV to our house in VA, I remembered last Autumn when we got caught in a long line of traffic outside Middleburg. Leaf peepers moving like molasses through horse country, and even though no one was going more than 15 mph, some jackass managed to hit a deer right in front of a farm mansion or winery. A man in LL Bean "work" clothes and a tweed cap was standing over it, disgusted. Just as we drove by, he pulled out a handgun and shot the deer in the head. Everybody was a phony that day, and then for one second we weren't.

Kathy Fish & Joseph Young Collaboration--Coming Soon to an Educational blog near you

Tomorrow morning in a very special VIPSonvsf blog entry: Kathy Fish and Joseph Young collaborated on an amazing project where by they each wrote 5 micros, busted 'em in half, then sent the halves to each other to finish.

The result is 10 micros plus 10 hybrids. And they are stunning.

And then they offered them to me for my vsf blog. I am so thrilled. Let me be clear, I never solicited this work. Kathy and Joe offered me the material, plus notes on the process, so my class could see how this kind of adventure can work.

I love writers.