What is real?

From Seattle Magazine—Dana Sander's article: Local Writer on our "Reality" Obsession

"Seattle writer David Shields’ new book explores the cultural obsession with “reality”—and in doing so may well alter the future form of the novel"

A Metaphor?

To continue with the Super Bowl motif —a novel way to view your next short story or novel.

A NOVEL APPROACH
by CJ Cooper

"You are a writer, perceptive, empathetic, analytical, observant, spontaneous, and creative (right?) so the similarities between a novel and the Super Bowl game are probably obvious to you."

He's Accessible and Spot on

A New York Times review of Tony Hoagland's book UNINCORPORATED PERSONS IN THE LATE HONDA DYNASTY: Poems

"There are 15 or 20 better poets in America than Tony Hoagland, but few deliver more pure pleasure. His erudite comic poems are backloaded with heartache and longing..." —review by Dwight Garner
••••••••••
With the Super Bowl Coming Up This Sunday...
Sports Mysteries

A Long Wait !

Why not say Lost Man/ Woman Booker Prize?

“The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival has announced a special event to exclusively announce the Lost Man Booker Prize shortlist. The Lost Man Booker is a one-off prize to honour the books which missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1970. In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became - as it is today - a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. As a result a wealth of fiction published for much of 1970 fell through the net."

From the Guardian :
Lost Man Booker Prize longlist to award best omitted novel of 1970


Their shortlist will be chosen from a long list of 22 books, which would have been eligible and are still in print and generally available today.

Oxford Literary Festival
"The 2010 Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival from Saturday 20th to Sunday 28th March offers a wonderful range of talks, discussions, debates, readings, Literary Lunches and Dinners in the exceptional and beautiful surroundings of Christ Church and Corpus Christi College – with many major events staged in The Sheldonian Theatre, The Bodleian Library and other prestigious venues."

Bermuda Sunrise

by Ira Smith

September dawn on Bermuda’s highest point,
undeveloped summit of Somerset Island;
Mother Nature begins her dynamic show!
The main character waits off stage
while audience warm-up takes place.
Brisk winds, intermittent showers, and
layered cloud formations usher in the swollen sun,
blinding me as she peeks through blue slits
between billowing tans, pinks, maroons,
grays and even blacks;
show concludes with special guest -
giant over-the-shoulder rainbow.

Meanwhile, the lifeless QE2 lies at anchor
in the shallow Great Sound, too large to be dockside;
a tender nuzzles her amid ship - whale suckling its calf.
Passengers asleep in the hull like swallowed fish,
exhausted from yesterday’s shopping in Hamilton
and last night’s night clubbing, their mind, body and soul
imprisoned by steel encasement of their life style,
view restricted to a single port hole,
totally oblivious to the mystique and glory
of the Bermuda sunrise.

Ira Smith © 1984

More Six Word Memoirs

On NPR— Can You tell Your Life Story In Exactly Six Words?

"Smith Magazine invited writers "famous and obscure" to distill their own life stories into exactly six words. It All Changed in an Instant is the fourth collection of very, very brief life stories from Smith. The tiny memoirs are sometimes sad, often funny — and always concise.

A new book: It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure

Stop Worrying—

With the emergence of the ebook and the competition between Kindle and IPad about to ignite, what will happen to the book—the book printed on paper without any talking or moving parts, save for children's pop-up books?

Why The Novel Will Never Die

From a book review of Michael Wutz's Enduring Words

"Along the way, he documents and analyzes ways in which novelists and authors have fortified their craft with narrative techniques that incorporate and sometimes even pre-empt elements of photography, recorded sound and film. Like species everywhere, he claims, the book will evolve and survive. "—Ben Fulton

Hunting for a Story?

Walk into a convenience store, the Laundromat, or a local hangout
Stand on line at a Starbucks—
Watch a sandlot baseball game—
Speak to the person behind the counter of a deli—
Eavesdrop
You'll find stories


From the National Post The Gem of an idea

"I read something interesting in the newspaper or overhear a comment in a restaurant and I think: How can I turn that into a scene in a book? I'm always making up stories in my head, something I've been doing since I was a child playing with my cut-out dolls."—Joy Fielding


••••••••••••

From the Guardian

Where do stories come from? by Hilary Mantel

Thinking About the Internet and Writing

Salon asks : "Digital Nation": What has the Internet done to us? by Heather Havrilesky

"After all, my 13-year-old stepson texts more often than he speaks, my 3-year-old daughter wants her own bright pink iPad so she can see what Cinderella is doing right now, I waste most of my day reading Tweets from a Laura Ingalls Wilder impersonator..."

From the Best Article Every Day—How the Internet Changed Writing in the 2000s by Kevin Kelleher

"...language is always evolving, and a more conversational English isn’t a bad thing. “Writing, when properly managed…is but a different name for conversation.” Laurence Sterne wrote that in Tristram Shandy 250 years ago. Thanks to the Internet, it’s more true now than ever."

Just For Your Amusement

A droll, ironic, tongue in cheek, and totally enjoying look at the writing of a story.

A Primer on Story Writing in thirty-Nine Steps

"27) Don't reject interesting stuff (things for characters to say and do, things to see, places to be, etc.) because the stuff doesn't conform to your idea. Change your idea to wrap it around the stuff."

More Information on the Tournament of Books

Judges for the Tournament — and more

Alice McDermott writes about writing: 'Bend Sinister: A Handbook for Writers'

"I have never been a student in a writing workshop where the phrases "a short story must never" or "a novel must always" didn't fill me with the determination to write a story that did what it mustn't or a novel that didn't do what it must.

And in the 20 years I've been leading writing workshops I have never answered any question that begins, "Are you allowed to." or ends, "Can you do that?" with anything more precise than, "You can do whatever you can get away with." —Alice McDermott

Quotations

Quotation marks are serious business—

Yagoda's Rules for Quotes

the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks

Interesting Blogs

Virginia Quarterly Review

Quarterly Conversation

Critical Flame

Matt Bell on The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction

'Dribbles, Drabbles, Micro- & Flash (Oh my)'

The Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest

The jack­pine son­net is: 
A sonnet-like poem.

"Where does it comes from? : 
Milton Acorn (1923 – 1986), a poet from Prince Edward Island, cre­ated the genre and named it after the jack pine, a tree that seeds itself in fire.”

Geist Jackpine sonnet contest Rules and guidelines

"How to write one:

Write a poem with 14 lines, each line containing 7 to 13 syllables. But, in Acorn’s words, “If your sonnet cuts itself off — click! — at, say line 12, 18 or 20, leave it at that.” An odd number of lines is okay too. Apply the rhyme scheme of your choice, and if no rhyme comes up, be patient. Acorn advised writers to write internal rhymes (rhymes within a line) or external rhymes (rhymes at the end of consecutive lines) “to keep the flow.” In the absence of rhyme, use assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds), “to keep the rhyme alive in order to come up with a true rhyme further on.”

Southern Literature

I recently read The Next Step in the Dance by Tim Gautreaux, a new, for me, southern writer.

Oxford American lists the Best Southern Novels

“The Southern Literary Review celebrates southern authors and their contributions to American literature.”


The Southern Literary Review asks and answers—What makes southern literature?

My favorite southern writer—Flannery O'connor.
"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location."—Flannery O'Connor

The New York Times article: "In an online poll conducted by the National Book Foundation, her collection “The Complete Stories” was named the best work to have won the National Book Award for fiction in the contest’s 60-year history."

Exploring Narrative

From Narrative Magazine "Unrolling those Narrative Threads"

“Narrative nonfiction goes under many names, including creative nonfiction, literary journalism, and fact-based storytelling.”

Writer's and Editiors

Your Poems

"... poems on commodities: from lollipops, farmland or petrol to body parts, microchips or precious metals, anything that can be bought and sol."

From the Guardian: Tony William's Poetry Workshop

Check this out. It looks like great fun—
Be sure to read the workshop information.

"... your entry (pasted into the email, rather than as an attachment) to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk must be submitted before midnight on Friday January 29."

Interior Monologues

Have you ever written an interior monologue?

"Interior monologue is a narrative technique meant to reproduce a character's thoughts, feelings, and associations in the untidy fashion in which they flow through the mind." answers.com

In a Shell...

"Interior monologue was introduced to fiction in the early 20th century. There are notable examples from the age of modernist experiment. Molly Bloom's unpunctuated monologue that forms the end of Joyce's Ulysses is a famous one."

Prompt: Write two different interior monologues that have some connection. Send it in for posting.

Link and Holly

by Ira Smith

One summer morning in 1984, staying
with Mother in Westport,
while walking up from the beach,
Hildegarde (Hilly), Lincoln Barnett’s widow,
invited me in to see her remodeled kitchen.
We visited for a bit and she asked me,
“Have you ever seen Link’s office?”
I didn’t admit that I hadn’t set foot
in their modest house in thirty years.
Link had been gone for five,
Hilly was lonely.

An old-fashioned wrap-around porch
was his office: enclosed and winterized,
with railing to ceiling picture windows
facing Lake Champlain;
floor to ceiling bookcases
lined the original exterior walls.
A 12’x3’ slab of wood hinged
to the railing was his desk.
An 8x10 framed photograph of Link
arm-in-arm with Fred Astaire in a dancing pose
was among the sparse memorabilia.
She invited me to sit in his
high back leather, swivel chair.
Hilly reminisced, “In his last years
Link loved to recline in this chair and
between occasional snoozes, drink in Lake Champlain
and Vermont’s Green mountains beyond.”

Hilly gave me the latest paperback edition
of Link’s famous 1948 “The Universe and Dr. Einstein.”
She still gets royalties – more than a million sold,
in twenty-five languages, required reading
in college literature!

A privilege to stand on another person’s
hallowed ground; though austere in décor,
this working refuge was deeply inspirational.
The lap-lap of the waves against the shore,
the swing and sway of the maple limbs,
the thrust and glide of the passing gull
supplied silent background rhythm and harmony
while journal notes and research data
were crafted into elegant composition.

* * * * * * * * * *

Received my first autographed gift from Link when I was
eighteen, its importance to me deceived by his humility
and modest living:

“The Universe and Dr. Einstein.”
For Ira D Smith Jr.
with the best wishes of his neighbor –
Lincoln Barnett
Westport N.Y. – January 31, 1949

Twenty-five years later, received another autographed gift
from Link, with a much greater sense of treasure. I remember
him coming across the lawn from his house to hand it to me.

“The Ancient Adirondacks”
For Ira D. Smith Jr.
with every good wish
from his long-time Adirondack
friend and neighbor –
Lincoln Barnett
Westport, N.Y. – July, 1974

His words became a deep inspiration for my own unpublished

“My Beloved Wilderness Journal”

Link was born on February 12, 1909, Abraham Lincoln’s
birthday, and died September 8, 1979. The local headline:

“Renowned Adirondack Writer,

Lincoln Barnett Dies.”

My awareness of the depth of Link’s accomplishments had to
wait for his eulogy. He was editor and foreign correspondent
for Life Magazine during World War II.

He wrote several profiles on prominent people such as
Fred Astaire, Ernie Pyle and Bing Crosby in his book,
“Writing on Life.”

Einstein wrote the foreword for the
“Universe and Dr. Einstein,”
an unprecedented act for him.

At that time, the scientific community considered it the
best possible interpretation of Einstein’s work.
He won the National Book Award in 1950.

Ira Smith©2010

Letters

Years ago, before letter writing went out of style, people wrote long letters to one another—letters, I think, written while sipping a hot cup of Earl Gray tea, letters written with an ink pen rather than a ballpoint. Even when the ubiquitous Bic made its foray into letter writing, epistles were written in longhand.

Over the past twenty years fewer letters are written— perhaps thank you notes remain a hold out. Email, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs ,Social Networks promise immediate responses. Instead of one correspondent a plethora of people read your words, follow your writings.

Letters allowed the correspondent time to think, time to reflect, time to respond.

“Brenda Miller and Holly Hughes are collaborating on a book on writing, tentatively titled The Pen and the Bell: Reading, Writing, and the Contemplative Life, which will feature a series of letters the authors have written to each other.”A Series of Letters

Letter-Writing site

Best Collections of Literary Letters NPR)
Best Collections of Literary Letters NPR)

Literary Letters and Cyberspace