Michael Chabon's keynote address was so freakin' good. Here are just a few things I jotted down:
"It may be that all morality rests on our ability to see the likeness in unlike things: I and thou."
"Ideas are the easiest and perhaps the least interesting parts of the job...Ideas are swarming, ubiquitous, chronic. Ideas are a plague....There are five novels in every newspaper, ten in every work of history, one in every unhappy family." Ideas are everywhere--the trick is sticking with them.
"I gave off the moral equivalent of that new car smell."
"the pile of well-typed crap"
Life is not a story, at least not a very good story. Life is just a bunch of middle.
"I got down to the work because the serious and diligent people around me were getting down to theirs."
"If your students are lucky enough to not know everything...."
"challenging each word to defend its presence in the sentence"
"No sentence was so fine that it could not be improved upon the ninth time through."
"I believe that writers ought regularly to read the dictionary" in order to discover the musculoskeletal system, the genome, of our language.
Novelists have two obligations:
1. Bringing the dish. "They bring the news, the gossipy gospel." The author is our friend, showing us the map of a life.
2. Keeping it entertaining. Sometimes using artifice, "all the thrilling sense of deliverance that only a great lie can." Pure autobiography is the last thing we want. When you're vanishing an elephant onstage, you don't tell about the half hour you spent reading up on mirror optics in a chophouse on Wabash Avenue, sitting on a donut cushion for your hemorrhoids.
Chabon did the talk in a Q&A style, asking his own questions and doing voices and impressions of question-askers one might find in an audience, which I thought was pretty genius. He said he'd been very disappointed when he learned we couldn't have a Q&A because the space (a large ballroom) wouldn't allow it. This disappointment again drove home, like almost every panel, the point that writing and reading are all about connecting with other people.
Here are some books Chabon mentioned as having influenced him:
Oakley Hall- Warlock
Jorge Luis Borges- Labyrinths
Edith Wharton- The Age of Innocence
Vladimir Nabokov- "I admire him for Lolita and Pale Fire, but I love him for Pnin."
Love in the Time of Cholera, 100 Years of Solitude
Moby-Dick
Portrait of a Lady
Next, I went to a panel called "It's Not Just About You: Solidifying Journalism's Role in Creative Writing Programs." The panelists were Patrick Walters, Jim Sheeler, Philip Gerard, John Calderazzo, and Rebecca Skloot. Here are my notes.
There's not necessarily any difference between journalism and creative writing. It's important for people who identify as either to learn about and embrace the other.
Reporting is simply defined as looking for facts, about your own life or others'. Reporting makes possible the effects we usually think of as literary--the meaningfulness. "Collect all the dots and connect them." Think of lives not as biographies but as stories. Research is not just looking at a photo; it's wondering what's not in the picture. The best pictures are a gift from the subject to the photographer, and it's the same way when you write about people. They're giving you a gift.
When you raise big problems and issues, you have to put them in context, try to turn it toward resolution. Writing about others forces you to observe and imagine what it's like to be someone who's not you. You take on a huge responsibility to be true to their story. The msot important thing you can say is "I don't know." Don't trust memory, no matter how sure it seems.
When Rebecca Skloot wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (for ten years!), she fact-checked absolutely everything. Even dialogue! When you show that you're trying to get everything right, people will give you a lot. They will help you.
Learn about research methods used by anthropologists and oral historians. Make the writers you read show how they know what they know.
Storytelling isn't going anywhere. People want to read stories, not strands of fact.
Here are some resources they mentioned:
Norman Sims, ed.- The Literary Journalists: the New Art of Personal Reportage
Norman Sims and Mark Kramer, ed.- Literary Journalism
Mark Kramer and Wendy Call, ed.- Telling True Stories
James B. Stewart- Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction
At http://www.newsu.org/courses, you can find tons of free tutorials, self-directed courses, webinars, broadcasts, and other resources designed by successful journalists to help you learn some of the skills. It's part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Sounds legit.
In non-AWP news, I'm still waiting to hear about a few jobs that seem promising, and I have an interview on Tuesday to work as a typesetter! Typesetting is by far my favorite part of the publishing practicum. The woman I talked to on the phone said the interview will be more practical, not just talking. They'll actually give me some text and say, "Make a wedding invitation," or, "Make a business card." Very different from typesetting in a book interior, but using many of the same skills and techniques. The job is in a rural area about an hour away from where I am now, which means it would be a hassle in some ways. But my dad commutes about an hour each way, and it's worked for him for years. If I get the job, I'll just get me some books on CD or awesome podcasts (once I get a pod) and learn my way to work. And we never know whom else I'm going to hear from. There's no telling how God is going to work in my life in the next few weeks as we iron all of this out. I'll keep you posted!
Next up: To Publish or Self-Publish?
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