I found out yesterday that we sometimes get paid with live checks (just learned that neat and apt term) and sometimes with direct deposit. We never know which until it happens. Peggy said, "It's hit or miss." People shrug this stuff off! I don't think it's OK! Seems like it's asking for someone's check to be missed someday. This workplace gets more Twilight-Zone-y every day.
But I got to watch a search-and-dive team train by retrieving a dummy from a pond, touch a (disembodied) baleen, and interview four magicians for three stories. I'm very lucky in very many ways. I meet the neatest and sweetest people. And readers seem to respond well, which is the whole point.
Plus, I'm awesome at "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me," because I listen to NPR all the time. Fret not, WHQR, I didn't pledge during the drive, but you will get your recompense yet, dear friend. Just you wait.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Enter the mini
Hiya,
I'm going to try some mini-blogging, like a couple of sentences at a time. I believe it will make me more likely to post regularly rather than lapsing. And of course, once I'm logged on I'll probably spill at least a paragraph or two, so the idea is to trick myself into thinking I'm only writing a bit, which seems so much less daunting than having to deliver some insightful, decisive thing.
Thus:
I found the way to keep lettuce crisp and delish for a week or even more! Rinse (in a bowl if the breed has a lot of sand in it), drain, pat/shake dry, and then put in an airtight container with paper towels to wick away the excess moisture.
Also learned that my bread freezes quite well and thaws just fine in the microwave.
I finished Devil in the White City in a record four days or something. What a thrill! I recommend it to everyone. It's about the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and a serial killer who lived in Chicago at that time. As a nonfic writer, I found the notes almost as intriguing as the book. Larson was so thorough and so detailed in his research. Definitely a new role model for me. Now I'm on another book by Erik Larson, Thunderstruck. A bit less ferociously all-consuming but well above other books. This one's about Marconi, the beginning of wireless telegraphy, and also a murder but I don't think it's a serial killer like in the last one. Larson writes history really accessibly because he focuses on people. I want to implore him to write textbooks, or just adapt his existing books slightly for a student audience. I'd devour a history class if it was structured like his books.
That's all. I've an early morning tomorrow. Stay tuned for mini-posts.
I'm going to try some mini-blogging, like a couple of sentences at a time. I believe it will make me more likely to post regularly rather than lapsing. And of course, once I'm logged on I'll probably spill at least a paragraph or two, so the idea is to trick myself into thinking I'm only writing a bit, which seems so much less daunting than having to deliver some insightful, decisive thing.
Thus:
I found the way to keep lettuce crisp and delish for a week or even more! Rinse (in a bowl if the breed has a lot of sand in it), drain, pat/shake dry, and then put in an airtight container with paper towels to wick away the excess moisture.
Also learned that my bread freezes quite well and thaws just fine in the microwave.
I finished Devil in the White City in a record four days or something. What a thrill! I recommend it to everyone. It's about the Chicago World's Fair in the 1890s and a serial killer who lived in Chicago at that time. As a nonfic writer, I found the notes almost as intriguing as the book. Larson was so thorough and so detailed in his research. Definitely a new role model for me. Now I'm on another book by Erik Larson, Thunderstruck. A bit less ferociously all-consuming but well above other books. This one's about Marconi, the beginning of wireless telegraphy, and also a murder but I don't think it's a serial killer like in the last one. Larson writes history really accessibly because he focuses on people. I want to implore him to write textbooks, or just adapt his existing books slightly for a student audience. I'd devour a history class if it was structured like his books.
That's all. I've an early morning tomorrow. Stay tuned for mini-posts.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
A Good Day
Yesterday, I went to the office to upload my week's articles, then left on assignment. I covered art camp at Art Exposure in Hampstead, a really great place with wonderful people. Then I visited the Sea Salt Bakery, which was recently started by the same people who opened my beloved Sweet 'N' Savory in 1992. Their display trays are made of bread.
I left early because I had an oil-change appointment, and rather than go all the way to Wrightsville Beach for one hour, I decided to sit in Port City Java in the Harris Teeter across the street from the Honda place. I ran into a couple of friends from school, one of whom had just returned from Japan. Also saw some of the familiar faces from Flaming Amy's Bowl. At the Honda place, I ran into another friend from school and had a wonderful long conversation with her while waiting for our cars. She's hilarious and insightful. I was very happy to skip my reading session.
On the way to dinner, I saw someone who used to go to my church, then at the restaurant a couple the wife of which is in the MFA program, then at the concert, two friends from high school. That makes eight people I randomly ran into in one day! I wonder why that always happens in clusters and then not for weeks. But I love when it does. I also finished Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, a wonderful and surprising and educational and funny book I'm intensely glad to have read, and then started in on Devil in the White City, which it hurt to tear myself away from at 1:30 a.m. to go to sleep. I wish I could read it while working out so I wouldn't have to choose between the two later today. So everything added up to a wonderful, fun day, and here I am on the other side of it still riding the wave and enjoying my first fully unscheduled day in a long time. Let's keep it up, okay?
I left early because I had an oil-change appointment, and rather than go all the way to Wrightsville Beach for one hour, I decided to sit in Port City Java in the Harris Teeter across the street from the Honda place. I ran into a couple of friends from school, one of whom had just returned from Japan. Also saw some of the familiar faces from Flaming Amy's Bowl. At the Honda place, I ran into another friend from school and had a wonderful long conversation with her while waiting for our cars. She's hilarious and insightful. I was very happy to skip my reading session.
On the way to dinner, I saw someone who used to go to my church, then at the restaurant a couple the wife of which is in the MFA program, then at the concert, two friends from high school. That makes eight people I randomly ran into in one day! I wonder why that always happens in clusters and then not for weeks. But I love when it does. I also finished Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, a wonderful and surprising and educational and funny book I'm intensely glad to have read, and then started in on Devil in the White City, which it hurt to tear myself away from at 1:30 a.m. to go to sleep. I wish I could read it while working out so I wouldn't have to choose between the two later today. So everything added up to a wonderful, fun day, and here I am on the other side of it still riding the wave and enjoying my first fully unscheduled day in a long time. Let's keep it up, okay?
The state of things
It's been a long time since I posted, and for excellent reason, though I say so myself. I have a full-time job now! I'm a newspaper reporter, which is delightful since I actually (gasp!) get to work in my chosen and studied field of writing. Despite the hour-or-so drive to work and the sometimes-several-hours of driving to and from assignments, I very much enjoy the work. Someone asked me the other day what exactly I do. I said, "Well. I decide what is newsworthy. I go to the news. I interview people and take pictures. I write the stories in InDesign and deal with the photos in PhotoShop, and I upload them to a server." It's much more manageable than it sounds, mostly because the crew is quite laid back and gives reporters some hard-core freedom to cover whatever we find interesting, on our own timetable. I'm very lucky to be working in this setting as opposed to a traditional daily paper. Of the four papers owned by the company, three come out once a week and one comes out twice a week. It's a good pace: always enough work, rarely too much for sanity. Also, I love interacting with all the different people I write about: professional magicians, children taking art lessons, librarians, owners of art centers and bakeries, businesspeople, politicians. Even town council meetings are surprisingly eventful and easy to find the story in. I've gotten a lot more comfortable making cold calls on the phone to find out when an event is or some other tidbit of information. We crack ourselves up at the office, and I should soon get a computer with all the right software so I can do some composing at home. NPR/WHQR is my new best friend, with all the driving I do, so I'm always learning something illuminating. It's a sweet deal overall. Since I write so much for work, posts here might become more sparse and will probably include some links to pieces I've written for the papers. But do keep checking, and I will do my utmost not to let this blog lapse.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
AWP 7: To Publish or Self-Publish?
The main guy who talked at this panel was Will Harris.
Self-publishing has a bad name, but if you're an indie filmmaker or musician, that's cool. So think of self-publishing as being an indie publisher.
If you're going to self-publish, you'll probably have some control over the cover. People always judge books by their covers, so be sure to make something great. Here are some things to keep in mind with covers.
1. Distill the book's theme and tone.
2. Be clear, even obvious.
3. Be bold, with no boxed-in tiny images. Let the image fill the field! Type in it, not next to it.
4. Be open to the unexpected.
5. Trust your designers. Don't be married to a specific concept. It's OK to argue with the designer, but if you do, have a reason that's related to the book.
Which leads us to the next list, Working with a Designer.
1. Brief them in one page about the project.
2. Be clear about themes.
3. Show covers you like, but...
4. ...no expectations.
5. Feel first--don't overthink.
6. Don't tell them how to design! You can share ideas, but don't say, "Put a cat in the corner."
Don't use timid type. Put nudity on the cover if possible (subtle nudity, to make sure it stays on shelves).
Pitfalls of design:
weak type
anonymity
too much going on
image or type too small in relation to cover
Pictures or people are very effective--people look at people--but not too specific, just a suggestion. You don't want to nail down how the reader can imagine a certain character.
All the major self-publishers are fine, there are no glaring differences or problems with any. The question is what you are going to do, how you are oging to separate writing from editing and designing.
Find your tribe. There are probably ten million people for each author who already love you, agree with you, and want to be your friend. You have friends, a family, colleagues. List fifty people in real life who really like you. Build from there, and that's your tribe. Also go after your mentors and heroes and say you love them. Most of them will honestly and sincerely relate to you if you do so with them. Concentric circles will grow outward from who's already in your life. All of the platforms (Facebook, etc.) are what you make of them. Make sure the relationships on there are actual ones that will help, not just friends for the sake of having a lot of friends.
The two types of people most preyed on are actors and authors. "They'll buy anything if they think it's magic." Don't be in that group. Think about what you're paying for, what you'll get out of it.
Make sure you get an ISBN and a listing in the Ingram catalog. That's how you get on Amazon and stuff.
Readers don't distinguish between self-published authors and traditional publishing. Virginia Woolf, Joyce, Poe, and a long list of others self-published. If it's good, it'll fly. Yes, a lot of self-published books are bad. The founder of lulu.com said, "We specialize in bad poetry that sells six copies to the friends of the author." But remember there are also a lot of terrible books that were published traditionally. The majority of music is bad, but if you make your own CD, nobody cares that it's not produced by a house.
Think about why you're not publishing traditionally. Are you ignoring feedback? You can overcome the bad-book stigma with self-awareness, confidence, and credibility. Time will also help cure the stigma.
Finally, "Technology doesn't make a good book. You make a good book."
Some of the resources he and others mentioned:
http://www.360digitalbooks.com- printers, will ship anywhere
http://www.iuniverse.com
http://www.lightningsource.com- discount for stores, returnable books, but less simple--you have to have a fully formatted PDF for the whole book and the cover.
http://www.lulu.com
http://www.authorhouse.com, consolidating several sites
http://www.redroom.com
The next post will be about Digital Publishing and cover some of the same ground as this one. See you next time! Thanks for reading.
Self-publishing has a bad name, but if you're an indie filmmaker or musician, that's cool. So think of self-publishing as being an indie publisher.
If you're going to self-publish, you'll probably have some control over the cover. People always judge books by their covers, so be sure to make something great. Here are some things to keep in mind with covers.
1. Distill the book's theme and tone.
2. Be clear, even obvious.
3. Be bold, with no boxed-in tiny images. Let the image fill the field! Type in it, not next to it.
4. Be open to the unexpected.
5. Trust your designers. Don't be married to a specific concept. It's OK to argue with the designer, but if you do, have a reason that's related to the book.
Which leads us to the next list, Working with a Designer.
1. Brief them in one page about the project.
2. Be clear about themes.
3. Show covers you like, but...
4. ...no expectations.
5. Feel first--don't overthink.
6. Don't tell them how to design! You can share ideas, but don't say, "Put a cat in the corner."
Don't use timid type. Put nudity on the cover if possible (subtle nudity, to make sure it stays on shelves).
Pitfalls of design:
weak type
anonymity
too much going on
image or type too small in relation to cover
Pictures or people are very effective--people look at people--but not too specific, just a suggestion. You don't want to nail down how the reader can imagine a certain character.
All the major self-publishers are fine, there are no glaring differences or problems with any. The question is what you are going to do, how you are oging to separate writing from editing and designing.
Find your tribe. There are probably ten million people for each author who already love you, agree with you, and want to be your friend. You have friends, a family, colleagues. List fifty people in real life who really like you. Build from there, and that's your tribe. Also go after your mentors and heroes and say you love them. Most of them will honestly and sincerely relate to you if you do so with them. Concentric circles will grow outward from who's already in your life. All of the platforms (Facebook, etc.) are what you make of them. Make sure the relationships on there are actual ones that will help, not just friends for the sake of having a lot of friends.
The two types of people most preyed on are actors and authors. "They'll buy anything if they think it's magic." Don't be in that group. Think about what you're paying for, what you'll get out of it.
Make sure you get an ISBN and a listing in the Ingram catalog. That's how you get on Amazon and stuff.
Readers don't distinguish between self-published authors and traditional publishing. Virginia Woolf, Joyce, Poe, and a long list of others self-published. If it's good, it'll fly. Yes, a lot of self-published books are bad. The founder of lulu.com said, "We specialize in bad poetry that sells six copies to the friends of the author." But remember there are also a lot of terrible books that were published traditionally. The majority of music is bad, but if you make your own CD, nobody cares that it's not produced by a house.
Think about why you're not publishing traditionally. Are you ignoring feedback? You can overcome the bad-book stigma with self-awareness, confidence, and credibility. Time will also help cure the stigma.
Finally, "Technology doesn't make a good book. You make a good book."
Some of the resources he and others mentioned:
http://www.360digitalbooks.com- printers, will ship anywhere
http://www.iuniverse.com
http://www.lightningsource.com- discount for stores, returnable books, but less simple--you have to have a fully formatted PDF for the whole book and the cover.
http://www.lulu.com
http://www.authorhouse.com, consolidating several sites
http://www.redroom.com
The next post will be about Digital Publishing and cover some of the same ground as this one. See you next time! Thanks for reading.
Friday, April 30, 2010
AWP 6: Chabon and journalism
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?
"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?
Monday, April 26, 2010
AWP 5: The Limit—or Light—of Spiritual Belief: Across Genres.
Hi all, thanks for being patient as I put off blogging in favor of other pursuits.
This panel included Emily Louise Zimbrick, Scott Cairns, Janet Peery, Nicole Mazzarella, Farideh Goldin, and Josh Allen.
When we encounter inconsistences in scripture and religion, we can ignore them, discard them as irrelevant, or acknowledge and study the complexities. If they're in God's word, maybe God wants us to consider these things, difficult questions, moral complexity. Real faith confronts the trouble and the troubling head-on. Bad literature, religious or not, avoids it. Dickinson wrote, "On subjects of which we know nothing, we both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble."
Scott Cairns started by talking about the ressourcement movement, a French Catholic movement to recover patristic wisdom that had been excised from writings. He used the phrase "squandering tradition" to describe what the people were doing when they originally cut out parts of those religious writings. Cairns introduced (to me) the terms cataphatic, for a theology of attributes in which we say things about God as if he were a person and we knew him, and apophatic, the via negativa, the theology of unsaying and the way of unknowing, in which we think and speak of God in terms of what he is not. The two traditions usually balance each other out. For example, many people think of God as a king, but acknowledge that he is not king in the way we normally think of human kings. Cairns talked about Gregory of Nyssa (or someone else) meeting God in light, then in cloud, then in darkness. He said poetry is not a matter of waying what we think or want readers to think, or redacting experience, but an experience of trusting language and the words on the page. "If I only wrote what I know, I wouldn't have ever made tenure. So what I do is write in order to know."
Josh Allen talked about his fiction in which a husband notices his wife coming home later than usual from work and finds that she is stopping at a Mormon church to pray. He discussed the importance of multiple valid points of view and quoted John Garder, who, in On Moral Fiction, said "True art is too complex to reflect the party line." Allen quoted someone else who said, "We have to safely leave evangelism to the evangelist....Art transcends its boundaries by staying within them."
To an extent, all literature is about a spiritual journey.
Examine truth without examining dogma.
A happy ending, like any ending, has to be earned. The character has to make choices to resolve the story, not just feel despair and go up on the roof and have a transcendent experience. It must stem from choices the characters have made, not grace we don't understand. Offering readers only one emotional response means the piece will tend toward sentimentality.
Things they mentioned in the panel:
Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
David Kurzon, ed., Modern Poems on the Bible
The Classic Midrash from Paulist Press
E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel talks about the difference between preaching and prophecy. Music critic and writer Greil Marcus, talking about Van Morrison on NPR, says that Van Morrison breaks through his own defenses and thus breaks through his listeners'.
Thanks for reading! The next post will be about the keynote address by Michael Chabon and, possibly in the same post, a panel on journalism and CNF. Good stuff.
In other news, I've just taught my last class, and had my last class as a student last week. It's a very weird feeling, like I'm losing part of who I am. Only part, though, and I can be a student of life whatever my career turns out to be.
I set the inside of my oven on fire the other night. I preheated the oven to make sweet potato fries, and the bottom of the oven had some butter-and-sugar residue from pecan rolls which had overflowed a little (or perhaps more than I thought). Funnily, I was more upset about not being able to bake the sweet potato fries than I was about the actual presence of a small fire in my house. Go figure. I've bought a new drip pan and am now about to install it and retry those fries. Nothing if not adventurous, this life.
This panel included Emily Louise Zimbrick, Scott Cairns, Janet Peery, Nicole Mazzarella, Farideh Goldin, and Josh Allen.
When we encounter inconsistences in scripture and religion, we can ignore them, discard them as irrelevant, or acknowledge and study the complexities. If they're in God's word, maybe God wants us to consider these things, difficult questions, moral complexity. Real faith confronts the trouble and the troubling head-on. Bad literature, religious or not, avoids it. Dickinson wrote, "On subjects of which we know nothing, we both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble."
Scott Cairns started by talking about the ressourcement movement, a French Catholic movement to recover patristic wisdom that had been excised from writings. He used the phrase "squandering tradition" to describe what the people were doing when they originally cut out parts of those religious writings. Cairns introduced (to me) the terms cataphatic, for a theology of attributes in which we say things about God as if he were a person and we knew him, and apophatic, the via negativa, the theology of unsaying and the way of unknowing, in which we think and speak of God in terms of what he is not. The two traditions usually balance each other out. For example, many people think of God as a king, but acknowledge that he is not king in the way we normally think of human kings. Cairns talked about Gregory of Nyssa (or someone else) meeting God in light, then in cloud, then in darkness. He said poetry is not a matter of waying what we think or want readers to think, or redacting experience, but an experience of trusting language and the words on the page. "If I only wrote what I know, I wouldn't have ever made tenure. So what I do is write in order to know."
Josh Allen talked about his fiction in which a husband notices his wife coming home later than usual from work and finds that she is stopping at a Mormon church to pray. He discussed the importance of multiple valid points of view and quoted John Garder, who, in On Moral Fiction, said "True art is too complex to reflect the party line." Allen quoted someone else who said, "We have to safely leave evangelism to the evangelist....Art transcends its boundaries by staying within them."
To an extent, all literature is about a spiritual journey.
Examine truth without examining dogma.
A happy ending, like any ending, has to be earned. The character has to make choices to resolve the story, not just feel despair and go up on the roof and have a transcendent experience. It must stem from choices the characters have made, not grace we don't understand. Offering readers only one emotional response means the piece will tend toward sentimentality.
Things they mentioned in the panel:
Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
David Kurzon, ed., Modern Poems on the Bible
The Classic Midrash from Paulist Press
E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel talks about the difference between preaching and prophecy. Music critic and writer Greil Marcus, talking about Van Morrison on NPR, says that Van Morrison breaks through his own defenses and thus breaks through his listeners'.
Thanks for reading! The next post will be about the keynote address by Michael Chabon and, possibly in the same post, a panel on journalism and CNF. Good stuff.
In other news, I've just taught my last class, and had my last class as a student last week. It's a very weird feeling, like I'm losing part of who I am. Only part, though, and I can be a student of life whatever my career turns out to be.
I set the inside of my oven on fire the other night. I preheated the oven to make sweet potato fries, and the bottom of the oven had some butter-and-sugar residue from pecan rolls which had overflowed a little (or perhaps more than I thought). Funnily, I was more upset about not being able to bake the sweet potato fries than I was about the actual presence of a small fire in my house. Go figure. I've bought a new drip pan and am now about to install it and retry those fries. Nothing if not adventurous, this life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)