Wet Ink

Print or Kindling?

I love my Kindle, especially given the limited shelf space I have for actual books, not to mention the fact that, as a commuter, it's great to be able to read books and/or manuscripts whenever I'm on the subway.  But this wonderful device could never take the place of paperbacks.  Why?  Well, here are a few thoughts:

• As a secondary school teacher in the UK, I taught literacy to children from age 11 upwards.  One of the very first lessons I'd teach the new kids every year was how to open a dictionary at the right section.  In other words, if they were looking up "kangaroo" they'd know roughly where the "K" was.  And with "lemon" where the "L" was, and soforth.  Not only is this an important skill, but it also speaks to the importance of reference books.  There is only a certain way of scanning or searching a Kindle book, but with real books, there are many. 

• The same goes for annotation.  You can annotate a Kindle book, but (in my version, at least) I haven't found a way to have the annotation visible at the same time as the text.  The ability to scribble in the margins can be liberating.

• I came across a sticker at the front of my Collected Works of Shakespeare the other day.  It said, "Susanna Armstrong, Class Prize, 1984."  Print books have a history and a story.  This makes them more than words.

• I adore book stores.  And they're educational places.  It is exciting to be able to scan the bookshelves, picking up books, looking through them.  I like being able to feel how long a book is, by weighing it in my hands.

• There's nothing like a beautiful cover.  Kindle doesn't do this justice, especially on mine, which is black and white only.

• When my father died, it was a while before I was able to handle his things without pain.  But once I could, his books were important.  They had been touched by his fingers, his memories, and sometimes, his notes.  Books are tactile possessions, items we treasure and make our own.

But that doesn't mean the Kindle isn't a wonderful instrument.  Perhaps someday, when I'm dead and gone, a loved-one will pick up my Kindle and say, "Ah yes.  She loved this.  Oh, the stories we shared..."

 

Erotica, Together

Yes, it's me, the long lost blogger.  Honestly, I've been somewhat frazzled by deadlines of late, let alone the urge to fit in my creative work, but I aim to be back blogging here at least once a week.  And besides, I have news to share! 

I have a new erotic writing class coming up and it promises to be a doozy.  Bring it on, I can't wait!

Writing Erotica

6 Wednesdays, 11:00am-2:00pm at Grub Street headquarters. Begins February 8th.

In this six week course, you will study tried and tested techniques in order to pull your reader into your erotic scenes. Writers can choose to work on either short stories or scenes from a memoir/novel in progress. Drawing on well-respected authors such as Anais Nin, Shanna Germain and Steve Almond, we'll explore what makes sexy writing sexy, while also tapping the transformational qualities of the genre. Come along with a willingness to be open about feelings and sensations, and to be positive about consensual sex. All sexualities warmly welcomed. Led by an instructor who regularly publishes erotica and views it as some of her most meaningful work.

Level: For Everyone
Type: Daytime Workshop
Max Capacity: 12 students

You can sign up on the Grub Street workshop page and of course, you can email me if you have any questions.  I'm blog (at) suewilliams.co.uk

I'm also feeling an Anais Nin season coming on.  Inspiration and erotica from Nin herself feels like a great blog subject for January 2012.

A Happy New Writing Year, folks.

The Tall Tale of a Corn-Loving Porcupine

Sometimes, you read a story that just doesn't seem believable, yet when you tell the writer, "This doesn't feel plausible," they look a little piqued and cry,"But it really did happen, last Tuesday!  Just as I've described!"

Of course, what this sometimes means is that the description needs to be different, or the level of detail, or the perspective...  At other times, it's simply that our day-to-day lives can get so crazy that others can't relate.  And that's a lonely place to be.

Well, in the case of Teddy the porcupine, if you'd told me such a creature would make this kind of noise when deprived of their corn-on-the-cob, I'd have needed some convincing.  But here you go, courtesy of Jezebel:

 

Now if that isn't a tall story, I don't know what is.

Thanks to the fabulous RW for the link!

Truth

My five cents on a writer's truth:

Tonight, I wittered on to one of my classes about truth in fiction writing.  I'm not talking about factual truth, but imaginative truth.  What we see, feel, hear in our mind's eye.  Our stories are a part of us, and a reader can tell when we're bluffing.  Orwell wrote, "Good prose is like a windowpane," a line I appreciate on so many levels.  Yes, our prose is often best when it's invisible rather than flamboyant, so that the story itself seems uncluttered by words.  But the other reason why good prose is like a windowpane, is because it allows us to see into one another.  It gets out of the way, and lets me look into you, and glimpse what you hold in your mind, your heart.  Good prose almost makes us psychic.  It removes our boundaries and merges our imaginings.

The last thing I told the writers in my class was this:  When I look back on my writing life, back to before I was published, I remember people telling me to follow my own heart, listen to my own instincts.  I wish, now, I had done so sooner.  Because the most useful thing I have ever learned about writing is this:  Though my readers are so helpful, I must first listen to what is inside me -- be it a voice, a longing, or a fantastical scene. And I must be faithful to that.

When I was a child, at Christian Science Sunday School (I am definitely not a Christian Scientist now, I might add!), we sang a hymn about a "still, small voice of calm."  It's a Biblical reference, if I remember rightly, and though it's meant to allude to God, I think it's also a great way of speaking about writing.  The calm voice we hear inside is often our deep, quiet truth.  Listen to that.  Always. 

Foster it.  Love it.  And be grateful that it's there.

The Dachshund Chronicles

I have long been a fan of dachshunds.  In fact, to get a taste of my true feeling for these little dogs, you can listen to my story the Beloved Boots of My Old Master, Pim.  That piece actually bonded me with them all the more -- funny how our work can have that affect.

Anyway, today I'm walking home from the library, when I see a guy with a dachshund, ahead.  The dog has a plump, pink polka-dot coat on him.  Aw, I think.  Dog catches sight of me...and suddenly, he's running at me, barking, bouncing around my ankles, saying, "Look at me, I'm the bee's knees" and that kind of caper. 

His bemused owner approaches, lead (US "leash"?) in hand.  He apologizes, tells me this is way out of character, and puts the lead on his small, rotund companion.  As he's dragged off, the dog is still barking back at me.  "You like me," he's calling, in his little dog voice, "I know you do.  Give me a treat!"

And so, he became a story.

Romancing the Imagination

Hello, folks.  I'm happy to be back.  It's been such a busy time that I haven't known where to put myself.  But what I have discovered is this:  spending ten minutes per night on a project that's new and personal is a great way for me to feel good again.  It's quite amazing -- just a few minutes and I feel like I've found myself.  Perhaps it's because all my other projects are for publication with deadlines, so they don't feel as intimate as those ten minutes a night.  Plus the ten minutes is memoir.  Personal, indeed. 

When I remember I am a writer because I love writing, I find my footing during an all too crazy time.  No matter where our writing lives take us, we need to make sure we're romancing our imaginative selves. 

Number one is the love.  Number two is the rest.   So I vow to be blogging here more often.  And I look forward to it.

Artists Get You Out Into that Dark Sea

I don't know about you, but I often feel rather lost in this world.  I'm an introvert who has a talent for expressing feeling on the page, but when it comes to life's bigger emotions I'm a genius at hiding them...not only from others, but from myself.  The result is that I swing between feeling lost and losing.  You know what many of us artists are like.  Wise when it comes to others, lost when it comes to our selves.

Anyway, I'm reading A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, and it's really rather a gift.  Thought I'd share some of it with you:

"Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found.  It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it's where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own.  Scientists too, as J. Robert Oppenheimer once remarked, 'live always at the "edge of mystery"--the boundary of the unknown.'  But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea."

And:

"The question then is how to get lost.  Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to deconstruction, and somewhere in the terra incognita in between lies a life of discovery."

And:

"There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lost a bracelet, a friend, the key.  You still know where you are.  Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element.  Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it.  Either way there is a loss of control.  Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names.  This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train.  Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery.  The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before.  The material falls away in onrushing experience.  It peels off like skin from a molting snake.  Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go.  And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss."

My father died seven years ago this coming Wednesday.  I constantly feel the loss of him.  And I wouldn't want it to be otherwise.

Spreading the Word

Firstly, my super-talented Grub students have been having their work published.  Check out Alexa Kontes' darkly brilliant Secrets in Used Furniture Review.  And stay tuned for three (yes three!) forthcoming stories from Erik Doughty (one of them also in Used Furniture -- a mag that clearly knows where the talent's at).  Erik is presently becoming an amazing lawyer, but I have urged him to never forget that he is also an amazing writer.

Secondly, I went out with a friend tonight to Marliave in Boston, where it turns out Bostonian writers were congregating at a reading event upstairs.  While my friend sat with me at the bar, she came across several writer-friends, and I was forced to wonder, yet again, whether we artists all have intriguing psychic radars.  Mind you, if we do, why aren't we all getting book deals?  Hmm.  Might have to rethink that one.

Speaking of book deals, thanks to yours truly and (of course) Diane Goettel, Black Lawrence Press now have a Novella category.  If you have a novella, why not submit?  Black Lawrence are wonderful and the open submissions period is currently underway, so it won't cost you a cent.

A Deeper Kind of Naked

This coming Saturday, I will be teaching a 6-hour (full day) workshop on writing the literary sex scene.  You can find out more and sign up here.  It promises to be a fantastic day.

Here's the course outline:

A Deeper Kind of Naked: Writing Literary Lust

Literary work often shines best when desire is not only enticing to read, but lays its characters bare both literally and figuratively. In this day course, you will practice crafting sex scenes that raise the stakes by building authentic desire. Placing an emphasis on feeling, sensation and transformation, we will lend fire to your work while revealing your characters at their most vulnerable and/or powerful. Whether you are writing a novel, short story, or are crafting brand new scenes, you will benefit from this supportive class. All sexualities warmly welcomed.

I'm looking forward to getting naked with you. ;)

Faulty Plants & Wily Verbs

Tonight, I was talking with friends about my lack of gardening skills.  "Every time I get a plant, it fails," I said.  I meant to say "dies" but "fails" it what came out.  It was a funny moment in which I realized I really do put the onus on that poor plant.  Via verb use, I'd managed to make myself sound less like a plant-murderer and more like someone who'd been let down by her faulty plants.  A bananas but elegant example of why verb-choice matters...

I haven't wittered on (Brit!) about UK sayings for a while, so here's one I use all the time:  Join the club.

Example:

Speaker 1: I have so much work to do

Speaker 2: Join the club.

See, you can use "join the club" whenever you want to express the fact that you -- and many others -- feel (or are) the same way.  I love this saying.  Love it, love it, love it.  It communicates so much in so few words, and the metaphor's a tease.  

I have LOADS of students who have had works accepted for publication/published and I haven't had time to sit down and collect all their links.  So if you are one of those talented published folks, congratulations!  And send me your links so I can finally showcase you.

Write on!

Sugar Doesn't Lie

I have just been reading Sugar's advice on writing at the Rumpus, in response to a reader's letter.  Sugar is wonderful and she writes a fantastic response, particularly for writers who are feeling stuck in the rutt of "not getting anywhere."  I quote:

"How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."

Amen to that, Sugar.

Ten years ago, a friend told me I was a terrible writer.  She took my first little paper-mag publication in her hands (it was a poem called "Igloo") and said, "Oh I thought you meant you'd been published in a real magazine."  Then she went on to add that my writing was too dark and that no one would ever want to read such rubbish.

We lost touch.  And I kept writing.  And my writing got better.  And I never got less dark.

Saying Swear Words Stresses Your Brain (But Please Don't Stop)

Not so long ago, a study was done into swearing.  The results suggested that speaking swear words actually stresses our brains.  My feeling?  This stress might often be positive.  Certainly, if you look at psychodynamic theories of psychology (think Freud and Jung) there is the notion of stress being unconsciously suppressed, creating all sorts of mental and physical problems, and needing an "outlet" into consciousness for healing to occur.  Surely such a release could be seen as desirable.

Besides, swearing is important in terms of social rebellion, and of course, it is often needed to vent or air the truth.

At any rate, the subject of swearing is a rich one, and the vid below shows just how inventive and downright hilarious swearing and other insults can be.  And by the by, if you're not a fan of the creative insult, teamed with a medley of curse words, you might want to cover your ears...

Thanks to LG and JA for the links.

 

 

Flash Fiction Workshop for Seniors

Folks, please spread the word that I'll be teaching a flash fiction workshop at the Mystic Valley Art & Experience Senior Art Show, which promises to be a wonderful event.  (If you're a Brit reader, "senior" translates as "senior citizen").  Find out more details here.

Sassy Gay Friend: Othello

By the by, if you've never heard of Sassy Gay Friend, please check out his videos, especially his Shakespeare spoofs which include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello (which is below).  These vids are hilarious and educational too.  If I was still teaching high schoolers, they'd be golden in a classroom.

 

Some Heartbreaking Work

I've just had a short short published by Monkeybicycle, who I do so love.  I hope you enjoy it -- it's called "A Heartbreaking Work."

Congrats this week go to Erik Doughty, who has just had a gorgeously poignant short short accepted by Flywheel.  And those Virgin Writers, Esme Foong and Cheri Biggs, have been at it again, talking about magic.  You did know there was such a thing as writing magic, didn't you?  No?  Check 'em out.  Beautiful stuff.  Also, Rosaly Quinones Doyle, a longtime reader of this blog, has started a thoughtful and impassioned blog of her own and I want to share the link with you.  This week, she writes about the rosy vision of romantic love.