At the recent &Now Conference in Buffalo, NY, I sat on a panel about collaborative projects with John Dermot Woods, Johannes Göransson, and Tim Wood. And during the Q and A portion, there were several ideas raised about the collaborative process and its potential to partially limit or bind a writer – some comments even [...]
Archive for October, 2009
Pressurized Writing, Pushed Writing, Bound Writing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged &Now Conference, Johannes Göransson, John Dermot Woods, Tim Wood on October 31, 2009 | 9 Comments »
Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged An Attempt to Trace Such Illusions to Their Physical Causes, Oliver Sacks, Samuel Hibbert, Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions; Or on October 31, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I heard about this book in a lecture given by Oliver Sacks about hallucinations: Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions; Or, An Attempt to Trace Such Illusions to Their Physical Causes, by Samuel Hibbert, published in 1824. Happy Halloween!
Contests, Cartoons
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged asemic writing, poetry contests, poetry slam, ren and stimpy, south park, spoken word poetry on October 31, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I’d like to address some of the issues regarding contests that Sean raised yesterday—once again, through the lens of cartoons and their peculiar engagement with poetry. Aside from cash, job advancement, and literary patronage, the spoken word contest (or poetry slam) seems to be about the spectacle of competition per se. I mean, people are vying [...]
genius
Posted in Uncategorized on October 30, 2009 | 4 Comments »
What are your conceptions of genius? What fairy tales and mythologies do you associate with the word?
Break Every Rule, Part 1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Break Every Rule, Brian Evenson, Carole Maso, Gary Lutz, The Shelter of the Alphabet, William Gass on October 30, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Carole Maso’s Break Every Rule is a quiet, elegant book of essays. Every sentence here is a gem. Remember that time you walked barefoot across a pebbled beach, marveled at every sea-bitten thing, picked up some bright form that warmed your palm, that had some power in it. That’s what it’s like reading Maso. The [...]
Why Enter a Contest?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Cash and art?, Literary Contests on October 29, 2009 | 14 Comments »
Why would anyone enter an artistic contest? For me: 1.) Cash. I was paid a $1000 for a story a few years ago, in a contest. (This will never happen again, I assure you.) That was the best month of beer I’d had in a really long while. 2.) Job. I am in a tenure-track [...]
Smart people
Posted in Uncategorized on October 29, 2009 | 13 Comments »
But there’s the thing, yeah?, as writers, we do value intelligence. We value smartness productivity publishing reading writing etc etc etc. Do you value it more than “kindness” or “caring”? What’s important in a friend/partner to you?
What Do You Listen to While You Write/Read?
Posted in Uncategorized on October 28, 2009 | 28 Comments »
For me, nothing beats complete silence while writing or reading. I used to be able to listen to music, any kind of music while I wrote. But then, I could only listen to instrumental music. But now it’s impossible. Floorboards creaking, doors clicking, people chattering, pens scraping, keyboard tapping—everything rattles me. So for the past [...]
Dino Buzzati’s “The Falling Girl”
Posted in Uncategorized on October 27, 2009 | 2 Comments »
A Summary: In “The Falling Girl” by Dino Buzzati a young girl commits suicide from the top of posh skyscraper full of apartments and offices. Time is suspended as she falls. As she falls, people examine, comment, and question her from windows. By the time she reaches the ground she has extraordinarily aged and is [...]
A Kind of Mini-Primer on Flarf
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Flarf, Nada Gordon on October 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
In an otherwise disposable blog post “SPLENDOR, generation, and VALOR SETS” Nada Gordon weighs in on Flarf: “Let’s discuss this, shall we? Or rather, deconstruct it. Firstly, Flarf is not (in the robotic sense of the term) “generated.” Flarf poems are written. Their materials are, in Kasey’s term, sought. I almost prefer the word rescued. [...]
The Radiohead of Writing?
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Cory Doctorow, the first writer to use a Creative Commons license in conjunction with a commercially published novel, is kicking off a grand new publishing experiment. Doctorow has long offered free ebooks of his new books on the very day they were released traditionally. This new project sounds massive, and very much something to pay [...]
H+ Magazine
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
HERE is an interesting site: “h+ covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways. We will be following developments in areas like NBIC (nano-bio-info-cog), longevity, performance enhancement and self-modification, Virtual Reality, “The Singularity,” and other areas that both promise and threaten to radically alter [...]
Who the Fuck is “we” James A. Michener?
Posted in Uncategorized on October 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you” James A. Michener. Yes, that’s true, and also: If you can’t be white milk, please don’t be milk at all. No, wait. If you can’t be mayonnaise, uh, be a saltine…Wait, if you can’t be sexually OK and also maybe wear a [...]
Would You Ghost-Write a Book for Tom Cruise?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Tom Cruise book, Write for Cash on October 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
MFA/MA Make Your Writing Glow?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged MFA writing sample on October 25, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Lots of students coming to see me about applying for an MA or MFA in Creative Writing. What’s the most important factor in getting in? THE WRITING SAMPLE! (A while back a Important Person at Vandy told me, “We don’t give a shit about their GPA–it’s all the writing. I’m going to say I’ve had [...]
Lon Otto: Flash Writer From the ’70′s
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Nest of Hooks, A Very Short Story, Cover Me, Lon Otto on October 23, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Here is a Lon Otto flash: A Very Short Story A man is at a party with his former lover and her new husband. She is in one part of the room with her husband, talking with some old friends. He is a little way off, telling a story. And then he starts making a [...]
Big Other Contributors’ News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Artistically Declined, John Madera, Kim Chinquee, Kitty Snacks, Leni Zumas, Light Boxes, Midnight Picnic, Molly Gaudry, Mud Luscious Press, Nick Antosca, Pretty, Ryan Bradley, Sententia, Shane Jones, The Collagist, We Take Me Apart, White Pine Press on October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Leni Zumas has a fantastic new story in Kitty Snack’s 2nd issue. Please check out an excerpt of “On Water” HERE. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Ryan Bradley is co-publisher of the new press Artistically Declined which will be releasing Ken Sparling’s elusive second novel, Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt in early 2010. Sparling is the author [...]
Jumpstart Your Fiction #1
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000 on October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000
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Authors
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John Madera
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John Dermot Woods
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Ryan W. Bradley
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Michael Leong
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Greg Gerke
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J. A. Tyler
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Stacy Muszynski
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A D Jameson
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Tim Jones-Yelvington
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Rachel Swirsky
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Edward Mullany
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Aya Karpinska
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Paul Kincaid
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davis schneiderman
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Amber Sparks
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Tim Horvath
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John Domini
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Elaine Castillo
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Curtis White
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Paula Bomer
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Andrew Taggart
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James Tadd Adcox
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Nick Francis Potter
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Brian Kubarycz
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Gabriel Blackwell
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Janey Smith
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Matty Byloos
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J/J Hastain
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Greg Hunter
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