Lightning, Thunder and Fire Writing! Part I.

We’re going to start with Lightning Writing today.

Remember the joy of writing with invisible ink when you were a kid? You’d buy this ink at a novelty store and write in it.Nothing would appear on the page but when you held it up to a light bulb, the words would appear.

You can use a technological equivalent for those days when the censor is sitting on your shoulder and you’re lingering too much on what you’re writing instead of trusting yourself and moving ahead.

The idea is to write in a text you cannot see or cannot understand but which you can easily change back to your normal black Times New Roman (or whatever) on a white background.

Okay, ready to go?

First, change your font color to white with the selection tool in the upper right corner of the toolbar area. Begin to type.You will see . . . NOTHING!

This is a wonderfully freeing way to write. You will feel a closer connection between your brain and your fingers when you write without the in-between appearance of the printed text.Your thoughts will fly freer. You can come back and censor, tweak, re-arrange later. That’s the part of writing that should come later, divorced from the act of creationg. Give it a try.

Now that you know how to do this, be really brave and start a folder in which to save your unseen writing. Don't peek. It’s okay to give it a retrieval name you can see. You’ll want to call it up later, select the text, and change it to black.

After writing something, I always put it “in the drawer” for a few days, at least, or better, a few weeks before I come back to it. My mind will have been working on it in another way and my thoughts and eye are sharper to revise.

I’m going to give you a few days to try this and then I’ll post again, with some exciting variations.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel--Canterbury Tales for our Time

After reading The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I went to see the movie.  Both were interesting.  Having read them close together, I was very aware of the differences.  Book to film is something I always find fun to analyze.  I immediately liked the beginning of the film better than Deborah Moggach’s book, although she’s a great writer and I love her stuff.  The book started with a fairly long exposition of the troubles a daughter and son-in-law were having with her randy, flatulent, belching, selfish old dad, who in the film became a still randy old man but someone in search of love and companionship and a fairly attractive human being, very vulnerable.  The beginning of the film?  Well, think Canterbury Tales.  Each character is introduced before they begin their journey together (not the flight to India but the journey in the hotel toward whatever peace or pain they are going to find in their final years).  Although Chaucer’s pilgrims went on pilgrimage to holy shrines for expiation of sin (as well as a nice road trip, different food, and good company), the main sin of the pilgrims here and the reason for their residence at the Marigold was financial improvidence or other problems that left them unable to afford England.  The movie is billed as dealing with the trials of old age but I think it’s more about how we allow or forbid cultures to change us, whether the cultures are foreign countries or different micro-cultures we encounter as we travel through life in our own countries.  I loved a sentence that was repeated several times during the movie, especially by the endearing, ever optimistic young proprietor of the Marigold:  Everything will be all right in the end and if it’s not all right, it’s not the end yet.  I can live with that.

Get my blog posts in your e-mail!

I've just added a new service to my blog, which you will find by following this link or going to treeriesener.blogspot.com. All you have to do is enter your e-mail and you'll get every new post.  I hope a lot of you will establish a relationship with me this way!

The statue of Diana that stands at the top of a grand staircase in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  The line to see the Van Gogh exhibit went past her.  I should say, the line to stand in another line to get into the exhibit went past her.  But the wait was worth it.

Van Gogh's Paintings Get Tilt-Shifted (12 pics) - My Modern Metropolis

I just went to an exhibition of Van Gogh's later paintings.  He plunged into glories of light and color at a certain point in his life.  I think he would have loved Photoshop.  Van Gogh's Paintings Get Tilt-Shifted (12 pics) - My Modern Metropolis:

'via Blog this'

MOBIZ: The end of traditional paperback books

I found this article interesting because I still buy hardcover books, beautiful books, books with lovely paper and illustrations, nice fonts but I find I look for a Kindle copy instead of buying a cheap paperback.  MOBIZ: The end of traditional paperback books

New Blog Style to Celebrate 8000th View!

I've spent the morning giving my blog a new look.  Not so artistic but easier to read, I think, and easier to find posts that might be of interest. I'm not quite finished with tweaking but I'll be interested in what people think.  Oh, I'm celebrating--just passed the 8000th view!

Tree Riesener Reading At Bolingbroke

I'll be reading from my forthcoming collection of ekphrastic poetry, EK, which will be published by Cervena Barva Press in 2012.  The reading will be at the Bolingbroke Mansion in Wayne, Pa. on December 7 at 7:00.  More information will be coming out soon but there will be my featured reading with slides of the images, an open reading and gorgeous refreshments, all in an old mansion decorated for Christmas. What's not to like?  Come on out and have fun!

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Poetry chapbooks by Tree Riesener:  Inscapes (Finishing Line Press), Angel Poison (Pudding House Publications), Liminalog (Inmates Run The Asylum Press).  Each book is $10.00 and shipping is free when you order from me!  If you'd like to know more about the contents, just drop me a line!  FORTHCOMING:  New full-length collection, EK, from Cervena Barva Press!

The Meat Eaters By JEFF MCMAHAN (New York Times)

An interesting analysis of the food chain--would the world be better off if all meat-eaters were replaced by herbivores? Would this enable us to be kinder, gentler people? Follow the link and read on . . .

Our own form of predation is of course more refined than those of other meat-eaters, who must capture their prey and tear it apart as it struggles to escape. We instead employ professionals to breed our prey in captivity and prepare their bodies for us behind a veil of propriety, so that our sensibilities are spared the recognition that we too are predators, red in tooth if not in claw (though some of us, for reasons I have never understood, do go to the trouble to paint their vestigial claws a sanguinary hue). The reality behind the veil is, however, far worse than that in the natural world. Our factory farms, which supply most of the meat and eggs consumed in developed societies, inflict a lifetime of misery and torment on our prey, in contrast to the relatively brief agonies endured by the victims of predators in the wild. From the moral perspective, there is nothing that can plausibly be said in defense of this practice. To be entitled to regard ourselves as civilized, we must, like Isaiah’s morally reformed lion, eat straw like the ox, or at least the moral equivalent of straw.

Tree Riesener Reading At University of Pennsylvania Bookstore

Penn Bookstore Series

Light of Unity Association and Mad Poets Performance Series
1st Thursdays, April through September
Hosted by Tamara Oakman

University of Pennsylvania Bookstore
3601 Walnut Street
University Square
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Admission: $7 or $5 for students, seniors & MPS members. Proceeds split in half between performing artists and a different charity each month. Event co-sponsored by the Light of Unity Association.

Thurs., June 3: Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Dan Maguire, Quincy Scott Jones, Mel Brake, Tree Riesener, George McDermott, and a musical/spoken performance by: Ian Wolf.
June proceeds to benefit Philabundance.

This series is supported by PA Partners in the Arts (PPA), the regional arts funding partnership of the PA Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding comes through an annual appropriation by PA’s General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PPA is administered in this region by the Five County Arts Fund. Special thanks to April Williamson of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

Authors' Contracts Will Look More Like Service Agreements

Fascinating article from Bruce Milligan's "Publishing Perspectives." Read the whole article by clicking on the title.

"Future contracts will reflect the multiple opportunities that authors have to market themselves and their works directly to their readers. “If you imagine a world in which authors ‘don’t need a publisher,’ it encourages the publisher to take a different view. The contract looks more like a service agreement. Publishers have scale and reach and access to funds that authors don’t have, but the paradigm looks slightly different.”

When Brevity Is a Virtue

Short stories have won unusual plaudits this year. Alice Munro won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her body of work; Elizabeth Strout's short-story collection, "Olive Kitteridge," claimed the Pulitzer Prize. "Olive Kitteridge" has sold 472,000 copies according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75% of book sales—impressive for any kind of literary fiction.

When Writing, Avoid Early Closure

There have been a few times in my life when a poem or a story composed itself like a house afire. My fingers danced on the keyboard. My pen slid over the page. I was completely channeling the duende and the work passed through me like sunlight through a window.

Not often.

Most of the time ideas start to gather like the harbingers of a storm. First a few clouds in the sky. Then a few drops of rain. Maybe a long sultry day before the first rain falls. Then a break, time to take a little walk, weed the garden a bit, put a bucket under the leaky place before the next installment of rain. Eventually all this foreplay is over, the heavens break open, rain drenches the ground, soaks in, swirls in rivers. The writing starts to come.

There's a natural tendency to want to finish a bit of writing. The soul yearns for the finished project. But for me, most of the time, I'm not channeling a poem. I'm laboriously building it up, word by word, phrase by phrase. I've learned to trust the process. As I take a walk, ride trains, read, run errands in the city streets, I live with the poem or story. It's always with me. I wake up in the morning and discover my brain has been busy all night.

I've learned to wait until a fair amount of notes, jottings, little sketches, cryptic phrases are there on the page. Only then is the best time for me to begin writing. After the first draft is more-or-less finished, I put it aside and resolutely ignore it (or try to ignore it) for at least a few days. The day comes when I feel it would be okay to work on it again. By this time, the well of ideas from my subconscous is overflowing again for the revision process, one of the most rewarding, voluptuous parts of the composition process.

Don't cheat yourself of all this joy by feeling the work must be brought to completion too quickly. It really is true that the process brings great happiness and almost always (except when the duende visit you) results in deeper, more redolent writing.

Read this poem, Ithaka, by Cavafy. It's probably the best poem ever written about enjoying the voyage as much as the port.

Bruce Milligan: In Praise Of The Lowly Chapbook

From Bruce's article: "The books themselves run the gamut of printing and binding techniques: letterpress, offset, even laser printing; commissioned handmade paper, high-end linen paper, best-available-at-the-local-paper-store-on-Friday-afternoon paper; almost all have hand-sewn bindings—Coptic, Japanese, or plain saddle stitching. All are signed and numbered, with print runs no larger than 500 copies. Prices range from $14 to $75. What they all have in common is that they almost always sell out within the first year or two and, being “collectibles,” the last few available copies inevitably escalate in value, sometimes precipitously."

Susan Tepper Interview: Final Question

Tree: Well, Susan, these are going to be your last soul-searching questions, unless we come up with some more. I want to pry a bit into your innermost thoughts today, so my first question is this:

Do you keep a journal?

Susan: I have never kept a journal. I was taught if you write it down, you've already begun. I'd rather just dive right into the fiction and poetry.

I spend a huge amount of time revising my fiction, many stories have gone through thirty to fifty rewrites. Same thing with the novels.

Huge amounts of time spent on rewrites. I end up with a mound of papers before the piece is complete for me. Raymond Carver said you know you're done when you take out punctuation, put it back, then take it out again. In other words, when the redundancy kicks in. I can tell I'm done when I'm happy with it each time I read it over.

Sure, over the years, I can see things in published work that I might tweak a bit. But once it's done, it's pretty much set in stone for me.

Poetry is a little different. I write short poems that come out fast. Some work well and get published quickly. Others, I let sit, and might revise a year later. Revision for me, with poetry, is more about form than words. I write abstract poetry, so in revision I might slide the lines around a bit, which can cast the poem in a different light. Abstract poetry is more like painting, in the sense that it makes its statement on the page by where it appears when the line is "speaking." I hope that makes sense.

Tree: I know this is a question asked of all writers but for me it has an enduring interest. What writers do you return to and read over and over? Contrastively, who are some new writers you are excited about?

Susan: William Trevor is a staple for me. I have never read a William Trevor story that failed. He has brilliance on every level: his craft, his choices, the way he understands the human psyche and its weaknesses and failings. Simply amazing. I think that's a true gift some are born with, and he made the decision to steer it into writing.

I also read Jean Thompson. Her unusual take on life really spikes her fiction, I'm very fond of her work.

Mark Wisniewski, who I've been reading for twenty years, just knocks me out. He goes places I wish I could go. I think of Mark as my "spirit writer." I finally met him, when I invited him to read in my FIZZ series at KGB Bar. He is as nice as he is talented.

With poetry, it's Simon Perchik that I read over and over. I interviewed him twice, and reviewed his opus book Hands Collected for the Boston Review. That book spanned fifty years of his poetry. We have become close friends, and Simon is my poet mentor. I feel truly blessed by this.

Tree: I go back to Trevor over and over, keep his big fat collected stories beside my bed. Mark Wisniewski is a favorite as well. What an enigmatic thinker! I'll have to investigate Jean Thompson (like tomorrow!). Simon Perchik is wonderful. We like so many of the same writers. No wonder I'm drawn to your work. Okay, let's go on to the next question.

Would you free associate these phrases. No need to explain. We won't make the mysterious mundane!

The first phrase is this. What do you think of when you think of a good place to be?

Susan: My bed, in a sweater, St. Martin in the Fields Church concert, KGB announcing my readers, greenhouse in winter, local ice cream parlor, Prague, Waterloo Bridge, tea in the Crypt, St. James Park, Marios cafe, the Jimmy concerts

Tree: What are some places where you wouldn't want to go?

Susan: Cemeteries, Madrid, Las Vegas, Detroit, para-sailing, deep sea diving, family reunions

Tree: Well, I said I wouldn't ask but I hope someday you'll explain these to me. I can understand not wanting to go to Detroit, but Madrid? And I've always thought Las Vegas would be the Grand Canyon of Neon. Love to go there just once.

Okay, this is the final question. Let us in on the secret. What are you working on now?

Susan: A bunch of things. A novel of linked stories, a story about a museum guard, a story about a man who lives in Prague. And always poems... when they want to come to me. !

Tree: Susan, thank you for spending this time with us. Good luck with Deer

Susan Tepper Interview, Question #3--Intuition or Planning?

Tree: I know you have characterized yourself as an intuitive, spontaneous writer, as compared to an outliner or planner. Could you share some thoughts about your writing habits, even such mundane things (that can be very important) as, for example, pens or pencils. Special kind of pen? What kind of notebooks? Home or cafés? Any computer programs? Neat or tidy desk? Give us a picture of you as a working writer!

Susan: If you can picture someone acting compulsively, then you pretty much get me as a writer.

It's my drug of choice.

I wake up with poems on my brain in the middle of the night and dash into the next room to write them down. Lately that has eased up a bit, thank god.
But I'm like the person who buys the big double pack of Oreos and sits down and eats until the last cookie is gone. In other words, I have no will or willpower over writing.

Tree: But as a writer, you do have to sit down and work on something. Of all the writing projects I presume you have in your brain, how do you organize the day's work?

Susan: I don't make decisions. I don't say: I want to write a novel. I sit down at my computer in a cramped, pathetically overstuffed little room and start typing and whatever comes through me onto the page, that's what I write. The other day, I overheard someone saying something in a diner, and I thought: that would make a good story title.

If writing wasn't so completely enthralling to me, I probably would have gone nuts by now. The whole thing totally absorbs me. The writing, the submitting, the promotion, the editing, the magazine, my writer friends, my reading series... on and on.

Tree: But what about the times you need for actual writing? Do you like mornings, afternoons, any particular needs of that sort?

Susan: The only time I'm not writing on a daily basis is when I'm traveling. I never travel with a laptop or notebook. I adore travel so much, I want to take in everything without being distracted. If I could travel endlessly, I might quit writing.

Oh! I just caught a little insight. Writing is travel! So that's the key to the puzzle -- I'm a compulsive traveler! In actual travel, I travel with my husband, Miles, who is a great travel companion.

Tree: What can I say? I'm an organized writer who makes endless lists and action plans. But a part of me is just like you. I usually start the day with very free-wheeling writing exercises and I have to say some of my best writing has come from those times when I empty my mind and just type whatever comes directly from my brain to my fingertips.

I think it's good for writers to be comfortable with both approaches and draw on them as needed, maybe trust an intuitive approach for the initial work and then re-approach it more critically for the revision. But we have to trust the duende who bring us the ideas and the flow, right? Never second guess them or they might stop helping us! Thanks, Susan. Until tomorrow!

Susan Tepper Interview, Question #2--Magical Realism

Tree: Okay, we're ready for question #2, continuing our exploration of the scenes behind the scenes of your stories, and here it is!

Transport one of your characters to his/her dying days. Using first person, talk about a moment (or two or three) when this character was happiest, when something "clicked." In other words, what are one or several things in life that brought him/her some happiness in spite of everything?

Susan: Very cool question! Ok, I'll go with the character Maura, in Elvis Out of The Meditation Garden.

Tree: Before we read more about Maura's dying thoughts, could you fill us in a bit on her background?

In the story she's a young woman in her twenties, kind of sweet and not especially interested in her boyfriend Ramey, who is pressuring her to marry him. But Maura is very interested in Elvis, who they've stolen from his grave, and transported to their Elm Street Community Theatre, for a special Elvis musical event. For the purpose of answering your question, Maura is now in her forties.

Whoever knew that living near power lines could cause you so much trouble? I was just so happy to finally have a house, a nice old white clapboard house. For about the first decade we lived here, I never really paid attention to the phone lines and all that electricity strung pole to pole through the back yards.

I was busy raising our twins, Julie and Jim, while my husband Mark was on the road a lot. Sales. I never liked when he had to leave, it worried me, not that I'm afraid of being alone, but I worried about the women. There are always women around men who travel. Elvis traveled. Priscilla must've spent a lot of time alone with Lisa Marie.

But back when I knew Elvis, that short while at the theatre, I'll confess I wasn't really thinking about Priscilla. Sure, her name had come up a few times but she was history. I wasn't. I was there and Elvis was there and it was magic! He had touched my breast! Held onto it. Until my boyfriend Ramey made him let go.
Now I touch where my breast used to be and hold my breath remembering.

If only I had figured out a way to be alone with Elvis before he had to leave us. I should have gotten Ramey out of the theatre on some pretense. I should have led Elvis over to the pink velvet couch from our Arsenic and Old Lace production. I know Elvis would have followed me.

I knew it then and still know it. Nothing can take that away. I touch my phantom breast again and I can feel Elvis inside me, deep in my body. That makes me rest more easily.

Tree: When I read this story, I think "magical realism." Did you consciously write this story to fit into this category? Is this a school of writing you are interested in?

Susan: Magical realism is wonderful! I love the stories of Garcia Marquez, which I read intermittently. I have written a few pieces that I suppose could be put into that genre. One is a story called "Above the Clouds Midnight Passes" which was published by Crannog Magazine in Ireland, and inspired by seeing a Max Ernst exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What an incredible painter!

But I have to say I don't consciously choose which way a story goes. The Elvis story could have turned out to be one that takes place while he's alive. But somehow his wanting whiter teeth forced it into the present. And, of course he's dead! So the story had to become whimsical on some plane. Here's what I remember about the "Elvis" story. I woke up with the first line in my mind and could picture Elvis saying it. I typed that first line and the rest followed. I'd be happy to have someone call this story Magical Realism.

Tree: Well, Magical Realism is one of my favorite genres and I think this story definitely has an honored place there. Thank you, Susan. I look forward to your answer to tomorrow's question, when we pry into your writing habits! Until then!

Susan Tepper: Interview

Last month I posted a review of Susan Tepper's new and acclaimed book of short stories, Deer.  This month I'm following that interview up with a series of interview questions.  I'll be posting one question and answer each day this week.

Here's the interview for today!

Tree:  Susan, since you lived with these characters a long time as you were I wonder how you would assimilate into your characters' landscapes, the worlds they live in.  Of all the characters in your stories, which one lives in a landscape in which you would most like to spend a year?

Susan:  Wow, tough to answer.  My first thought was none.  Most of these characters are struggling.  Then I decided I could live in the landscape of childhood again, particularly the landscape of Henrietta in "Velvet Box."  She's a scrappy girl, smart and independent.  Life doesn't touch her.  It's the suburbs, in the 1950's, when children were allowed to run free.  She has her little tribe:  younger sister, Bibi, and younger cousin, Pete.  She's the leader of this pack and the world is her oyster.  She tears around the neighborhood saying and doing pretty much as she pleases.  There's grass and trees and dogs and caterpillars and hydrangea bushes and plastic lawn deer.  There's also a violent neighbor, a repressive church and a dying uncle.  Henrietta remains aloof from all that is not life affirming.  She does this unconsciously.  That life can be bad or difficult simply doesn't penetrate her spirit.  And that is the ultimate freedom.  I could definitely live there.

Tree:  That sounds like my childhood.  I would take off all day on my pony, with a BB gun and a lunch.  Nobody worried about me all day.  It's a sort of freedom children today don't know.  I could live in that landscape again, although I'd do without the BB gun!

Tomorrow:  Susan turns to the other end of life for one of her characters and discusses her thoughts when nearing death.

Susan Tepper's Deer & Other Stories: Step Into Her Scary, Tender World

With this publication of Deer & Other Stories from Wilderness House Press, her first book of short fiction, novelist and poet Susan Tepper is well on her way to establishing her own territory, even as Cheever, Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor have done.  Instead of the world of monied but angst-ridden New Englanders, violent and ancestor-ridden Yoknapatawphans, or Gothic, God-ridden Southerners, Tepper has her world of late-Twentieth-Century-ridden lost but valiant souls.

The leitmotif of this book is the deer, who makes an appearance in each story whether as a head on a wall or hanging upside down in a garage, draining.  Putting a deer in each story could have been a tiresome affectation, something dragged in to achieve continuity, but when deer cross from their wilderness into contemporary civilization (or what passes for it in a Tepper story), my first thought is of the deer as elegant, out-of-place creatures standing frozen in the lights of a car.  We know they will soon be transformed into road kill, much as many of the characters in this book will be transfixed and wounded by the lives they find themselves out of place in, whether that place is cleaning a filthy rented house or sexually servicing the Beatles along with the lesser Mahareeshi in India.

It is a measure of Tepper's excellent writing and the tenderness with which she views her characters that we care what happens to these high school students playing hooky and driving illegally while passing a joint, this mismatched honeymoon couple with a wife trying to cope with a mouse-haunted house and a husband who wants sex "with devices," all the while worrying if such a thing might leave her with a permanent vibration, a young boy struggling with life in Italy with his grandparents, his only friend another young ex-pat who tells him his family "defecates" in the ground.  "Naturally we have a toilet.  We're not animals.  We shit to fertilize the garden.  We give back what we get from the ground.  We get very large radishes.  You'll see."

The stories are fascinating but let's talk about the language we find in this book.  Susan Tepper writes damn good sentences, sentences to enjoy, to linger over.  As someone who has taught writing, I could pick any page in this book and have students study the variety of sentences, the texture they lay on the page.  A lush variety of beginnings, from prepositional phrases to participial phrases to single words.  Front-loaded sentences, back-loaded sentences.  Balanced, coordinated sentences and the occasional short, starkly declarative utterance.  This is the writing of a language lover, not cunningly devised but flowing easily with a gorgeous balance of language perfectly suited to the characters.

Immediately and especially noticeable is the onrush of exciting, powerful verbs.  Teenagers clock eighty-five, things are rammed, chilly wind beats, food is shoved into mouths, a wife flashes a sweetly savage smile.  Details are crisp, clearly observed, telling, not overloaded with adjectives and unneeded adverbs.

The dialogue here is language that would naturally issue from the mouths of her characters but even in passages where the characters are not speaking, we share in their interior lives with interior monologues.  This is an immediate book and we are sucked into these difficult lives and stay with them until the resolution, wishing the story could go on a little longer. 

The thing to remember when you rush out to buy this book (which you should immediately, it's that good) is that these people (I won't even call them characters) are US, in our infinite variety, pain, and machinations to survive.  Along with us, they are all afraid of dying and camouflage that natural human tendency in a variety of ways, their hopeless, stumbling rush toward oblivion honestly but lovingly chronicled.

Gmail - This Sun., Mad Poets Festivel-CityTeam Ministries FOOD BANK - treeriesener@gmail.com

This Sun., Mad Poets Festival-CityTeam Ministries FOOD BANK


From Eileeen D'Angelo, President of Philadelphia-area Mad Poets Society--Come to have a good time and help the less fortunate, this Sunday, October 4! Follow the link for all the details.

Hello, Everyone,

Please take a minute to read the attached press release. Although this Sunday is the 22nd Mad Poets Festival, noon to five at Media Borough Hall, 3rd and Jackson, in the Mansion Parlor + 40+ Poets will read- More importantly- John Clifford of CityTeam Ministries told me yesterday that CityTeam Ministries is experiencing a dire reduction in food donations due to the economy& lack of donations. He will be present at our festival to collect non-perishable food items, or canned goods, AND to dish up warm & delicious chicken chili at a minimum of $1.00 a cup - to bring awareness to the poor and disadvantaged in our area. The Media Food & Arts Festival will happen during the same time frame, on State St., between Monroe and Orange: bands in the streets, arts, crafts & all different types of food. John and I thought this is the perfect time to remind everyone not everybody has food. The event is free - but your "ticket" is some non-perishable food item or canned good. A listing of ideas is posted below. All Donations to CityTeam are 100% deductible, and their contact info is below. Please spread the word any way you can. IF YOU HAVE A BLOG, please post this. If you do Twitter, or if there's some other social network you are involved in, I urge you to post this information & see if we can "scare up" some food donations. IF YOU HAVE A MAILING LIST of folks you know would be interested in helping CityTeam, please forward this to them.

Southword Journal Online home

Interesting and thoughtful article about the printed (?) word and online publishing, from Southword magazine (Ireland).

Southword Journal Online home

Time To Get Serious About Blogging

I have to accept the fact that summer, that lovely, louche time of being very gentle with myself, is over.  It's been so seductive to picnic and laze on the front porch reading and consequently, I haven't kept up my blog.  Those days are over now (leaves starting to fall) and I have to face the fact that the whole nature of a blog is timeliness!  So hold me to it if I let slackerdom creep up on me again and tell me to start blogging. In my own defense, I'll say I've published a ton of poetry and fiction during this time so I haven't been totally morally dissolute.

Today I want to share one of my little book customs.  Every change of season I make a stack of books to work on in the coming months.  I will read other things along the way but these are the ones I want to get through for sure.  I like some variety:  poetry, short stories, a couple of contemporary novels, some classics, letters or memoir, a travel book for sure and something about nature.  These things live between the two owl bookends on the table by my favorite chair (yes, I have a favorite chair, so what!) along with my journal, my bookmark collection, and my fountain pens with different colors of ink. 

For a classic, I've just started to re-read Thomas Hardy and started with Far From The Madding Crowd.  I decided to read Hardy because I was intrigued by Katherine Ann Porter's essay on the contrasting views of Hardy and T.S. Elliot about the "common people" in their writing.  She felt Hardy had a much gentler, but very realistic, view.  So far, I have to agree, at least that Hardy penetrated to the essence of his peasants, while depicting them, often, as mildly comic.

This book takes me to a time when landscape was so much a part of these people that the death of a tree was noticed and commented on, seeing the tree as one of them, a laborer that had its place in the world of work.

"Yes; and Tompkins's old apple-tree is rooted (uprooted) that used to beaar two hogsheads of cider and no help from other trees."
"Rooted?--You don't say it!  Ah!  stirring times we live in--stirring times."

A kindler, gentler world, you might say, but the book also deals with the plight of a deserted, unmarried pregnant woman, general illiteracy, no social welfare system for the old, rampant disease and death, and the necessity to find work, or often, simply starve.  We have so much more and go so much faster, but I think the French proverb has much truth:  The more things change, the more they remain the same.  In much of the world, women live precariously close to death for transgressing social mores, there is general illiteracy, especially for women, there is no welfare system for the old or the weak, virulent diseases rage, children die for lack of simple medications, and people starve.  Even in the United States, many are hungry and sleep on the streets. 

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Table of Contents: Easy, perfect alignment

If you have labored countless hours over your table of contents, trying to make the numbers align, only to have a wavering line that looks like a snake's spinal column, leave me a comment and I will send you the elegant, easy answer! Editors will accept your manuscript if only for the beauty of your TOC! No more of this, "Well, I'm not even going to read this thing! Look at the table of contents--this author is definitely a sloppy, ill-defined thinker!" Leave me your e-mail.

Fanny Howe: “Buddhists Like School and I Don’t.” An experimental poet meditates on the intersections of language, writing, and God.

And now, surprisingly, a woman was introduced as the image of compassion and an object of the Dalai Lama’s greatest admiration. Mary! He didn’t make fun of her apparitions but believed that they had really occurred and that she was sending us important messages about the necessity for peace. She was, in a very real way, the Christian Buddha, and he was perplexed by her removal from Protestant religions.

Indie Filmmakers organize! Why not Indie Authors?

"If you have a passion for making movies and you are looking for others who have similar interests, you have come to the right place. Whether your talents and interests are behind or in front of the camera, IndieClub. com (click on title of post) is the premier site for networking. IndieClub's 30,000+ members include actors, directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, grips, gaffers, CGI artists, makeup artists, and any other title you might see rolling in the end credits. IndieClub's goal purpose is to network us all together!"

I have long wondered why we accept independent filmmakers and record producers as legitimate, inspiring artists taking production into their own hands but meekly accept the onus on authors who do the same. Publish your own book and no matter how good it is, you'll have trouble getting reviews with the major reviewing sites, newspapers and so on.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I understand this. When considering the purchase of music or buying a ticket to see a film, one can view samples. With the online tools now available, it would be easy to do the same for writing.

I grant you, people don't seem to follow writers with the same enthusiasm as they do music or film. How much more enthusiasm could be developed if independent publishers of their own work developed a cooperative package for helping one another? I think such an organization could be tremendously powerfull and could result in authors breaking the stranglehold publishers have.

Hope you'll take a look at this site and share comments. Shall we form an Independent Publishers Association? (I don't like "self-published." The word has become too tarnished with associations of the old "vanity publishing." Nobody says an independent record label is "vanity music"!)

Tennessee Williams Liked To Revise ... And Revise ... And Revise

I've been reading the Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams, and I loved this anecdote. I'll just share the quotation from Gore Vidal's introduction.

"Over the decades I watched Tennessee at work in Rome, Paris, Key West, New Haven . . . He worked every morning on whatever was at hand. If there was no play to be finished or new dialogue to be sent round to the theater, he would open a drawer and take out the draft of a story already written and begin to rewrite it. I once caught him in the act of revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely, then said, "Well, obviously it's not finished." And went back to his typing.

As an inveterate reviser, I love this. Before I consider something even approximately finished, I have probably worked on revising it for weeks. Every time I send something out, I revise it again.

I totally understand one of the Impressionist painters, Bonnard (?) maybe, who was caught sneaking with his paints into the exhibition where his pictures were hanging, just touching it up a little.

Easy And Good Way To Make PDF Files

This is going to be just a little posting but I have been so happy with this free program I want to share. Several times lately a publisher has asked me to submit a PDF. Not wanting to spend money, I searched for free programs and found one called Cute PDF Writer. It was a quick, easy download and seems to work perfectly, at least for my simple needs. I've put a link to the site if you want to give it a try.

Creative Writing Tip: Thunder Writing

Last week I introduced you to Lightning Writing—white font, white background. Today I want to show you how to do Thunder Writing—black font, black background.

First, I’d like to think about the connotations of these two kinds of writing. Lightning Writing, as I said, is white on white. But what does white writing make you think of? Sudden illumination, jagged writing, purity and clarity? Definitely. But whiteness also makes me think of the eeriness of a deserted, weed-filled field on a hot summer day, with the buzz of unseen, unknown beings filling the air; Remember how Meursault felt in Camus’ L’Etranger in the blinding heat of the beach, leading him to an unpremeditated murder? You never dare to stare into the sun for fear of blindness. The point? When you write in white, you must open your mind to ambiguity—clarity and confusion.

You’ll experience the same abiguity when you do Thunder Writing—black on black. We often think of blackness and night as scary. Night is when the vampires and zombies come, when we feel terror trying to change an exploded tire on the expressway with all those serial killers cruising past. Sure. But night is also velvety soft, comforting and warm. It’s when you can think about things without guarding your expression. It’s time to be soft and warm in your nest of crisp sheets and blankets, for those wonderful moments of thinking before you sleep. It’s the gleam of crows’ wings and kohl to line your eyes. So when you write in black on black, consciously direct your writing toward affirmation and fear.

As with Lightning Writing, try to save your Thunder Writing without looking at it for a few days. Then you will open the document, select the text with Control + A, change it to black on white, and be amazed by what you wrote. Use it to write something consciously controlled and save it again, let it ripen.

Next week, we’ll talk about Sky Writing, Solar Writing, and Grass Writing.

Okay. Here’s how to do black on black.

Go to “Format” on the toolbar. Click on “Background.” You will see the background change to nice solid black. Then go to the “Text Color Selection” tool in the upper right (as you did for Lightning Writing) and choose “Black.” WARNING! Don’t choose “Automatic” or your text will be white, an interesting effect but not what we’re aiming for.

Start to write thunderously, with your fingers coming down firmly on the keyboard. Or begin to write stealthily, with your fingers coming down like delicate cats’ paws!

Friday's Creative Tip: Writing Soup

Today's tip is about a delicious soup that writers can easily make and only take about fifteen minutes off from their work.

The pan: I think cooking instruments should be lovely and satisfying to the cook's soul. I make this soup in a huge saute pan with a long, curving silver handle. It's so pretty you can just leave the soup in it for everybody to serve themselves.

The ingredients: Carrots cut up in round slices or those little carrot-shaped pieces you can buy in a packet. A package of fresh Swiss chard. Three or four cans of vegetable broth (stock up when it's on sale).

The recipe: Empty four cans of fragrant broth into your elegant pan. Add the carrots. Cut the stems off the Chard, wash it, and chop it into rather small pieces. Dump the veggies into the broth and heat it until the carrots are cooked the way you like them. Add some mushrooms if you like but they aren't really necessary.

Eat your delicious writers' soup. It isn't heavy, which would stifle your creativity. It is BEAUTIFUL--golden carrots, dark green Chard, light green broth. If the day is hot, cook it early and put it in the fridge because it is possibly even better cold. You will get a lot more writing done because you won't have to cook again. Just add a nice piece of vegetarian cheese and some lovely crusty whole-grain bread!

Lightning, Thunder and Fire Writing! Part I.

We’re going to start with Lightning Writing today.

Remember the joy of writing with invisible ink when you were a kid? You’d buy this ink at a novelty store and write in it. Nothing would appear on the page but when you held it up to a light bulb, the words would appear.

You can use a technological equivalent for those days when the censor is sitting on your shoulder and you’re lingering too much on what you’re writing instead of trusting yourself and moving ahead.

I’ve done this for years and was interested to hear another writer, Karen Blomain, talk about using it at a conference I recently attended. She uses the white version but I have several variations.

The idea is to write in a text you cannot see or cannot understand but which you can easily change back to your normal black Times New Roman (or whatever) on a white background.

Okay, ready to go?

First, change your font color to white with the selection tool in the upper right corner of the toolbar area. Begin to type. You will see . . . NOTHING!

This is a wonderfully freeing way to write. You will feel a closer connection between your brain and your fingers when you write without the in-between appearance of the printed text. Your thoughts will fly freer. You can come back and censor, tweak, re-arrange later. That’s the part of writing that should come later, divorced from the act of creationg. Give it a try.

Now that you know how to do this, be really brave and start a folder in which to save your unseen writing. Don't peek. It’s okay to give it a retrieval name you can see. You’ll want to call it up later, select the text, and change it to black.

After writing something, I always put it “in the drawer” for a few days, at least, or better, a few weeks before I come back to it. My mind will have been working on it in another way and my thoughts and eye are sharper to revise.

I’m going to give you a few days to try this and then I’ll post again, with some exciting variations.

Facebook Writing Community Rocks!

I've been fortunate enough to achieve some writing successes the last several days: A first for the literary short-short at the Philadelphia Writers Conference, a second in the category of Science Fiction, Imaginative Fiction and the Supernatural at the same conference and being a finalist in the Black Lawrence Press for my short story collection, Kissing Jesus. It felt a little egocentric to post these accolades on Facebook (although other writers do the same). The resulting congratulations from others, especially writers who know the loneliness and difficulty of the writing life, brought me a lot of joy. Now one of my Facebook friends, Joolz Denby, has even started a Facebook cafe and treats us to a new kind of coffe or tea along with delicious cakes every day. If I can't have a writers' cafe down the street, where we all stop in for our coffee and absinthe at the end of a hard day of writing, I'll be happy with my Facebook friends. Thanks, all!

Iranians To Follow On Twitter

StopAhmad and Emoltzan are good people to follow on Twitter for Iranian news as it happens. You can probably find more. I would think to be cautious even on Twitter. Who knows who is posting. The government could be posting under an assumed posture. Read and evaluate!

Twitter To Iran

I am getting tweets from Iranian citizens, DIRECTLY from Iranian citizens. For example, a woman just posted that the police knocked on her door at 2:00 a.m. and took her daughter away. Her husband is now having heart pains because of this. We should all make an effort to get our news this way, direct from the citizens, because it's hard to know what's what when the news is filtered by the media.

Nabokov On Writing-Colum McCann, NYT

Vladimir Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

Writing Aloud is Dead

Tonight I attended the final performance of the 10-year-run of one of the finest theatrical endeavors in the country. For the past ten years, eight under the direction of David Sanders and the last two under the direction of Rebecca Wright, a season of dramatized short fiction by local and national writers has been blessed with sold-out performances at InterAct Theatre on Sansom Street in downtown Philadelphia.

Over the years, I was lucky to have three of my short stories in the series. I met many other writers and actors who brought the stories to vivid life on the stage of Interact Theatre and who have become friends.

We ended the final performance with reminiscences and drank a final toast to a great series, a great theatre, great directors, great actors, and, from my point of view, best of all, great writers. We drank a toast there and I came home and drank another. When a theatrical series gives its final performance, it's like a death and so we had a wake for Writing Aloud.

Skyping From The Hospital

I am in love with technology. Here I am, waiting in a hospital for my dear one to have an operation, tapped into a wireless network and even able to Skype Europe. Some people become irritated with those who use their technology (cell phones) in public but I kind of like that. It's nice to see people wanting to stay close to the people they care for. As long as they're not driving and texting, why not? I think it's better not to use cell phones for long chats while driving, but it's not a whole lot different from just talking to someone in the car, as long as they're using a headset. As far as talking on cell phones in trains and so on, I love it, being privy to all that information, participating vicariously in people's glorious and messy lives. On occasion, I have even entered into the conversation, whispering some advice to the person talking and definitely talking the problem over after, entering into people's lives for the space of the ride. I have yet to have anybody get angry; they seem complimented to have me interested. Little do they know I write it all down as soon as possible and save it for a novel.

Mother's Day haibun, 2009

A day celebrating my biological role. More than that, I guess. My sociological role as well. All my failures kindly overlooked. As if I were the final winner of the American Idol of Motherhood show. As if I danced with the star who was the Platonic role model of mothers, her hands of steel and nimble legs using me as a marionette who appears to be dancing just as well as she does. Surrounded by faces who have decided not to tell me my cancer is beyond redemption, that the doctor has sewed me back together so the show can go on. Now the night's curtain has fallen. Wipe off the makeup, let my cup of hot milk tremble, no longer try to walk with a vigorous and springy step. Oh, how kind are the ones who surround me, how kind is the darkness.

still in the moon’s night

chamomile sheets and pillow

outside wind rises