Story of the Week Hits Narrative Mag

Narrative Magazine is running my short story, "Farallon," as a Story of the Week beginning today, March 8, through Saturday, March 13. Take a look here. After March 13, readers may access the story via Narrative's archives. (I workshopped this story last August at Squaw Valley, with Ron Carlson as my workshop leader, so I owe a special shout-out to Ron and my workshop-mates. Thank you, writing friends!)

I'll have a chance to work with Ron again in Positano, Italy, at the Sirenland Writers Conference, and, I hope, to meet Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, Hannah Tinti, and Michael Maren. Workshop of a lifetime!

Drinking Ron Carlson's Kool-Aid

While at Squaw Valley Writers Workshop in August, Ron Carlson, one of our fiction workshop leaders, encouraged us to lay off the email until after 4:00 p.m., and to forgo blogging altogether. He's no Luddite, but he's got a point: all things technology are time suckers -- and he never even mentioned Facebook, which I confess is an all-out addiction.

The point is that there are too many distractions for writers, most having to do with eating, coffee drinking, and excuse-making in general, and if we're "working" on anything other than fiction, we're simply goofing off.

So I'm taking a sabbatical from blogging, and limiting myself to two Facebook visits per day -- before 9:00 a.m., and after 4:00 p.m., when I'll also check email.

Can I do it? Heck if I know, but I'm gonna try. I gotta try. I've got a deadline for the first draft of my new novel, and if I'm going to nail it, I've got to drink Ron's Kool-Aid.

See you April 1?

Litcomm -- A New Genre?

I was reading The Sacramento Bee recently, which featured a piece on Roger McGuinn, the founding member of the folk-rock band The Byrds. I was interested in the story because McGuinn commented that the folk-music establishment in the '60s viewed the Byrds as little more than “barbarians at the gate” because they weren’t purists. McGuinn attributed the folk establishment's attitude to a “kind of snobbishness.” Which got me thinking that this is sometimes how writers of literary fiction view writers of commercial fiction. Which got me thinking about those of us who fall between those categories; who write commercial fiction with literary qualities. Which got me thinking we need a new category for this genre, and that we ought to call it Litcomm.

I Googled “litcomm” to see what was out there, and it appears the term is most often used as an abbreviation for “literary comments” or “liturgy committee” or “liturgical commission.” A search for “genre litcomm” brought up no hits (none!) while “genre litcom” brought up “literary community” and not much more. There was nothing anywhere about a market inhabited by the likes of Larry McMurtry, Pete Fromm, Ron Carlson, Dennis Lehane, and, well, me. (Why should boys have all the fun?)

And get this. Type in www.litcom.com and you’ll find that the domain name is parked, but available for $4,350. (Why stop there? Why not shoot for $5,000?) Oddly, www.litcomm.com has been purchased by a guy in Wappingers Falls, NY, though this name too is parked. Why? Is he a writer? And if not, what’s he’s going to do with it? Type in www.litcom.net however and you’ll see that it is a parking space reserved (gereserveered) for (voor) a Scandinavian company providing “services.” And then there’s www.litcom.org -- which is ahem, best left alone.

I’m curious about other writers’ feelings on this. Is anyone willing to share? Are you a litcomm writer, and if so, should we band together and form a group and maybe march on Washington? Or at the very least, New York City? Let publishers know we’ve got a voice and wish to be heard and that dammit our numbers are huge? Or are there only five of us, one of us unpublished? In the words of Scout Finch, “Shoot me a beet, Pete,” and let’s see where we go.

Indian Creek Chronicles

Just finished Pete Fromm’s INDIAN CREEK CHRONICLES, a story about the seven months Pete spent alone in a tent in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness guarding salmon eggs. There is much to love in this book, and several times I laughed out loud, as I thoroughly related to Pete’s fascination in his younger days with the mountain-man mystique. In describing himself as a nineteen year old about to embark on his winter-long endeavor, he says:

“At the last instant I remembered to buy a percolator and a few pots and pans, things I’d never owned or used. And finally I added a hundred pounds of potatoes, saying I’d dig a food cache to keep them from freezing. I didn’t really have any idea how to make such a thing, but the word “cache” was always creeping up in the mountain man books. It had a certain sound to it.”

I remember years ago reading a paperback based on the movie “Jeremiah Johnson,” and thinking warm biscuits slathered in bear grease must be the best thing going. I even fantasized about homesteading in Alaska, going so far as to buy a laundry basket and a spatula and other items I’d need for my new life in the wilds. I too was 19, and had never held an ax or caught a fish or picked a berry from a vine. But life in Alaska sounded divine.

The thing about Pete’s book is that it makes me realize how completely insane my plan was, and how much I missed by never having tried.

Buy this book, and when you’re done with it, stash it alongside Ron Carlson’s. Then sally forth and write your story!

Ron Carlson Writes a Story, Part 2

When I wrote my October 31 blog, “Ron Carlson Writes a Story,” I didn't know I’d want to follow up a few days later, but having finished his book two nights ago (a slim volume comprised of 112 pages), and having dog-eared 11 of those pages and scribbled copious notes in the margins, there’s a passage I’d like to share where he discusses how uncomfortable it is to reach the point in your story where you don’t know where you’re going. Here’s what he says:

“But I am nervous. I’m thinking I’d like to get some coffee. I’m thinking I’d like the phone to ring and have it be any of ten people who would call and say meet me for coffee. A little coffee here after typing for an hour or so, why not? Stretch the legs, that’s it, and then while I’m in the kitchen, peek outside at the other world, see what’s happening, breathe the larger air, witness the passing traffic, every car full of writers who have already given up.”

Writers who have already given up.

I read that line twice, and then once more, knowing that was me, in 1998, a writer who’d given up.

I remember the night exactly – the feel of damp air on my skin as I walked home from a neighbor’s house, the streetlight glowing pink in the evening fog. I remember too the envy and anguish I felt over my neighbor’s excitement, and how difficult it was to share his joy. He’d just finished a novel, and believed, like we all do in those very early days, that the world was waiting with open arms to receive his special gift.

I’d been a writer, too, for a while, but put it aside to financially help our family. It was the right thing to do at the time, but nevertheless, I made a promise to myself that night that if I ever got another chance to write full time, I would never ever give up; that I’d keep at it forever, if that’s what it took, to write a novel a publisher would buy.

The other day, I was visiting my husband’s 96-year-old grandmother in her assisted-living facility when she leaned over and asked, “When you gonna sell that book?”

“Probably when I’m 96,” I said, “and living in assisted-care.” She laughed, and I did too.

And though I don’t know when I’ll get published, I do know I’m a writer who will not give up, so when Ron Carlson looks out his window at all those passing cars, I will not be in even one of them, but at home, nervous and thinking about coffee, and getting the work done.

Ron Carlson Writes a Story

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, host of Writers on Writing, welcomed writer Ron Carlson to her podcast this morning. Ron is the director of the MFA/Fiction Program at the University of California, Irvine, and was one of our workshop leaders at the Squaw Valley Writers’ Workshops this summer. Barbara and Ron discussed his new book, RON CARLSON WRITES A STORY.

During the interview, Ron said stories are created in the dark, and that we as writers must tolerate their ambiguity and trust our instincts when putting words to paper. He also said it’s important that writers stay with the writing, even when it feels substandard – a challenge he too finds daunting. He illustrated this point by stating when he gets stuck, he sometimes gets up from his chair and leaves the room, then wanders into another room – invariably the kitchen – to pour a cup of coffee and pray a sentence will emerge. Better to sit tight and work it out, he maintains -- dance with the desk what brung ya.