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authorkdrose

~ Pushcart Nominated Poet & Author. Reader. Analyst. Futurist. Belle of the Pithy, Acerbic Ball.

authorkdrose

Tag Archives: Reblogged Posts

The Wound—Because Damaged People Make the BEST Stories

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Authors, Books, Culture, Publishing, Writing

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Books, Culture, Publishing, Reblogged Posts, Writing

Kristen Lamb's Blog

screen-shot-2016-12-05-at-9-58-19-am

Many emerging writers come to me when they find they are struggling with their WIP. I always begin with the same question, “What is your story about?” Often, I get this response, “Well, my story isn’t plot-driven. It is a character-driven story.”

Translation?

I have no plot…and please stop asking me because it makes me want to drink heavily.

There really is no such thing as a purely character-driven story. Character and plot are like two keyed cogs. One drives the other. The plot pushes the protagonist to grow and as the character grows, this in turn drives the plot.

For instance, in The Lord of the Rings the plot problem (Toss evil ring in a volcano before power-hungry necromancer takes over Middle Earth) is what forces the Hobbits to leave The Shire. Ah, but once they leave, how they respond to escalating threats determines plot.

For instance, they…

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Social Justice For Rhinos

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Helping Others, non-fiction

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Books, Culture, Helping Others, Reblogged Posts

This is a worthy cause to think about and do more. The book they produced is to help their cause. I am putting up pictures of the book so readers can see. PS: Authors Professsional Co-Op is a Facebook Group I have belonged to for a long time and it consists of writers who are serious about their craft.
——
It is amazing the hard work people put into trying to save and help and aid. I am mindful and do what I can. I also often wish when I made more money that I was more cognizant of all the different charities, causes and things like this. Don’t think one person doesn’t matter. One person matters a great deal. Here is an update from one person who is helping in his own way. Besides what my husband and I do in person, I will do what I can, on this blog over time to help charities in need.-KD
Here is how to help, from Paul himself:

“These are the links to the anthology ‘Looking into the Abyss’

UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1539868923

USA https://www.amazon.com/dp/1539868923

Kindle Worldwide  http://authl.it/6bo

ebook

“I have no standard blurb for the book, just that 11 authors from around the world got together to help save the rhino, one story at a time, by helping raising funds for ‘Boots on the Ground’ the most dangerous anti-poaching operation in the world.”

there’s a little more on my website http://paulznewpostbox.wixsite.com/paul-white

and ‘boots on the ground’ has a facebook page https://www.facebook.com/thebootsontheground/ .”

abyssadvert21
‎”Paul White‎ to Authors-Professionals Co-op updated 11/26/16
November 24 at 12:26pm ·

Just to keep all of you in touch with how things are progressing on the ground with the Rhino, here are a few photos.
We need to promote ‘Looking into the Abyss’, the sales are slow.
I have dedicated a double page to the book in the new edition of Conservation Redlist magazine.
“Boots on the Ground” in Mali with some of the most incredible people you ll find in Anti- Poaching Training…”

Photo credits: Nigel Kuhn

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Paul White's photo.
Paul White's photo.
Paul White's photo.
Paul White's photo.
Paul White's photo.

 From Paul and his group:

 

rhinoboots

DIVEDAPPER INTERVIEW WITH JERICHO BROWN

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Authors, Culture, Genius, Literary, Poetry, Writing

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Literary, Poetry, Reblogged Posts

“Even language is not on our side.”

JERICHO BROWN

Interviewed By: Kaveh Akbar

About Jericho

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Best American Poetry. His first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Emory University.

Jericho’s Website

The New Testament
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How do we have both ecstasy and irony in one place at one time?

There is a face to every poem. It’s got a nose, it has eyes. Sometimes it only has one eye. Some really good poems have thirty.

I learned years ago that the thing you are avoiding is actually the big thing.

Nobody has gotten more lagniappe than Jericho Brown.

I’m not after a rejection of being a Black gay poet. I’m after understanding what being a Black gay poet might allow me.

We can accept the fact that we’re artists as a burden, or we can accept it as the best thing that could possibly ever happen to anyone.

We have to be honest about the work we’re doing, and honest about the fact that thoughts lead to actions. Poems are meant to adjust our thoughts and our feelings.

If we can get you to the point where you see yourself as white as opposed to seeing yourself as normal, then that’s a good start.

I don’t know a poet who is not teaching, or mentoring, or editing a magazine, or running a blog, or doing a contest, or running a reading series.

J: Don’t you go to school in Tallahassee?

K: Yeah, I’m getting my Ph.D. at FSU, so I go to school and I teach. Your pressmate, Erin Belieu, is here.

She’s just a lovely soul.

Haha, she really is. You know her, right?

Of course I know her, I love her!

I do, too! You just sound so happy.

I’m full of positive statements. I think maybe people aren’t used to that. And so it says something about what we’re going through, right? That when we hear a positive statement, we immediately have to be skeptical about it. I think part of that is because we’re poets and so all we’re ever doing is thinking critically. It’s true that in order to do what we have to do, we have to do that at every turn. We have to think critically and question all of the things that are coming our way. But it becomes problematic when we find a reason to question our joy, which we should be allowed to have like anyone else is allowed to have. How do we begin to balance that? How can we be people who are indeed critically thinking and problematizing in a healthy, skeptical way, and yet still fully enjoy the pleasures that we’re meant to enjoy as it relates to ecstasy, and joy, and life as we know it. I want to figure out how to get the spirit of that into my work.

Yeah.

And I know from your work you are interested in the same thing, right? How is it that I represent myself as a spirit? How is it that I represent myself as something and someone continuous?

Oh, very much.

That representation of the self is a representation of the truth of the human race. And yet, how do I also represent the fact that I know that the human race doesn’t always know how to act like that? We don’t always act like who we really are. We don’t always perform in ways that would suggest we are made of spirit. This is why I love poetry—I don’t think any other art can get at that in the way poetry does. I don’t think any other art can get at how we move back and forth between fear and faith in the way poetry does. That’s what I’m really interested in doing and that’s what I’m really interested in reading. I’m really interested in reading the work that makes that which is complex, complex. Makes difficult that which is difficult.

Absolutely.

A lot of the work that I read and don’t like is the work that wants to make simple that which is difficult. Or wants to make difficult that which is really simple.

Totally, totally. So much of what interests me about poetry, and your work specifically, is the way that it has this compulsion to celebrate. But then there are all these external forces conspiring against that deep internal joy, that deep internal exuberance. So it’s the friction—what creates the sparks in these poems is often the friction between that deep desire to acknowledge that exuberant core and the external station that would conspire against it.

Yes, yes. I mean, this is what we’ve been talking about for years—how American poetry is descended from Dickinson and Whitman. That any American poet must find a way for each one of their poems to embody both of those spirits at once.   How do we have both ecstasy and irony in one place at one time? Because, in actuality, those are the bodies we live in. Our bodies have those things in one place at one time. I don’t know whether or not this is the case for everyone, but I think it’s also important to understand that I am descended from those two, and that I am also descended from Phillis Wheatley. Being descended from Phillis Wheatley allows me to see what Dickinson and Whitman offer me through a very different kind of light.

Totally.

At the same time that I am as American as Dickinson and as Whitman, I am also as rejected, or as descended of slaves, as trapped, as kidnapped, as someone like Phyllis Wheatley. So how is that possible? How do I write from a position that is Whitmanian and Dickinsonian, and yet understand that that position in and of itself, because it is the American position, means to kill me. Right? There was no plan for my existence as a thinking being. There was never any plan for that. As a matter of fact, all of our founding documents prove that there was a plan for just the opposite. The plan was actually that I not exist as a thinking being, right?

Yeah.

So that’s another thing poetry allows me. It allows me to deal with being an artist of many backgrounds and to hold great complexity in my very being.

That complexity becomes a charge as you move forward.

Yeah. For me, it becomes a way to think and re-think about tradition. I have the opportunity to carve something new in a tradition—in several traditions—that is a very long and very old tradition. And that seems to be our job. How do we move forward within the tradition as individuals? So says T.S. Eliot. Do you understand what I mean?

Yeah, totally.

And that’s exactly what I’m after. I’m not after a rejection of being a Black gay poet. I’m after understanding what being a Black gay poet might allow me. I’m not the only, or the first, Black gay poet, so what does being a Southern-gay-Black-poet allow me? What can that bring forth in my work? That’s what I’m really interested in seeing. I’m interested in looking at the larger—supposedly larger tradition and all of the traditions within that supposedly larger tradition. I’m going to change that because I hate the word so much because obviously I am one hundred percent an American poet. I am a part of the larger tradition. I am an English-speaking poet.

Even language is not on our side. Even in that moment, right? And so that’s what I mean about being skeptical and questioning. We have to do that every moment. We have to take every opportunity we can to correct ourselves, and that’s what poems allow us to do. That’s why revision is so important. It gives us the opportunity to look back at what we’ve done and say, “Did I get it right?” before we try to get the work in print. Do you understand what I mean?

Right, yeah, absolutely. Go ahead.

No, I talk so much.

It’s so good.

I hardly ever get to talk to you, Kaveh, and it’s all I ever want.

The best conversations are the ones where I do the least talking. I’m coming from a different position than you, but America didn’t anticipate the presence of people like me being American either. I was born in Tehran, but I’ve lived my whole life here in America. There’s a way in which you come into this negative space where your very humanity is this gap in the planning that this nation had for itself. There is a way in which you can harness that.

That’s fascinating.   That’s exactly what I mean. I just think it’s important that we accept the fact that we’re writers. I think we should accept the fact that we’re artists. Obviously we don’t have any choice in that matter. All of us are clearly very smart people. There are other things we could be doing that would be much more financially advantageous. So we can accept the fact that we’re artists as a burden, or we can accept it as the best thing that could possibly ever happen to anyone. And if we can accept that as the best thing that could possibly ever happen to anyone, that changes what we use in our poems and how we use it. And it changes how we look at what we use and how we use it.

The other truth, Kaveh, is that when we’re writing a poem we’re not really thinking about these things. At least for me. I mean, I’m thinking about these things all the time, but I’m thinking about them because I’m thinking about them in the same way that I breathe. I’m thinking about whatever I think about whether I like it or not. It happens inherently and intuitively.

It’s like a compositional part of your consciousness.

Exactly, exactly. And what I’m actually thinking about when I write a poem, I mean what the poem allows me to do is to have those things, and yet to have them at bay. Because when I’m writing a poem, I’m thinking about line length, and line break, and structure, and the kind of ending I want to make, and how the opening works. “What does climax mean in a poem?” is the question that I ask myself all the time. “What is the middle of the poem?” Like, “where is the middle?” “What does it really mean to make a turn in a poem?” I used to tell my students that you only get to say ‘but’ in a poem once.

Totally, I love that.

But immediately after I told my students that, I went about the business of trying to write poems where I could use ‘but’ more than once. We’re really trying to see what we can do when we write a poem. “How does this work in second person?” That’s where we’re really getting so many of our joys from.

Yes. That seems very true to me. You have this sort of foundational consciousness where you are constantly thinking about these larger questions, but when you get into the actual process of writing a poem it becomes this game of language.

Yes, absolutely.

And to talk about writing a political poem, or to talk about writing a socially engaged poem, just the action of writing a poem is inherently political because you are slowing down the metabolization of language, which is an inherently political act and a socially engaged act because you’re actually thinking about what you’re saying. There’s the poem in The New Testament , “Found: Messiah,” where you take this cruel, sort of ghoulish, blog post, and you slow down the language in a way where it just becomes so—I’m getting literal goosebumps just talking about it now—it just becomes so staggering and devastating, and it’s got that ending, you know? That’s an example of how our formal conversation that’s going on in our head just sees language and then changes it into something totally different.

 

Yes, I agree completely with that. I mean, that’s exactly what I wanted to do and I thank you for saying that. It is true that to simply sit, and think and really contemplate a thing and see it for what it really is, is a political act. But I do want to add that there is a face to every poem.

Did you say a face?

Yeah, a face. It’s got a nose, it has eyes. Sometimes it only has one eye. Some really good poems have thirty. Every poem has a face, and on the face of the poem you can tell whether it’s interested in supporting the status quo or whether it’s interested in questioning the status quo.

Absolutely, that’s a great way to say that.

So there is the work that we do when we write a poem that is automatically political. But there is another kind of work that we do when we write a poem that tells us exactly which political side we stand on.

Yeah, yeah. Totally.

We have to be honest about the work we’re doing, and honest about the fact that thoughts lead to actions. Poems are meant to adjust our thoughts and our feelings. We read a poem that we love and we don’t think about or see things the same way we did before we read that poem. That’s the litmus test. And if that’s the case, if our thinking does indeed change, then it follows that we have no choice but for our actions to also change. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

The work still has to be well crafted. It’s funny, when you start talking about this stuff, people like to assume that you mean bad poems are okay to write. I don’t think bad poems are okay to write. I don’t want to read them. The other thing I think people assume when you start talking about this stuff is that you want them to go write about something that they haven’t actually thought about. And that’s not what I want, either. If you’re writing about something you haven’t really thought about, then you’re not going to write a good poem. You know what I mean?

I absolutely know what you mean.

Our poems have to come from our obsessions, our passions, the things that wrack us, our questions about the things that we don’t understand but really want to understand, right?   The things that drive us up a wall. For instance, I do have questions about why it is that more poets who aren’t Black have so little to say about things like police brutality, and I have those questions only because I wouldn’t have had those same questions however many years ago. I definitely have those questions now because, you know, everybody is watching the same television news. And everybody has the same social media and everybody is walking around with devices. So there was a time where I could completely understand that if something was not your experience, then you could not have anything to say about it. But it seems to me these things are to a point now where they are indeed everyone’s experience, in some way or another. But, at the same time, I don’t want people writing about a thing that they haven’t really thought about.

I’m not sending you in to write a poem about race when you haven’t known that you’ve had a race your entire life. I would like for you to get that down first. If we can get you to the point where you see yourself as white as opposed to seeing yourself as normal, then that’s a good start. So that’s what I’m for. There are people who see beautiful trees and don’t even notice them, but I don’t think they need to write about nature. You don’t need to write about saving our planet, which is dying by the way, if you haven’t thought about the fact that she’s dying because your poem is not going to be good. You don’t realize that, for instance, when you were a kid you walked around on concrete with bare feet. Now realize the fact that you will scorch the bottom of your feet if you put your bare feet on concrete today. If you want proof that the planet is indeed getting hotter, use your memory. Those are the kinds of things that are of interest to me—that we actually make material out of what we are thinking about, and that we begin to question why we aren’t thinking about the things that are right in front of us. That seems weird to me.

I would go as far as saying we are not questioning the things that are right in front of us because we have been allowed not to. We have the privilege not to. And there are some privileges we should not take advantage of. Sooner or later, if you keep seeing people get shot, if you realize there is no proper way for Black and Brown people in this country to interact with law enforcement, there is no having been subdued, or having completely complied, that means you won’t just get killed. I think we should make a decision about whether or not we’re okay with that. I don’t know who has not seen enough of these videos to know that if you have yet to think about this, then you’ve also said you are okay with it.

Right, right. I keep thinking about what you said about the poems having faces, and how the The New Testament epigraph, a James Baldwin quote, corresponds directly to that, “one’s enemy—sees the face you wear, and this face can elicit the most extraordinary reactions.” I keep thinking about the poems that are willfully clinching their eyes closed to try to deny the existence of these things that are very much a part of our daily experience. But if a poem isn’t paying attention to the world, then I’m not going to be inclined to listen to it.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

This is very much a part of everybody’s daily experience unless they are actively trying to avoid it, which is a whole other conversation. And for it not to permeate the conversation at all is telling. It’s telling in the ways that you are describing.

Yeah, yeah, yes. I mean, there has to be some way that we can write a poem about running on the beach and enjoying running on the beach. A lot of us are spending a lot of time running on the beach. I’m serious. There’s got to be a way that we can write the poem about looking forward to our weekend getaway in the Hamptons. I mean, seriously, that’s really what many of us are thinking about. We’re thinking about how we can get away to the Hamptons. But, sooner or later, we have to question why we are thinking about some things but not thinking about others? And we have to write poems about that ‘why?’ “Oh yeah, I have seen this over and over and over again, and I’m not thinking about it, so maybe I could at least write a poem about why I’m not thinking about this thing that I’m seeing over and over again.”

Yeah. And I think that the negative space of something that is very deliberately left out of a conversation becomes an element of the poem, too.

Yeah, yeah.

I write a lot about addiction now, but it was something I had been trying to avoid putting in my work for a long time. It was just this conversation that I didn’t want to have anywhere that anyone was actually going to be able to read it. You know what I mean?

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, I know.

You’ve spoken in the past about how your family didn’t know about your HIV status, but you’ve since written about that more. There are these things we don’t want to engage in our work that then ultimately find their way into the work.

Yeah, I learned years ago that the thing you are avoiding is actually the big thing. The thing you are resisting is actually the thing that is begging to come to the page. It’s like, “Hey talk about me, I’m here.”

It’s something that’s sort of been marinating in your subconscious for so long that it’s really going to come out. It’s really going to have something to say when it’s ready.

  The marinating that it has done is what allows you to deal with it in terms of line, and line break, and other craft elements. That’s what allows you to actually begin to make metaphor for it. Because you dealt with it in your head for so long that now you can finally make something of it.

Yeah, yeah. I love that.

You can make something of it without ending up in tears. The tears that you have when you write about that thing are different from the tears you have, in terms of your memory, of being in the midst of that thing.

It’s fascinating to think about the sort of alchemy of that action. You take a memory that turns into tears. Already there’s this correlation between the abstract and the concrete, where this memory is this very abstract thing, and these tears are this very physiological response. And then you can turn that into this poem, which is this thing that has ink and is on a page, or it’s in the air and it has vibrations and sound. It’s this consistent transmutation of the lived experience into all of these different forms. There’s something really really charged and poignant to me about that. I’ve never gotten over that magic.

I think it’s really wonderful that you’re doing all of the work that you’re doing as a member of the poetry community. Can I just say that? I think it’s wonderful. I love that about you, and I love that—I just love that we’re all together.

I know, I know.

And we like each other. A lot of us really don’t like each other. I didn’t know this at first. I’m really only recently coming to have a complete understanding of this. But, you know, a lot of us have whatever kind of history we’ve had with each other, or we find our poetics to be so diametrically opposed that we are not interested in one another. That does happen. But the other thing that happens that I really love about you, and that I love about poets is that everybody, and I’ve said this elsewhere, but I really believe everybody is such a wonderful ambassador to and for poetry. I love that. I love the fact that you’re doing this interview with me and we’re having this conversation and we’re doing this because we somehow think this is for poetry itself. As opposed to it being for Jericho, or for Kaveh. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Absolutely.

I don’t know a poet who is not teaching, or mentoring, or editing a magazine, or running a blog, or doing a contest, or running a reading series, or—I don’t know that you could say that about all the other writers. In terms of the “in it” that we all do, that everyone of us do to keep the thing alive, to keep the thing going and talked about, even if it’s only among ourselves. We’re all in it to either make poetry better for one another, or to introduce it to those who have yet to meet its magic. I just love that about poetry. And I’m really glad that we get to do that together, and I appreciate you.

You always think of me, and that’s so sweet. You always take these pictures of my poems and tweet them out into the world. And I always feel like, “Oh, wow. He read my poem.” I really appreciate that. I’m serious, you don’t know how much that means to me. When y’all had that conversation on All Up In Your Ears with Jonathan and francine and Gaby, I never told y’all by voice, but I just sat there and cried.

Are you serious?

Yes! I mean, I’ve been wanting to be a poet for a very long time. When I was a very young, I mean like six, seven, eight years old, I was like, “I’m going to be a poet.” And I had no idea what that meant. I just kept saying it out loud, and my mom and dad kept telling me, “Don’t say that.” So to be in a position where I could hear people who I admire so much, people I respect, actually making conversation out of the work that I’ve done—that’s it. That’s a dream come true.

I’ve always said that one of the most important days of my life—I’d given a reading at a Cave Canem anniversary, or something—this is before I’d had a book come out. Terrance Hayes was at the reading. And when I was very young, I mean 22 years old, we met and he was a wonderful mentor to me.   He really taught me how community works in poetry. I really felt like I learned that from him. I remember giving this reading years after having met him, and I remember after the reading he came up to me and he told me that he was proud of me. I remember thinking to myself, “Well that’s it. Everything else is gravy.” I still feel that way. And so I have extra. I mean really, I’ve gotten so much extra that I always feel that it’s my responsibility to say yes to every damn thing. Nobody has gotten more lagniappe than Jericho Brown.

Yeah, yeah.

I really appreciate that.

That’s beautiful.

And it’s what I mean to do when I write poems. I mean to write poems that folk can look at and definitely say, “Okay, he’s really pushing. He’s trying to do the work.”   They don’t even have to say that I succeed every time. But I want it to be clear in my work that I’m not playing. This is who I am. There’s plenty of play in the work, obviously, yes. But I mean to be a poet. I intend it. I mean to progress this tradition. I’m in it. I’m in it for it. The only thing that’s going to stop me is death. As long as I’m here, that’s what I’m going to do. I know that people like you and people like Gaby also mean that. That’s the thing that excites me. I love that y’all have that podcast and that y’all just sit around and talk about a poem a piece. That just floors me. People can pretend that’s not a big deal, but that’s such a big deal. To create that kind of space. It’s a big deal, and we have to continue to do this.

I was always somebody’s child when I was first writing. I still feel like I’m somebody’s child. There was always somebody taking me to the side, asking to see my poems, telling me not to send them nowhere because they were a hot mess. I’m not doing anything that I’m supposed to be doing if I’m not also doing that. I gotta write the best poems I can ever write, but I’ve also got to be a member of this community in every way that I can possibly be a member of it.

Oh, I think so much of that—and we’re almost out of time, so I’ll try to wrap it up after this—

Yeah, because I’m about to go get my hair done, and I’ve driven all the way to the salon on this phone, and I’m like, “Girl, Ms. Candy is gonna get in my head. I’m gonna come out of here a new man, honey.”

I’ll let you get to Ms. Candy in just two shakes of a lamb’s tail, but just to put a bow on everything—I think that there are some for whom poetry is just this constant source of joy, and exuberance, and vitality, and whatever you want to call it, and it becomes too unbearable to hold it all in to yourself. There’s no way to hoard that sort of joy, and so you have to push it out. And I think you are an exemplar of that. You brought the word ‘ambassador’ into the conversation, and I think that’s very apt. I think you are an exemplar of that, of being a good ambassador for the craft. You’re listed in the acknowledgements of every other book I read. And I think that’s just what we do. If you really care about this craft the way that people who really love it tend to, you just have to push it outward because it’s unbearable to hoard that kind of joy.

Exactly, exactly.

Do you have any final words you want to say before I let you go?

No, I just want to tell you that I love you and I really appreciate you for calling me.

LINK   http://www.divedapper.com/interview/jericho-brown/

Submission Strategies

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Literary, Publishing, Submission Opportunities, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Publishing, Reblogged Posts, Submissions, Writing

The Masters Review Blog

Nov 10

Submission Strategies

Submit with abandon? Send out a story that’s already received 20 rejections? Keep going? Call it quits? Should you send an edited piece to a magazine that passed on an older draft? Kim Winternheimer talks submission strategies.

submission-strategiesSubmission strategies are a tricky thing. Every emerging writer I know discusses submission failures and victories, and it’s a topic that pops up in conference panels and workshop often.

Writers talk about submitting because the process itself is the road to publication. Because success in selling stories rests entirely on that effort. Writers lament and analyze the form rejection they receive after eight long months, and applaud the personalized request for more work. Writers talk about the process because they want to see how others are navigating the labyrinth, and, because silently they wonder: am I tackling submissions the right way?

I am a huge fan of Karen Russell’s stories and remember a time I was waiting for her to sign a copy of, St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves. I had planned to ask what her first Big Publication was, and when it happened in her career. I think I was hoping for advice about submitting. That Karen Russell (the Karen Russell) would pass down a piece of information I could replicate.

When I got to the table I asked: “What was your first Big Publication?” Karen replied, “It was The New Yorker. That was my first publication.” “Ever?” I asked. She smiled and nodded, yes. Then she added: “I got very lucky.”

I mention this because most writers—even very successful ones—don’t publish their first story in The New Yorker. And while every person’s path to publishing is different, I think most new writers understand the broad strokes are often the same: land stories in literary magazines, land stories in some great literary magazines, land an agent, sell a novel or story collection.

So it’s hard. The New Yorker hasn’t gotten back to you. Maybe we haven’t gotten back to you, and there’s that nagging question again: am I tackling submissions the right way?

As an editor who sees and processes a lot of stories, certain submission strategies are apparent. We see multiple stories from the same writer in the same contest (as many as six to ten), we see stories from writers with long stretches between submissions, and we see submissions from writers only once.

I do feel that the kind of writer you are and the goals you have for your writing dictate your submission strategy. For example, prolific writers can submit multiple new stories to a contest at the same time without compromising quality, while others submit new work intermittently. Some writers value the long bio, while others value the short and extremely impressive one. Here are a few strategies and issues I see with submissions. (Please note: it is impossible to go through the many varied and personal ways a person can go about submitting because each writer is different, is affected differently by the process, and has different goals for her writing.)

Top-Tier Publication Goals

What kind of writer are you? And what are you goals? For writers seeking top-tier publications, be realistic about what that means. With so few spaces for new writers who submit through the slush, this strategy inevitably means long wait times and many rejections. Take Tin House for example. They publish one new writer in each issue. That means they take one story that is probably not from an agent. That means out of the thousands of stories they receive each year, four are published from the slush. Four. And while an acceptance from a publication like Tin House will do wonders for your visibility, prepare yourself for the realities of this strategy. (It is worth noting they have an excellent track record of publishing flash fiction from new writers online and their platform offers incredible visibility. We love you Tin House!) If rejections get you down you might be compromising confidence and the enjoyment of the process by setting your sights too high. It’s also true that you might land the publication of your dreams.

Staggering Submissions

I think it is a strong strategy to have both top-tier and medium-tier publication goals for your work. I also think it is wise to submit to handful of those when you feel your story is ready, lets say ten, and see what kind of feedback you receive before moving on to the other publications on your list. If you are getting all form rejections, it might be worth revisiting the piece, workshopping the story with friends, and editing before moving forward. I always think it’s wise to revisit a story after a little time away from it, but if you are getting positive feedback, then consider moving forward to the next round of lit mags on your list.

When To Call It Quits

No outside opinion can take the place of a writer’s instincts for her work, so if you are submitting a story that you really believe in, I don’t think there is ever a time when you should quit on it. I do think you should continue receiving feedback and improving on the piece to give the story its best chance, but trust your instincts. There are stories that simply aren’t meant to be published and there are those you should never give up on. I believe strongly that if you continue to service your work and grow as a writer, if you continue to believe in a piece, you will find a home for it.

Submitting The Same Story To A Lit Mag That Already Rejected It

We have writers ask if they should submit a story we’ve already seen, but for a different contest or category. Lets say, they received some positive feedback during our Short Story Award For New Writers, but it wasn’t accepted for publication. Should they submit it to New Voices? Our Fall Fiction Contest? Again, this is a matter of preference, but with The Masters Review we consider all the work we read for publication. If a story isn’t the winner of a contest, but we want to publish it anyway, we will accept that piece. With that said, if we passed on your story I think it’s a waste of a submission fee to send it to us again. Are there exceptions? Of course. If you’ve drastically improved the piece or reworked it so that it is a totally different version of the story we first saw, then please send it our way. But in the end, more than your submission fee, we want to see your best work. And we want to publish that work. If we rejected a story originally we would probably like to see something new from you.

Submitting to The Same Magazine With Different Work

I can’t emphasize enough that continuing to submit to the same literary magazine is something you absolutely should do. As editors, we have a long list of writers whom we’ve declined but are eager to see work from. It’s terrible to think they might not submit to us again when their work is so close and such a strong fit, but has otherwise been beat out by other stories. We’ve published several authors who first received rejections from us. They stayed in the game. They serviced their work, and in the end, they sold us a story.

The Right Fit

It almost feels silly to comment on submitting work to a literary magazine that publishes the kind of thing that you write, but you would be surprised to see the submissions we receive (poetry for example, when we do not publish poetry) that are immediate rejections because of fit. A writer should have a strong understanding of the kinds of stories a magazine publishes to improve their chances. Topically and in terms of style and tone, fit is tricky, but you will only improve your chances by reading that lit mag and knowing what kinds of stories they publish. Still, it’s an obvious statement that many writers, in their zeal to publish, ignore. Do the research. It pays off. (At the very least, read submission guidelines!)

I feel strongly that outside of specific submission strategies, the cream rises. If you continue to submit, that means you are continuing to write, and the strongest strategy for submission success is writing, writing, and writing. As your work improves, the publications will come—and then the very good publications will come. Sit down and edit your work. Don’t be afraid of change and don’t be afraid to move on from a story or set it aside. Your writing might not be where you want it, but you know a good story when you read one. When your talents as a writer and your ability to identify what you love in fiction intersect, you will have success.

by Kim Winternheimer

LINK: https://mastersreview.com/submission-strategies/

Camus: The Paris Review

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Authors, Culture, Essays, Genius, Literary

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Paris from Camus’s Notebooks

September 19, 2016 | by Alice Kaplan

Albert Camus.

The myth is tenacious: an unknown writer on the verge of international fame, not suspecting that the scattered pages on his or her desk will become that miracle, a first published novel and a passport to glory. From March to May 1940, Albert Camus was that man, finishing a draft of the book he was calling The Stranger. The city, eerily calm, overtaken with a sense of dread, was weeks from the German invasion. Paris has changed enormously since 1940, but you can still walk in Camus’s footsteps through places that a few literary specialists have put on the map and come close to a moment of artistic creation.

Camus finished a first draft of his novel alone in a hotel room in Montmartre. The former Hôtel du Poirier on the rue Ravignan sits atop one of Paris’s “buttes” or hills, whose cleaner air might have benefitted the young writer, who struggled with chronic tuberculosis. The site is still about as picturesque a place as Paris has to offer: up a terraced set of steps, on one side of a cobblestone square with its own fountain, the little hotel stood directly across from the Bateau-Lavoir, a beehive of artist studios, spread out like a ship. On this vessel of high modernism, Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907. The glory days of the Bateau-Lavoir ended after World War I, but in March 1940, when Camus lived in its shadow, the place still exuded its bohemian aura. Crowned by the mammoth Sacré-Cœur cathedral, Montmartre was an acquired taste, with its own diehard citizens—pimps and scoundrels, anarchists and poets. Far from the business districts, Montmartre was still, in 1940, practically a separate village, a neighborhood where an artist or writer could get by on almost nothing.  Continue reading →

Poem Published on Spillwords

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

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 Link:  http://spillwords.com/to-love-and-work/

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To Love and Work by K.D. Rose at Spillwords.com
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To Love And Work

To Love And Work

English Literature August 30, 2016 K.D. Rose

LOVE, Poetry, work

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To Love and Work

written by: K.D. Rose

@KDRose1

 

We carry small choices across generations,

resurrecting puzzles and pale faces,

daring, fertile,

as if suffering and pleasure will one day prove a great feast.

We are auctioned daily at our desks.

We are proficient at all weather smiles,

trudge home in burnt clothes,

yearning for eyes that see.

The surge and swell of inner tides exposed by lamplight

floods and wraps around us.

Invisible hands write, piercing our day of veils.

I turn myself into a green field of daisies.

I will be spring.

  • About
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K.D. Rose

K.D. Rose

K. D. Rose is a poet and author. K. D.’s book, Inside Sorrow, won Readers Favorite Silver Medal for Poetry. Her latest release is Brevity of Twit. Her poetry and short stories have been published in Candlelit Journal, the Voices Project, showcased in the Tophat Raven Art and Literary Magazine, and on Creative Thresholds online. Poetry publication is also forthcoming in Poetry Breakfast, Stray Branch Magazine and The Nuclear Impact Anthology.
She has a B.S. in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Social Work. K.D. regrets not possessing a piece of paper that says MFA but hopes you won’t hold that against her.
K.D.’s favorite writers are dead and her other favorite writers are unknowns she reads in Lit mags.
 

Latest posts by K.D. Rose (see all)

  • To Love And Work – August 30, 2016
  • Dear My Lungs – August 11, 2016

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  • FledglingFledgling
  • So I WriteSo I Write
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Made Paragram Paradox Prize Long List

22 Monday Aug 2016

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One of my poems made the Paragram Paradox Poetry Prize Long List!

“Paragram Paradox Prize – the Long List

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by SallyJ in Claire Dyer, creative writing, Humorous writing, independent poetry press – Paragram Press, Paragram, Paragram Paradox Prize, Paragram Paradox publication, Paragram poetry anthology, poetry, Poets, publication, publication of anthology, publication prize, publication success, Uncategorized, writers, writing, writing prize

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long list

Claire Dyer has now chosen her long list from the entries to the Paradox Paragram Prize.

In her comments when making her judgements Claire says:
‘Judging this competition has proved both challenging and inspiring. I have learnt lots! I have also greatly enjoyed witnessing the many and varied interpretations of the theme, been impressed with the skill and courage of the entrants, as well as their intelligence, compassion and generosity of spirit.’

All Long List pieces will be included in this year’s Paragram anthology, due to be published by the end of 2016 by Paragram Press. The Short List and subsequent winners in each category will be chosen and the details posted on this site as soon as they become available.

Humour Ian Colville Parable
Humour Ayelet McKenzie Clean Windows
Humour Michael Weightman Black and White
Humour Vivienne Vermes Love Affair Between People of Literary Bent
Humour Aileen Shirra Mongrels
Humour Angela Higson A Social Occasion
Humour Angela Higson Remembering Innocence
Humour Carolyn O’Connell Postings from Mozart
Humour Audrey Ardern Jones Track Record
Humour Jack Houston My Wife and God
Poetry Ruth Hill Beziers
Poetry Jules Webster Monday Wash
Poetry Vivienne Vermes Dry Stonewalls
Poetry Lynne Taylor Identity Crisis
Poetry Polly Stretton Bittersweet
Poetry K.D. Rose The Physics of Ex
Poetry Alwyn Marriage Conversation with Magic Stones
Poetry Amanda Oosthuizen A Stone for Seeing
Poetry Jessica Mookherjee The Crone
Poetry Jessica Mookherjee Beast
Poetry Hilary Hares Reversal
Poetry Tobi Cogswell Wrong Turn Ronnie
Poetry Marjon van Bruggen Negative Distance
Poetry Joanna Tulloch The Poem that Couldn’t be Written
Poetry Mary Ewing Contraindicative
Poetry Jack Houston Leon’s Last Act
Poetry Smita Vyas Kumar Rear View Forecast
Petite-prose Vivienne Vermes Fata Morgana
Petite-prose Vivienne Vermes A Good Book
Petite-prose Aileen Shirra Happenstance
Petite-prose Amanda Oosthuizen Girl who Climbed

We are considering including a Paragram Picks section in the Paradox anthology as the Paragram team of independent readers has been delighted by other pieces of writing which may not appear in the list above. Watch this blog to see whether your piece is picked by one of our readers…”

 

Link:

https://para-gram.com/2016/08/22/paragram-paradox-prize-the-long-list/#like-1169

25 Reasons Why I Stopped Reading Your Book

09 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Authors, Books, Writing

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From Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds. Original Post is here

I don’t read novels like I used to.

I want to, but can’t. That’s for a lot of reasons — for one, it’s time. I write a lot. I have a five-year-old. Life intrudes. My reading is also broader, now. Writing comics means I read more comics. I also do a lot of research and read non-fiction — more non-fic than fic, I think. The other thing, though, is that I know how the sausage is made. I know because I make it every day. My hands are unctuous with narrative pigfat. I find that as you do a thing more and more, you become more persnickety about that overall thing. Example: there’s a farm-to-table ice cream place not far from us, and the owner has very strong opinions about ice cream. Who gets it wrong, who gets it right, what techniques are best, or laziest, or who is sexier, BEN or JERRY. I don’t have those kinds of strong opinions about ice cream because fuck you, it’s ice cream. Bad ice cream is better than no ice cream. Shove it in my bone-cave. All of it. NOW PLEASE.

But! I have strong reactions to novels. Stronger than I used to. I’m like a stage magician where it’s harder to fool me with your magic because I know all the tricks. I can see the misdirection coming a mile away. That means I probably start and put down four novels for every one that I pick up and finish. I don’t throw those first four down in rage before urinating upon them. I just quietly set the book aside, say “This book is not for me,” and then I urinate on it. No rage at all. Only smug beneficence paired with my steaming asparagus pee!

Kidding, kidding. No pee.

But I thought, okay, it might be interesting to unpack a little bit why I pick up some books and then put them down after five, ten, thirty pages. This is true of manuscripts both published and unpublished. And it’s important to note here that none of what I’m about to say is gospel. Some of these books reached shelves. Many of these books do very well despite what I’m telling you here. Which is to say, the list of reasons I’m about to give are intensely personal to me and not in any way good guidelines to follow. Why even include them? First, because I want to unpack it for my own curiosity (and this blog is for me before it is for you), and second because maybe the conversation will trigger something in your thoughts about your own work, or it’ll inspire some interesting and spirited conversation in the comments below.

(I encourage you to use the comments to answer the question: what makes you put down a book?)

Let’s begin.

1. I just don’t want to read it. This isn’t a helpful comment by any stretch of the imagination but it’s vital I get it out there — sometimes, I pick up a book, I start a book, and it’s a puzzle piece whose nubbins and divots don’t line up with mine. Book’s not for me. I’m not for it. End of story.

2. I have no context. None. Zero. Crafting the first thirty or so pages of a book is itself a vital and elusive art. You are required to pack so much into so little while at the same time not overdoing it. But the greatest thing missing from too many books is context. Books that begin with characters just doing shit or saying shit or thinking shit are fine — but from the first page, I want context. I don’t need all the details, but I need some sense of what’s going on and why. I need to be rooted in the story fast as you can get me there. You can meander, but goddamnit, meander with purpose. I need to know why you’re writing it, why the character is here, and why I should give a hot cup of fuck in the first place. This isn’t easy to do! Writing those early pages is a combat landing in terms of narrative — you’ve got to pull us all the way from the atmosphere to the ground in a thousand words. It’s hard, but WE NEEDS THE CONTEXT, PRECIOUS. *gums a fish*

3. Another thing I need that you’re not giving me: stakes. This is tied into the context. But if I don’t know the stakes — what can be won, what can be lost, what’s on the table — then why am I reading? Why are we here? Where are my pants?

4. Too much action. Once again, this is tied a little into the context problem, but I really hate books where I start them and suddenly we’re thrown into BULLETS WHIZZING AND KARATE WHALES AND A THOUSAND CREAMY PASTRY NINJAS and it’s five pages of cool-ass katana action and yet I have no idea what’s happening. Every punch is clear as day, but the motivation behind the scene or sequence is invisible. Realize that the mechanisms for resolving conflict are not the same as the conflict. A fistfight is not a conflict. Why they’re punching the beefy fuck out of each other? That’s the conflict. Jealousy. Stolen property. Revenge. Whatever. Conflict is the reason behind the fight, not the fight itself.

5. The book is all surface. A story isn’t just one thing. It can’t just be what you see, what you read — it has innumerable added layers, all invisible but still keenly felt. Like, okay, consider a sports car. The fanciest fastest motherfucker you can think of. The love child of a Lamborghini and a SR-71 jet. That car isn’t a model. It’s more than its frame and its paint job. Some of the interior you can see: seats, dashboard, steering wheel. Some parts you can see only if you look hard: the engine under the hood, the dead guy in the trunk. (I know cars like that don’t have trunks you can use to store dead bodies, but just play pretend.) Other parts will never be seen by you: the engine’s deepest interior, or the endless human and machine hours put into designing the car and the engine and the experience of the car. The car is more than just its function, too. It has style. It has a vibe. Designers don’t just plunk down a seat thinking, WELL THE DRIVER NEEDS TO SIT. It’s that, but then it transcends function. It becomes, how do we want the driver to feel? How do we want him to look in his own head and to other drivers? The car has a theme, a mood, it has a message. Your story is like that — or, it should be. It can’t just be CHARACTERS SAY SHIT AND DO SHIT. That’s there, but it’s just the paint job. A story operating without deeper layers is a shallow narrative, and I ain’t got time for that.

6. The characters all sound the same.

7. The book starts off too, um, genre-shellacked. What I mean is, if it’s sci-fi, it’s loaded for bear with bewildering sciencey stuff, or if it’s fantasy it’s all funky names with magical apostrophes, or if it’s horror it’s more interested in soaking the pages in raw, red gore and horror tropes. Context is king, yet again. Character is everything. Root me in the character. Make me care. Then layer in the genre elements. It’s like a cake — it’s easy to make icing taste good, but too much of it is gross. (Don’t tell this to my son, who will vacuum the icing into his maw while discarding the cake part. The little barbarian.) The cake is the foundation. It’s what holds up the rest of the stuff. Cake is character, character is cake. Now I’m hungry. I want cake. Someone get me cake. YOU THERE IN THE THIRD ROW. CAKE ME. NOW.

8. Speaking of genre, I’ll put a book down if it feels too samey-samey. It’s not that you can’t do interesting things with well-wrought tropes, but usually, I can tell when you’ve performed the narrative equivalent of a Human Centipede — where you digest one kind of fiction and then excrete that fiction back out into the world. It’s like Taco Bell — you’re just renting it and returning it to the ecosystem without actually processing it. I’d rather you make the genre yours. I’d rather you read more broadly and bring outside influence to the work.

9. No voice at all. This is a personal preference, to be clear — some readers want an author who disappears into the background. I don’t. I want the author to emerge a little, like a shadow in the rain. Sometimes that means word choice or sentence construction or rhythm. Sometimes it’s in the themes that present themselves. The book isn’t ALL YOU, ALL THE TIME, but I still want to see your bloody fingerprints at the margins of the page. I’ll put it this way: Dan Brown’s work is, to me, about as cardboardy as it comes. No harm or foul, because hey, his books are whiz-bang successes. But then you look at someone like Stephen King, whose work always reads like Stephen King. His ease of storytelling doesn’t betray his voice. Daniel Jose Older’s work feels like Daniel Jose Older’s work. Victoria Schwab’s work feels like — drum roll please — Victoria Schwab’s work. (I like these authors because when I read their work, it’s not that I know what I’m in for, it’s that I know I’m in the company of a capable, confident storyteller. Some authors view this as a brand, but a brand is about a pre-existing set of chosen permutations — a brand is about comfort. I want voice. I want to trust in the story even as it brings me discomfort.)

10. Too much voice will kill my interest, too. Comes a point where you gotta get out of the way of your own story. (Again: Stephen King is amazing at this. His work feels like his work, but he’s also not tap-dancing in front of the tale — he sits very comfortably behind the curtain.) Your story isn’t a stunt. It isn’t a stage. You’re playing drums, not playing lead guitar.

11. I’m bored. I get bored easily, to be clear. In this day and age, I’ve got a lot of very dumb stuff competing for my attention and I fall prey to it too easily — it’s a lot easier to check Twitter than read a novel. People could read a book, or they could hunt Pokemon. At the same time, though, I don’t think it’s an unfair ask when I say it’s important a story be interesting. One of the most vital goals of a storyteller is to capture attention. It’s like trapping a fly in a cup. It is necessary to be able to — from the first sentence – snap your fingers and hypnotize me with the tale at hand. And that means being interesting. The question of what’s interesting, however, is a many-headed, snarly beast, but at the very least, look to how one tells a story in person. Think about how you would keep people’s attention. How would you spark their interest? How might you give them just enough to keep listening? Worry, danger, conflict, desire. Imagine telling a story in such a way that if you just quit in the middle of a sentence, you’d leave people hanging with a HOLY SHIT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT look on their dumbfounded faces. Write a book like that.

12 . The balance of mystery is off. Mystery is tricky. Every mystery is a question mark, and as I am all-too-fond of repeating, a question mark is shaped like a hook for a reason. It sticks in you and pulls you along. But too many question marks and you’re pulled into asplodey viscera like that guy from Hellraiser. We need mystery early on — little mysteries that tease us forward without overwhelming. Or one big mystery that will cast its void-like shadow over everything. We still need a rope to feel for in the dark, though — something we use to pull ourselves a long. Too many questions, too much mystery, and we feel lost. We have no rope, no anchor. We have only hooks and darkness. And also cake. What I mean is, I’m still hungry for cake, you bastards.

13. Not enough cake in your story.

13. Fine, here’s a real #13: JESUS GOD THIS BOOK IS SLOW. I don’t need every book to have thriller pacing, though I admit I do prefer a snappier, zippier narrative. But while I do not require your book to read like it’s duct-taped to the back of a cheetah fixed with some manner of rectal rocket, I do want to feel like we’re getting somewhere in a way that respects the story and respects the time of the reader. Some books I read I feel like that stormtrooper on Tatooine — “Move along, old man in a landspeeder. Go on, just go, c’mon. Vertical pedal on the right, Grandpa Kenobi, chop-chop.” A story is liquid. A story moves. It doesn’t need to be a raging rapids, but don’t let it be a stagnant puddle. That’s how you get mosquitoes.

14. The story is too busy, too early. Cleave to simplicity. Simple goals are better than complicated ones. You can build up to bigger conflicts, but at the fore, think conflicts that are primal, that are easily parsed by the largest number of us. A lost child. Revenge for a death. Grieving over someone gone. Broken love. Simple, forthright things will grab us and root us. Common, fundamental problems are key — then you can spin them in whatever way fits the story (A DRAGON WANTS REVENGE ON A LIVING STARSHIP BECAUSE IT KILLED HIS ROBOT LOVER). Start small. Begin simple. Complexity comes later.

15. Also, this is true with language, too. If your book’s language is muddy or bombastic, I’ll check right out. Aim for clarity above any kind of GRAND MAJESTY OF THE HUMAN TONGUE. You’re not trying to impress us with frippery. Writing is a mechanism. It is a means to an end. Writing conveys more than itself. Writing is a conveyance for story, for idea, for character, for theme, for vision. Seek substance over style. Pursue precision in language over a noisy parade of words.

16. The character has done something I hate. And this is a weird thing, because it’s not a character’s job to be likable or to perform actions perfectly in line with my own morality, but if by page five I find out he’s a puppy-kicking baby-shitting rapist, I’m done. Sorry. Maybe this is a tale of his redemption or maybe you just want me to empathize with this horrible person, and that’s fair. I’m just not going to do it. I don’t need characters to be likable. I do, however, need them to be livable — meaning, I need to find some reason to want to live with that individual for 300+ pages. Some things are dealbreakers, though, and a character who is too vile or somehow unredeemable by my own metric… then I just can’t stay in the story.

17. Whoa, way too heavy a hand with the worldbuilding, pal. Ease back on the infinite details, okay? The worldbuilding should serve the story. The story is not just a vehicle for worldbuilding. I want to eat a meal, not stare at the plate. The plate can be lovely! You can work very hard on the plate. But not, I’m afraid, at the cost of the food that sits upon it.

18. Similar to the above? Your book has way, way too much exposition. Exposition is not the devil. We like exposition… ennnh, within reason. I like to treat exposition as if it’s a dirty necessity. It is an unpleasant act that must be fulfilled — it is, in a way, like air travel. Nobody likes air travel. These days, air travel is basically just SKY BUS, full of as many dubious weirdos, like that guy who keeps taking off his shoes, or that other guy who sweats hoagie oil, or those people who were somehow allowed to bring on a Tupperware tub of warm sauerkraut. But if you wanna get to that place you wanna go: you hop on the plane and you get it over with. Exposition is an act that is best served by figuring out how little of it you can get away with while still serving and continuing the tale. Get in. Get out. Get it over with.

19. OH MY GOD I AM BEING CRUSHED BY THESE WALLS OF TEXT. Stories are beholden to rhythm. Short sentences, long sentences, diverse paragraphs, mixed-up word choice. But if I open a book and it’s just one epic paragraph after another, after another, after another, my eyes start to become tired. I pee myself and pass out. It’s not a good scene.

20. I’m confused. No idea what’s happening. Have to keep backtracking to find out.

21. I gain no sense of why now? Every story you write should begin with that essential question: why is this story happening now? If we are to assume that a story is a break in the status quo — and to my mind, stories are exactly that — then the timing of the story is vital. What precipitated the narrative? What events inside the story make it necessary, and necessary at this moment? Did someone just steal the Death Star plans? Is this a Christmas party set in a building just as German terrorist-thieves are about to initiate an, erm, hostile takeover? Has there been a wedding? A funeral? A discovery? An attack? HAS THERE BEEN AN AWAKENING AND HAVE YOU FELT IT? Some stories lack an answer to that question, why now, and I can feel it. It undercuts the urgency of the tale. And urgency is everything. Creating urgency makes the story feel vital and it keeps people reading. (Lending the narrative that urgency is a lesson unto itself, of course.)

22. Not enough sodomy. Okay, just seeing if you’re still reading. But seriously: cake and sodomy.

22. Okay, real #22 — the plot exists outside the characters. They do not control it. They do not contribute to it. Nobody is directing it but you, the Overarching God-Author. You’re like a railroading DM who has the adventure set one way and any time the party wants to try something different (“We’d like to make friends with the Demogorgon!”) you short-circuit and punch the plot to do what you want it to do, not what feels natural to the characters, their motivations, and their actions. Plot should be internal, growing into the narrative like coral, like bones, but yours is external: it’s all exoskeleton, all scaffolding.

23. The plot exists only because of stupid, wrong people and their very bad, very stinky decisions. I’m not saying characters cannot and should not make mistakes. Characters needn’t — and shouldn’t — be perfect. But if the plot only exists because they’re jerky dumdums who just make jerky dumdum decisions, then ennnnyyeaaaah not for me. I prefer you treat your characters as if they’re all intelligent with respect to their own worlds. That doesn’t mean high-IQ. It doesn’t mean a plumber knows how to build a fucking teleporter. It just means within respect to their own life and experience they have some smarts going on.

24. Your characters aren’t acting like people. They’re acting like plot devices. This is related to #22 and #23, but what I mean is, you can feel how they’re acting against logic and their own emotional intelligence to further plot points. They keep secrets when keeping secrets is neither prudent nor interesting — it’s just that the secret is what keeps the plot alive. They lie when it makes no sense to lie. They perform actions like the victims in the horror movie, just stumbling into danger because they need to die to chain to the next scene in the sequence of events.

25. Everything is just a series of scenes. Scenes need to connect. They are bound by a throughline. But yours just feel like disconnected bits — vignettes and moments and setpieces that have been placed next to each other but given no connection. They are rooms without doors or windows.

* * *

It Stinks

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Authors, Culture, Literary

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The corpse flower’s indifferent, cosmic energy.A still from the New York Botanical Garden’s livestream of the corpse flower in bloom.As I strolled through the mid-morning dumpster efflorescence of the west Bronx, I thought to myself: Summertime in the city is a contact high. It has less to do with sun and heat; it’s the sweet-sour… a href=’http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/08/04/it-stinks/’Read More/a span class=’link’»/span

Source: It Stinks (The Paris Review)

Breaking Facebook Dependence—How to Create an Enduring Author Brand

25 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by kdrose1 in Authors, Social Media

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Kristen Lamb's Blog

Image via Drew Coffman courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons Image via Drew Coffman courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Friday I wrote a post Is Facebook Dying? What’s Killing It? to relay what I strongly will be the next evolution of the Digital Age, a Web 3.0 if you will. Judging from the early success of augmented reality games (referencing Pokemon Go), I think we can expect to see more games and more variations.

And this is not necessarily a bad thing.

FB has been like a spoiled child garnering all the attention for far too long. Perhaps that is at least in part responsible for all the poor behavior. Thus, the new ARGs really are like that younger sibling that comes along.

Suddenly FB is no longer an “only” child and is going to have to learn to share attention. Does it mean we will never again pay attention to FB? No. But it certainly won’t have the monopoly…

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