Rust Hills and the Lens of Fiction

I just recently finished reading Rust Hills' classic Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular and must say that I did find it quite useful in settling into the new semester of writing. While the book does focus in very large part on the short story, he does provide highly valuable tips to crafting novels. An act that I've been highly engrossed in for sometime now. The "Bastion" piece is by far larger than I had originally thought it would be, and it is with some fright that it might continue to grow. Regardless, Hills' call for a tightly controlled focus is helping me with this piece. It's actually allowed me to see the beginning in a new and more controlled fashion, one that I've been reworking over the past few days. I'm finding these craft books quite handy in breaking writer's block.

This tight focus on narrative perspective is something that I've become quite fascinated by. When asked to apply some of Hills' theories to some short stories in The Habit of Fiction collection, I became fascinated by the way in which Christie Hodgen uses vignettes in her piece "Three Parting Shots and a Forecast." The story, a wonderful piece of historical fiction, revolves around the assignation of Lincoln as seen through the "eyes" of Booth, Lincoln's chair, Lincoln's Doorman, and Boston Corbett. It's worth a read just for the details she employs in exploring this single most important act through differing viewpoints. The narrative lens is tightly focused on its respective subject matter.

I've often talked to my classes about narrative lens in fiction, but this semester it has spilled over into poetry. I try to compare the speaker of the given work to the camera lens of a director. I often use Wes Anderson, if only because I'm still hooked on his Darjeeling Limited. It seems to help the students to watch the way he uses and relies upon distinctive concrete images to paint his scenes. I noticed a very strong improvement in their narrative control after telling them to watch at least one of his films. Movies still seem to have something valuable to writers. They're not all evil.

Thievery Corporation and the War of the Dictionaries

So I'm sitting around reading on this lovely Saturday night, as most graduate English/Creative Writing students are undoubtedly are, and I'm reading all about the War of the Dictionaries, when I realize that I may have gone right off the deep end. I've started to feel the strangest urge to go off and read Dictionaries by famous editors and see if I can start find their style. There is something that goes seriously sideways in your head when you start longing to read alphabetically arraigned definitions of words to try and get at the heart of a man. Dictionaries are an interesting endeavour to consider, but I'm starting to think that is might be too much reading and focus on the subject for my own sanity. Should I really consider reading all of the Webster 1828 Dictionary, just see if I could seen some new aspect of his personality, his soul, in the definition of "estuary?"

I've been listening to a lot of Thievery Corporation recently. It also happens to be that I also happened up the movie Garden State recently as well. The majority of which is good and often just straddles the line of really cool and almost there. We won't talk about the ending. Regardless, this tune appears rather prominately in the film. Something to watch/listen to and consider Worcester's emotional status around the SC portion of the definitions in Comprehensive and Explanatory Dictionary.

Thievery Corporation - Lebanese Blonde (yeah, yeah, the French version is better)

The Trials of Zero Degrees in South Central Indiana and Notes on Workspace

Well the ass finally fell out of the thermometer here in Bloomington. Our nightly lows will be below zero degrees for the next two nights and low and behold after just one night of this stuff, we already have frozen pipes. After looking around weather underground, it seems that the weather on Turtle Island is gone awry. There are hard freeze warnings from Tampa, Fl to New Orleans. Hopefully, their pipes will be safe. I thought leaving Montana behind would leave this type of day behind. Maybe it would just be nice to an insulated crawlspace.

First day of fiction workshop and we had a fairly interesting talk about writing, inspiration, and work place. Now, the typical public stereotypical viewpoint of the writer's world is a dark grimy attic somewhere with a typewriter/word processor and an ash tray. Fact of the matter is that space does matter, and for me as a writer avoiding this type of space is key. The general consensus among the writers I know of, is that workspace matters for nothing more than comfort and inspiration. Attics don't cut it.

I can say that my workspace is as earthy as I can make it, living where we do. I have a clear view of a sugar maple and the old workshop across the street. The wood panelling is nice, even if it is fake, and the high ceilings of my office tend to bring in more light than other place's I've worked. I've added certain personal touches such as pictures from my travels, a Tibetian flag, and other nostalgia pieces that help as triggers to positive places that I can draw my work from. It'll be nice come summer to look out one of the windows and see the garden we're planning. But for now it's the light and presence of self I've crammed into a corner of the room that seem to make that space workable.

Saddly, due to company in recent weeks I've been unable to utilize that space and have found my workflow basically plugged. I've been reading sure, but have been lost in any attempt to produce new works. My fiction isn't really up for review for a couple of weeks so I have time to re-situate myself in the space. Right now though, without my workspace, I feel out of sync. So much of life depends on timing. Maybe even this cold snap has something to do with that.

Kerouac and Freezing Fog ... oh my.

Winter tends to come and go here in South Central Indiana and it looks like its fighting its way through the fog of the Hoosier Hills today. Everything is coated in a beautiful sheen of ice and the air is heavy with the smell of the nearby woodstove. All the benefits of living across from an antique woodshop. Actually, it's quite beautiful and reminds me of fall visits to the Smokey Mountains as a kid.

Being trapped inside (self-imposed of course) I've taken to listening to Billie Holiday and reading over some long neglected Kerouac that I've been meaning to. I received a copy of his City Lights publication a week or two back and finally got around to reading it. Kerouac's Scattered Poems is just that, poems collected from his scattered wanderings around the world. Everything from hymns to haiku to collabrative bits with Ginsberg and Cassidy are in the collection. It's an interesting collection only in so much that it offers a vantage point into the poetics of Kerouac. Much of the poems I can do without, but he seems to have learned at least a couple of things from Snyder when it comes to haiku. These tiny jewels might be the best part of the book. Not in the traditional poetic sense of haiku, but more out of the sense of seeing roots in his fiction and his construction of myth. Kerouac is more prose writer than poet, but certain aspects are fairly enjoyable.

I tend to like poems about craft, so here's a reproduction of his piece entitled "Poem" and dealing in large part with the craft of writing poetry.

Poem

Jazz killed itself
But dont let poetry kill itself

Dont be afraid
of the cold night air

Dont listen to institutions
when you return manuscripts to
brownstone

dont bow & scuffle
for Edith Wharton Pioneers
or ursula major nebraska peose
just hang in your own backyard
& laugh play pretty
cake trombone
& if somebody give you beads
juju, jew, or otherwise,

sleep with em around your neck

Your dreams'll maybe better

There's no rain
there's no me,
I'm telling ya man,
sure as shit.

1959

See not the most poetic but still interesting. It's more a book for huge Kerouac fans and freezing fog days in places like Indiana.

Some Notes on the Preparation of a Novella

So I'm writing away on this whole novella enterprise (begun in earnest around September) and I'm stumbling through both the editing and completion portion. I've only re-wrote the beginning three times now, replaced narrators, and added whole scenes. I'm beginning to work about stretching this past the whole novella thing. That's the problem with writing, it's far more organic than we would often like it. This is not to say that writing comes down upon us in some magically driven type force. Rather that the whole process takes a lot of time, patience, and effort.

As it stands now I'm about three fifths done the physical writing portion with the totality of it at least sketched out. "The Bastion of Industrial Decline," may not even keep its name. While I like the ring of it and can personally see the tie between story and title, but worry it might be too vague for those outside my head. It's still fun to sitdown and write, just that private time and the space to get into that mode necessary to craft words into something meaningful seems limited at best over the previous few weeks. I've crawled to only about 700 or so new words in the past 2 weeks. I'm needing a few days worth of burst to get this novella moving in the right direction before it loses all sense of speed and momentum.

I know that my novel in clearly in the midst of a holding pattern. Hopefully it won't be a perminant one. But again, those type of things are rarely close to certain. Poetry also seems to be eating time in regards to the craft. This isn't a horrid thing, just slightly problematic in that I would like to finish this one project before branching too deeply into newer stories. Just one of those things. Focus is an important thing for any artist. Just trying to pull mine back online before fiction workshop rears its head.

Slumber Party Music

Well, happy New Year all. We've all made it to 2009, which for some is a better thing than others. I managed to finally find the music videos for this Detroit indie band Slumber Party. I first came across them on the Model D Media and really dug their sound. It's rather reminscent of the early 1990s stuff like the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Breeders. It just seems so Midwestern (though mind you neither of those bands are from that general area) and tends to remind me of my youth in the metro Detroit area. Hope the hangovers and general tiredness is treating y'all with some sense of dignity. Detroit's industry might be dying but the city is far from gone. The art scene is alive and well. This particular group is just a small part of it.

Slumber Party- Late Nite


Slumber Party - Electric Boots