Back when Yvonne was dancing they had a manager who wanted to put pictures of all the girls on the walls. He hired a photographer who talked about image and branding and asked all the girls where they were from, and when Yvonne said outside Kansas City he made her dress as a farmer’s daughter, Daisy Dukes and red-checked shirt tied at the midriff. …
Read the rest of the story here.
Bristol Writing Workshop, Week 2It’s hard to think of a better place for a writing workshop than the Rogers Free Library in scenic coastal Bristol, RI. This beautifully restored historic library offers lots of public space, including a meeting room for classes. This week, I’ll be continuing my three-part writing workshop, “Short Stories: From Inspiration to Publication.” We will be doing some in-class writing and revising and talking about the process of revision–not always the most fun part of writing, but always necessary. I’m looking forward to seeing last week’s writers and some new faces! It’s tonight (Thursday, October 9) at 6:30 p.m.; the final session will be held on Thursday, October 23.
I’m happy to have a story published in the October issue of Foliate Oak. Click the image below to read it, and check out the rest of the issue while you’re there.
Oklahoma 1944: Howard Hughes Spends the Night in Jail
So there we were, reeling from one bad dive bar to another, even more impossibly bad dive bar, when …
Oh, wait. BLOG hop. I’ve been invited to participate in a blog hop, not a bar hop.
Just what is a blog hop? You may wonder. I wondered, too. It’s a chance for writers to introduce other writers while sharing a few comments on their writing process. I was tagged by Patricia Flaherty Pagan, the editor of Up, Do : Flash Fiction by Women Writers and the new collection Eve’s Requiem: Tales of Women, Mystery and Horror.
In her blog post, Patty talked about a story I’m looking forward to reading, based on Boston’s real-life Great Molasses Flood of 1919. It will be included in Eve’s Requiem, but in the meantime, here’s one of her stories you can read online. It’s moving, honest, and raw, and beautifully compressed.
I’m going to cheat a little in answering some of the questions I was given to avoid spoilers, since this story is coming out soon–in the October issue of Foliate Oak–and I hope you’ll go there to read it.
1. What is the name of your character? Is s/he fictional/historical?
–My character is a historical person, but also a fictional creation. I think any time we try to enter someone else’s consciousness, as I did with Zelda Fitzgerald in my Up, Do story “Lights Out: Zelda in Highland Hospital,” we create a new character who exists in our minds and on the page, even when they are based on someone from “real life.”
2. When and where is the story set?
–In a small town near Norman, Oklahoma, in 1944.
3. What should we know about your character?
–He is out of his element (in every possible way). Also, he has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Also, he is in jail.
4. What is your character’s goal?
–On an immediate level, he wants to get out of jail. But he also wants to escape in a more profound way: escape fame, identity, self.
5. What is screwing up your character’s life (main conflict in writerly speak)?
–There’s a drain in the floor…
6. What is the title of your piece?
–Nope. Spoiler.
7. Can we and when can we expect the story/novella/book to be published?
–Yes. Foliate Oak magazine, October 2014.
And now I’m going to tag two more up-and-coming writers whose work you should know: Mick Harris and K.C. Wilder. Read them and love them.
Mick Harris is a writer and editor living in the CA East Bay. They hold an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Their work is available or forthcoming in Fruita Pulp, Deep Water Literary, Pink Litter, Digging Through the Fat, the Up, Do anthology from Spider Road Press and the Candlelit Journal. You can blame them if you want, but they probably didn’t do it. They blog and make poetry at http://www.positivelysocialsix.wordpress.com.
K.C. Wilder is the author of the chick lit novel Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husband, the YA series of Heather Hollow paranormal fiction, and the short story collection Wrecks: Three Stories of Imperfect Love. She also proudly contributed the short story “The Mermaid” to Merry Chick Lit, a compilation with all proceeds benefiting breast cancer nonprofit Rocking the Road for a Cure. She loves writing, reading, swimming, stand-up paddle boarding, gardening, dog-walking, cat-cuddling, and good-naturedly misbehaving. She blogs (often hilariously) at Girl on a Wire.
I’ll be leading a fiction writing workshop at the Rogers Free Library in Bristol, RI, this October. The workshop is free and open to all. For information or to register, contact the library at 401-253-6948.
Ian checking out his copy of my new micro-chapbook, “Who’s the Skirt?”
You know how if you do an online image search for “summer” you’ll come up with all these images of people lounging on wide verandas sipping mint juleps, or floating on an inflatable raft in some tropical-blue pool with some juicy book in hand, looking as if they’re just too lazy to raise their hand to turn another page?
Is that your summer? Nope–it’s not mine, either. But here are a few of the things I have been up to.
While I’m no longer publishing Newport Review, the magazine has been given a safe haven by the online journal Literary Orphans, and they will continue to host the archives. Future special projects are still a possibility.
I’m still editing, though. I’ve taken on the position of Flash Fiction Editor at one of my favorite new journals, Cleaver magazine.
And I’m still (always) writing. My short story “What Daisy Knew” was just chosen for the Great Gatsby Anthology to be published by Silver Birch Press in 2015. Another story, “Lost in Supermarkets,” was accepted by NANO Fiction and will be published in an upcoming issue.
A micro-chapbook of six of my tiniest stories, Who’s the Skirt? Mini Stories has just been published by Rhode Island’s own Origami Poems Project. It’s now available wherever OPP poems are distributed, in libraries, bookstores, and cafes throughout the region, or from the OPP web site.
I’m still teaching and sharing my love of flash fiction. I taught a one-day teen writing workshop at Newport Public Library this week, and I’m also leading an ongoing six-week workshop at the Essex Public Library in Tiverton, meeting Wednesday evenings from 6-7:30.
And tonight, I’ll be one of the featured readers in the Wickford Art Association’s second annual Poetry & Art Exhibit. I’m looking forward to meeting the artists whose work I responded to and to hearing some incredible poets read their work. Last year’s event was an amazing gathering; here’s a news article about this unique pairing of visual art and literature.
At the end of April, I was a guest speaker in a friend’s college class. I talked about flash fiction and how cutting a story to its bones can sometimes make a story stronger and more universal. We did a writing exercise, cutting stories in half and then in half again, down to their very essentials, and it was amazing how often we found these very brief distillations of story were better, sharper, and more moving than their longer versions.
As a challenge, I asked students to enter the 53-Word Story contest. The prompt was to write a 53-word story set in a carnival. I promised that I would enter the contest, too.
And I did. My entry was a piece I’d been working on for a while. There were several versions, all of them going on for several pages, but not quite working out the way I wanted them to.
I took them, stripped them, boiled them down. This story was the result.
Stuck with a story? Be brave. Be ruthless.
Chop, chop, chop!
I’m looking forward to this weekend, when I’ll be attending the Morning Garden Writers Retreat in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with my friend Marybeth Rua-Larsen, who is currently celebrating the release of her first poetry collection. The retreat is led by poet Jennifer Jean. It will be a welcome chance to take a whole weekend to focus only on writing–part of my resolve for BoNoProMo, a NaNoWriMo alternative introduced by novelist Lisa Borders. While BoNoProMo technically stands for “Boston Novel in Progress Month,” I’m taking it as an invitation to set aside ten hours each week for writing, whether that means short stories, flash fiction, prose poetry, or even something that might be a novel.
Those of us who have taken the pledge are also trying to stay off Facebook for the duration–or at least to limit our time there. Fewer cat videos, more stories!
I’ll admit it–I am not one of those writers who is good at sticking to a schedule. I know there are some writers who swear by the 5 a.m. rule, getting up early to write for an hour before breakfast. Others treat it like a job, clocking in from nine to five. I’m more of a “wait until inspiration strikes” girl, which means that one night I may stay up until 5 a.m. writing, and then I might go a week without writing anything else.
But I’ve noticed that when the opportunity for uninterrupted writing time is put in front of me–as it is during my writing group meetings–inspiration kicks in pretty quickly. So I signed on for the BoNoProMo challenge, and so far it’s worked out pretty well. I’ve been working on a series of connected flash pieces that I’ve been thinking about for a while, and also come up with some new, unexpected stories.
Maybe it’s a spring renewal after a long, hard winter. But I also think that part of it is because of that ten-hours-a-week pledge, because I’ve given myself the time, the permission, to write. And I’m hoping it’s going to last a lot longer than the month of May.
Photo of Morning Garden by January at Poet Mom.
Author Event
Up, Do: Flash Fiction by Women Writers
SATURDAY, APRIL 5
7:00PM
Three fiction writers–Theo Greenblatt, Kathryn Kulpa, and Tania Moore-Barrett–and three poets–Kim Baker, Diane Dolphin, and Lynnie Gobeille–come to Books on the Square for a high-energy evening of flash fiction and poetry. A reception and book signing follows.
Copies of Up, Do and poetry collections by the authors will be available for sale. For information and directions, visit Books on the Square or call 401-331-9097.
Two of my flash fiction stories are included in the anthology Up, Do: Flash Fiction by Women Writers, published by Spider Road Press.
This collection is available on Amazon or directly from the publisher, Spider Road Press.
5% of the proceeds from all Spider Road Press titles are donated to charities which address the issues of sexual assault, supporting American veterans, empowering youth and fighting hunger at home and abroad.
You must be logged in to post a comment.