Archive for June, 2011

Getting words down & revising them

June 27, 2011 | 10 Comments

I can’t remember how I came across a wonderful vimeo video on  Writer Unboxed  by Yuvi Zalkow on his breakthrough in revising his born-dead novel. Zalkow describes himself on vimeo in his “failed writer series” as a “writer, storyteller, novelist, shame-ridden schmo, maker of online presentations about my failures (and occasional successes) as a writer.” I can relate, having just had a great essay (trust me!) fail to win two contests and get rejected even as a submission. That’s what …

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The quotes on my desktop

June 23, 2011 | 10 Comments

There are quotes about writing on my desktop. Actually, they’re in a Word file, at the top of a journal I’ve kept for the last year as I produced a fourth version of my memoir. I don’t make journal entries every day, usually when things go really badly or really well. Or when I notice something I want to remember—like the fact that I won’t be able to remember or recreate or explain how I interwove narrative threads over the …

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Jen Knox defends ‘romantic’ semicolon; 25 ‘terrific novels’ for J-students

June 17, 2011 | 7 Comments

Jen Knox, a fiction writer and author of the memoir Musical Chairs, recently issued a nice defense of the semicolon on her blog: Kurt Vonnegut is famous for saying the following: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” Great quote, but total bullshit.  The semicolon is beautiful, the epitome of a soft pause that gives cadence to an …

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Charlotte Roche, Mick Jagger, creativity

June 12, 2011 | 5 Comments

Charlotte Roche introduces her interview with Mick Jagger in German, then talks with him in English. Charlotte Roche is the author of Wetlands, a novel, according to The Guardian, that “makes the Vagina Monologues sound tame,” and which has been a big hit in Europe, especially in Germany, where the author lives. I’d heard about it and how disgusting it is, but hadn’t read it until recently, intrigued by a student’s struggle to review it on campus for a literary …

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Gregory Orr: memoir as ‘lyric invitation’

June 7, 2011 | 10 Comments

In our correspondence about his memoir The Blessing, I asked Gregory Orr about the accusation sometimes leveled in the literary world that memoir is mere “therapy,” whereas in fact memoir writing may stir the psyche in disturbing ways. His response appears as a guest post. Guest Post by Gregory Orr Therapeutic—that term has such a bad odor among us. I wonder why? “That’s not art, it’s therapy.” You hear that a lot, but I have to wonder what’s going on …

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Q&A: Gregory Orr on ‘The Blessing’

June 2, 2011 | 5 Comments

Orr has distilled the anguish of his youth right down to its holy bones.—Booklist The Blessing: A Memoir by Gregory Orr. Council Oak, 209 pages. Gregory Orr’s The Blessing is one of the finest memoirs I’ve read. There are tons of good memoirs and more than a few great ones, but this one did it for me. It joins a select handful that thrilled me to my toes: Lee Martin’s From Our House, Dinty W. Moore’s Between Panic and Desire, …

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