But Call Me Betsy

Been reading a lot of student fiction lately and submissions to Philadelphia Stories for the next magazine publication, and there are a couple of hiccups I see sometimes in the work. One is the impulse to be very specific about which side a person might be using to complete an activity. For example, sentences like this (not from any real manuscripts): "She picked up the fountain pen with her left hand and began writing on the paper while resting her right cheek on her right palm." While I get the impulse here--writer wants to be sure we're very clear on the way the person is poised--it is unintentionally humorous (perhaps she's sitting on her right palm while writing, if you catch my drift) and unnecessary unless the story is actually a Sherlock Holmes-esque mystery involving forged documents by a person who's really right handed. Better just write: "She picked up the fountain pen and began writing." The additional description of her face resting on h...

In this Penn grad class I"m taking, we get to write a short story and then we're going to also be writing poetry. We had our first fiction workshop this week, and it seemed clear that some of the students might be more comfortable in the poetry realm--lots of heavy imagery and repetition; stuff like :"words, words--what are words? Silent words Words as heavy as snow. Wordsmith-ing of the word in the dark scream of the throat." (Reminds me of Woody Allen's Love and Death , where the characters are parodying Russian literature... "Wheat.....wheat.....fields of wheat.....cream of wheat....."). Of course, I am terrified of poetry--I am sure most of mine will be bad. In fact, I know that I write fantastic at bad poetry. Here's a poem I wrote yesterday after eating lunch at Pod with a writer friend of mine: The dumplings sat fat and juicy Like the heart of an over weight midget Yum Maybe I will be okay if we can write narrative poetry ala Billy Colli...

I didn't have much time to take photos of windows this past Christmas, but here is one I captured. It looks like one of those roadside memorials--you know, the place where a car or bike accident happened and someone died. Here, it appears as if perhaps Santa was run over right outside of this house. Last weekend, Dan and I decided to be nice to ourselves and stay at a bed and breakfast in Lambertville. However, when we got to the B&B, we found it was run by a crazy old lady and her creepy son. For $155 a night, you might expect a luxurious room with a jacuzzi. This place had a TV the size of a shoebox, a plastic stand up shower, and kitschy decorations. The room was tiny, the wallpapers bubbly and water-stained, and the decors was tacky and gross. My biggest fear was that the son had privately drilled holes all over the place and would be watching us as we changed our clothes, took showers, and slept. We left, but not before having a terrible altercation with the strange own...

I had to put Henri to sleep last Monday. He was about 17 years old--give or take six months. We took him to Penn Vet Emergency Hospital and they were very nice--gave me all kinds of options about euthanasia--if I wanted to be there or if I wanted to just leave; if I wanted his ashes or not, gave me time to say goodbye (too much time. When you know you're about to put your cat to sleep, it's difficult to do anything like enjoy your time with him. I just wanted it to be over); they wrapped him up so he was cozy in these nice blankets. I had to do this one other time with Gretel, and that was terrible and this was terrible too--not terrible as in traumatic, because he was so out of it, he didn't seem all that upset. Just terrible to have to make that decision. What that must be like when the creature in question is a human? I can't imagine.  I stayed in the room. It helps to see it happen. Otherwise, I could imagine myself worrying about how it went down, if he was dis...

We'll start a new fiction writing workshop tomorrow night with Philadelpia Stories ; the class that I teach. Ten students signed up, all women. Funny, but most of the fiction classes I take or teach mostly consist of women. I've been thinking a lot this weekend about what to discuss for the first night. My impulse is to tell them everything that they shouldn't do---to talk about the things in writing that don't work---mistakes that I see writers make frequently. But then, that seems negative and too many warnings can leave you feeling stuck every time you sit down to start writing. It's hard enough to write with your own voices of doubt in your head, let alone new rules given to you by an instructor. Instead, we'll talk about what a story is--what makes a good short story, how you get started, maybe a few ways to turn off the negative internal voice so that you can keep writing. But, can I just mention to you a few pet peeves I have in fiction writing, just ...

In my fall fiction writing class, a common suggestion during critiques went something like: "I couldn't tell what kind of haircut she had...I wanted to know what color her eyes were. I just couldn't tell what she actually looked like!" Sometimes, another person might  try to help the writer along toward a more concrete description by suggesting that the central character give us this information by catching sight of her reflection in passing mirror or window, or in the bend of shiny spoon, or the wavery pool of a lake. Whenever someone asked wanting to writer to pause to describe the protagonist, I wanted so suggest that we refer back to any of the published stories we'd read for class. Very seldom does E. Annie Proulx have a character stop and ponder the amber sheen of her own eyeballs or the flowiness of her blond hair.  Raymond Carver, though he may describe the blind man in "Cathedral," doesn't pause to ponder his own bloodshot eyes in the b...

My friend Janell is also into the humiliation of pets for personal gain. Here is the evidence: I also got some good news today. I won first prize in Zoetrope 's all -story contest, which means some money for me and possibly action from literary agents. My story as chosen from 2,200 entries, so I feel good about that. It's a story I wrote last year in one of my Penn MLA classes. As with anything, I only allow myself to get excited for about 35 seconds, and then, I'm usually like, Well, but that's in the past. What's next? But maybe I'll try to enjoy this for a little while. The other thing it does is remind me that I really need to be sending my work out. Not to sound like a jerk, but I usually get a fairly positive response from my fiction. For this particular story, I even received a nice rejection from Tin House earlier this fall. So, you never know--what one journal might reject, another might really like. It also makes me self-conscious about my b...