Category: Writing

  • My Story Won’t Work, But That’s Okay

    I have been working on this one short story, off and on, for like four months now, and the thing just won’t work. I’m on my fourth draft of it, which also means that I am attacking it from yet a new direction. I would like to say that fourth time’s the charm, but at this point, I would just be happy with a glimmer of hope that I am moving in the right direction.

    Which brings me to this question; When should I throw in the towel on this story?

    But as soon as I asked that question, it made more sense to invert the question; Why haven’t I given up on this story?

    Well… I think it’s funny, and original. I think there is a kernel of truth in it, which needs to be shared. And I like working on it, though it does feel laborious at times.

    Now, I do write stories which, I know while writing them, are complete pieces of shit, or when I finish them, confirms they are pieces of shit. I’m not being hard on myself, these things are garbage, but I know the exercise of writing a story is important too, even if no one will ever see it. And sometimes I have to get a story out of my head so I can move on to the next thing.

    Not this story… it keeps poking at me, and won’t let me leave it alone. I hate rewriting, but it keeps pushing me to take another crack at it.

  • Personal Review: “Jesus’ Son” by Denis Johnson

    Up until a couple of months ago, I hadn’t ever heard of Denis Johnson. (And yes, the rock I live under is very comfortable.) I found out about him from a review of Ted Geltner’s biography of Johnson, Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures. From that article, I was intrigued and put Johnson’s Jesus’ Son on my reading list.

    If I had pushed myself, I could have read the book in a day, but spreading it out over three seemed more appropriate. A couple of things jumped out at me, besides the fact that it was a quick read. First, this book of short stories just oozed 90’s literature, which is strange as most of the stories take place in the 70’s, while the stories themselves were written in the 80’s, and only published in 1992. I can’t fully say why it felt so 90’s, but it Gen-X despondent seemed to be lurking in corners. The second idea the book presented to me is that the drunk/addict poet or writer is rather cliché now. Maybe not as drunken muscled as Hemmingway, Kerouac, or Burkowski, but the stories in the volume ran in the same vein. Here, we are presented with pretty much the same first-person character from story to story, who is too poetic to be a regular run of the mill drunk. No, this is the tragic drunk writer whose writing is their only salvation – the thing that keeps them going.

    That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the book. No, I was struck at how simple, and effortless everything in the stories felt. It carried such weight but drifted on the air. The destruction of a character’s life never felt so beautiful and fragile. No, I get why Jesus’ Son is placed on best of short story collection lists, year after year. Johnson’s stories and writing style has clearly been influential. I was about half way through “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” when it dawned on me how many flash writers must consider Denis Johnson a primary source, with his books lovingly squirreled away on their shelves.

    The final thought that I had while reading this book was that these stories felt like they were fun to write. Some books can feel laborious – not to read that is – such as writing it took time, work, dedication, perseverance to deliver the story exactly the way the writer wanted to tell it. Jesus’ Son felt like it was a blast to write. Either making it all up, or using real life situations, or maybe combining it all together, the end result was a book that felt like it was just as entertaining to write as it was to read.

    Having said all of this, I must now return to my home under the rock. There, I will toss this book up on the shelf, with all the other collections of short stories that I own and wonder how did I miss out on Denis Johnson when he was alive?

  • Just Some General Bitching (Unedited)

    I’m having a hard time getting myself motivated. To do anything, really.

    Doesn’t help that I got two rejections in the last twenty-four hours. But this is part of the gig; Lots of rejection, and trying to not let it get to you. I’m at the point now where I am beginning to think that the story really isn’t that great. Or it needs a rewrite. Or maybe I just need to burn it and rid it’s presence from my life.

    The other thing is that I have spent the past hour catching up on my flash reading. I subscribe to a large number of online journals who email out flash fiction, and I have fallen behind of late, or the whole Summer. Anyway, I’m trying to get on top of it, and see what is worth reviewing. Nothing has been peaking my interest, and I started to think maybe it’s not the fiction, but me. Maybe my head isn’t in the right space for this.

    Time to take a break.

    More like changing gears, because here I am working on the blog. I have to get in my 1,000 words a day. (You know, it’s not so much writing as it is typing, and I think somewhere Truman Capote is laughing with me.) The only way to get better at something is practice. Practice! PRACTICE!

    As I sit here, I remember once, maybe back in college or sometime in my past, there was this writer complaining how much they hated blogs and bloggers. They said it was useless writing as all bloggers do is bitch about things in badly written ways. I don’t think writer was totally wrong.

    Yet, I feel that someone needs to sit down here and take a stand to say that some writing should just bitching, complaints, and listing of grievances. Isn’t bitching a form of expression?

    Sure, it would be better if I could string this expression in a clear narrative form, that has a well-defined beginning, middle, and end – with that end being a wonderful conclusion the initial thought. That would be nice and clean and concise.

    But life is messy and not clean, and sometimes this human experience is muddy, and gross, and undefined and rough and jagged. And uses bad grammar and has typos or type-o’s, or however one would spell that word.

    Sometimes you just got to get it off your chest to move on. And sometimes you want to scream into the void that a blog. A testament, a covenant that this moment existed, and was real, and had a value to no one else other than the person who wrote it.

    There you go.

  • A Summer Rainy Day Does Me No Good

    I have chores, like every day of my life, which I feel compelled to complete first before I can go out and work on the things that are important to me. There are holes to this system, other people have pointed it out to me, but I will argue on the whole it works. Every system can be improved, but what I have gets the job done.

    Except when it’s a rainy day. Like a full, gray cloudy sky day, when it feels like rain, smells like rain, and keeps raining. Summer rainy days are the worst. It’s all hot and humid outside, so it doubly makes me not want to go outside. (Autumn and Spring rainy days are at least classic, and charming. They make you want to stay inside and read.) There is very little enjoyment in going out in a hot sticky humid gross smelly Summer rainy day.

    Today was a Summer rainy day, and though the calendar says September 1st, the start of the Autumnal months, it is still Summer out. The air conditioner is still running, and will be for a week or two more.

    But I did my running around in the rain. Shopped groceries for the family, which meant that I was running up and down, all over Harlem, hitting up three different stores to get everything that we need for the week. I got a little wet, nothing awful, but I had on a raincoat, which was just an extra layer on top of an already icky day – the end result was that I was sweating while getting rained on.

    Now, I have earned my goal and have returned to the end of the couch to work on my work, and even get some reading in. Now, the rain out the window feels appropriate, and fairly measured.

  • Summer Break is Over

    Before I had a kid, and was a young adult running around New York City, the framework dates for Summer were simple; It lasted from Memorial Day to Labor Day. After Memorial Day, it felt like the City emptied out, and then the day after Labor Day, the City filled back up. And that was how I thought of Summer in those days.

    After having a kid, “Summer” returned to the definition it had when I was a child; Summer was from when school ended, to when school started up again. It didn’t fit neatly into the Memorial/Labor Day bookends, because the school bookends feel correct.

    Which brings me to say that Summer is over as the kid is back in school.

    And this was an okay Summer. Nothing amazing, but still fun. We did some road trips as a family, visiting Vermont and West Virginia. The kid went to her sleep away camp, which allowed all of us to enjoy a break from each other, and as enjoy reuniting as a family again.

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    (Here I am about to go four-wheelin’ in Vermont.)

    Creatively, I took a break this Summer. I kept up the journal, but decided that I should have a break from the blog, reviews, and fiction. I thought it best to catch up on reading, and start thinking about what I want to accomplish for the last half of the year. I did work a little on a novel, but it was more an exercise of fun, and not meant to be anything more than that.

    So, here I sit, writing a blog on the couch, a stack of books on the end table, and a crap ton of short stories clogging up my Inbox that need to be read and possibly reviewed. Then there are the stories I need to finish writing, and then proceed to submit to all the lit journals across the internets.

    Which leads me to say, I am looking forward to Autumn!