Sean Lovelace is running right now, far. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS is his flash fiction collection by Rose Metal Press. His works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Sonora Review, Willow Springs, and so on.
77. Is it ever a good idea to give your book away?
14. Relatives of writers really tussle with what to give them; who wants another giant book of 500 bad poems? If asked, what do you tell people?
1. What’s the highe$$$t you’ve ever given for a book, any book? Do tale.
9. You know what writers really need? Nothing but time. I once wrote a grant (a process about as fun as boiling gravel) and received that grant and it was worth several thousand dollars and what did I want, those grrrrrr-anters asked? Time. So they paid someone to teach my class that semester while I wrote (and played a smidgen of disc golf). Time. Capital T. (This an argument for the MFA, BTW, but I don’t wanna start that withered face of an apple turning over.)
111. Who gives a shit? (And he read Jest on tape while night-walking Maine highway shoulders)
018. Advice: Don’t give breached things. It’s general knowledge I’m addicted to hot sauce (a key aspect of nachos). Years ago, a student gave me a bottle of hot sauce (though post final grades in this case, the student gift thing is already weird/odd for me. I never know what to do except discourage). The bottle was open, half contents gone. Another time a friend gave me an expensive bottle of bourbon as congratulations for a life event. He then cracked it open, took a preternatural swig, and drank half the bottle his own self. Don’t.
Does the used book fall under this rule?
Reason, Magic, Skill and Love
Frankly, I think poorly of
Taste the drink, add a little more whiskey, taste again, now put the bottle aside
Oh, I’ll stagger
An open can spread frank before the sky
Cheap gin, cheap ginger ale, not much ice
The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes
I like to drink and read with my mom
Anyone’s who drunk, I know it myself, they’re likely to exaggerate
Rye whiskey in the green celluloid glass of a bathroom
It’s just the thing for shock
God doesn’t believe in the easy way
Precede into the kitchen
I don’t even drink anymore, just wine
This is one gigantic day
But you’ve got tomorrow to reckon with
1. I met with a student to give advice on his MFA sample writing portfolio. Since I read these portfolios for my university and wrote one for my MFA, I felt ‘qualified,’ but with Tao Lin quotation marks. Some of the student’s poems had images and word-play. Tropes. Alliteration, at least one spondee. The first page was strong. I told him, “Good. You showed on the first page that you have read poetry and care some about words. The first page is important. Thoughts are being made.” I said, “You have images immediately. A lot of people sending in won’t have any images. They won’t get in. A lot of people like to write poetry, not poems. I mean they write about pride or love…” (trailing off. not quite sure what I meant here)
Content: The poems were about hangovers, beer, marijuana. I said, “These are sort of derivative ‘beat’ poems. That’s OK, write what you want once you’re in graduate school, but I think you should play the game a little. Get in grad school first.” I told him many readers would groan when they read poems about hangovers, beer, marijuana. “People are going to think you read some Bukowski. They’ll think you’re a type.” The phone rang 4 times and I ignored it. I said, “Do you have poems about any others things?” He did. Put some of those poems in the sample, I advised. I said again, “This isn’t a criticism of your work. Any subject is fine. Write what you want. I’m just trying to help you get into grad school.”
E-book assassin, etc. My first response was falling sky, or I am sick of people saying the e-book will garrote the book book. But then I read the article and found several points for possible discussion here:
1. Was the indie bookstore having troubles anyway? The e-book might be gaseous, but maybe the canary died from starvation?
2. One complaint is about “browsing.” You’ll do your browsing online, then just drop by the brick/mortar store and get the book you already know you want. You won’t browse at the store. To me, if you enter the store, all is good. Who cares why/how you entered?
3. But people sell their books online now, so don’t enter a used store to sell, and therefore another opportunity missed to buy.
4. Google ebooks allows indie bookstores to join/not beat the future.
5. All the ebooks in the world aren’t going to replace the “space” of a bookstore, readings, signings, coffee, conversation….
11. I never understand what a translator must feel. To “guess” what word might represent the author’s intent. Like dancing about architecture or fucking about bowling parties, I’m sure. Here is a fascinating interview about translating Haruki Murakami.
55. At a thousand thousands, Sam Lipsyte reads Hob Broun.
5. There is no # 5. Ok, this: Taylor Swift is vacuous. So there is no # 5.
14444. Sean D. Kelly writes an essay about Scylla, blow-driers, Charybdis of religious delusion, the conditions of thigh chaffing and self-deception, the dancer as the dance, and the anxiety and nihilism of George Michael/Nietzschean post-God secularism. Well done, sir. And worth your time. Click. Trust me.
7. Hey you opinionated cacafuegos. What makes bad writing bad? This is sharp blow glow. Watch:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWLS2_PEfI
There’s no rule that says you get steadily better.
I had a big Hemingway boner.
It’s pretty bad.
Loafing is the most productive part of a writer’s life.
James Norman Hall
True dat, Mr. Hall. Internet, coffee maker, gazing out the window at the snow—it may seem like not-writing, even now, but the mind stirs the pink shirt that becomes the fish that sings the flamelets of river, also known as words. For all the clatter of the laboriousness of writing, you should be thankful that every time your eye tingles cotton triangles, your lingual papillae meet ketchup (one of the only foods to trigger all 5 taste receptors: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, umami), your hand grips the perfect heft of a green bocce ball, you are indeed writing. Or you could read a book, another form of osmosis, but Hall isn’t talking about reading, me thinks, because reading is not loafing, no matter how far you drift away…so when someone on Facebook pokes you about yet another 8500 words, or when Joyce Carol Oates belches and out floats her 83rd lurid tale of obsession, etc., etc., relax, relax, go take a slow walk through a cow pasture, an interstate, a marriage, take a walk down through a brown couch, or a blog. You are loafing right now. I mean to say writing. Continue.
2. Washington Post with “Three Books on Hipsters.”
Their affinity for tight jeans, shaggy hair and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is easily mocked, but the principal criticism is that they’re frauds.
11. Rose Metal Press is having a fund drive! For 5 years RMP has been putting heart-imploding hybrid/slash/flash into your taped coins/eyes/tattoo tails/synapses. You get stuff, too. Give.
14. Cult Pulp Fiction at Sabotage Times. Or:
Pretty soon, my feverish teenage brain was boiling over with descriptions of high-class orgies, anal penetration and amyl-nitrate-fuelled orgasms.
236. Did someone on this fucking site already link to this long un-cut interview of DFW from 1998? I don’t know. I don’t. If so, some HTML god will most likely remove it and you won’t even see these words. Fuck.
9. Did you hear Steve Martin was so blar they had to offer a refund? Why was he boring? He talked about art. Martin says:
“So the 92nd St. Y has determined that the course of its interviews should be dictated in real time by its audience’s emails. Artists beware.”
Get off my lawn! Yeh but Steve, you’re trying to sell a book. You are Steve Martin. You manipulated, man. But I like it. This goes under one of my favorite genres of public readings: You expected this, I’m going to give you that. Recently, I went to see a semi-famous memoir writer and she ignored all that and read a dry history of religion. you could hear the air crackle as expectations tumbled into walls. Hissing. Andy Kaufman reading Great Gatsby. Ever been to one of those readings? Like WTF? They glow.
5. Some MFA fuck will host the Oscars.
77. In other sad news:
14. Flash Fiction interviews Nicolle Elizabeth. I thank them.
My favorite part of it is that it isn’t getting another print run. Can I say that?
111. Kyle Hemmings interview at Dark Sky Magazine.
One of the biggest influences, besides other writers, was the nine or ten years I spent on the streets of New York, when I became addicted to the club scene.
1. Me here. My father brings novels to family reunions, funerals, and weddings. They are secreted in large pockets of his jacket. He brings them out, he reads them during the various proceedings. People have said things. But is this so wrong?
Catch 22 caught on. So did blog. Jabberwocky, kids, jabber-fuckin-wocky. Writers make words. Go right ahead:
1. Term for stealing a simile.
2. Term for writing drunk.
3. Term for moment you know you’ve lost the audience at a reading.
4. Term for author groupie.
5. Term for moment you know you will not finish reading the book in your hand.
6. Term for guilt felt for playing video games when you should be writing.
7. Term for sentence you wish you wrote.
8. Term for disappointment of meeting the writer in person after glowing his/her words.
9. Term for hatred of flash fiction.
10. Term for writer who gets drunk and discusses own books.
11. Term for person at reading who laughs loudly at things not funny.
12. Term for the feeling you get when meeting someone in person you only knew online.
11. Paula Bomer book. Mike Young book. Word Riot. Pre-order special ends Dec 1. I reckon you better.
14. From Paper Cuts.
Audience Q: How do you know when you’re getting better?
Lorrie Moore: Maybe you don’t.
Audience Q: How do you know when you’ve found the right ending?
One of the Brooklyn guys named Jonathan: Maybe you don’t.
5. internet stunts versus blurbs: is there a difference? (Or how do I get Tao Lin’s name into this post?)
77. My computer crashed two days ago. Do you back up your writing? How and how many times? Any horror stories like when Hadley lost all of Hem’s stories on the train, etc?
