The Rules
The Guardian has published ten rules for writing fiction from several different writers. Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here. My favorite are Jeanette Winterson’s rules which include:
2. Never stop when you are stuck. You may not be able to solve the problem, but turn aside and write something else. Do not stop altogether.
7. Take no notice of anyone with a gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind.
9. Trust your creativity.
What are your rules?
Friday Fuck Books, Let’s Get the Band Back Together.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30AYABGnGkU
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuWB9Nhoypw
For you, B.
It is Friday: Go Right Ahead
I’d feel better if you drank your drink.
I like to laugh smoke out.
You’re drunk, and I’m drunk, and I’m just exactly drunk enough to tell you anything you want to know.
Stupidly calm.
Now I am dangerous.
Drunk, yes, but so what?
I want to try cocaine, though because that’s suppose to sharpen the brain, isn’t it?
Stop waving your hat in my face.
Feed the lettuce to the bunny and eat the bunny.
Michael Kimball Guest Lecture #4: Story and Plot
“Fuck the plot.” Edna O’Brien says that in a Paris Review interview. She then goes on to say this: “What matters is the imaginative truth.” I don’t know what she means, exactly, by “imaginative truth,” but I can imagine what she means.
It reminds me of something that somebody told me Rick Whitaker said: “Plot tells you how their life turns out. What the fuck do I care about how their life turns out? I want to know their heart.”
And that reminds me of this quote from Andy Devine: “We all know how the story ends. If you have the baby, then the baby will die. If you fall in love, then the love will end.”
In spite of my affection for those three quotes, I still like to think about story and plot. I still like it when things happen in fiction. In fact, I have always thought that one of the great things about being a fiction writer is that you can make anything happen.
Celestial Navigations
“Tens of millions of people have seen these films. No one knows who made them.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UdZSrEos-k
Oh Satan, you rascal
As of late, I’ve been on this Black Metal kick. Mayhem, Burzum, Krallice, Sigh, Cobalt, Liturgy, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc. So a buddy lent me this book called Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind. It’s not very well written, by which I mean the composition isn’t particularly engaging, the organization is less than fluid, the structure is uninspired, and the insights are rarely explored beyond their basic recognition; but, as a primer for the genre, I thought it was pretty good. (Plus, there’s a bunch of crazy pictures depicting Norwegians in corpsepaint.) Before I read it I didn’t know anything about Black Metal, and now I feel like I have a fair understanding of its origin. Plus, I learned a little about Vikings, a little about murder, and a little about Satanism, which are all interesting things to learn a little about.
Here’s the opening paragraph:
The Devil has always treasured music. What better arena to inspire, cultivate, and propagate his will into the affairs of man? Music serves as both balm and excitant, soothing the savage or awakening dormant passions. In spiritual terms music is a magical operation, a vehicle for man to communicate with the gods. Depending on whom the celebrants invoke, this can mean soaring to heaven on the voices of angels or raising beasts from the pits of hell.
Hey, here are those links you asked me for
The new issue of Gigantic magazine now exists! UPDATED: Though I’m not seeing much evidence of #2 on the site right now. The launch party for #2, the “Gigantic America” issue will be at PPOW gallery in NYC on 2/27, and will feature readings by favorites-of-ours Deb Olin Unferth and Sasha Fletcher, among others. The issue itself has interviews with Sam Lipsyte and Lydia Millet, plus new fiction from Robert Coover and Leni Zumas, plus “collectible biographies of famous Americans” written by the likes of Michael Kimball and Clancy Martin. Holy awesome!
Also, check out their exclusive preview of Paul Willerton’s Little Big Cremaster 3.
Meehan Crist’s review of John D’Agata’s The Lost Origins of the Essay is now up at Powells.com. Crist, you may or may not know, is the reviews editor at The Believer. Her review originally ran in the February issue, to much acclaim, and was selected for publication on the Powell’s site by the NBCC. Cheers!
The Rumpus has an interview with the poet Gary Young. How often do you see a poet-interview at the very top of a general-interest culture website? Good God, I love these guys. While you’re over there, check out “Sexually, I’m More of a Denmark: A Highly Subjective Book Review” by Chelsea G. Summers, and then, if you like, get linked (via them) to Javier Marias’s KCRW Bookworm appearance, which went live yesterday.
It’s Derek Jarman Day at Coop’s Place. Re the photo above-
Jarman is also remembered for his famous shingle cottage-garden, created in the latter years of his life, in the shadow of the Dungeness power station. The house was built in tarred timber. Raised wooden text on the side of the cottage is the first stanza and the last five lines of the last stanza of John Donne’s poem, The Sun Rising. The cottage’s beach garden was made using local materials and has been the subject of several books
Speaking of which, do you know that Donne poem? It’s one of my favorites of his. Here are my favorite lines from it:
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
But you really should read the whole thing. Happy Friday!
5 blars (or brain cattails, put in your head-vase)
1.) The University of Indiana’s main library sinks one inch per year. Why? The engineers forgot to calculate the weight of? [Go ahead, lovers, guess]
2.) Badass Pub Crawl in LA. What do you say to Aimee Bender while drunk? “Yo! Can I stumble into, vomit on every reviewer so lazy as to compare you to Ray Carver, Aimee? ? Can I be like your anklet monitor, Aimee? Just near you? I like the way you spell your name.” Crash.
3.) “true originality doesn’t exist anyway, only authenticity” Bullshit meter?
4.) An interview with Carole Maso (Brian Evenson on the inquiry machine). This is old, OK. “HTML is a blog, what is this old shit, yo?” Blah blah. Go lift weights in the shower, so you can sweat yourself and clean yourself simultaneously. Now you’re in the future. So chill-axe.
5.) This Heide Hatry shit is bloody and controversial so just be careful and don’t swoon on me. (We all know pigs are smarter than dogs [don’t get me started on cats] but pigs taste great, right?] Etc. Etc. Yawn. Slurp. Etc.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyHq26xJ5as
We’re Getting On: A Conversation With James Kaelan
James Kaelen’s We’re Getting On, a collection of interconnected stories following five people as they relocate to the Nevada desert intending to abandon technology, will be published by Flatmancrooked on July 2, 2010. The project is being billed as a Zero Emission book. In addition to sending his writing out into the world, Kaelen also plans on going on a West Coast bike tour without leaving a carbon footprint to promote the book and, in many ways, the ideology behind the book. He took some time from his busy schedule to talk with me about the book and the book/bicycle tour.