Alissa Nutting‘s writing appears in Tin House, Fence, BOMB, the fairy tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin, September 2010), as well as many other journals. She is the author of the short story collection Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (Starcherone, October 2010), and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is fiction editor of the literary journal Witnessand managing editor of Fairy Tale Review.
This site lists how Twilight might go if written by a list of other novelists…noteworthy remix styles include Murakami:
“Bella has sex with Edward, who is half a ghost. Jacob is a talking cat. Most of the prose is given over to descriptions of Bella making pasta.”
and Cormac McCarthy:
“In the opening scene, Edward dashes Bella’s head against a rock and rapes her corpse. Then he and Jacob take off on an unexplained rampage through the West.”
“A script is to a movie as a blueprint is to a building,” he said. “So many of the things that will later be major, visceral aspects of the storytelling — cinematography, music, sound effects, costume, performance, the rhythm of the editing — are only just indicated or assumed, and will be realized by a team of talented collaborators. The fiction writer has to serve all those functions alone, with his prose, selecting information so a handful of notes let readers hear the symphony. A screenwriter creates potential — a novelist has to fulfill it.” –from Up Front
I wrote an article about editing and some of my past favorite submissions (favorite as in “was this handwritten paper submission composed with human blood? ha ha. wait…no seriously look…this submission REALLY IS written in dried human blood, wash your hands!” or “poem about a snowflake written in the shape of a snowflake just in time for Christmas,” or “story from guy in prison who in his cover letter asks us to mail the money he’ll get if his story is published to the address of a given drug dealer below, explaining that the funds will be an installment payment towards the crack cocaine tab he’d accrued at the time of his incarceration” or even “travel back in time to kill Hitler only to end up falling in love/sexing him, so much sex that he becomes docile and happy, except you then get pregnant with his hitlerspawn who grows up to do exactly what his father would’ve done even though his name is Wilhelm, sometimes the best intentions don’t get the best results” favorite). But also about the pure, kitsch-less favorites as in “this story makes me see Pushcarts rain from the sky.”
Also, I will be reading this Saturday at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle at 7pm
Also, I keep trying to quit Taco Bell beef but it’s like that Taylor Dane song “Love Will Lead You Back.” Ain’t that the meximelt truth.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6A0xivfIMo
Flavorwire has spoken out against the five major offenses frequently made in author photos. For my next book I want to take an author photo that breaks all five where I’m smoking while putting my hands to my face while twisting my torso to rest my arm on the couch in my office and supporting my head upon my fist.
Tentacle-rape anime is so 2000 and late. What’s 3008? Hot Guys Reading Books.
This site posts pictures of men reading.
HTMenL of Summer! Grab some Crisco, lose the shirt and submit!
I find myself obsessed with two things this morning, the first being the viral video of Lin Yu Chun singing a flawless rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RgXC303Q5A&feature=related
The second artist Alexa Meade, who paints human flesh so that the subject appears to be a painting rather than a living person; the backgrounds, too, are painted to look like a painting, thereby making a photo look painted:
What is the literary equivalent to Lin Yu Chun’s uncannily flawless performance? How do we complete these analogies; what are the X’s in
“Lin Yu Chun : Whitney Houston” as “Writing : X” ? Or the more direct, “Photograph : Painting that looks like a photograph” as “Writing : X” ?
I can scarcely believe I have never ordered anything from SkyMall. Shopping for ill-advised items—particularly while intoxicated—is what I do best (for example, coming out of a bourbon fog at 3 a.m. and waking up to an infomercial for a personal massage device called the Dr. Ho. Its creator, the human Dr. Ho, has a braid down to the middle of his back and is wearing nothing but biker shorts. I call in and buy one immediately. When it arrives, it does little more than deliver a series of painful electric shocks that feel like bites from a robotic gerbil).
And I am a nervous flier (read: sedatives). You’d think I already would’ve ordered the Bigfoot Garden Yeti Sculpture in slurred speech while suspended 32,000 feet above the ground. The problem is that to order on the plane, one has to pick up The Phone That Lives Inside The Seat. I have a lot of anxiety about doing this. Buried snugly inside the cushion, its curved receiver looks like the fossil of a slender bone that should not be disturbed. Were I to pick it up with fluffy clouds just outside the window to my left, I fear the voice of a deceased relative would be on the other end via some weird heavenly reception, or that my call would be promptly and embarrassingly connected directly to the pilot. Or something even weirder: no voice at all, just heavy breathing that would prompt me to respond “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret” in a shaky voice and to waft my remaining drink vouchers above my head like they’re Wonka’s golden ticket.
But returning home from AWP, I glanced at SkyMall’s pages with a new mission: how might an emerging writer come to stick out at these conferences? I needed some kind of gimmick, some angle. Then I saw it: the travel bidet.
Yes, I realized. I could be the writer who carries around a travel bidet in a small pink suitcase at all times. When people say, “Who is Alissa Nutting?” others could then answer with certainty: “She is that writer who carries around a travel bidet.” It sounds pretty great; the description promises that “this little wonder, which comes with its own handy travel pouch, provides a refreshing, pulsating spray of water just where and when you need it.” The bidet sales-pitch informs me of the link between sanitation and ego: “personal appearance starts with personal hygiene, something people don’t always like to talk about but that is at the cornerstone of our self-image.” The write-up also assures me that not being comfortable “can affect our performance and self-confidence in important business and social functions.” Where was this little gadget before my panel??!?
I will BeDazzle my bidet briefcase. I will spend all year BeDazzling it, and when I get to AWP 2011, I will be the most confident writer in the room. What worries me is that people might be reluctant to shake my hand, or hug me, when I am carrying my bidet briefcase. This makes no sense because I will actually have a superior level of cleanliness. Perhaps I can write this in jewels across the case-top: FEEL FREE TO SHAKE MY HAND, I AM ACTUALLY CLEANER THAN YOU ARE.
I thought I’d give yet another shout-out to Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch’s Ten Talks/Two Walks from Ugly Duckling Presse. Written in the form of “sixty-minute, sixty-sentence walks around Manhattan and a pair of dialogues about walking,” the book’s observational humor often digresses into moments of tastefully awkward poignancy and makes clear, through tugging at the errant threads found in New York City’s human scenery, that everything is truly connected in a glorious form of mental acupuncture: men fighting with lampposts spawn a recollection of a flexible phone conversation, the actions of strangers remind the narrators of their own behavior, and the outside city is shown to be a reflection of the internal time and time again.
As someone who is an outsider to New York (I’ve been there only twice to salivate at the foot of its cultural picture window), Ten Walks/Two Talks grants readers rare and tender access to all the parts of NYC that won’t be shown on Will & Grace anytime soon—and even to some of the parts that may, although they won’t be portrayed in such a koan-like, meditative manner as within this book. If one wished to expand the American Museum of Natural History to include the human specimens found on a collection of random street corners, there could be no better curators selected for the job than Cotner and Fitch. With brand new taxonomic categorizations like “dwarf carrying bag of bananas” and “gold spandex wearing friend to the geriatrics,” this book makes an evocative catalogue of all the city and the imagination have to offer.
Last time I went to the NYC, I paid too much for leggings and ate things that have milk in them when ordered in New York City but do not have milk in them when ordered elsewhere. This was very fun, but next time I think I’ll just walk around and stare.
