Kyle Minor's Blog, page 6
August 3, 2012
Advice to My Younger Self
Perhaps I haven’t attained the stature to give advice to other writers, but here is what I would say to a younger version of myself, if I could:
1. Swing for the fences every time.
2. If there is a thing you want to get paid to do, but no one would think of paying you to do it, do it for free, and place it wherever it will reach the most eyeballs.
3. Don’t waste your time doing things for money which won’t get you closer to the things you really want to do, unless you need the money to live.
4. If you’re a prose writer, study poetry as much as you study prose.
5. Be humble enough to do things that you ought to be “past,” if they will help you get better. Stature comes from your work, ultimately, not your institutional position.
6. Write in other genres.
7. Do things that carry with them a high probability of failure. Keep failing at them until you’re not failing at them anymore.
8. Give yourself over to your teachers while they are your teachers, but be your own man or woman once you’ve learned what you can.
9. Don’t go to too many literary parties.
10. When people try to hurt you with words, don’t shut down the writing operation, even for a day. Put the hurtful words aside for a few days, then use them as fuel or material, going forward.
11. Don’t be too beholden to any exterior voice.
12. Know all the rules, push them as far as you can, but also: If you push it as far in the opposite direction as you can, there’s power there, too.
13. If your work receives a tepidly respectful reaction, it’s not there yet. If it makes some people soar in their hearts and others very angry, you’re probably onto something.
14. The academy is a good shelter, but it’s not your ultimate audience or validator. Let it hold you only loosely.
15. Have two things going all the time, because when the inevitable procrastination begins, you can use it to work on the other thing, and go back and forth without losing all that time.
16. Being drunk doesn’t help your writing in the long term. Neither does being neglectful of people you love. Be decent if you can.
17. If you do well, people will become jealous. Let them be, and be nice to them if you can.
18. Sometimes you will become jealous of others. Try to let it go, and extend yourself with extraordinary niceness, if you can.
19. Keep the books you really care about close to your work desk, so you can remember what the real stuff is.
20. Make some writing friends and love and serve them as much as you can.
21. Be nice to people who are still trying to figure out how to do it for the first time.
22. Avoid Internet articles about literary politics. Also: Avoid Internet discussions about literary politics.
23. If people spend a lot of energy attacking you, stop dealing with them altogether. Focus on your work, not on other people.
24. Focus on your work, not on other people.
25. Focus on your work, not on other people.
26. Focus on your work, not on other people.
27. Facebook is fun, though, for interacting with smart people who are interested in the same things you are interested in. Allow yourself such pleasures, in moderation.
July 16, 2012
“Glossolalia” in Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial
My story “Glossolalia” appears in Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, an ebook anthology edited by Cal Morgan. Free Kindle/Nook/SonyReader editions are available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.org. It’s also available in PDF, at Fifty-Two Stories Other contributors include Ben Greenman, Jess Walter, Blake Butler, Elizabeth Crane, and Roxane Gay. Download away!
July 4, 2012
50,000 Hard-Earned Words
I’ve posted selections from three years’ worth of my writer’s notebook (click here to see them) – 50,000 words of interviews, links, mini-essays, thoughts about the craft and the art of literature-making.
I’ve had an ongoing need to continue my education as a reader and a writer, and this is how I’ve been doing it, day by day. A lot of these were originally posted as Facebook notes or HTMLGiant. Some have been living in a stack of index cards on my work desk. There are another 50,000 words I didn’t post, because I didn’t think they were as interesting or useful. I’m mostly at the end of doing this kind of thing every day, for now, but it was tremendously helpful and generative while it lasted.
Happy Fourth of July!
45,000 Hard-Earned Words
I’ve posted selections from three years’ worth of my writer’s notebook (click here to see them) – 45,000 words of interviews, links, mini-essays, thoughts about the craft and the art of literature-making.
I’ve had an ongoing need to continue my education as a reader and a writer, and this is how I’ve been doing it, day by day. A lot of these were originally posted as Facebook notes or HTMLGiant. Some have been living in a stack of index cards on my work desk. There are another 50,000 words I didn’t post, because I didn’t think they were as interesting or useful. I’m mostly at the end of doing this kind of thing every day, for now, but it was tremendously helpful and generative while it lasted.
Happy Fourth of July!
June 20, 2012
“Glossolalia” in Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial
My story “Glossolalia” appears in Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, an ebook anthology edited by Cal Morgan. It’s available now in PDF, for free, at Fifty-Two Stories, and free Kindle/Nook/SonyReader editions will be available July 17 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.org. Other contributors include Ben Greenman, Jess Walter, Blake Butler, Elizabeth Crane, and Roxane Gay. Download away!
April 30, 2012
Iowa Review Prize
Some good news today: My story “Seven Stories About Kenel of Koulev-Ville won the 2012 Iowa Review Prize for Short Fiction. It will be published in the 2012 issue of the Iowa Review.
March 4, 2012
Good News
I've officially signed with Katherine Fausset, at the Curtis Brown Agency. She'll be representing The Sexual Lives of Missionaries to publishers far and wide this spring. I'm in good company, too: Katherine also represents Laura van den Berg, Chad Simpson, and Benjamin Percy. Curtis Brown also represents S.E. Hinton, Po Bronson, and David Lodge, and the estates of John Cheever, Lucille Clifton, A.A. Milne, and W.H. Auden.
Rose Metal Press Field Guide
I wrote an essay for the Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Nonfiction, edited by Dinty Moore, which will hit bookstore shelves this fall. Other contributors include Jenny Boully, Lee Martin, Sue William Silverman, Robin Hemley, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Bret Lott, Brenda Miller, Philip Graham, Lia Purpura, Nicole Walker, Patrick Madden, and Ira Sukrungruang.
Sketchbook
I’ve posted selections from three years’ worth of my writer’s notebook (click here to see them) – 50,000 words of interviews, links, mini-essays, thoughts about the craft and the art of literature-making.
I’ve had an ongoing need to continue my education as a reader and a writer, and this is how I’ve been doing it, day by day. A lot of these were originally posted as Facebook notes or HTMLGiant. Some have been living in a stack of index cards on my work desk. There are another 50,000 words I didn’t post, because I didn’t think they were as interesting or useful. I’m mostly at the end of doing this kind of thing every day, for now, but it was tremendously helpful and generative while it lasted.
February 22, 2012
Ninth Letter Serialization of “In a Distant Country”
Untitled, oil on canvas, Frankentiénne
For the last six weeks, Ninth Letter serialized my long epistolary story “In a Distant Country,” in six parts, putting up a new section once a week, as part of their Featured Writer series. The story is a companion piece to my novel-in-progress The Sexual Lives of Missionaries. It takes the form of letters home by minor characters from the novel. The letters trace through the decades the observations and complaints of others about the fate of Sheila Brocken, an 18-year-old girl who marries a lecherous 42-year-old missionary she meets on a work trip to Koulev-Ville, Haiti. The letters begin before their marriage, and continue through her husband’s death in the dechoukaj uprising at the end of the Duvalier era, and on into an ever more uncertain future. Each installment will be accompanied by a painting or illustration. First up was an untitled oil painting by Frankentiénne (see above), who also was the writer of Dezafi, the first novel ever published in Kreyol rather than French. I’ve posted links, below, to each Ninth Letter installment, and a link to the final PDF, which includes all six installments as the full version of the story:
Part One · Part Two · Part Three · Part Four · Part Five · Part Six
“In a Distant Country” Complete Story PDF (Ninth Letter Magazine-Style Layout)
excerpt from companion novel-in-progress The Sexual Lives of Missionaries, at Guernica: http://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/2863/kyle_minor_7_15_11/
