Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 47

Dear Diary: Keeping A Notebook Just for You

I may be slightly addicted to Brain Pickings lately. The site is like a file cabinet of interesting and helpful things for creative types (which I believe we all can be). Most recently, in addition to lists of writerly advice from people like Vonnegut and Fitzgerald, was this article on a Joan Didion essay about keeping a notebook.

I write in so many different places and I often wonder why I scatter things around like that. I have this blog, I have the other blog—and basically just copy/paste between the two. How this came about I don’t recall, but I get more traffic now at Red Room than I do at WordPress, though I still prefer WordPress’s interface. It’s easier to use (sorry, Red Room), but clearly it seems worthwhile enough to me to keep both of them.

I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh right, notebooks. Anyway, I know one of my goals—don’t call it a resolution—was to write here more often, but I also find I’m writing more in my notebook. As in a real notebook, with pages and lines on the paper and everything.

A really cool cover (at right) also helps and can be inspiring.

I’m using this one to keep notes for my various workshops, as well as bits of stories that I’m working on, and lists of all kinds. I’m also trying to do, more or less, a writing prompt every day. Sarah Selecky has a daily email that goes out with a prompt to get things rolling (“Write for at least ten minutes. Write, by hand, in your notebook.”). That last bit—by hand, in your notebook—seems to be the key for me. I’ve been regressing technologically in my writing, to the point where a pencil seems like the right write thing.

I know, I’ve written about this before. (Last week, in fact.) It’s a subject that I keep coming back to, especially when I try to write new material using a computer. I don’t want to be a luddite on principle, but I seem to be becoming one by accident.

But here’s the thing about keeping a notebook: I don’t write in it because I think my thoughts are particularly noteworthy or profound or special. In fact, sometimes looking back at things I wrote in my notebooks even just a couple years ago is profoundly embarrassing. (“I really thought that? Seriously?”) That bit of humbling is useful, I think. Sometimes it shows me that I’ve made progress in my thinking, or in my life. Other times, it shows me that I haven’t changed at all, or that I’m repeating things I should have already learned by now.

It can be a reminder also not just of things that have happened, but of how they happened. It’s funny (not in the haha way) to look back and see what I wrote about a certain event and realize that I don’t remember it that way at all, even though I’m the one who wrote down that account and I’m the one reading it now and thinking, “Wait, that’s not right. Is it?” A reminder that the memory cheats.

And then there’s the fact that it’s all I this and I that. Always, I, I, I. I hope that I get a lot of it out of my head there, in those pages, so I don’t come off as quite so self-absorbed elsewhere.

Do you keep a notebook? What do you get out of it?

Foolish Hearts, or Here we go again!

After yesterday’s post about the audiobook version of Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction, it seems only appropriate that Becky Cochrane sprang the news about Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction, which she and Timothy Lambert edited as a follow-up to Fool for Love. I’m happy to say that I’m in this one with my story “Tea.”

Even happier, several people from the first anthology—’Nathan Burgoine, Mark G. Harris, David Puterbaugh, Greg Herren, and more—are in this new one as well, along with some names that are new to me. I can’t wait to read it.

Congratulations, Tim and Becky!

Back where it all began

As my friend ’Nathan Burgoine said today, it’s hard to believe that it’s been four years since Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction was published. Has it really been that long? Also, has it only been that long? It seems like so much has happened between now and then. All told, I’ll have published fifteen short stories by the end of this year. My first novel came out last year. And I’m in grad school.

So it’s kind of cool to learn that Fool for Love is now available as an audiobook from audible.com. I don’t often listen to audiobooks, but I think I’ll make a point of listening to this one. If you’re a fan of audiobooks, and if you like short fiction, I can tell you there are some wonderful, funny, and touching stories in here.

I can’t wait to hear how Roman Wagar, the reader, does Hildie’s voice….

How to tell if you’re in grad school: a one-question pop quiz

Q: Did you stay up all night last night, apart from a two-hour nap, in order to finish a short story that needed to be turned in, even though it was a Saturday night and there were loads of other things you’d have much rather been doing, like sleeping?

If you answered “yes,” congratulations. You’re in grad school.

I’m not complaining though, not really. If anything, I’m kicking myself over poor planning and time management. On the bright side, I do have a completed story draft at the end of all this, and when I thought I was going to have to pull something out of my slush pile, I opened up an older, un-workshopped story and started cleaning it up. I might submit it later in the semester, although ideally I want to write another story first. I have one in process that, like the one I turned in, has been lingering for ages and just needs to be done.

Add to that two requests for stories around some interesting topics that may or may not be suitable for class (translated: they’re a bit naughty). I have a couple ideas for those already, and I think they’ll be fun.

It’s not all work though. I also went snowshoeing this weekend at Mount Seymour in North Vancouver. It’s funny going from rain in the city to snow in the mountains in the space of less than an hour. Once we got there, it took a little under two hours to get from the bottom to the top (heh-heh, “bottom to top;” hi, by the way—I’m twelve years old) with a lot of slipping and sliding along the way. Also, I need warmer gloves. I did take pictures, but naturally, I left the cord for this particular camera in St. Louis. If I find one I can borrow, I’ll post them later. It was beautiful. Cloudy, but beautiful.

And sliding back down on your ass was loads of fun.

Harper’s publisher apparently doesn’t know how internet search engines work

In a reminder that some people probably still think that the internet is a series of tubes, there’s this commentary from the delightfully curmudgeonly publisher of Harper’s magazine (found via the blog of writer Nathan Bransford) decrying how Google encourages the “for-profit theft” of information while making it much harder to find paid content.

Specifically, this gem:

Google’s bias for search results that list its own products above those of its competitors is now well-known, but equally damaging, and less remarked, is the bias that elevates websites with free content over ones that ask readers to pay at least something for the difficult labor of writing, editing, photographing, drawing, and painting and thinking coherently. Try finding Harper’s Magazine when you Google “magazines that publish essays” or “magazines that publish short stories” — it isn’t easy.

Huh?

This is like me being outraged that I don’t pop up when I search for “gay man who writes stories.” (Mind you, it would be completely awesome if I showed up under those results, but I might as well be wishing to show up under the results for “Kylie Minogue’s biggest gayest fan” [I love you, Kylie! Call me!].)

Mr. MacArthur also comments on entrepreneur Xavier Niel and his ad-blocking technology:

Or try to get up-to-date news about Xavier Niel and Free through your friendly local Google search engine.

Yeah, I couldn’t find anything about Mr. Niel when I Googled him….

I get that things are changing fast. I also get the concern about compensating content creators fairly for their intellectual property. (Hello, I’m a writer.) This sort of hand-wringing accompanies every change in communications technology. (Wasn’t it Socrates who lamented the negative impact writing would have on argument and memory?) I’m kind of appalled that someone in Mr. MacArthur’s position wouldn’t take a moment to at least try to figure out how search engines work, or consider that the online advertising he’s decrying may not be all that different from the advertising in the pages of his magazine.

Other issues with Google aside, I don’t think the company shouldn’t be compensated for the service they provide by putting an amazing amount of information at my fingertips, even if there is also a lot of debris and clutter. But then it’s my job to sift through that information and determine what is credible and what is not. And that’s far from the “dumbing down of America” that Mr. MacArthur mentions. Sure, a lot of people might not perform that due diligence (even I might not), but then I doubt many people at home were fact-checking Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather back in the day.

Meanwhile, better stay off Mr. MacArthur’s lawn, kids… though I bet his exercise in curmudgeonly whining has driven a lot of traffic to Harper’s website.

He can thank Google for that.

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’d vanished

(Tap tap tap) Is this thing still working? It is? Oh, good.

I wouldn’t blame you if you’d wondered. I tend to go in fits and starts when it comes to this blog—lately, mainly because I’ve been running to keep up with just about everything else. And I’m so easily distracted. The computer has pretty much replaced television as my idiot box (in more ways than one). I go online to look something up or check email and an hour later I’ve wandered into some backwater of Wikipedia, I’ve got a dozen tabs open, or I’ve fallen under the hypnotic spell of LOLcats.

It’s not pretty.

And then there’s social media. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve deleted the Facebook app off my phone and my iPod. This is a good thing for two reasons: 1) Facebook is an enormous time suck that could be better spent working on my various short story assignments for the three workshops I’m taking. (OK, one of the workshops is in the graphic novel, so I should call those assignments comics—I think I’ve come up with my character for one of them: a neurotic alien who crashes his flying saucer somewhere in Middle America, where his universal translator gets him into trouble but also allows him to talk to dogs.) Anyway, that’s reason #1. 2) I am finding I don’t have the patience for Facebook lately. I could enumerate all the ways it irks me—Vaguebooking, ranting, or holier-than-thou-ness (all of which I’ve done at one point or another—which means that, yes, I try my own patience sometimes). If I went into detail about that, though, I’d just sound like someone’s grandpop shouting “Get off my lawn!”

Too late, perhaps.

I’ve taken to writing things down in a little notebook again. (That’s the latest one over there on the right. Christmas present from my friend Jan. Pretty nifty, yeah? For those of you who were born too recently, the cover’s supposed to look like an audiocassette. Those were these things that were around before CDs and after vinyl. You’ll probably never see one outside of a garage sale.) I used to write lists in a notebook as a matter of habit, but fell out of it when I started using my iPod for to-do lists, notes, and whatnot. (Whatnot is a word that I don’t think is used often enough.) I’ve found I don’t follow through with things when I type them into a list on  a device though, so it’s back to pen and paper.

I sometimes worry that I’m developing a curmudgeonly relationship with technology. I don’t want to encourage that, but even the terminology sounds weird, doesn’t it? We don’t have a “relationship” with technology. They’re things, inanimate objects. They’re not people, or pets, or anything alive. (They’re not even plants.) I guess it’s because we do things to them and they “respond” that leads me to think of them in relationship terms.

Sometimes I need a break from that relationship, though—and that says more about me than it does about the gadgets or what anyone else does with them. Now, I’ve got to go sharpen my pencil and work on a story that’s due tomorrow….

Big finish or slow fizzle?

There’s a moment some nights, right after I turn out the light and I’m lying in bed, that I think, “One of these days you’re not going to wake up, you know.”

That’s followed by a second of total terror, when I open my eyes again and take in whatever I can see of the dark room—I should point out, this moment is different from the moment just before I turn out the light, when I look around the room and ask myself what the hell am I doing here? This last question only comes to me when I’m at grad school, and I’m happy to report it’s occurring with less frequency.

That other moment, though, that happens wherever I am.

So there I am, lying in the dark and trying to imagine what everything just ending is like. Is there a slow drawing down of the senses, like drifting off to sleep but not being quite sure of the moment when sleep actually overtakes you? If it happens suddenly, by some accident or abrupt onset of illness—think massive coronary—I’d imagine it would just be like someone turning off the TV: Boom, show’s over. Nope, not gonna find out who shot J.R. Because you’re J.R., and this time you didn’t pull through after Kristin Shepard plugged you. (Sorry. Spoilers!)

Look, I don’t think I dwell inordinately much on the idea of death in general or the subject of my own mortality in particular, but rather I think we don’t think about these things often enough, which is not news to anyone, really. But I don’t want to think about it in that hair-pulling, hand-wringing “oh my God we’re all gonna DIEEEE!!!” kind of way. Because that’s just not very interesting. What is interesting to think about are all the amazing or horrifying or completely mundane things that are going to happen after us that we’re going to miss out on. Personally, I’d love to be around when people start leaving the planet again. But we don’t get to call those shots.

It’s cropping up in my writing more and more often too. Actually, considering that one of the main characters in my first novel is dead from beginning to end, I’d say it’s been a theme, yeah?

On the bright side, I have to say these things don’t keep me awake at night. I still manage to fall asleep just fine.

What do you think about right before you fall asleep?

Revisiting “The Elephant Vanishes”

I recently re-read Haruki Murakami’s “The Elephant Vanishes,” a short story in a collection by the same name that came out in 1993, but the story originally made an appearance in The New Yorker in 1991.

The first time I read the story was in an undergraduate creative writing workshop that I took in the early 2000s, while I was working at Webster University in St. Louis. I fell in love with the story then, about a man who lives in a Tokyo suburb that’s home to an elephant, the one remaining resident from a down-at-the-heel zoo that was forced to close. The town is mystified when the elephant and its trainer simply vanish one day and leave no trace of where they went or how the elephant got out of its cage. In the ending of the story, the narrator explains how he was the last person to see the elephant and its trainer, and he knows how they may have escaped.

I knew it was a story I wanted to discuss in one of my workshops this semester, but I’d left my copy of the collection at home in St. Louis. Fortunately, I was able to find the version that ran in The New Yorker and the university’s gods of copyright handled the rest so we could make copies. While I was home, I grabbed my copy of the book and brought it back to Vancouver with me.

After I read the New Yorker version, something about it didn’t sit quite right with me. When I got my copy of the book, I figured out why:

The endings were different.

Not materially different in the events that take place, but there are two paragraphs in the book version that are absent from the New Yorker version. Reading the two of them now, I’m looking at those two paragraphs and wondering why they made such a big difference back then, and I’m also wondering, is it better with them or without them? What would my experience of the story have been like if I’d read it in The New Yorker first? I can’t go back and unread them, so I’m hoping that it’ll make for an interesting discussion in workshop.

Your terrible year

It seems that no matter whom I ask, the prevailing sentiment about 2012 is God, that sucked. So, I feel fortunate that it played out pretty well for me. I just hope 2013 works out to be better for more people than the last year was.

I’ve been thinking, though. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, and while I have some obvious goals for 2013, they all revolve around writing—well, except for that whole “need to lose five more pounds,” which is perennial. (Actually, since I gained five pounds when I went home for Christmas, make that “need to lose ten pounds.”) My point, though, is that my life is not just about writing.

No, really.

And anyway, “let my hair grow long enough that I have a ponytail” is not really a resolution (though grad school is likely the last time I can even try to pull that look off). However, my residence at grad school is an environment filled with musically inclined people. Even a respectable portion of the science and business grad students can sing, or play piano, or some other instrument.

When I was walking through the bookstore yesterday, I noticed that they have guitars for sale. They don’t cost that much. So, that’s a thought I’m thinking.

Anyone out there play guitar? How hard is it to pick up?

The Next Big Thing

All aboard the Next Big Thing blog hop!

Robin Summers tagged me in her post last week, so I get to tell you about the thing that’s occupied my attention for the past three years. “Next big thing”? Sounds a bit grand, but it was a big deal to me. The blog hop’s purpose is to introduce readers to writers that perhaps they haven’t heard of, whether it’s a new release or a work in progress (WIP). This is week 28.

According to the rules of the hop, I will be answering questions (the same ones for every other blog hopper) about my book. At the bottom of my post I’ll “tag” two more authors who will do the same thing next week on their blogs Wednesday, January 9, 2013.

1. What is the title of your work in progress? The manuscript is finished, actually, and it’s called The Unwanted.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book? Basically, it started with a story I wrote, “The Trouble with Billy,” in the anthology Speaking Out. It was a story about a boy, his best friend, and his bully. The boy, named Jamie, lives with his dad and has always believed his mother was dead. I wondered, what if she was actually alive—and what if she was an Amazon?

3. What genre does your book fall under? Young-adult fantasy.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Oh, good question. I picture a teenage version of David Tennant for Jamie, the protagonist, but for the others I have images of them in my head that don’t necessarily conform to anyone famous.

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of the book? Can the teenage son an Amazon never wanted save the mythical tribe of warrior women from the wrath of a vengeful god?

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Neither, but stay tuned!

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript? About two years. I am an extremely slow writer, so that’s actually an improvement over my first novel, which took seven years.

8. What other books would you compare this story to in your genre? I hesitate to compare it to anything, not because it has no peer, but because I wouldn’t want to blame anyone else for any of my mistakes. After I started writing this, I picked up Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and began reading those. The Unwanted is targeted at an older audience than Percy, but they’re great fun.

Another book I read while working on this was Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. This was my favorite book of 2012 and, while I would not even begin to compare my work to an Orange Prize winner, she inspired me to make it the best I possibly could.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? I have been interested in Greek mythology ever since my mother gave me a copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology as a high schooler and later a big encyclopedia of world mythology. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Amazons have been interesting to me ever since I first read a Wonder Woman comic book. That said, my Amazons don’t have bullet-deflecting bracelets, golden lassos of truth, or an invisible jet.

In other news, I really want an invisible jet, but I’d settle for the bracelets.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest? Goddesses, three-headed dogs, and an army of the undead. How’s that for fun?

Who’s tagged? My friend ’Nathan Burgoine who is finishing his first novel, due out this year from Bold Strokes Books, and I was going to tag Rebekah Weatherspoon, but she already got tagged by Yvonne Heidt (who’s also posted this week). I’m bad at tagging, clearly. So! If you want to be tagged, leave a comment and I’ll add you!