. Spinning .

Well, another year down and another 100 stories written–though they’re only a portion of the 365 I’m committed to write this year.

The summer 100 Days Projects started in 2008 with Carianne Mack painting daily and a poem inspired by it by Steve Ersinghaus. This collaboration resulted in a beautiful book of the complete works. I started the 100 Days Project in 2009, writing a hypertext story every day for 100 days in conjunction with about a dozen others who dedicated their days to art, poems, stories, films, audio, etc. In the summer of 2010, I participated with 100 flash fiction pieces and a matching image which served to practice my Photoshopping and Photography skills.

There were about sixty participants starting out this year, with a good forty-plus finishing. Some of the most fantastic artwork, poetry, photography was produced by some extremely talented artists and writers. What was neat for me this year was that a few of my friends from Fictionaut were coerced into joining up and so there was a better sense of camaraderie and support. While we can say we create for ourselves, we really do appreciate an audience for our efforts and there were a precious few folk (bless ‘em!) who read or viewed almost all the work of their fellow artists and were encouraging by their comments and retweets or Facebook notices. Believe me, that was most appreciated.

But I’m not nearly done; I’ve got an end date of December 31st, 2011. While I may have written 240 stories this year, I’ve still got 125 to go. Then editing, reworking, and sorting into some semblance of order for either individual or an anthology submission

While I’m taking part in another summer’s 100 Days Project, I’ve really been writing a story a day since January 1st and have passed the halfway mark a few days ago. Everything that started here was transferred to the Talespinning site at the end of May.

Several changes have occurred in the process. Starting out, I wrote a story as influenced by Carianne Mack Garside’s artwork. Her own commitment to produce a piece daily was affected by her baby’s growth and curiosity and resulting need for extra attention so I continued on my own. Inspiration came out of thin air. When the 100 Days Project came up at the end of May, I decided to once more hook up with the group, and so it goes. Even with this project, we’ll be hitting another halfway mark of 50 days of daily work this weekend.

It’s amazing how many ideas and storylines a writer can find, either spurred by the creativity of others or just by life itself. Someone made a comment on one of my stories to the effect that he found it surprising that I could develop some many different characters, a new one each day. I laughed and responded that perhaps it is the writer’s version of multiple personality disorder.

Meanwhile, because I have been reading the other participant’s work, as well as those of fellow writers on Fictionaut and new literary publications as they come out, I haven’t kept up on my novel reading, nor my hypertext and new media learnings (last posting at Hypercompendia was on the Morpheus software!) so these two weblogs have been sort of stagnant for a while except when something interesting (at least to me!) happens and I’ll post to the Reality category.

Gardening, framing, reading, and writing; this will be my summer.

With the amount of short story reading and writing I’ve done over the past couple years, I think I’ve detected some patterns in the new trends of what’s relative in contemporary writing.

There are audiences of all types, we all like different genres, styles, eras, etc. But as a writer wanting to be published in the current short story/flash market, it’s always necessary to keep up with the current trends. You can buck them, decide that nowhere among the many groups of literary journals does your work fit, or you can try to adapt your style by learning what’s currently “in.”

One thing I’ve noticed is that the market is more youth-oriented, and this is likely because many of the established print and online lit journals are affiliated with the MFA programs or at least the English Departments of universities. Then there is a whole group of students who graduated or are in the process thereof, who have found out how relatively easy and cheap it is to run a magazine online. Easy, that is, because most will command a group of volunteer readers. Cheap, because even a free blog can serve as an official venue.

What I’ve seen in many of the “younger” style of writing, the early twenty to twenty-eight or so group, is that there is still a lot of narcissism, or leftover angst. Stories are typically in the first person POV and about inner conflicts or sex. Lotsa sex, only it’s called fucking because that’s what you couldn’t write in high school.

There are still plenty of journals devoted to more story-oriented, more experienced writing styles that are geared toward the reader whose world includes a much broader spectrum of love, relationships, sex, friendship, troubles, jobs, world security, etc.

I suppose what I’m saying is that now, more than ever, it is imperative to READ any literary publications to which you plan to submit. Luckily, this doesn’t mean a yearly subscription to a thousand magazines. The online publications are pretty much free to the public to read. The print journals, for the most part, include a few sample stories that can be read online. This, I think, is all good news for the writer.

Today marks the one hundred fiftieth story I’ve written as part of my commitment to write daily since January 1st of this year. It also coincides with Day 10 of the 100 Day Project for this summer of 2011.

I’ll be taking down the pages here that mark the first 140 days of the 365/365, since all have been transferred into monthly posts at Talespinning to accommodate the 100 Days setup.

It’s quite a learning process, to find a story to write every day, to change narrative voice and writing style, to investigate techniques and language and genres. Some of these pieces have already been picked up and published elsewhere; most will never move beyond the pages of my weblog. There are those I feel really good having written, and those that even with the famous editorial eye, just aren’t pleasing even to their own “mother.”

Check out the 100 Days Project–there are so many fine artists and writers and crafters and photographers there that you’re sure to find something each day to make the summer special.

This morning I finally finished up the story to submit for non-fiction. It was one I had written as part of my last year’s participation in a fiction project. In the final editing for this submission, I tweaked language, fleshed it out, and changed the tense.

Yes, that’s about all I had to do to turn fiction into an honest non-fiction.

With the ruckus caused by James Frey’s A Million Tiny Pieces being passed off as reality, I find this amusing. The thing is, Frey knew the difference between right and wrong, real and made-up, since he’d done the opposite of what I’ve just done. He claimed his novel was his personal experience, and only switched it to non-fiction, memoir, when he couldn’t shop it successfully. In the Oprah interview on yesterday (and continuing today, I believe) he claims he wasn’t thinking at all about genre, was inspired to just sit down and write something totally different, and didn’t have the writing class experience behind him to guide his decisions. I call him a big fat liar.

But was I just as guilty when calling true events fiction? I don’t think so. It’s not a mortal sin anyway; perhaps venial and ten Hail Marys will clear the air.

The thing is, ALL fiction is truth. All must have some basis in fact, all must be born from an egg before it flies away on its own. You can’t write about aliens coming in from Mars on their spaceships and landing on Earth if you don’t know about planets, space travel, and flight. Then you’re freed from the constrictions of knowledge to color them green.

UPDATE: A link to an article on the truth of personal experience in flash fiction at Flash Fiction Chronicles by Thomas Kearnes.

About a month ago I was asked to submit a non-fiction piece by a great editor who kindly had published my work in the first issue of his magazine last year. I don’t write a lot of non-fiction. On the other hand, all fiction comes from experience of reality.

I don’t know if it’s the privacy factor, but I know that the things in my life that are most interesting are the ones that I’m not of the mind to own up to. Some of these events have been crayoned and restructured and found their way into any number of short stories I’ve written. I just can’t seem to open up quite that much knowing that people I know are reading it as truth if it’s labeled non-fiction. So I’ve been stuck here all month with ideas and no story.

Then it dawned on me that it didn’t have to be about me at all. I don’t even need to be in the story. With a deep sigh, I opened Pages and set up the font, typed my name and “Word Count:” on top and settled in to write.

Who and what would I write about? Again, the “non-fiction” designation prevents anything from being written that is without the knowledge or permission of the characters we’re dealing with in the story. Even without naming names, it’s a bit awkward to again find those stories that are different, fresh, new, and told honestly but sensitively.

Now that would be easier to do than to sift through my lifetime and people I’ve known to come up with the story that will be both real and entertaining in some way. Something moving, something to which others can relate, something funny or tragic, big or small. And still, I find my emotions creeping in and closing the door.

When artist Carianne Garside made the commitment to a piece of art every day for a year through 2011, I decided to match it with a piece of writing, fiction, essay, or poem. I’m always worried about quality when pushing for quantity, but there’s always time to go back and do the editing. The other problem is story, but what helped here was the art to inspire, much as word and phrase prompts were the flint in the 52/250 Project that’s just finished.

When Carianne found in mid-April that other things pulled for more of her attention and she took a hiatus (I believe she’ll be picking back up her routine, but instead for the 100 Days Project through the summer), I wondered if I could continue with no obvious source of ideas, no limited amount of something to focus and draw a story around.

It’s been difficult, and yet I’ve found other ways to come up with narrative. The old fashioned way; looking around, reading, noticing, seeing something that may not be obvious without a creative mind to look for it. The other good thing is the freedom of timeline. It was often tough to wait for a piece when I had time to write but without knowing what the piece would inspire (in 52/250, themes were listed weeks ahead). Being me, I was often out of mental energy when I got the base to build on. I’m a morning person and was better waiting until the next morning to conceive and write.

Better too, to take advantage of a flow, and I often find myself writing several stories at once when the dam’s open. That covers me for days when the muse is on vacation in Tahiti with no cell phone or internet connection. With the 100 Days and the 365/365, I didn’t have that option of starting a story until I saw what the inspiration piece would be.

So coming back to time, while I feel there are certain stories that are some of my best work ever and some have already been published, I’m not pleased with each and every day’s work and would never have left these stories without editing before moving on to the next. But as long as I use downtime to go back and edit, to reread each story or poem and rework those I’m not happy with, that’s an acceptable method of working for me right now.

The third quarterly issue of the fabulous 52/250 project has just been released and it’s another winner.

thirtynine is a selection of the best stories and poetry produced during thirteen weeks of work by an average weekly  group of between thirty to forty writers. The 52/250 Project was based on a different prompt each week that offers the winds of creative thoughts and stories to fly, unlimited by anything other than a 250-word restriction.

My own story Unspeakable is included in this anthology and I thank the excellent work of the editors, Michelle Elvy, Walter Bjorkman, and John Wentworth Chapin for once again producing an amazing collection.

Was so humbled and yet prouder than ever this morning when I noticed on Facebook that the long list notables was published for the 2010 storySouth Million Writers award and I was plopped in there among some of the most popular and finest short story writers I know. The story, Where We Come From, Where We Go was published in the Istanbul Literary Review last year.

Congratulations to all, and particularly Fictionaut friends Marcus Speh, James Valvis, Tara Laskowski, Rachel Swirsky, Amber Sparks, Roxane Gay, Frank Hinton, and Bonnie ZoBell.

Big thanks to the folks at storySouth, and special thanks to Dorothee Lang, Susan Tepper, and Gloria Mindock, three wonderful writers, editors, and friends.

Wanted to make a note here about a current publication of work at The Blue Print Review that I’m particularly excited about.

While working on a one-a-day throughout 2011, with Carianne Mack Garside producing a piece of art and my matching it with a short piece of prose, it was suggested by Dorothee Lang, the terrific editor of BPR that I submit some pieces for a special upcoming #27 issue she was planning, Synergetic Transformations, that would be comprised of collaborative works. That sparked a desire to include Steve Ersinghaus’ poetry since he has worked on the 100 days projects since 2008. He kindly produced a couple to match the pieces selected by Lang.

It’s always a thrill to be published in such a fine literary journal as BPR, mainly because Dorothee is such an artistic soul that she takes meticulous editorial care with the presentation. This was especially exciting for me since it included mentors and friends in the effort. Below are links to the pieces, and a link to the notes on the project here.

Cross Section of My Day/ – Gibb/Garside

Cross Section of My Day/ – Ersinghaus/Garside

Comfort – Gibb/Garside

Comfort – Ersinghaus/Garside

Sometimes, in a calm lull of the writing process, you think you really don’t care about getting published since once your first story/poem/essay has been accepted, you’ve begun to call yourself a “writer.” You think the shine is off and yet you realize it comes anew with each and every “yes” just as the “no, sorry” can still pierce the skin–though it doesn’t cut to the heart the way it used to.

There was a day this past week where two of my pieces were published, one day after another. I was ecstatic! Both were solicited (versus normal submission) which is lately what I find myself doing–just because the submission process takes me so long to decide what to send and where to send it and how to keep track of it all. And one was in a print edition (Thunderclap Press) which still, regardless of how we feel about online literary magazines and our recognition of them as equal to print, still holds that little extra thrill leftover from the early days of ezines.

What cracks me up–though admittedly with a touch of sadness–is that aside from my fellow writers, my social network friends aren’t really impressed at all. I see tweets and posts that record each play of some televised game–a ball is thrown, carried, swatted, or kicked over some boundary and makes an extraordinary number of people excited. I admit that I’m not into most sports–a ball goes this way then that way then this way then that for a couple hours and that’s about all I make of it.

It dawned on me that this is reinforced at the college level, and starts early with Little League and elementary school sports and high school athletics. We’ve held onto that Adonis dream, that exultation of the human body, the athlete we shower with scholarships and contracts and advertising gigs and money beyond almost any other field of personal accomplishment. Americans, more than any other country, hold as their heroes their sports stars, their celebrity actors and actresses. All physical–very little cerebral idols here.

We don’t complain about Taylor Swift (and I like her) making $45,000,000 a year, or multi-million dollar contracts for playing basketball for a year. Somehow, we don’t want to look closely to see our money making them rich, but feel they deserve it because we’re entertained. Reading, I guess, is not entertainment any more. Writers don’t as a standard get paid anything for short stories and poems–they’re supposed to be content with the thrill of publication alone. Most writers of published books get very little, though big name celebrities (writers, yes, but sports stars and actors and politicians as well) and phenomenons are way up there in making money off a book.

You see, we don’t have readers willing to pay to read a story whereas we’re overloaded with watchers willing to pay big bucks to see a game played, or a concert or movie. And time is a factor as well, since these days, literature of all kinds, lengths and genres are available online for FREE. It takes about a minute to a minute and a half to read a 250 word flash fiction, which evidently is too long, even as we sit two to three hours watching a ball go this way and that, this way and that.

It’s times like this that I particularly wish that I were tall or pretty instead of smart. Or maybe I’m not so smart after all.

(This post originally appeared in January, 2011 at Nothing to Flawnt in my gastarbeiter appearance on that weblog, with thanks to Marcus Speh.)

Yes, thank you, yes, yes!

The writer’s dream come true. Gra­ciously accept­ing con­grat­u­la­tory com­ments from his peers on his lat­est pub­lished piece. But what did it take out of him to get here?

Like a new mother for­get­ting the agony of child­birth when she holds the new babe against her breast, the writer doesn’t look back at the years of rejec­tion slips, the mis­car­riages of writing.

We found your work not quite a fit/not suit­able for our journal/REJECTED.

Most writ­ers really started back in grade school. Pat­ted on the head and encour­aged by teach­ers and of course, a mother who loves every word. Some­times there are years in between bouts with the muse but at some point we decide to take it seri­ously. Put some effort into it. Sub­mit. And that’s where real­ity hits fic­tion and the pain of rejec­tion adds lay­ers to character.

Many years ago–at that par­tic­u­lar moment when light­ning struck which I mis­took for that “time to get seri­ous” sign–I did some research. Armed with a hand­ful of short sto­ries and many, many poems, I hit the track. Of course, back then it was all print­ing out, cover let­ters, envelopes (two–one the dreaded SASE) and postage. I went through Duotrope and selected what I thought were among the “upper ech­e­lon” of lit­er­ary jour­nals, those found in the cam­pus library: Glim­mer­train, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, the col­lege reviews. Twenty of the best. Those that reg­u­larly pub­lished the lat­est Joyce Carol Oates. Back then, I strictly obeyed the “no simul­ta­ne­ous sub­mis­sions” warning.

And waited. And waited. And waited for some kind of response.

These days, with online sub­mis­sions the norm, it is so much eas­ier to sub­mit. Cheaper, too. In truth, I feel for the edi­tors who must dread in some ways just know­ing each morn­ing that though there may be a pearl in the onslaught of words, there is indeed that onslaught that the ease of sub­mis­sion has opened up.

Over the years I’ve learned a bit more about the sys­tem of sub­mit­ting and the one thing that was always stressed, the same thing that out of ego but more, out of impos­si­bil­ity due to lack of funds we tended to ignore, was to sub­scribe to a mag­a­zine in order to find out exactly what it sought by way of writ­ing. Well, you can only afford so many mag­a­zines and you can talk your­self into think­ing you fit.

One of the best moves I’ve made was join­ing the won­der­ful com­mu­nity of writ­ers at Fic­tio­naut. It did, of course, open some doors and make some amaz­ing friends that are so sup­port­ive of each other that a writer need no longer feel alone and small. Bet­ter yet, it revealed the dif­fer­ent styles of con­tem­po­rary fic­tion and poetry writ­ing and what was being sought by the jour­nal edi­tors. Not only do the links make the mag­a­zines eas­ily acces­si­ble online, it offered sam­ples of the editor’s writ­ing! What bet­ter way to see exactly the tone, style, voice, topic, etc. that an edi­tor looks for in select­ing, than to see what type of writ­ing he/she presents? That in itself was invalu­able and ben­e­fi­cial to both sides; less head bang­ing and less read­ing of incred­i­bly mis­matched submissions.

Another thing that such a com­mu­nity of good writ­ers can offer (besides some cri­tique if requested) is the oppor­tu­nity to learn by read­ing and writ­ing. I know that per­son­ally, the work of my friends has had a direct impact on my own style of writ­ing. I find it easy now to write a story in rela­tion to either a theme or a word count. A word count! Some­thing I just couldn’t com­pre­hend as rel­a­tive to story at all!

While I’ve gone off into dif­fer­ent direc­tions in my own writ­ing and have wan­dered into hyper­text, flash, and code, I see these same explo­rations into new media brought about by the inter­net and the com­puter by the mag­a­zines and by the writ­ers and artists. Mar­cus Speh has dab­bled in hyper­text nar­ra­tive. As have Dorothee Lang (edi­tor, Blue Print Review) who has taken it fur­ther into com­bin­ing story with visu­als. Meg Pokrass has found a niche in tak­ing advan­tage of Xtra­nor­mal, a free ani­ma­tion pro­gram on the web and has com­bined story with audio/visuals with exper­tise and her inim­itable flair. There are more and more venues will­ing to accept the new media form of writ­ing that an online pres­ence can offer that tra­di­tional print form never could.

So yes, life for the writer has changed. The nar­ra­tive, the meth­ods, the writer him­self, as always, adjusts and expands to ful­fill both the read­ing audi­ence and that inner need to be read. There is indeed life after rejec­tion; all I needed to do was grow into it.

Nothing irks me more than . . . people who spout off about what irks them in the incorrect  grammar of others.

It really bothers me when people use “I” instead of “me.”

It drives me to distraction when people use “it’s” instead of “its” and vice versa.

Why can’t people learn the proper use of “who” and “whom?”

It’s not that hard to determine the correct meaning and tense of “lie” versus “lay” people!

I’m really offended by the incorrect use of . . .

I hate to be nitpicky, but . . .

This is what social networking does. Gives us a way to vent about personal little annoyances that seem to plague the rest of the world while we ourselves are perfect. I’ll bet you won’t find a person who uses all the grammatically wrong terms, nor one who doesn’t present at least one flaw in his or her own grammar.

Face-to-face, pointing out a grammatical error used to be considered rude unless it’s in English class, editing, or when correcting a child or an ESL student just learning the language.

Do you honestly think you have the right to change (even if it’s improving) everyone else so as not to offend you? Repeat offender? Unfollow them on twitter, defriend them on Facebook. Surely that will keep you above the rabble.

Not everyone speaks as “good” as you; deal with it.

It won’t be more than mere practice, no eloquence finely honed and polished to perfection, but a flash piece each day to match–no not match, but inspired by–Carianne Mack Garside’s beautiful art.

So here will be my offerings, starting with Day 1, Potent. Note that each month’s work here has a separate page (links on the right sidebar).

Gone are the days when a Photoshopped Happy New Year! greeting will do on a weblog this last day of the year. Everyone seems to be listing achievements, successes, plans for the year ahead that will be both a challenge and an inspiration to bother working even harder next year.

2010 was a great year for me in the area of my writing. About 30 pieces published, including a hypertext and some images among the fiction. Might’ve even done better had I been organized enough to submit more work to more places. But the satisfaction of realizing a hope that you’re good enough to be published is both a blessing and a curse. You really need to keep up on it, not sit back and relax.

The highlight of the year has to be the coming-in-close in the Bartleby Snopes Dialogue Contest. No, wait–here’s the real thrill, winning the Eighth Glass Woman prize for “Wanderer.” Knowing so much more through Fictionaut about the writers I’m humbled to be alongside may be the biggest compliment and stamp of approval yet. These are writers, real writers. I feel like maybe I snuck in through the side door.

Anyway, my “list of literary accomplishments” is as always, on the “My Work” link. Beyond that, I wrote a story and made up an image every day for 100 days through the summer. I found myself listed in the Electronic Literature Organization Directory for the 100 Days Project of 100 hypertexts done in 2009. I’ve written a story each week for the 52/250 project since May, and will continue on that through May of this year. I wrote another 24 stories for another month-long project. All in all, I likely wrote about 150 stories this past year. Oh, and at the Tunxis 24-hour marathon in April, I produced a new hypertext piece.

Aside from writing, my other endeavors have not been as fruitful. I’ll learn, I suppose (and that’ll be a New Year’s resolution) not to keep knocking on doors that are closed to me. I’ve applied so many times for openings at a local place that they likely fear I’m a stalker. Same thing with writing; I’m learning that no, my work doesn’t “fit” at all at some venues, and why don’t I believe them? Rejections are never happy things, but it’s senseless to set yourself up for a fall when your style of writing is not only not what they want, but their literary tastes simply aren’t yours either. That’s diversity. That’s a good thing. Focus and research is the key, as every writer is told and for some reason, it doesn’t get through until the bright light pops on with the newsflash.

So there will be some dedicated focus this new year so not as much time and effort is wasted. I won’t send my resume out to places I wouldn’t want to work just to punish myself nor hit on places I’ve been turned down at a dozen times. Same thing with the writing. Organization, whether by Tinderbox software or by Duotrope Digest, will be the very first thing I do.

Projects, yes, I’m planning some projects. Personally, a new business of sorts. In writing, learning–no really, spending the time and finally learning–to more easily understand and implement HTML5, CSS3, JQuery, audio, and visuals into my work. Not written in stone, but somewhat man-made concrete: a hypertext novel; a traditional novel; putting together and marketing an anthology of short stories; an online new media magazine; and work that I love to do, am good at, and will produce some bit of income–in that order of importance. In addition, getting back into reading and reviewing my literature collection of classics on a regular basis. Though I’ve in truth spent more time reading than writing this year; hundreds and hundreds of flash and short fiction and poetry over at Fictionaut and 52/250 and many online zines. They’re really what has honed my own edge of writing as well as offered hours of delight in reading.

So I close the old year with some successes, many failures, but knowledge that promises. I will make time for old friends, make myself try some new things, spend less time on social networks and give reality more.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, successfully satisfying New Year.