. Spinning .

Loved this article by Kirsty Logan at the Pank Magazine Blog on her experience with joining the Fictionaut group:

Some of it is genius, some of it is crap, and some of it is probably amazing if I could only understand it. I read Fictionaut more avidly than I read any other magazines or websites, and I feel more connected to it; maybe because I feel like I know these writers.

It’s a lonely calling, this writing business, and it’s ego-bruising more often than it sets you flying, but the support of other writers is something that keeps one going sometimes. Kirsty says it well:

Because that’s what I love best about all this social media – the blogs, the status updates, the trackbacks. I love when people comment on one another’s words. I love dialogue. I love that people are responding to the thoughts of others.

On top of this, I found two messages today in response to my own commenting on there:

“Thanks for your comments on my story. I always look for your picture in the comments column, and if I don’t see it in a day or two, I delete the story!”

and

“Susan, your comment makes writing the story so worth it!”

That for me, as a fellow writer, is one of the best comments I could get back.

Good article at Outsider Writers on the purposes and personal needs and uses of communities founded around a common interest: What is A Writing Community, Anyway?

Yes, I’m STILL reading Confessions of Nat Turner and will post on it soon, but it’s obvious that I haven’t been the twice-a-day poster girl here for a while. Well, there are some good reasons for that. I’m writing. And, I’m getting quite a few stories published.

So in this age of me-me-me, I’m focusing on my own writing more than reading someone else’s–though I am reading about fifteen stories a day on the writers colony site fictionaut. There’s a sense of enthusiasm and support from the writers gathered here that I’ve not found elsewhere at this high a level of quality writing. These people aren’t wannabes, they’re for the most part, published authors and editors so they have that burning fire and unrelenting drive that makes writing a big part of their lives.

In the past few months, I’ve realized my own ambitions of being published or forthcoming in literary journals such as The Blue Print Review, elimae, Bewildering Stories, The New River Journal, fourpaperletters, metazen, Litsnack, Istanbul Literary Review, and others. A Valentine’s Day Challenge turned into a group of 25 stories and poems that will be published in chapbook form and I’m glad to say that my story is included. But it’s taken me a long time to get to this point and I can’t sit and rest on my laurels. What pleases me very much is that a couple of the stories were written in hypertext and that I’m finding publishers willing to work with me on this and include it in their journals.

So that’s where I’ve been and that’s where I’ll be for a while, particularly now with many of the submission deadlines closing before the summer. I’ve got a whole batch of new stories that need endings, and a long way to go before I can rest, but Spinning and its sister Hypercompendia are not dead, just holding their breath while I play on the railroad tracks.

Fictionaut’s a great colony of writers and between yesterday and (ongoing) today, there are at least 20 hastily written great Valentine’s Day stories by writers that rose to the fun challenge. This group is just one of overwhelmingly good writers, well-represented in the literary journals, and best of all, the most supportive and helpful bunch of artists I’ve ever encountered.

Here’s my contribution to the challenge: A Gift of Love

But do read them all, the poetry and flash fiction would make a great anthology!

I use twitter as the person next to me that’s available for a passing thought but isn’t there right now. I just tweeted: “Uh-oh. I’m beginning to be irked by “moments” that want to pass for flash fiction story.”

Flash fiction is usually at maximum 1000 words, usually less than 500. I’ve just started getting into it and was happy to see that my writing could compress into that form without losing story. I love the concise quick kill, the clean stage with a few obvious props of painted trees and a bench that signifies a park. It is a form that goes for the jugular, and it reaches it first try. It’s a heart-thumping, gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping scene that envelopes a lifetime in a moment. But it doesn’t always work just for its lack of verbiage.

In amongst the jewels I’m finding a lot of cut glass. The writing is superb, but frankly, the story isn’t there at all. While leaving much to the imagination of the reader is fine, leaving the reader to write the whole story is (Barthes be damned) presumptive and ridiculous if one still wants to use the self-designation of story writer.

A moment captured properly can indeed be the representation of a life story. Then again, it could just be an interesting moment and not a story at all. After all, I can look at you and say, “Hey!” and where’s the story in that? But if forced to make something of it because that’s all that’s been presented, you will. Am I angry at you? Did you do something wrong? Do I need help with something? Do I have a knife hidden somewhere?

More on this later. I like to keep it brief–but informative.

This is an interesting article by New Pages on the importance of the 2-Year College Literary Magazine (thanks to Dorothee of Blue Print Review for pointing this out).

There are as many reasons to publish a topical magazine as there are reasons to write. For some larger institutions, it may bring in some bucks–though nowhere close to what a good ball team can bring in. Then again, editors aren’t paid college coach salaries either. Then again, the article doesn’t overlook the small college as a source worth scouting:

“Maybe it’s time we started paying attention to what’s going on outside of the literary bubble, so we can see some of the raw talent of writers who aren’t afraid to experiment.”

There is the real and honest effort to showcase literature and the arts as a path of cultural and intellectual excellence. There is a purpose to simply encourage students by showcasing their work and firing an interest that may have lain dormant or repressed. And sometimes, it’s used as a handout to impress alumni and others in hopes of donations.

“Community college students are non-traditional – so you have this whole crop of writers from incredibly diverse backgrounds,” says John Dermot Woods, faculty advisor for Luna, the student-run literary magazine published at Nassau Community College in New York. “The possibility of finding something there, something raw, something that isn’t out of a polished school of literature or thinking, is a really wonderful thing.”

I went to a small community college, Tunxis in Farmington, CT, and encouraged by a faculty member, planned, edited, and physcially published a small, hot off the xerox, literary magazine called “otto” that was eventually brought to the board and given some funding to allow production of a slick, color-photo magazine published annually. Community colleges are not luckily taken up by the strict focus on sports and are more open to all aspects of learning, English and grammar being an important element of that learning.

And some grow to become a very important element of the college:

“We weren’t content to be a small literary journal and just publish our students,” says Bart Edelman, the editor of Eclipse, a Glendale College literary magazine that went national in 2000. Eclipse reserves about 15-20% of the magazine for student work. “I thought it was really important to do something greater and to allow our students to have that unusual opportunity to be part of a national literary landscape. We wanted to see if we could have the best of both worlds.”

The article goes on to note that small college publications face the same problems of other publishing houses and large university presses, looking for a readership supportive enough to justify the expenses when cost-cutting comes around.  It’s an excellent read and I’m happy that New Pages and writer Jessica Powers took the time to delve into this.

One of the exercises in Creative Writing as I remember it was to write a story, cut it down to 600 words, then again in half to 300. 

I sputtered and sulked. A writer has barely set the stage, just touched on the characters, hinted at conflicts within that limited space, I argued. Shall we not let the reader see the newly ironed crisp curtains blow in the breeze of the open window that lets in the scent of the lilacs?

The answer is, of course, no. Not unless the lilac bush is holding a gun or its branches are spotted with bloodstains or it can sing Ave Maria backwards in perfect pitch.

I’m finding my stride with the under 500-word story. It can hold a lifetime because a lifetime is merely a repetition of moments sometimes shattered by change. Whatever those moments, there is either expected or unexpected reaction and that, my friends, is all there is to a story.

Then again, sometimes there is reason for more; and anyplace from the six-word-story of Hemingway to the giant 1000 pages of some great historical tome makes a story. It all depends on the time, the tone, the writer, the reader, the medium, and the next thing waiting to be written or read.

While I’ve had the best of intentions, it’s obvious that I’ve little time to read the past couple of months. But what’s better than reading? Only writing, and that I’ve been doing dawn till hours after dusk.

We’re at day #51 in the 100 Days Project and I’m working on that fifty-first short story in hypertext form right now. Over at Hypercompendia I’ve posted some thoughts as we reach the midpoint of the effort. To be more personal here about my own work, I’ve found that I can respond to deadlines; I can come up with a new idea every day; I can follow prompts or be inspired by outside forces; I can write humor, mystery, contemporary, poetical prose, change voice, braid stories, and most importantly, learn something new every day both about story form and hypertext.

Though I am still reading as much as possible, possible seems to be near zilch with gardening, housework and job all screaming for attention. I’ve been really tempted several times to back out of this 100-day project deal for lack of time, lack of group support, and lack of being able to bend my left ring finger. In the end, this is more than an important exercise for me, it is a step forward in a plan to create a website dedicated to hypertext fiction for all ages. A free site where there will be a library of short stories, poems, and visual graphics all in the hypertext format that will be added to on a regular basis by writers and artists willing to share their work in order to generate more interest in the hypertext form by example and instruction.

So that’s were I’ve been. Not lazy, not dropping out of sight here on Spinning, but dedicating my creative energy and time to a project I think will blossom into more than just some summer stories.

I did a whole presentation on this at Hypertext 2008 in Pittsburgh last year: story wants to be laid out not according to the writer’s whim, but rather where it wants to go on its own. Of course, before the web and hyperlinks, we didn’t have the choice of hypertext versus traditional linear story. There were the options of form however in prose, poetry, etc.

With the 100 Days Project I am writing a story a day in hypertext form. Neha is doing story in poetry. Mary Ellen is doing writing character sketches, others are contributing photography, watercolor, script, and meals.  Steve is doing linear text story.

Now there are many times I’m writing something that seems to want a straight linear–and it’s hard to use the term linear here because non-hypertexted story needn’t be linear–and I either have to stop and think about it or squeeze it out as best I can. This is forcing it into a form which the story doesn’t necessarily need to be.  There is a third option that I’ve taken a couple times: dump the story and start a new one.

I’m guessing that just as I come upon stories that want to be straight, Steve imagines a few that want to be hypertext. He’s proficient at either and once you have the tools, it’s always a part of the initial conception of story. One thing that’s helped me keep in a hypertext frame of mind is creating a base map of story in Tinderbox with writing spaces based on the average (about 16 with a half dozen smaller links to inspire intersections). This serves as a blank piece of paper or monitor in the hypertext version of writing.

It does get easier as one becomes immersed in the style to maintain that style of story; I find myself reading a paperback novel looking for links.

Been spending most of my waking hours writing hypertext short stories and often there’s a need to remind myself I’m a writer–or at lease I’m supposed to be writing down stories. There are several methods I use to bring myself back into the black depths of writing, but one of them is to read one of the previous hypertext stories–up to #34 done out of 100 planned–and get myself back in the mood as well as copyedit what I may have missed before. I’m noticing a lot of double “a” or “the” and I laugh because it usually comes prior to an adjective or an action verb where I either don’t know what’s coming or I’m trying to think of a better way of saying it. Then when it hits, the fingers automatically type the article before the word.

In going back over yesterday’s story and comments, I realized that in rereading I had completely forgotten a line of the story and thus didn’t even answer the question of what was in the pastrami. So I came upon this, and maybe found out:

He went home not wanting to believe she’d been taken. He would never be able to eat anything again.”

After fiddling with a new theme and layout in css, I finally am getting down to the business of writing out today’s flash fiction hypertext. There’s a pretty specific starting point for the story because in this case (for the 100 Day Project) we read Steve’s story and float away in different directions from there. I read the story once quickly and note down what might get me going, from today’s story:

PLOT
Pushing the envelope
Gullibility
Mob mentality
Social Networking communication methods
Morality/social norms
Protagonist changes in facing 1st conflict

Plot made the biggest impression on me in this since one thing led to another in the typical cause and effect manner. But this guy was outrageous, and his actions escalated until someone questioned him–the hair being a metaphor certainly for more meaningful actions.

It would seem that the underlying themes of the story might also be mob mentality, and the public’s willingness to believe any b.s. they read or perhaps just how the media influences us, the ignorant public. How mistakes are forgotten, how far we can be pushed. So it may be a moralistic tale as well. One meant to provoke into looking at one’s own reality as pointed out in fiction.

I may read the story a couple of more times if something doesn’t scream out at me to be written. Then I find it and go from there.

In the 100 Days Project, Steve Ersinghaus generously shared two versions of a story to show how the writing process works to sometimes show us when we get bogged down and how to turn the story around by approaching it in a different way. Some of the other participants showed us dual examples as well as to what works and what doesn’t.

In my own hypertexts, I don’t edit the way I do in straight text, although I have dumped a couple of stories, I usually play with what I have since the structure is a large part of the work and a lot of the effort in creating the narrative. So I don’t have a way of showing a story that didn’t make it.

But I thought about it in between bouts of inspired moments and played with Tinderbox to show a visual of a story that doesn’t work:

I’ve been having some fun within the frame of intense work in writing a hypertext story each day for a grand total of one hundred through the summer if I can manage to keep it up. Even if I don’t, I’ve been forced to learn and relearn elements of story through the deadlines and the desire to come up with something new, something fresh and different than whatever I’ve been doing before.

The real roadblocks for me here are the inexperience with working within the hypertext format so each story needs double duty thinking. On top of that is the process of exporting each work into .html form and ensure that’s it’s working online. Sometimes in changing the titles, colors, etc. from one story to the next, a simple semi-colon goes missing, or a link has lost a character and it ends up pointing mid-story to an Error 404 page. Then there’s a lot of detective effort and time in tracking it down. The final kicker: I get to read it online in presention form and get itchy to edit. That takes several clicks to open the server page for the files and wait- we’re not done–make the changes to the hard drive .html file and the Tinderbox version as well.

So in the last couple of days, just when I was about to throw in the towel, inspiration came in the form of magical realism; a fun thing to do when story gets too serious and too formal. I tend to get “Byzantine” with words sometimes and overly explanatory and magical realism lets you cut that off at the pass. It’s a “because I say so” tool for the writer, somewhat like freeform poetry where the creative force negates most (not all) stringent and smothering restrictions on writing. It makes it more fun.

Was writing hypertext stories for the past couple of weeks and now I’m going to take the time to do some editing. Still my favorite line though from the last one: “I paint my lips with cherries, my eyes with  the horizon of the sky.”

Reading Neruda again, and an anthology of diverse poetry. It keeps me in the right frame of mind to deal with writing and life.

I have left the beginner for the end, being hypertextually inclined to screw with linearity that way.

Steve Ersinghaus is the starting point for the 100 Days: Summer 2009 project, a reversal of his role with Carianne Mack in last year’s 100 Paintings and Poems. It is easy to see why we have so many visual artists in the group; Steve not only is near unmatchable in story or poetry in his vivid imagery and narrative style, but he paints pictures with words that create inspiration to interpret graphically.

There is motion more than action, characters laid open to explore. For example, read this from #13 The Flight:

You see your wife disappear around the house but her name is lost to the width of your tongue. You find the image of the children in their white shorts and clean shoes in the grass and the dog watching them lovely and strange. They are sounds to listen for, colors to draw, mysteries to penetrate eventually, maybe on landing, and you wish you could remember her name. You wish you could touch her, the way you always did, which you, of course, can remember.

The wind is warm on your face, and you tell the world beneath you, which has the color of stone and glass, that you could always try harder. You could always try harder to remember but its impossible.

Yes, he’s an English Professor, but more, he’s an artist, a writer, a poet, and open to all manner of expressing the forms. More from Steve at his regular website here.