On Toilet Paper and Time Management

I realized recently that whenever I use up a toilet paper roll I tend not to put the new one on the dispenser right away but to instead leave it on the floor next to the wall.  Whether or not I install the roll immediately correlates with how busy I am, and if I’m stressed or have a lot of things going on or am maybe just focused on a writing project the new roll can easily sit on the floor for several days.  I don’t forget about the roll, though, and whenever I’m in the bathroom I’ll see it and think about how I really should put it on the dispenser, but then I’ll move on to something more pressing instead.  The location of my toilet paper, then, indicates how much control I have over my affairs, since an ideal day would always find the toilet paper dispenser filled and ready to use.

A big part of me thinks this is idiotic.  It’s just toilet paper, and I really shouldn’t give two fucks where it goes as long as I have some to wipe my ass with.  I could save a lot of time by not reloading the dispenser at all, just as I could also save a lot of time by not folding my laundry or scrubbing the grease off my stove.  I still do these things, though, because I like having a clean stove and picking out my clothes from a bureau, but what if I could let go of such trivialities and let these chores slide?  If I did, I’d have more time to write and pursue interesting projects and meet people and seek out opportunities—in short, I'd get more important things done.  The only trick would be to balance enough of the cleaning so I wouldn’t become the crazy old lady with the unopened mail and crusted lasagna pans overflowing on to the kitchen floor, and maybe we carry out our chores in part because we’re secretly afraid of letting things slide too far towards such a disaster—which reads like a stupid fear when you write it out like that.

Someone told me once that our brains naturally prioritize different problems in terms of their immediacy, giving preference to issues that affect our survival, well-being, and ability to reproduce, and if we don’t actively choose how to order our lives, our brains will by default shift into the food-water-shelter-sex gear.  I’m not sure that creating art has a place in that survival mode; it’s probably somewhere down the list between clipping your toenails and watching the sun rise.  It won’t have a place unless we give it one, which means that sometimes the toilet paper is just going to have to wait on the floor.

Hype for the Charleston Anvil

Fellow Bennington alum Randall Nichols and I have a history of supporting each other’s creative endeavors, which comes naturally since everything Randall touches turns out approachable, fun, and hard-hitting.  The Charleston Anvil is an indie art/literary/comic/everything else zine he’s started up with some fellow West Virginians, with the first issue released earlier this month in both print (!) and digital copies.  About half comics and half prose (plus photos and illustrations), there’s plenty of variety in style and substance, and the above adjectives I used to describe Randall’s work (approachable, fun, hard-hitting) apply equally to the entire issue. 

I’ve also got a story in there—a piece I had on the backburner called “One Nation, Indivisible” about a telemarketing call gone awry, which also marks the first time that work by both Randall and yours truly have appeared in the same place.  The print copy is cheap and the digital copy is pay-what-you-want (even if that price is nothing), so it won’t cost you anything to check it out.

Hype aside, it’s refreshing to see a start-up lit mag maintaining a print edition, since the costs involved with third-party printers and glossy covers tend to complicate the process more than most literary start-ups are willing to handle.  Comics and graphic novels especially tend to read more easily on the printed page, where readers are spared the scrolling and resolution issues that tend not to be a problem with words alone.  This also marks the first time my fiction has appeared in an actual print magazine, making it feel more valuable that someone’s taken the time and money to prepare a hard copy in the digital age.

It’s also refreshing to see a magazine with illustrations, since so many literary-only magazines tend to ignore visuals under the mistaken belief that poetry and prose are somehow purer when they’re not surrounded by a bunch of distracting pictures.  In reality, though, illustrations in magazines were a staple of the Saturday Evening Post-era and before, where, with so much different content vying for the reader’s attention (as opposed to a novel, where readers go in expecting a single experience), pictures help the reader differentiate between individual pieces.  Randall’s sci-fi story “The Norse Star” is one of the illustrated ones, and it includes a 2/3-page title pic that captures the opening image of the hero staring at the story’s impossible heroine and a few others spaced throughout the columns that enhance the story’s reveal.

Besides “Norse Star,” there’s an opening essay championing self-expression (“We Need You to Be Yourself”), an eight-page comic retelling of Hamlet with giant robots (“Hambot”), a short piece by fellow Benningtonian John Wiswell (“Making Her”), an illustrated essay on the subtle relationships in Jonny Quest (“Sadness File: 037”), and a final comic about a deal with a cowboy hat-wearing devil gone awry (“Walk for the Cure”).  Take it from me—it’s solid stuff, so here’s the link one more time.

How to Write an Academic Literary Bio

[Writer Name] is the author of [Novel/Short Story Collection/Chapbook Title] ([Name of Small Press]).  [His/Her] work has appeared or is forthcoming in [Insert list of other journals where the writer’s work has appeared, in order of most to least prominent].  The recipient of [Insert list of awards and fellowships received, in order of most to least prominent], [he/she] teaches in the [program name] at [name of university]. 

Literary bios are a common sight in creative writing journals where writers get published primarily as a way of getting or keeping a job as a tenured professor.  “Bio” here is different from “biography” in that a biography is usually the story of someone’s life, whereas a bio is primarily a tool for highlighting important things the person has done.  The goal of a literary bio isn’t to tell an interesting story (“He moved to the Yukon at the age of six and learned to clean and gut fish with only a butter knife”) or to reveal unique information (“She’s ambidextrous and teaches fine woodworking courses on weekends”), but instead to portray the writer as an established, competent, and esteemed individual whose writing should be viewed as important.

Literary bios usually consist of four parts:

1. The Lead. This should be a larger work that the writer has published.  (If no larger work is available, the Works List can serve as the Lead.)  Including the press name is a plus, since a higher-status press carries more weight than a lesser-known one, and mentioning the press name is good publicity. 
2. The Works List.  This is a list of places the writer has been published, starting with the most well-known.  (The Holy Grail for writers is to begin this list with The New Yorker.)  The names of the stories or poems aren’t important, since the focus is really on the status of the journals that have selected the writer’s work.  (This is especially evident when mentioning places where the writer’s work is forthcoming, since such unreleased work cannot by definition be appreciated by anyone—it is only necessary to mention the new outlet as soon as possible.)
3. The Awards List.  Fellowships, prizes (especially the Pushcart Prize!), shortlists, residencies, and the occasional artist grant all denote the writer’s work as worthy of such commendation, further establishing the writer as an important person.  Announcing the writer as the “recipient” of an award also sounds more prestigious than saying that the writer merely “received” it!
4. The Current Position.  Most bios mention the writer’s university and job title at the end almost as an afterthought, thus implying that the writer’s (usually academic) day job is less important than the writing itself, when in reality the writer’s procuring such a position is a large (even primary) motivator behind publishing in creative writing journals at all.  It is especially necessary here to mention the job title of “professor” or “assistant professor,” since saying that the writer “teaches in the creative writing program at X University” is often code for “works as an adjunct.”

In short, the secret to an effective bio lies in its predictability: bios are a tool for conveying information, measuring a writer’s achievements, and establishing a reputation, and thus serve the same purpose as the ingredients list on a box of fruit pies.

I Tried to Write Something and It Was a Failure

Three weeks ago I got one of the best ideas I’d had in a long time—it was funny, spoke about a meaningful subject, and would permeate with energy when read in front of a group.  I planned out the idea for a full two weeks, jotting down jokes and clever turns of phrase as they came to me, and confident in exactly how the final product would sound.  (This is the fun part of writing, where everything feels easy and perfect in the idea stage.)  When my schedule finally settled down I set aside a morning where I would type out an actual draft to make real, and this is when things changed.

Sometimes when I start writing I’m filled with energy and know exactly how I want those first few sentences to sound, though other times I stagger in my opening and find the rhythm as I go.  This was one of those times when the beginning felt weak but I knew I could iron out the tone and pacing over the course of writing, and so I continued through a sloppy opening.  It was a dull, stiflingly humid morning, and in my kitchen where I write my air conditioner hadn’t yet driven in enough cool air from the living room to make a difference. I’d also become aware of a sharp, weighty headache that caused me to lose focus every few minutes, though I knew that if I could just get past those opening paragraphs and start adding the jokes I’d already written that everything would be fine.  I thought again about how good the piece would sound when finished, hearing sections in my head (fragments of sentences, mostly, or certain dramatic climaxes) that rekindled my confidence and drove me to continue.

My headache, though, was getting worse, and when I added in the jokes from my notebook they felt out of place, like I was trying to beat life into an otherwise stagnant piece of writing.  I thought about things I needed to do that day and how late I’d slept, and tried to remember the glorious rhythm of the piece as I’d rehearsed it in my head, trying hard to summon the energy, the humor, and the bitingly sarcastic voice I knew would make it a success. 

I don’t remember when exactly I lost faith in what I was writing; I think for a long while I believed that a few rounds of revision could smooth out the rough prose, the inconsistent voice, and the overly long paragraphs, but then this hope fizzled out and left me wondering whether to abandon the draft and return to bed (it was still very humid in that kitchen) or to finish and commit to paper the ending I’d planned.  Those last two paragraphs were the hardest—hard because I didn’t believe in the piece anymore, and was writing for the sake of finishing something I’d started, and I knew that no idea, no matter how clever, could save the piece now.

When I typed out the last sentence I felt sick from fatigue and defeat; the piece would need a complete overhaul that required I start it again from scratch, which I did not at that point (and still don’t) know how to do.  It bothered me that the piece was a failure, and I didn’t write anything after that for a long time. 

I find myself wondering what lesson can be learned from this experience, what I can take from it that will make me a better writer, and what I can explain in this final paragraph that will uplift and educate you as readers, but I don’t think there’s any lesson to be learned here, and any attempt to churn one from this story will come across as childish and trite.  No—failing to write that piece was just something that happened, like breaking a shoelace or finding mold in your sour cream, and now it’s done with and should be forgotten—not in that repressed memory kind of way where later on you cringe upon recalling this thing that bothered you, but in that way where you can’t quite remember what you ate for breakfast the previous day but could probably recall it if someone asked you and you concentrated for a short while.  It was just a thing that happened.

The Guy Who Loved Video Games

A student in one of my first-year writing classes wrote an essay on the debate between PC and console gaming, and a damned good essay it was.  It wasn’t a typical essay, though: he cited the advantages and disadvantages of each argument before explaining how ridiculous it was to argue these differences at all, and ended with a page full of happy gaming memories playing Call of Duty on couches with friends and trying to beat the original Super Mario Bros. on his grandmother’s old tube TV.  It’s not about asserting one platform’s superiority, these anecdotes implied, but about the fun you have playing the game.

“So, I didn’t really get which side you were on,” a girl in our peer conference admitted.  “Do you prefer PCs, or consoles?”

There were four of us in the classroom, the student who’d written the essay, his two groupmates, and me, the teacher running the show.  The other girl in the group admitted to knowing nothing about video games and also being confused about what the writer’s opinion was, having completely missed the significance of the happy gaming memories.  This placed me in an awkward position as the authority figure: if I felt the original ending forged a moment of great significance, but others had missed its meaning entirely, could the ending be considered effective?

I slouched in my plastic chairdesk and looked at the ending again: it was poignant, well-written, and evocative, while never quite spelling out in an obvious manner what the writer wanted to say—he was more subtle than that.  Still, two out of three readers had weighed in with their confusion. 

“As a writer,” I began when it came my moment to speak, “you have to consider your audience.  Every reader reads differently, and every reader will pick up different aspects of a piece depending on their experiences.  If something you’re trying to say isn’t coming across to two-thirds of the group [and here I let hang the unspoken implication that this was a very large percentage] then you might want to think about stating your point more clearly.”

And that was all—we then moved on to an essay about Christian stereotypes.

All day I thought about what I’d said, how I’d encouraged this young writer who’d written a damned good essay to compromise his vision because two classmates who’d never played a video game and had probably skimmed the essay the night before didn’t understand it.  The ending was valuable for its subtlety—it had made readers realize for themselves how ridiculous the PC-console debate was—and here I was, an authority figure who held the power to grant this student a letter grade telling him to bow to the whims of a few readers he wasn’t even reaching out to.  I hadn’t said this directly, but I’d pressured him to follow the mainstream—to do what everyone else wanted.

So I wrote the student an e-mail.  It was a medium-length e-mail, sent late at night, with a sincerity I hadn’t shown in the classroom fourteen hours before.  It said that he’d received some opinions from his readers, but that only he, the writer, could decide how valuable these opinions were.  Did he want to write an essay that spelled things out in simple terms, or did he want his readers to think for themselves?  It was a choice he had to make.

I felt a lot better after writing that, and the student did too—he replied saying he was glad to hear I’d liked his original ending, and that now that he had my approval he planned on keeping it.  It was a victory for artists and independent thinkers everywhere.

I wonder now, though, what kind of path I’d set him on, and whether he was prepared to face the challenges of arguing for what you know is right despite the put-downs of the majority.  I think about this path and how difficult it is, how many nagging voices come at us from groupmates and authority figures, how often these people tell us what we’re doing isn’t working or is just plain wrong.  I think about how sticking to an unpopular vision is one of the most difficult choices in the world to make, but it’s where great art comes from, because the ideas that get remembered are always the ones that break free from the mainstream.

Fuck if it isn’t a difficult struggle, though.

Low-Stakes Fun

I think a lot about writing purely for low-stakes fun (e.g. this blog) and how I don't do it as often as I'd like anymore.  I still keep a journal, which fulfills my need for personal reflection, but I miss pursuing more of the random ideas that spark into something more worthwhile than a Facebook message, but less tangible than a short story.  The things this blog used to be full of.

A big part of this has to do with my being in graduate school (where I've been for over a year), where such writing is hardly encouraged (long story), and social pressures tend to favor a more professional discourse of literary fiction (if such a term even has meaning anymore) published in magazines of note (or those that purport to be of note) to build one's CV (which, unlike a one-page employment resume, concerns itself chiefly with length).  Before graduate school, before work on the novel even, I made more time for this blog and for other low-stakes writing that kept the ideas flowing, kept me writing actively.  I spend more time writing now than I did then, though most of what I do now is novel- or larger project-related work, which in many ways I find disappointing.

Does this shift represent a maturing move toward more important endeavors, or a dwindling of my creative energy in favor of a more regimented structure?  To even phrase the problem in this way disgusts me.  Why can't I continue to work on a myriad of projects, fitting each one into its proper place on a smaller or larger scale that suits that individual idea?

Time, mostly.  There's never enough time.

Have to keep trying, though.

How to Write an Em Dash in Microsoft Word

A hyphen connects a pair of words to make a compound word, like this:

I ate six slices of pizza and got a stomach-ache.

An em dash, though, sets apart elements of a sentence that explain something, similar to a comma or a pair of parentheses:

The traveling vacuum cleaner salesman—always a nuisance to neighborhood residents—hadn't been seen in several weeks.

The hyphen ( - ) is short, while the em dash ( — ) is much longer.  The two look different on the printed page and shouldn't be confused, though confusion often arises because there's no em dash key on a standard keyboard.  Many writers will type hyphens or double hyphens in place of em dashes, which look silly and unprofessional. 

Here's how to type an em dash using Microsoft Word:



1. Type out the text before the em dash, without a space.

2. Press the hyphen key twice.

 

3. Again, without using a space, type the word you want to follow the em dash.

4. Now, hit Space. Word will automatically substitute the em dash for you.

Alternately, Windows users can access the em dash using the Character Map, that long list of special characters like ©,  ¥,  Ω, ∆, and ♫, to name but a few.  To access the Character Map, click the Start menu, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally, Character Map.  You'll find the em dash near the end next to its seldom-used cousin, the en dash, and its special character cousin the horizontal bar.

Once you've located the em dash, click Select to pull it into the box at the bottom of the window, then Copy to add it to the clipboard.  You can then paste it into MS Word and other programs as needed.



Writers: use proper em dash formatting whenever possible!  It makes you look more professional, it's easier on the eyes, and it saves your editors manuscript cleanup time down the road.  You should also know the word processing tools of your trade the same way carpenters know their hammers, biologists know their microscopes, and golfers know their clubs.  There's no reason not to.

Daily Grind (or, What I've Been Working On Lately)

Few things bore me more than hearing about other people's writing habits, but here are a few words about mine:

Summer's here, grad school classes are done, and aside from some paying work not worth mentioning, I've been living out an entirely self-motivated schedule, something I've been working toward for a long time.  My biggest task is finishing the novel (the current draft, anyway) once and for all, a goal that's nearer now than it's ever been.  Mornings are good for that, a chance to wake up, plan a point of attack while in the shower or frying eggs, and sit down at the computer (internet cable safely unplugged) until lunch.  Getting started can be rough, and reading a few pages from an old favorite (most recently Catch-22, Murphy, Lucky Jim, The Mezzanine, or Something Happened) helps get me motivated and starts the words flowing.  Reach a stopping point, eat lunch, and schedule the next novel-writing day.  Repeat until done.

Having more time also means more devotion to side projects - undertakings both necessary and dangerously distracting.  Foremost has been this year's Art Swap project, more complex than I'd planned, but moving toward an ideal that combines both writing and graphic art.  (More on this later, though my last entry sprung from an Art Swap outtake.)

Then there's been my real and always arduous attempts to get more of my writing out there (like, in places where people can actually see it).  For a long time, I've been torn between how much time to devote to creation vs. self-promotion: given our limited creative energy, does submitting and researching publishing outlets detract from the (more important) process of creation?  This question's hounded me for a long time, but I've realized that I spend far, far too little time on the distribution end of things, especially since the two tasks occupy different portions of the brain, can be done at different times of the day, and aren't mutually exclusive.

So I've been delving into realms both traditional (fiction slush piles) and non (podcasts, literary essays, travel fiction, etc.) in hopes of snagging some bites.  I left one success sadly unmentioned: Sam Roman was kind enough to feature my short piece, Korean-Man Purse, on her new project, Non Finito, the journal of unfinished writing.  I was glad to help Sam out (getting this thing started meant a lot to her), and I found...relief in sending out a scene (and a character) from the novel that ended up on the cutting room floor. Jackson did a lot to form the first draft's quick pacing and irreverent tone, and if all goes as planned, we haven't seen the last of him.

I've also let my personal reading slip by the wayside, and the stack of unread books next to my bed recently rose to rival my nightstand in height.  Reading's always been important to me, and I felt disgusted at my inability to prioritize it against grad school assignments.  Highlights of my return to the page include The Loved One (a solid comic novel by the underappreciated Evelyn Waugh), Don Delillo's White Noise, and a supermarket crime novel (i.e. a crime novel set in a supermarket) by my last workshop teacher Sean Doolittle (here's his actual webpage, not a Wikipedia entry). 

Of my last month's reading, though, I most recommend Steve Martin's Shopgirl to anyone looking for something smart, funny, and incredibly observational.  The Shopgirl movie's good, but the book is better, while also being a fast read (barely over a hundred pages).  The absurd commentary of Steve Martin's storytelling makes it all work in a way that's just fun to read.  Here's a piece:

Jeremy took Mirabelle on approximately two and a half dates.  The half date was actually a full evening, but was so vaporous that Mirabelle had trouble counting it as a full unit.  On the first, which consisted mainly of shuffling around a shopping mall while Jeremy tried to graze her ass with the back of his hand, he split the dinner bill with her and then, when she suggested they actually go inside the movie theater whose new neon front so transfixed Jeremy, made her pay for her own ticket.

Wish I'd written that.

Community's important too, and long, solitary days have led me to venture out to SP CE (pronounced "Space"), Lincoln, Nebraska's own poetry studio and writer's workshop group (prose and all hybrids welcome).  It's been good having people to talk writing and just share observations with a few hours a week, plus interacting in an environment that's primarily about the work itself, and not what it can do for one's professional career.

That's all for now.  I won't lie - I miss this blog tremendously, and as my entries become fewer and online traffic merges from blogs to Facebook, what I post here has become even more focused toward an audience of one (though Google still rates me as an authority on people who hate being called "buddy").  I've also been inspired by my former roommate and partner-in-writing-crime Randall's return to blogging with the creation of his Magic the Gathering-inspired card game 21 Others, which he's been writing, assembling, and testing.  No one stays away from the process for long.

Someday, I imagine, I'll have a bona fide website (or at least a Wordpress one) with pictures, more links, and a flashy design scheme, but for now, I'll just keep posting stuff here.  You know, because it's fun.

What is a Writer?

The first long story I ever wrote was about a travel writer who drank too much and had sunk into a morose depression because he wasn’t a real writer.

“What do you mean,” my teacher asked me, “when you say he isn’t a real writer?”

I didn’t have an answer for her, but had I been able to explain myself, I would have argued that a real writer wrote novels, or at least important nonfiction books.  I don’t know why I made this distinction at the time, though I now find it incredibly arbitrary.  Who are we to say that some people who write are writers while others who write are not?  Is being a writer defined by the type of writing one does, its frequency, its quality, or whether one writes to earn a living?

People use and withhold the word writer in so many situations that the term comes to indicate only the speaker’s values, what criteria that individual uses to decide which people are writers and which are not.

Using the word writer in this way doesn’t help anyone.  Either everyone who writes is a writer, or no one is.

Purple is the Loneliest Color, or, What Happens When You Look Up Color Names in the Dictionary

Gray is one of several deceptively easy words I can never remember how to spell correctly, though my Random House dictionary says that both a and e are acceptable.  The rest of the entry reads

gray (grā), adj. 1. of a color between white and black.

That a color can be so easily described in ordinary English I find astounding.  Try to outline the specifics of red, orange, or blue without using examples: you can’t do it!  Sure, you can stumble over words like bright, somber, or subtle to describe its hue, or words like rosy, fiery, or murky that are further dependent on familiar images, but each attempt comes down to the word itself: red is red, blue is blue, orange is orange. 

Gray is one of several colors that it finds its identity as its place between two others.  We could say the same thing about the other in-between sections of the color wheel, for example, green:

green (grēn), adj. 1. of the color of growing foliage, between yellow and blue in the spectrum.

Here, the writers have again used other colors to assist readers in imagining the color green, but they’ve also—first and foremost—compared it to a familiar image: growing foliage.  Not autumn foliage, but green summer foliage.  (Though I would never have thought to use those two words together, it’s a beautifully succinct way of describing green leaves without using the word green.)

Growing foliage is the idea the Random House folks believe will help the largest number of readers imagine the color green without ambiguity.  It’s a diplomat into the indescribable realm of colors, an honor held by a few other images:

yel•low (yel′ō), n. 1. the color of an egg yolk or a ripe lemon.

Here again the images are from nature, this time two foods.  Yellow, it turns out, is the only color to have two dictionary images, probably because egg yolks and lemons both readily present themselves to readers.  Here’s red:

red (red) adj. 1. any of various colors resembling the color of blood.

Fairly morbid, but clearer than anything I can think of.  Orange, through the magic of homophones, takes care of the problem for us, though we can also find it on the color wheel:

or•ange (ôr′inj) n. 1. any of various reddish yellow, edible citrus fruits.  2. a tree bearing such fruits.  3. a color between yellow and red.

Though orange as a fruit is technically a separate definition, it still does the job.  Blue, meanwhile, uses an image ubiquitous to any kindergartener:

blue (blōō) n., adj. 1. the pure color of a blue sky.

Which brings us, last but not least, to purple:

pur•ple (pûr′pǝl) n., adj. 1. any color having components of both red and blue, esp. one deep in tone.

This is fine—after all, the orange definition was a little convoluted too.  However, why aren’t the writers able to capture the color with a natural, determinable image like they are with all the others?  The rest of the entry provides little help: purple can specify a kind of royal cloth, denote something as imperial, describe exaggerated literary devices, or be used for the shocking or profane.  Nor can my edition of Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary help, though it does list purple as a mollusk of the genus Purpura that yields a purple dye.  (That’s right, purple is a kind of mollusk!)

I’m tempted to criticize my dictionaries until I attempt to find my own image to describe purple.  An amethyst?  Not common enough.  A violet, as in the type of flower?  This would work, but it makes for awkward wording, and doesn’t match the power of sky or blood.  A certain part of a sunset?  No way of telling which part.  A bruise?  Again, not all bruises are purple.

Purple, then, becomes a color lacking the natural familiarity we find in the others, a foreign, man-made hue.  This may be what led its rarity to be prized by earlier civilizations, and why purple is a traditional color of royalty, though under different circumstances the reverse could easily be true: without an easy way of identifying purple with the world around it, purple becomes a lost, misfit, lonely color.  Like anything that doesn’t synch with the natural, we can view purple in different ways, with the result that how we finally do view the purple in our lives becomes a litmus test to determine our relationship with the abnormal. 

On the Writing of "Salinger's Wishes"

An essay I originally wrote for this blog about the leaked J.D. Salinger stories recently appeared in The Millions literary magazine.  For those who haven’t heard, back in November, a manuscript entitled Three Stories by J.D. Salinger surfaced online and has been passed around widely since, in discordance with the author’s wishes that they (along with his other work) not be published until specific intervals after his death.  The essay proposes that Salinger kept the most polished of the three, “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” hidden because it tells an earlier version of Holden Caulfield’s brother’s death and focuses the tragedy for the reader less effectively than The Catcher in the Rye does.  The subject matter and timely nature of the essay seemed to make it worth submitting, and a few e-mails was all it took.  Writers like to pretend that submitting is an arcane, secretive process, but having never submitted a literary essay before, I found it surprisingly easy.  Click here for the link.

I don’t take a strong stance on Salinger’s strict, almost obsessive desire to keep his writing and personal life hidden.  If anything, I believe the man was entitled to his privacy, though I venture that his reclusive behavior probably did more to rouse attention (intentionally or unintentionally) about his life, writing, and personal relationships than a New York literary life would have.  Though we don’t know enough about Salinger to judge why he stopped publishing, the leaked stories provide some clues.  Two of them are rough drafts with crossouts, misspellings, and incomplete character relationships.  That Salinger chose not to polish them implies that he’d lost interest in them.  When I read “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” however, I saw a story that was ready for publication but showed three Caulfield brothers that were different than the ones in Catcher.  Because Salinger chose to change their relationships and the presentation of events in the story, we can infer that there’s something inherently unfinished about “Bowling Balls,” something that wasn’t what the writer wanted.  While Salinger’s reasons for guarding his later, finished writings may be shrouded in mystery (for a few more years, at least), his reworking of elements from "Bowling Balls" into Catcher provide more telling evidence.

I found myself drawn to Salinger’s process because, as a writer, I know it’s hard to get it right the first time.  This goes double for writers just starting out, as Salinger was in the 1940s.  While we can enjoy a novel or movie sequel safe in the knowledge that we can pick up our favorite characters where we last left them, readers of “Bowling Balls” must remember that its characters aren’t fully developed the way Salinger wanted them, and can't exist in the same world as Catcher.  Can we still enjoy stories like “Bowling Balls” with the understanding that they’re prototypes?  Of course.  But it requires extra effort to avoid being pulled out of the story, effort that isn’t required when we read Faulkner’s novels or watch Kevin Smith movies, and effort that’s harder for most casual readers to muster.  Salinger understood this, which is why he didn’t want “Bowling Balls” published but was fine with leaving it in the library for the scholars to read.

I expect, though, that as more of Salinger’s works are released and more facts revealed about his life, Salinger fans will understand more about his secrecy and his existing canon.  But we don’t have those answers yet, which is why people have made pilgrimages to his house or traveled to research libraries to read his early stories.  It’s natural to want to know more about the things you love, and frustrating when you can’t find the answers.  Nick Hornby writes about this in Juliet, Naked, where online myths and legends run amuck about a rock star who’s left the public eye, and when we find out how banal his life really is, the legends appear all the more ridiculous.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t read the Three Stories manuscript, but I do think that, as I write in the essay’s final sentence, they should view the stories as experiments from an earlier time.

Art Swap 2013 - The Lowdown and Story

Sorting the goods from the Art Swap, pre-mailing.  It was difficult to walk around for those two days. 

After college ended, the loss of both a community to share my work with and the structure to guide it bothered me for a long time. School had structure: teachers giving out assignments and a degree that needed to be completed and friends down the hall working on cool stuff that made us want to work on cool stuff too. The working world lacked community to an extent I found alarming. Somewhere in the post-college abyss, I was fairly certain, there existed young people doing paintings and sculptures and operas and comedy acts and lyric essays who were willing and eager to read, watch, listen to, admire, critique, and discuss their own work, but I wasn’t sure where they were or how to find them. I did, however, find a lot of people who felt the same way I did, both those who were unemployed and those who worked day jobs they weren’t really interested in.

I was inspired to do the first CD Swap back in 2008 while (voluntarily) sequestered in a sleep research study in Boston without windows, internet, or phone for two weeks. There were, however people: twentysomething interns and college students working at the sleep lab for science credit, medical experience, or weekend cash. They were bored of taking blood samples and delivering cafeteria meals, and wanted someone interesting to talk to about Woody Allen movies and feminist interpretations of male behavior, or the experience of working in the lab itself. It was the first time in months I’d met new people who had something to say, and the experience inspired a new feeling of optimism. I wanted to do something collaborative. I just needed something to do.

I remembered my friend Trainwreck talking about a CD Swap at his company where everyone made a mix CD, burned enough copies for the group, and exchanged. Though Trainwreck hadn’t gotten much out of it, I was pretty sure my friends had better musical tastes. New music was also something I hadn’t gotten a lot of since college. It was as good an idea as any.

Organizing the CD Swap, the people involved (friends from college and high school, and a few friends of friends), plus my own mix kept me busy and focused in a way I hadn’t been for a long time. My own writing at the time wasn’t going well, since I found myself unsure of my audience. Having an outside project, a kind of community, made the project more rewarding. The others as well gave the project their best: they designed elaborate covers, thought up clever themes, included bonuses, and even created original song mash-ups. Seeing them put in so much thought and effort made me push harder, and in retrospect partially replaced the more direct criticism I was used to from college.

The CD Swap went so well that we did another, then three more, totaling five years and well over a hundred CDs (for those involved in all five). By the end, though, the Swap had developed problems too big to ignore: higher than ever numbers of people and CDs, waning interest among veterans, and an alarmingly high number of last-minute dropouts. The CD, as we know it, is also nearing the end of its days, and doing an online swap seemed so banal as to not even be worth it. I also found myself remembering something Randall told me after he burned his final mix: “There’s only so much you can do with other people’s music.”

The solution then was to expand. Taking again an offhand idea from Trainwreck, I planned out an Art Swap, where instead of burning mix CDs, people would make well, something else. The swap was open-ended enough to appeal to anyone creative (be it in writing, music, drawing, video, sculpture, needlepoints, computer programs, websites, food – I used a lot of lists when I sent the e-mails), yet required enough effort to scare away those likely to flake out. The result, as seen in the above photo, was an assortment of projects unlike anything I expected: calligraphy, jewelry, re-usable shopping bags, an online scavenger hunt, even a board game. I also received a lot of messages from people who were happy to get their packages, but happier still to find the audience and the motivation to make something they were proud of.

For the next sixteen weeks, I’ll be featuring all of the Art Swap projects on this blog, with a different one posted every Monday. You’ll see pictures, audio files, a scavenger hunt, and other fun stuff, each project different than the last. I encourage you to check out their blogs, listen to their podcasts, and follow up on things you like. And if you’re sitting there reading, excited about this whole thing, wondering why you never knew about this before, post in the comments or send an e-mail to ianmrogers[at]hotmail[dot]com, and I’ll let you know when we do the next one in 2014.

After all, what better use is there for the internet than sharing cool stuff?

Something Universal

In books, I'm always searching for moments that reveal truths I've intuitively felt but have never understood clearly enough to attempt expressing. Sometimes you discover an author's more successful attempt to describe exactly that feeling you've always had but could never understand, and in hearing this thing from someone else, you realize it's something we all share.

I came across one last week in F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "The Rich Boy." The protagonist Anson, who has spent most of the story successful, drunk, enjoying wild nights out, and making out with hot girls, has reached his late twenties and finds himself alone in a New York hotel phone booth on a Saturday evening, reaching out to people from his old life [italics mine]:

Later he said that he tried to get me three times that afternoon, that he tried every one who might be in New York — men and girls he had not seen for years, an artist's model of his college days whose faded number was still in his address book — Central told him that even the exchange existed no longer. At length his quest roved into the country, and he held brief, disappointing conversations with emphatic butlers and maids. So-and-so was out, riding, swimming, playing golf, sailed to Europe last week. Who shall I say phoned?

It was intolerable that he should pass the evening alone — the private reckonings which one plans for a moment of leisure lose every charm when the solitude is enforced.

I've experienced this a thousand times, and I'm sure you have too. How often have you been overwhelmed with work projects, overtime, studying, classwork, family gatherings, or housework, dwelling first idly then intensely on all the fun or productive things you could do if only you had the chance: the novels you want to write, e-mails to answer, foods to cook, shops to check out, music to listen to, hobbies to spend more time with, or whatever else you'd like to be doing that you just don't have time for.

Now, how often have you been surprised with a free evening, a day off, a work vacation, or unemployment seemingly without end? You had a plan, but now it's gone.  The initial respite from stress turns into an excess of free time that becomes impossible to fill. What happens to our imagined projects then? They go from alarmingly real to frustratingly unfocused, or maybe we realize that we never wanted them that much at all. (Maybe we should have written them down.)

Fitzgerald knew this back in 1926, and little has changed since then. One could easily imagine Anson in polo shirt and Crocs sending text messages to everyone on his contact list and getting terse, negative responses, then reaching only voicemail as he became desperate enough to call. Fitzgerald describes this feeling using far fewer words than I've done here. We know what he's talking about; we've all been there. He's touched on something universal.

These are the things I think about when I'm stuck at home on a Friday playing Tetris instead of at the sold-out showing of The Room with Q&A by Tommy Wiseau. Damn you, UNH.

Officespeak Dissected: On Use vs. Utilize

In his groundbreaking work, Talk Around the Watercooler: The Syntax of Officespeak (2003), Chicago linguist Bertrand Hillworth describes the twelve syntactical and dialectical patterns that differentiate Officespeak from regular English. In chapter seven (“Throwing Out the Phrasal Verbs”) Hillworth documents the tendency among Officespeakers to choose longer, more complex Latinate verbs where casual English speakers would use shorter, Anglo-Saxon ones:

Officespeak	Casual English
purchase	buy
initiate	start
identify	find
disseminate	let (someone) know
utilize	use

Hillworth, however, understates both the overwhelming predominance of the utilize substitution in Officespeak and the discord between utilize and the more casual use. Consider the dictionary definition of the former:

utilize vt [F utiliser, fr. Utile] (1807): to make use of : turn to practical use or account 

A synonym study of use reveals that

UTILIZE may suggest the discovery of a new, profitable, or practical use for something 

These definitions imply that utilize, in the strictest sense, means to use something that is otherwise not being used, or to use something for a purpose other than its intended one. Thus, one can say:

Having accidentally brought the backpack full of office supplies on the camping trip, I utilized a letter opener to clean and gut the salmon.

I utilized my brother’s toothbrush to clean the inside of my hubcaps.

In the Macgyver pilot, the title character utilizes chocolate bars to plug a leak in the reactor. 

Consider situations where use would be more appropriate for these same items:

Rather than risk a papercut, I used a letter opener to open the morning mail.

I always use the same toothbrush for longer than I should.

Don’t eat the chocolate! Let’s use it for smores instead. 

However, as Farnsworth (2005) and Creyton (2008) document, Officespeakers are more likely to use utilize as a synonym for use in their everyday work speech:

Our organization can utilize the technology grant to purchase new computers.

You can utilize either the main entrance or the side door in the morning.

I suggest utilizing your time productively. 

In each example, (all taken from Creyton), the speaker uses utilize as a synonym for use while ignoring utilize’s definition of using something for a purpose other than its intended one. So widespread is utilize’s appearance in American offices that the literal definition has become all but lost, with the majority of Officespeakers expressing disbelief when confronted with the difference.

Creyton offers further proof of utilize’s ubiquity in the administrative world by noting that utilize is the most common dialectical trait for casual English speakers to copy when attempting conversation with Officespeakers. Simply put, if a non-Officespeaker meets an Officespeaker, he’s more likely to slip a stray utilize into his speech than to pick up on any other aspect of the dialect.

Why is utilize so common? Linguists differ widely on this question, but Farnsworth’s theory holds that because utilize is such an easily copied way of giving a matter the illusion of importance, those who aspire to pomposity in their professional lives subconsciously emulate it as a way of sounding more important, though they’ve not yet mastered the other Latinate verbs on Hillworth’s list or learned to alter their verbs into nouns (i.e. say be a recipient instead of the simpler receive). Thus, an overuse of utilize implies that not only does the speaker harbor dreams of advancement, he or she may be an apprentice Officespeaker not yet comfortable with the dialect.

The Economist recently gave a nod to my coining of the term Officespeak in an article on reflexive pronouns. Click here for the full article.

Calamity Cash and the Town With No Name: A Success Story

My good friend, former roommate, and fellow writer Randall Nichols just released his own indie comic, Calamity Cash and the Town with No Name, a collaboration with artist and fellow West Virginian Justin Cornell 4+ years in the making. This is a success story of the kind you don’t often see in the post-college abyss: a writer and an artist, both contending with their own responsibilities and commitments, harness the time to produce a full-length comic over a period of years. This is evening and weekend warrior shit at its finest, and now they’ve invested the capital in their very own print run. That’s why you should buy it.

"Calamity Cash & The Town with No Name" Synopsis:  The mother/daughter vigilante team of Tana and Cal Cash are on the run from an Afro-rocking, Kung-Fu assassin, and have been forced to make their last stand in a nameless desert town hiding a unbelievable secret - every last citizen is in the Witness Protection program! Out of gas, low on ammo, and with their backs against the wall, Calamity and Mama Cash become the town's unlikely protectors, but with friends so quickly becoming enemies, and old enemies becoming friends, is the whole place doomed to burn around them? And will our heroines be the ones to light the first match? A modern-day action/adventure western with words by Randall Nichols, and art by Justin Cornell. "Calamity Cash & The Town with No Name - Pt. II" (25 pages, $4.50 w/shipping).  [from The Mojo Wire]

If that doesn't wow you, here’s another reason to buy: Randall’s work is witty, bitingly observational, and he portrays his vagabond, struggling twentysomethings with an insightful sincerity that never stoops to melodrama or cliché. Based on my dealings with the writer, I can guarantee you that this is going to be good.

One more reason: copies are only $4.50 (including shipping!) signed by the author and the artist. Click here or on the picture above to go to Randall’s blog, The Mojo Wire, and purchase via Paypal.

For those of you still reading who haven’t yet clicked above, I’ll give you another chance to buy Randall’s comic now.

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It’s uplifting to hear that, in a world teeming with mundane distractions and lacking the financial and emotional support so vital for creative work, projects like Calamity Cash are getting finished instead of abandoned. Projects like Cash need an audience willing to shell out the few bucks necessary to keep them coming, but lack the marketing resources of a large publishing house to spread word of their existence to an overcrowded market. To know that so many projects have gotten off the ground through Kickstarter and other grassroots campaigns is inspiring, though even the most promising or awe-inspiring of projects is doomed to failure unless people know about them. I look and listen to the advertisements surrounding me on a daily basis and find that most of them feature products I already know. Yes, Coke is a sweet drink, Planet Fitness is a badass place to work out, and Old Spice makes you irresistible to women. Mass advertising, though its secondary purpose is to inform, first and foremost inundates us with those products profitable enough to warrant support while the smaller ones struggle to get noticed. How many amazing comics, novels, blogs, musicians, movies, webcomics, animated films, photographers, architects, dramatists, and other media could we discover if only we had the means?

Randall realized this long before I did, and, for a significant period after we left Bennington, blogged, Tweeted, Facebook shared, and generally talked about as many of his friends’ projects as he possibly could, to the point where his social networks obsessively centered around the achievements of others. My own meager work failed to escape his attention, as he tweeted a lot of things from this blog and eventually devoted an entire Mojo Wire entry (featuring one of the most unflattering pictures of me ever to grace the internet) to my metablog project Corporate Takeover. When asked about his constant sharing, he said that his friends were doing great things and he wanted to help in any way he could.

Creative pursuits (especially writing) are isolating avocations, and for those of us lacking contacts, the chances of getting your work noticed can be frustratingly slim. We owe it to ourselves to harness those resources available to us, but we all need friends willing to shout our achievements from the metaphorical rooftops of social media and weekend drinking sessions. We also owe it to those friends to return the favor without being asked.

So again, buy Randall’s comic for a measly $4.50, or explore the blog to read about its long, arduous history. For those who enjoy samples, try some of his fiction: New Hooverville, Arches, and more . Or take a peak at the writer himself during our more formative years:

Revenge is sweet. Thanks for the support, man.

We're Pleased to Bring You a Short Essay on Public Relations Writing

Writing for public relations is different than other kinds of writing. If I am at work and something bad happens, I must present it in such a way so that it appears as if something bad has not happened. (Failing this, I should present it in such a way that does not make my organization appear negligent or broken-down.) Public relations writing must create a fantasy that everything is going perfectly well. Organizations are always excited to present something, proud of something else, pleased to announce this, and regretting to inform you of that. I must spin negatives into positives, and when I share bad news, it is with an apology for the inconvenience. I cannot show you any of this writing, for I am embarrassed to have created it. You would not recognize me in it.

However, if I’m writing for myself and something bad happens in that writing, I am always honest about that bad thing and how it affected the characters involved. I do not want bad things to happen in my writing any more than I want bad things to happen in real life, but in describing them honestly, as they occurred, they take on a power that people can feel, understand, and appreciate. That thing becomes real, and we can appreciate the full power of that terrible thing.

The terrible lows of writing not bound by an organization’s constraints also brings with it dizzying highs; for when our minds are open to honest writing we also become receptive to all the emotions that come with it. No one could ever be open to a novel that began A friendly reminder that... for readers, knowing that the reminder is not at all friendly (and may actually be less friendly than a normal reminder), will shut off their minds to what follows. We live in a world saturated with the worst kind of bland, uninspired, official-sounding English meant to disguise truth in a cloud of euphemism.  How frightening to think that it might affect our ability to digest the writing that really matters.

A Thought

I've been mulling over the idea, recently, of starting a new blogging project far greater than Corporate Takeover in that it would take up an entire blog, be written by a fictitious character whose view of topics would be drastically different than my own, and take place in a world completely outside my current reality. It would also make fun of hipsters pretty bad.

Perhaps one day you'll see the start of it here, without knowing what it is, and assume the voice is mine. On that day you may think that I've lost my mind. Or, if you're easily taken in by pretentious arguments, you may think I'm making a lot of sense. Or, if you're a casual skimmer, you might not even notice. Stay tuned.

Writing Every Day

These days I think a lot (and I know my fellow writer and former roommate Randall does too) about whether it’s better to write every day, or whether some days are just not worth squeezing creativity from.

“Do you write every day?” George Packard asked me once.
“Um,” I said, “I try to.”

I’ve heard from books, teachers, and peers that writing every day keeps us sharp, focused, motivated, and—most importantly of all—moving toward a goal. Being busy, they would say, is no excuse. If I really wanted to write, I would find the time. (I find that most of the things I really want to do I eventually get around to doing, and those I don’t get around to doing I don’t want to do all that badly in the first place—like visiting Niagara Falls or reading Crime and Punishment.) Being busy is no excuse. Or is it?

When I was unemployed, I didn’t write every day (see this blog post as to why ), so I don’t think it’s a simple matter of free time. Rather, I look at my ability to sit down at the computer (or notepad) with confidence. If I have something clear to say, if I believe in whatever that something is, and I have confidence in my ability to express it well, then it’s less daunting for me to switch into creative mode and make it real. But on days when I’m fearful, pessimistic about the future (much less often now), discouraged, lack confidence in my prose, or afraid that a certain project will never amount to anything greater than a blog post, I find myself lying petrified on my bed unable to develop the ideas, in their place a swirling fury of worries about my very real existence, and not the fictional one I’d like to be working on. Some of these are days when I would very much like to write, and I become frustrated when I cannot.

Other days I find myself too burned out and tired to even think about writing, if I’ve worked late or had a long week, or just been through some exhausting ordeal. Is it better to fight through the fatigue and force the words to come, like an angry lover after a long night of fruitless intercourse? Some of my worst work has come on days like this, but some people might argue that bad writing is better than no writing at all.

On still other days, I have things that I would like or need to do. The April Fool’s Mix CD Swap for instance, while a lot of fun and creatively satisfying, takes up a tremendous amount of time. I write a lot of e-mails to friends now, but am still forgetful about communicating with some. I also read less often than I did in high school, which is something I’m trying to change. Last week the school where I work had a snow day, and instead of writing, I touched up the paint on the door panel of my car. I enjoyed doing it, and the Volvo certainly looks better now, but was it a good use of my time?

I think the ideal solution lies in settling all this other stuff—whatever it may be—so as to leave as much time, energy, and confidence to allow productive writing time. If I lack free time, I should cut back on other activities. If I’m low on energy, I shouldn’t work as hard. And, if some outside factor is affecting my ability to focus positively on writing, I have to fix it.

Perhaps writing every day is less of an ultimatum to be adhered to and more of a goal worth shooting for.