Lambent, Lit Mags, Carver

Please save your ten Lambent pages to the flash drive.

Then read Raymond Carver's "Little Things", which is posted here:
http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/Domain/796/little_things.pdf

When you are done reading, please have a short discussion about Carver and this story.

We will discuss literary magazines/journals during the second half of class.

If you finish early, please explore the concept of a professional literary magazine. You should be able to answer these questions: Please type the answers to these questions and print for a grade.

What is it?

How does one get published in a lit mag?

What are the benefits to having your work published in a lit mag?

Is it important to find a magazine that is a good fit for you?

What is a query letter? A SASE?

Homework: Find three literary magazines that you would like to submit your work to. Make sure you do your research. I would like you to write an explanation about why these magazines are a good fit for your writing. How often does the magazine put out an issue? I would also like you to find the submission requirements and deadlines for each magazine. Extra credit if you get your hands on a copy of a back issue of a magazine. Extra extra credit if you subscribe to one of the magazines you choose.

This website is awesome:
http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazines/

Write a Query Letter

These links are pretty good. The third one has a sample!

http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx
http://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/query-letters-and-examples/
http://www.jamesrussellpublishing.biz/queryletterbk.html

3 Requirements for the Week Ahead...

1. Choose 3 lit mags that you would like to subscribe/submit to.
2. Write something! A memory prompt was posted Tuesday.
3. Lambent pages... are they still the same?

Tapping into Memory

Memory is an essential part of ourselves. Without it we cannot find our bearings in time and place, make connections with other people, and understand ourselves. The experience of childhood is so potent it is not surprising that it is often the source of literature. Our lives are so shaped by childhood that recalling its detail and other memories is an important part of writing.

Exercise One
Try using photographs as triggers for writing. These might be old pictures of yourself or others which bring up memories of events on your life. They could be images of your first class in school, yourself outside a home you no longer live in, a family pet you loved, etc. Perhaps you want to consider pictures of places you once loved visiting or enjoyed travelling to a s a child. Begin by describing the photograph and the person/people in it in detail. Write about everything you remember about yourself at that time--the sort of things you did, wore, who you knew, what you felt, incidents relating to that time. One memory is very likely to set off others you want to write about.

*You can modify this prompt by describing an object, place, person, etc. as a memory trigger.

Exercise Two

Sometimes sense impressions--smells, sounds, textures, tastes, sights-- take us back to the past more powerfully than anything else. Make a list of smells that bring back your childhood or some time in your past. Here are some possibilities: bonfire smoke, lavender, the smell of clothes fresh out of the dryer, cocoa, etc. Describe one of the smell memories and write about what it brings up. Then explore your other senses in the same way. Examples could include pieces of music or textures such as clothes you remember.

Marking Period 5 Portfolio

I hope you all enjoyed "Rappin' for Jesus"...

As far as portfolios go, here is what you need to remember:

1. Please include at least 3 workshopped and polished pieces of writing.
2. Write a reflection that gives insight to more than just the assignments given. Remember while you were given a few prompts and ideas, but you were asked to start thinking of yourself as the generator of your own thoughts, ideas and style. Has this class given you an opportunity to write more of what you want to write? Or has it just given you a chance to procrastinate?
3. I also want you to consider how soon you will be walking across the stage next month... It is so soon.
4. This is your last marking period portfolio, as our final portfolio exercise will be on a larger scale (including a look back at past years...)

I hope these pointers help. If you need more prompts, ideas, questions for reflection, etc. please let me know.

Also- please continue to read Atwood. We will have a circle on Friday, so portfolios are due Wednesday and/or at the beginning of class Friday (i.e. you can use some time first period to add finishing touches, but you may not have the whole block of time.)

Questions? Please ask!

Flow Writing

There are various ways of starting off. One is to use a sentence opening which suggests discovery , movement, encounter or memory. Begin writing with one of these:

• "I opened the door and..."
• "For the first time in my life..."
• "I looked down and..."
• "I began to..."
• "It's been years since..."
• "At first I thought..."
• "What I wanted was..."

Then continue writing for five minutes. 

Here are some other openings:

• "Coming towards me was..."
• "What I wanted to tell you was..."
• "The music made me feel..."
• "I was aware of pain..."
• "I couldn't speak because..."
• "What I want to do is..."
• "A long way back..."
• "I couldn't make out..."
• "If I'm really honest..."
• "He/She has changed since..."
• "When I touched..."
• "I looked in the mirror and..."
• "If I dared I'd..."
• "What excites me is..."
• "I buried it..."

Try two or three of them and write for five to ten minutes. 

After you've written each piece read it and underline the sentences, phrases and words that strike you because they contain a thought or feeling or a word that catches your attention, interests you or excites you.

The Search

You are lost in a large, anonymous building which has many floors, corridors and doors. You are looking for someone or something. Who or what is it? Describe the building and your search. At last you hear music on the other side of a door. The sound moves you and you stand very close to the door. How does the music make you feel? What does it make you think of? Do you go in the room? Write about all of this.

Deadlines!

• If you are entering the haiku contest, the deadline is today. Please submit that work... It is only 3 lines :)

• I would love all of your work submitted to the yearbook. If you missed Friday's deadline please e-mail your work directly to Ms. Rudy. Her e-mail address is susan.rudy@rcsdk12.org

• If for some reason you did not turn in your portfolio, you can turn that in today for LATE credit. 

• Coffee House is NEXT THURSDAY. Please choose a piece and get going on your Group Poem.

• There is an open mic at Equal Grounds on April 1st. Extra credit will be given to those who attend. 

• Reminder: We will meet on the 2nd floor on April 1-3. This will be a time to rehearse for coffee house, workshop, read, discuss, etc. 

• If you are all set with all of the above, please begin your next short story and/or your pages for LAMBENT. 

Let me know if you have any questions!

P.S. The Gannon event is this Thursday. If you would like to join us, please let me know. 

Bell Work

Please read Raymond Carver's "Little Things", which is posted here:
http://www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/cms/lib/NC01001395/Centricity/Domain/796/little_things.pdf

We will have a group discussion when you are done. 

Work Time

1. If you haven't turned in your portfolio, please get that in today. 

2. Please choose what writing you would like put in the yearbook. I would like to submit that to Ms. Rudy TODAY.

3. Choose a piece to share in class on Friday. We can only have a circle if people SHARE/DISCUSS. We will be taking a picture and be recorded for the senior video on Friday.

Need a prompt? Go back to the 3 a.m. & 4 a.m. breakthrough stuff or look at one of the links below.
http://www.writersdigest.com/prompts
http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~creativewriting/Prompts.php
http://www.litbridge.com/creative-writing-prompts/

4. Create work for the Virgilio Contest

The Nicholas A. Virgilio Memorial Haiku Competition for Grades 7-12

Founded by the Sacred Heart Church in Camden, NJ, and sponsored by the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association in memory of Nicholas A. Virgilio, a charter member of the Haiku Society of America, who died in 1989. The Haiku Society of America cosponsors the contest, provides judges, and publishes the results in Frogpond and on the HSA Web site.
Deadline: In hand by March 25, 2014. Entries received after that date will not be accepted.
Eligibility: Any student in grades 7 through 12 enrolled in school as of September 2014 may enter.
Regulations: Submit up to three haiku per student. All haiku must be previously unpublished, original work, and not entered in any other contest or submitted elsewhere for publication. Please follow the guidelines carefully. Publication is defined as an appearance in a printed book, magazine, or journal (sold or given away), or in any online journal that presents edited periodic content. The appearance of poems in online discussion lists or personal websites is not considered publication. Judges will be asked to disqualify any haiku that they have seen before.
Submissions: Each haiku must be on three separate 3" x 5" cards. The haiku must appear on the front of each card; your name, address, age, grade level, and school (please include the school address) must appear on the back of (only) one of the cards for each haiku. Please do not send self-addressed stamped envelope with your entries. All winners will be notified. Winning haiku and commentaries will appear in Frogpond. Do not use staples for any purpose. Failure to follow this format will make it impossible to judge an entry and may result in the disqualification of a submission without notification.
Entry fee: None.
Submit entries to:

Tony Virgilio
Nick Virgilio Haiku Association
1092 Niagara Rd
Camden, NJ 08104-2859

Adjudication: Judges named by the HSA.
Awards: Six haiku will be selected and each awarded $50. The winning haiku and list of winners will be published in Frogpond and on the HSA Web site. The high school of each student winner will receive a one-year subscription to Frogpond.
Rights: All rights revert to the authors after publication.
Correspondence: Please keep a copy of your haiku; entries cannot be returned.
To see an anthology of past winners, visit the Nicholas A. Virgilio Memorial Haiku Competition Collection.

Hint Fiction

If you are in a slump or need something to give you a burst of creativity, please give hint fiction a try!

Hint Fiction

• We are going to write some hint fiction over the next few classes.
• Be prepared to write some today! Check out the following links:
• http://www.robertswartwood.com/hint-fiction/
• http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/10/what-can-you-do-in-twenty-five-words.html
• http://www.npr.org/2010/11/13/131276783/-hint-fiction-celebrates-the-extremely-short-story

Portfolio Requirements

• Writing Portfolios are due Monday, March 17th
• Please include polished/workshopped pieces of quality fiction. Remember we are looking for quality rather than quantity.
• If you are having trouble writing your reflection, please ask for help. 

Please enter the following contest for Double Extra credit!

http://www.susqu.edu/academics/10602.asp

Vignette Writing

Introduction

The highly acclaimed Latina writer Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago on December 20, 1954.

A graduate of Loyola University with a degree in English, she has worked as a teacher to high

school dropouts at Chicago’s Latino Youth Alternative High School, a college recruiter, and a counselor. She has also taught writing as a writer-in-residence at several universities. Cisneros

has won numerous awards for her writing, and her books have been translated into as many as

10 languages.

Cisneros attended the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, and while she was there, she

finished the manuscript for My Wicked Wicked Ways, a book of poetry. During her time at the

Workshop, she found her true literary voice, that of a Mexican woman. She found that her

writing could reflect her distinct and special ethnic and cultural background, and she has

written several books that express what others couldn’t; these books are The House on Mango

Street, Loose Woman, and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.

The House on Mango Street, which won the Before Columbus American Book Award, is probably

her most widely read book and has sold more than 500,000 copies. This novel is a series of 44

related vignettes narrated by Esperanza Cordero, a Latina girl growing up in a poor Chicago

neighborhood. Together these vignettes draw a memorable portrait of the barrio, its neighbors, its

young children, and Esperanza’s friends and family. This highly acclaimed novel is studied by

students of all ages, from grade schools to universities, throughout the nation and the world.

In her poetry and stories, Cisneros’ writing reflects her personal experiences and perspectives

as a Chicana. In these writings, she represents her community in an honorable way and shows

the diversity of her characters, who are searching for self-identity, independence, and cultural

acceptance. Much of her poetry deals with the places she has traveled, and blends Spanish and

English to enrich the text.

Cisneros has lectured throughout the United States, Mexico, and Europe, and is still writing.

She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

What is a vignette?
Author Ann Mackie Miller describes a vignette as “writing that is prompted by a particular focus. It might be a character, an event in your life, a setting or an observation. Each vignette stands on its own, a little slice of life that is usually particularly vivid and is written from your point of view.” (I really like her definition!)

Vignette- a short, descriptive sketch that may stand alone or be part of a larger work.

Resources 

• You can access the reading here: http://esl-bits.net/Books/Mango_Street/Part01/default.html

Bigfoot Stole My Wife

Good Morning,

Please use first period to workshop and polish your latest writing piece. Reminder: If you did not want to continue with your reincarnation story, you did not have to. You could turn in what you finished on Friday and work with a new piece of writing of your choice. If you have questions on this, please ask!

When you finish workshop/writing, please read the following short story posted here. Remember to post an insightful comment to what you read and respond to what you peers say.

Bigfoot Stole My Wife
By Ron Carlson

The problem is credibility.

The problem, as I'm finding out over the last few weeks, is basic credibility. A lot of people look at me and say, sure Rick, Bigfoot stole your wife. It makes me sad to see it, the look of disbelief in each person's eye. Trudy's disappearance makes me sad, too, and I'm sick in my heart about where she may be and how he's treating her, what they do all day, if she's getting enough to eat. I believe he's beeing good to her -- I mean I feel it -- and I'm going to keep hoping to see her again, but it is my belief that I probably won't.

In the two and a half years we were married, I often had the feeling that I would come home from the track and something would be funny. Oh, she'd say things: One of these days I'm not going to be here when you get home, things like that, things like everybody says. How stupid of me not to see them as omens. When I'd get out of bed in the early afternoon, I'd stand right here at this sink and I could see her working in her garden in her cut-off Levis and bikini top, weeding, planting, watering. I mean it was obvious. I was too busy thinking about the races, weighing the odds, checking the jockey roster to see what I now know: he was watching her too. He'd probably been watching her all summer.

So, in a way it was my fault. But what could I have done? Bigfoot steals your wife. I mean: even if you're home, it's going to be a mess. He's big and not well trained.

When I came home it was about eleven-thirty. The lights were on, which really wasn't anything new, but in the ordinary mess of the place, there was a little difference, signs of a struggle. There was a spilled Dr. Pepper on the counter and the fridge was open. But there was something else, something that made me sick. The smell. The smell of Bigfoot. It was hideous. It was . . . the guy is not clean.

Half of Trudy's clothes are gone, not all of them, and there is no note. Well, I know what it is. It's just about midnight there in the kitchen which smells like some part of hell. I close the fridge door. It's the saddest thing I've ever done. There's a picture of Trudy and me leaning against her Toyota taped to the fridge door. It was taken last summer. There's Trudy in her bikini top, her belly brown as a bean. She looks like a kid. She was a kid I guess, twenty-six. The two times she went to the track with me everybody looked at me like how'd I rate her. But she didn't really care for the races. She cared about her garden and Chinese cooking and Buster, her collie, who I guess Bigfoot stole too. Or ate. Buster isn't in the picture, he was nagging my nephew Chuck who took the photo. Anyway I close the fridge door and it's like part of my life closed. Bigfoot steals your wife and you're in for some changes.

You come home from the track having missed the Daily Double by a neck, and when you enter the home you are paying for and in which you and your wife and your wife's collie live, and your wife and her collie are gone as is some of her clothing, there is nothing to believe. Bigfoot stole her. It's a fact. What should I do, ignore it? Chuck came down and said something like well if Bigfoot stole her why'd he take the Celica? Christ, what a cynic! Have you ever read anything about Bigfoot not being able to drive? He'd be cramped in there, but I'm sure he could manage.

I don't really care if people believe me or not. Would that change anything? Would that bring Trudy back here? Pull the weeds in her garden?

As I think about it, no one believes anything anymore. Give me one example of someone believing one thing. No one believes me. I myself can't believe all the suspicion and cynicism there is in today's world. Even at the races, some character next to me will poke over at my tip sheet and ask me if I believe that stuff. If I believe? What is there to believe? The horse's name? What he did the last time out? And I look back at this guy, too cheap to go two bucks on the program, and I say: its history. It is historical fact here. Believe. Huh. Here's a fact: I believe everything.

Credibility.

When I was thirteen years old, my mother's trailor was washed away in the flooding waters of the Harley River and swept thirty-one miles, ending right side up and neary dead level just outside Mercy, in fact in the old weed-eaten parking lot for the abandoned potash plant. I know this to be true because I was inside the trailor the whole time with my pal, Nuggy Reinecker, who found the experience more life-changing than I did.

Now who's going to believe this story? I mean, besides me, because I was there. People are going to say, come on, thirty-one miles? Don't you mean thirty-one feet?

We had gone in out of the rain after school to check out a magazine that belonged to my mother's boyfriend. It was a copy of Dude, and there was a fold-out page I will never forget of a girl lying on a beach on her back. It was a color photograph. The girl was a little pale, I mean, this was probably her first day out in the sun, and she had no clothing on. So it was good, but what made it great was that they had made her a little bathing suit out of sand. Somebody had spilled a little sand just right, here and there, and the sane was this incredible gold color, and it made her look so absolutly naked you wanted to put your eyes out.

Nuggy and I knew there was flood danger in Griggs; we'd had a flood every year almost and it had been raining for five days on and off, but when the trailor bucked the first time, we thought it was my mother come home to catch us in the dirty book. Nuggy shoved the magazine under his bed and I ran out to check the door. It only took me a second and I holldered back Hey no sweat, no one's here, but by the time Ireturned to see what other poses they'd had this beautiful woman commit, Nuggy already had his pants to his ankles and was involved in what we knew was a sin.

It if hadn't been the timing of the first wave with this act of his, Nuggy might have gone on to live what the rest of us call a normal life. But the Harley had crested and the head wave, which they estimated to be three feet minimum, unmoored the trailer with a push that knocked me over the sofa, and threw Nuggy, already entangled in his trousers, clear across the bedroom.

I watched the village of Griggs as we sailed through. Some of the village, the Exxon Station, part of it at least, and the carwash, which folded up right away, tried to come along with us, and I saw the front of Painters' Mercantile, the old porch and signboard, on and off all day.

You can believe this: it was not a smooth ride. We'd rip along for ten seconds, dropping and growling over rocks, and rumbling over tree stumps, and then wham! the front end of the trailer would lodge against a rock or something that could stop it, and whoa! we'd wheel around sharp as a carnival ride, worse really, because the furniture would be thrown against the far side and us with it, sometimes we'd end up in a chair and sometimes the chair would sit on us. My mother had about four thousand knickknacks in five big box shelves, and they gave us trouble for the first two or three miles, flying by like artillery, left, right, some small glass snail hits you in the face, later in the back, but that stuff all finally settled in the foot and then two feet of water which we took on.

We only slowed down once and it was the worst. In the railroad flats I thought we had stopped and I let go of the door I was hugging and tried to stand up and then swish, another rush sent us right along. We rammed along all day it seemed, but when we finally washed up in Mercy and the sheriff's cousin pulled open the door and got swept back to his car by water and quite a few of those knickknacks, just over an hour had passed. We had averaged, they figured later, about thirty-two miles an hour, reaching speeds of up to fifty at Lime Falls and the Willows. I was okay and walked out bruised and well washed, but when the sheriff's cousin pulled Nuggy out, he looked genuinely hurt.

"For godsakes," I remember the sheriff's cousin saying, "The damn flood knocked this boy's pants off!" But Nuggy wasn't talking. In fact, he never hardly talked to me again in the two years he stayed at Regional School. I heard later, and I believe it, that he joined the monastery over in Malcolm County.

My mother, because she didn't have the funds to haul our rig back to Griggs, worried for a while, but then the mayor arranged to let us stay out where we were. So after my long ride in a trailer down the flooded Harley River with my friend Nuggy Reinbecker, I grew up in a parking lot outside of Mercy, and to tell you the truth, it wasn't too bad, even though our trailer never did smell straight again.

Now you can believe all that. People are always saying: don't believe everything you read, or everything you hear. And I'm here to tell you. Believe it. Everything. Everything you read. Everything you hear. Believe your eyes. Your ears. Believe the small hairs on the back of your neck. Believe all of history, and all of the versions of history, and all the predictions for the future. Believe every weather forecast. Believe in God, the afterlife, unicorns, showers on Tuesday. Everything has happened. Everything is possible.

I came home from the track to find the cupboard bare. Trudy is not home. The place smells funny: hairy. It's a fact and I know it as a fact: Bigfoot has been in my house.

Bigfoot stole my wife.

She's gone.

Believe it.

I gotta believe it.

"My Life as a Bat" by Margaret Atwood

Read "My Life as a Bat" by Margaret Atwood

Here is a link to the text:
http://www.sweetdave.com/moon_safari.htm

WRITING PROMPT
Why does the narrator think being reincarnated as a bat would be the ideal reincarnation? If you were to be reincarnated as an animal, what animal would it be? Write a monologue or short piece from the point of view of this animal.

The Shawl Themes

The Shawl" is noteworthy because of its scrupulous control of its limited point of view, with the point-of-view character being the mother of a starving infant during the Holocaust. There is nothing in the story about the political conditions in Germany’s Third Reich, which developed a policy of mass extermination of Jews; yet, within just a few pages, the story provides an inside view of the horror as it affected those who were the victims of this unspeakable policy. The story requires great attention, for the details are not described objectively but rather appear as they have been filtered through the suffering eyes and mind of the major figure, Rosa.

Survival
Underlying Ozick's story is the theme of survival. Rosa struggles with this constantly. During the march to the concentration camp, Rosa struggles over whether or not she should pass Magda to an onlooker, possibly ensuring her child's survival. Rosa decides against this, however, realizing that she would risk her own life in doing so and could not guarantee Magda's safety. Rosa chooses survival in the moment for both of them, rather than probable death for herself and uncertainty for her child. As Rosa struggles over what to do about Magda, Stella longs to be Magda: a baby rocked and sleeping in her mother's arms. Rosa also thinks that the starving Stella gazes at Magda as if she wishes to eat the child. Magda, though far too young to have any knowledge of what is happening to and around her, gives up screaming and quietly sucks on the shawl.
Life in the camp is a constant battle for survival. Rosa, apparently caring more about Magda's survival than her own. gives most of her food to her child. Stella, caring mostly about her own survival, gives no food to Magda. Magda herself turns to the shawl for comfort: it is her "baby, her pet, her little sister"; when she needs to be still—and stillness is necessary to her survival—she sucks on a corner of it.
Halfway through the story, Stella takes Magda's shawl because she is cold. It is, perhaps, the only one of her afflictions that she can do anything about. There is no food to ease her hunger, and there is nothing she can do to escape from the camp; but Magda's shawl might ease her cold. This, too, is a form of reaching for survival. Stella has chosen to bring what small comfort she can to herself, ignoring the potential cost to Magda and Rosa.
Magda, knowing no better, leaves the barracks in her search for the shawl. Again, Rosa has to make a choice about her survival. If she runs to Magda, they will both be killed. If she does nothing, Magda will be killed. The only solution she can think of, however slim, is to get the shawl to Magda before she is discovered by the camp's guards. She runs for the shawl and returns to the square with it, but she is too late. A soldier carries Magda away toward the electric fence at the other side of the camp. Rosa watches her baby fly through the air, hit the fence and die, then fall to the ground. Again, there are choices. If she goes to Magda, she will be shot; if she screams, she will be shot. Rosa chooses survival, using the shawl to mute her scream.

Motherhood and Nurturing
Closely linked to the theme of survival are issues of motherhood and nurturing. Throughout "The Shawl," Stella longs to be nurtured. On the march, she longs to be a baby, comforted by her mother's arms. In the camp, she longs for food, sometimes causing Rosa to think that she is "waiting for Magda to die so she could put her teeth into the little thighs.'' She takes the only bit of nurturing she can find: warmth from Magda's shawl.
The issues of motherhood are more complex. Because she is a mother, Rosa cannot think only of herself, as Stella does. Each decision must be weighed. What is the possible benefit to her? To Magda? What are the possible costs? With each decision, Rosa must decide whether it is in her best interest to sacrifice herself, her baby, or both of them.

Prejudice and Tolerance
Issues of prejudice and tolerance are also raised in "The Shawl." Rosa, Stella, Magda, and the others are imprisoned or killed in concentration camps simply because they are Jewish. Prejudice exists on then- part too—at least on the part of Stella. Looking at Magda's yellow hair and blue eyes, she says "Aryan," in a voice that makes Rosa think she has said, "Let us devour her."
The issue of tolerance is raised in the camp itself. Rosa and Magda are not alone in the barracks they occupy. The other occupants are aware of Magda's existence and of Rosa's deception. In the camp, "a place without pity," they cannot know what might happen to them if Magda is discovered in the barracks. Yet no one reports her presence.

Betrayal
Rosa constantly fears that Stella—or someone else—will kill Magda to eat her. While this does not happen, it is Stella's betrayal that costs Magda her life and Rosa her child. "The Shawl'' points to one reason for this kind of betrayal: the inhuman treatment Stella has received has made her pitiless. "The cold went into her heart," the narrator says. "Rosa saw that Stella's heart was cold."

Writer's Workshop

Writing Tips From the Masters
https://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/269

5 Tips on How to Run a Writing Group
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/5-tips-on-how-to-run-a-writing-group/

Tips for an Effective Writing Critique
http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/crafttechnique/tp/Creative-Writing-Critique-Tips.htm

Agenda:

1. Read the links above
2. Workshop (and use the information you learned from the links...)
3. Work on stories.

HOMEWORK: Bring in a draft of your short stories! Final copy due Wednesday, 1/26. READ SNOW CHILD.

Fever

We are going to begin class by discussing Fever. Please discuss/take notes and explore the information provided for a grade.

I found this article interesting. Check it out! It may help clarify some of the themes in the story.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/wideman-fever.html

A Q&A from PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3i3110.html

To help you understand Fever. 

Reviewers of Fever also single out the title story, noting its uniqueness, its range, and its message. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, writing for The New York Times, calls ‘‘Fever’’ ‘‘almost majestic in its evocation of the goodness and evil of the human heart.’’ She further notes the peculiar perspective used by Wideman in this collection, which she expresses as ‘‘not quite human but godlike, not limited by the conventions of ordinary storytelling.’’ She finds that ‘‘Fever’’ makes use of this style of storytelling successfully, culminating in ‘‘an almost unbearably anguished meditation on human nature in plague time, the power and sadness of the story are enormous, its vision triumphant.’’ 

Wideman’s career can be characterized by his search for new ways to explore themes and ideas and to express the African-American experience. ‘‘Fever’’ is a boldly experimental work, one that floats back and forth between time periods and narrators and thus defies easy labeling or analysis. Randall Kenan of The Nation forthrightly deals with Wideman’s slipping back and forth in time; he presents his own reasoning: ‘‘It is as if Wideman is again playing games with us, forcing us to see the past and the present as one; how we are affected by what has gone before, not only in our thinking but in our acting and in our soul-deep believing.’’ Despite the story’s elusive nature and Wideman’s claims to Rosen that the story ‘‘shouldn’t be tied to any historical period,’’ reviewers note his evocation of a specific period in American history. Other reviewers comment on the way Wideman collapses time to present a composite picture of a certain place and mindset. Cara Hood writing for the Voice Literary Supplement claims that present-day Philadelphia emerges as the protagonist of the story. 

Reviewers do not overlook the significance of Wideman’s message in examining his style. Herbert Mitgang in the New York Times finds that even after reading the story, he is left with the knowledge of Wideman’s search for ‘‘some sort of universality’’ to the human condition. Some reviewers, however, do not care for the way in which Wideman attempts to get his message to readers. For instance, Clarence Major of the Washington Post believes ‘‘Fever’’ to be the most ambitious if not the most artistically successful story of the collection. Mitgang recognizes the importance of what Wideman is saying when he writes that Wideman’s ‘‘voice as a modern black writer with something to report comes through.’’ Despite this praise, Mitgang does not believe that the rest of the stories are successful, asserting in his review of the collection that they add nothing to Wideman’s reputation as a writer. 

In Wideman’s extensive and accomplished body of work, ‘‘Fever’’ occupies only a small spot. Yet, if it accomplishes nothing more, it demonstrates Wideman’s careful exploration of relationships among people and the effects that these relationships have on society. Wideman’s interest in the issues he raises in ‘‘Fever’’—including racial relations, communication, personal freedom, and violence— is seen in the works that he has written later in his career.Philadelphia Fire picks up the final section of the story in its fictionalization of the 1985 MOVE bombing. The Cattle Killing explores the devastating effects of racial prejudice on the African Americans who remained behind in Philadelphia during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in greater detail. The body of Wideman’s work strengthens Robert Bones’ assertion, made in 1978, that Wideman is ‘‘perhaps the most gifted black novelist of his generation.’’

Source: Short Stories for Students, ©2012 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.

Have you begun your first short story?

Please have the first 2.5-3 pages with you on Thursday so we can workshop.

Discussion/Quiz Questions

Joyce Carol Oates
Heat
Questions based on the analysis provided at http://www.levity.com/corduroy/oateshea.htm. Feel free to use this information as a resource when writing your responses.

1. Oates' brief introduction to the story as anthologized in The Oxford Book of American Short Stories explains:

For the author, the formal challenge of "Heat" was to present a narrative in a seemingly acausal manner, analogous to the playing of a piano sans pedal; as if each paragraph, or chord, were separate from the rest. For how otherwise can we speak of the unspeakable, except through the prism of technique?

What does she mean by this?

2. Why do you think Oates titled this story "Heat"?

3. What main ideas—themes—does Oates explore? Don't forget discuss the title, often a clue to a story's theme.

4. Some argue that this story reads as a news article or obituary. Why do you think Oates chose to write the story this way? Do you think it strengthens or weakens the story? Why?

5. What do you think of the characterization of Roger Whipple? Do you think it's fair that he will not be charged for the sexual assault and murder of the twins?


Tobias Wolff
Hunters in the Snow
Questions adapted from Holy Huddle

1. Describe the development of Frank and Tub’s relationship after Kenny is shot. What factors are at play here? Do you find it believable that they leave Kenny in the back of the truck while enjoying the warmth of a roadhouse—twice? Why or why not?

2. Lying is a common theme is Wolff’s stories. Identify places in the story where there’s a disconnect between what the characters think/feel/assert, and the reality of their situations. Are the characters actually lying? Deluding themselves?

3. In what ways are Kenny, Frank, and Tub products of our society?

4. Discuss the three principal characters in this story. How are they motivated? Who is the most sympathtic? What themes are suggested by their interactions?

5. When asked to list his favorite books, writer David Sedaris had this to say about In the Garden of the North American Martyrs: "[Wolff’s] stories are like parables, and after reading one I always vow to become a better person." Assuming that Sedaris subscribes to the dictionary definition of parable, how is "Hunters…" like a parable?

parable
(n): a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle 

WRITING

When you finish your questions/discussion, I would like you to begin planning for your first major writing piece. You can do one of the following:

• Choose another prompt provided on Monday
• Develop/expand the prompt you already started
• Generate your own idea for a story
• You can begin writing or work on creating characters, just be productive!

HOMEWORK

Read John Wideman's Fever (pgs. 692-696)

Joyce Carol Oates' "Heat"

Joyce Carol Oates' "Heat" and Tobias Wolff's "Hunters in the Snow"

Pick up Oxford Book of Short Stories.

Focus on narrator's voice in "Heat".

HMWK: For Friday, read Tobias Wolff's "Hunters in the Snow"--indirect and direct approaches to character description and development. Major themes? Symbols?

Continue to work on short stories.

For Tuesday, read John Wideman's "Fever".

Joyce Carol Oates:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgJ809QKmas

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaxFbNgskOw

Biography (born in Lockport):

www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/oat0bio-1

Video adaptation:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Mw-1EQTpM 

Fiction Exercises

Welcome to Advanced Fiction! I am looking forward to working with each and every single one of you in a new genre of writing.

Fiction Warm-up Exercises/Brian Kiteley

A Selection of Fiction Exercises, from The 3 A.M. Epiphany

Published by Writers Digest Books

Copyright Brian Kiteley (clicking on this will take you back to my home page)

Take a look at some sample exercises from The 4 A.M. Breakthrough:

1. Synesthesia, according to M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms, is a description of “one kind of sensation in terms of another; color is attributed to sounds, odor to colors, sound to odors, and so on.” Here is an example of synesthesia from Bruno Schulz’s Street of the Crocodiles: “Adela would plunge the rooms into semidarkness by drawing down the linen blinds. All colors immediately fell an octave lower [my italics]; the room filled with shadows, as if it had sunk to the bottom of the sea and the light was reflected in mirrors of green water.” Schulz describes a change in color by means of a musical term. Writers consciously and unconsciously employ this peculiar method to convey the irreducible complexity of life onto the page. Diane Ackerman (in A Natural History of the Senses) feels we are born with this wonderful “intermingling” of senses: “A creamy blur of succulent blue sounds smells like week-old strawberries dropped into a tin sieve as mother approaches in a halo of color, chatter, and perfume like thick golden butterscotch. Newborns ride on intermingling waves of sight, sound, touch, taste, and, especially, smell.” Usesynesthesia in a short scene—surreptitiously, without drawing too much attention to it—to convey to your reader an important understanding of some ineffable sensory experience. Use “sight, sound, touch, taste, and, especially, smell.” 600 words.

2. Deja Vu. Write a 500-word sketch of a scene in which a character has an experience that causes her to recall a startlingly similar past experience. Juxtapose the two scenes, the present one and the past one, on top of each other, writing, for instance, two or three sentences of the present moment, then alternating back and forth between present and past that way. Show the reader the remembered scene by use of Italics. Why would a character be haunted like this? Think of a convincing reason for the deja vu experience. Or don’t worry too much about convincing reasons—just let some strange set of events impinge on the present moment of your character. Be playful with the relationship. Simple advice to beginners: don’t be heavy-handed. It’s easier said than done, I know, but you can train yourself to relax and honor your readers with difficult and unusual human patterns of behavior. Always flatter your readers by proposing a complex and unexpected reality.

3. The Reluctant “I.” Write a 600-word first-person story in which you use the first person pronoun (“I” or “me” or “my”) only two times—but keep the “I” somehow important to the narrative you’re constructing. The point of this exercise is to imagine a narrator who is less interested in himself or herself than in what he or she is observing. You can make your narrator someone who sees a very interesting event in which she is not necessarily a participant. Or you can make him self-effacing yet a major participant in the events related. The people we tend to like most are those who are much more interested in other people than in themselves, selfless and caring, whose conversation is not a stream of self-involved remarks (like the guy who, after speaking about himself to a woman at a party for half an hour, says, “Enough about me, what do you think of me?”). Another lesson you might learn from this exercise is how important it is to let things and events speak for themselves, beyond the ego of the narration. It is very important in this exercise to make sure your reader is not surprised, forty or fifty words into the piece, to realize that this is a first person narration. Show us quickly who is observing the scene.

4. Body English. Write a “conversation” in which no words are said. This exercise is meant to challenge you to work with gesture, body language (or, as a baseball announcer I heard once misspeak it, body English), all the things we convey to each other without words. We often learn more about characters in stories from the things characters do with their hands than from what they say. It might be best to have some stranger observe this conversation, rather than showing us the thoughts of one of the people involved in the conversation, because the temptation to tell us what the conversation is about is so great from inside the conversation. “I was doing the opposite of Freud,” Desmond Morris says, of his famous book The Naked Ape that first studied the ways humans speak with their bodies. “He listened to people and didn’t watch; I watched people and didn’t listen.” Because of Morris, according to Cassandra Jardine, “when politicians scratch their noses they are now assumed to be lying—and the sight of the Queen [Elizabeth] crossing her legs at the ankles is known to be a signal that her status is too high for her to need to show sexual interest by crossing them further up.” Autistic children cannot understand human conversation even when they understand individual words because they cannot read facial expressions, which is clear evidence of how important other forms of language are. 600 words.

5. The First Lie. Tape-record a conversation. It’s a tried and true method of understanding how people talk, but still surprisingly effective. Obtain permission of the people you are taping. Instruct your group each to tell one small lie during the session, only one lie. Tell them, if they get curious, that some philosophers think that deception was a crucial learned behavior in the emergence of modern consciousness several thousand years ago. You can participate in the conversation yourself, but don’t become an interviewer. Let the machine run for a good long while, allowing your friends to become comfortable and less aware of the tape recorder. Listen to the tape a day or two later. Play it several times. Choose some small part of the conversation to transcribe (the lies may be interesting, if you can spot them, but more interesting should be all the other stuff they say). Transcribe as faithfully as you can. Do not transcribe more than one page of talk. After that, fill out the conversation with information about the people who are speaking, giving us only details about them that we need to know. The final product should be no longer than two pages long, double-spaced.

6. Phone Tag. Write a fairly long, complicated phone conversation overheard by someone in the room. All three people—the listener in the room, the caller, and the person on the other end of the line—are involved with each other in some way (not necessarily romantically). Let us hear the other end of the conversation, without actually hearing it. This means you will be giving us only one side of a conversation, so you will have to work to make the side we’re hearing intriguing and capable of carrying a story. The listener in the room can guess what the person on the other end of the line is saying, but try to keep this guessing to a minimum, and make sure this guesswork is done with integrity—well after the unheard speaker has spoken. 600 words.

7. Underground History. Reread your own older fiction—one story or as many as you want to. Find the ten most common words from this fiction (excluding small and uninteresting words). Use these words as hidden titles for ten paragraphs of prose. By hidden, I mean that you should operate as in the above exercise, but after several rough drafts, eliminate the titles. Choosing these ten words is obviously going to be somewhat subjective, unless you have a program that allows you to do some of the work for you (for instance, you could pick a word that seems to occur commonly, then do a MS Word global search—the find icon under edit). This exercise may help you uncover the trends and unexpected subject matter of your fiction.

8. Backwards. Write a story backwards. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’sChronicle of a Death Foretold works this way, more or less. Murder mysteries are told backwards, in a sense. Most stories we tell orally we tell from the middle forward until someone tells us we’ve left out important details, then we double back. You might try taking one of your own short pieces—or someone else’s—and simply reversing the sentences. What then? Unless you’re very lucky, you’ll have to do a good deal to make this reversed piece of prose make sense. Make sure this does not become simply a device. The structure should be inherently useful to the material, which is good advice for any fiction. 500 words.

9. Jointly Held Story. Speak the beginning of a story with someone else. Choose someone you know well, who also writes, but that’s not a necessity. Choose a good storyteller. Do this in a relatively private place, where you won’t be interrupted. One person starts the story and continues for a few sentences. The next person continues for another few sentences, and so on for a while. You don’t need to start up right away after the other person has finished his or her bit. End when you feel things getting exciting. Both speakers should go away from the experience and write down what they remember of the story, but don’t write the tale down right away. Let it sit in your memories for a day or so. Don’t play games of one-upmanship with your partner. Be faithful to the growing story and the characters created on the spur of the moment. Listen to the other person’s quirks of storytelling. Let someone else’s manner of creating a story guide you and influence your own story-telling style. The two stories that result from this exercise ought to be quite different from one another. 1,000 words.

10. Home. “Some women marry houses,” says the poet Anne Sexton, meaning presumably that these women marry not men but the ideal of house and home. The different etymologies of these two words are instructive. Home originally referred to village or hometown. House has in its earlier meanings the notion of hiding, of enclosing oneself. Now house indicates any house, and home is the place that is central to our notions of ourselves. Use a home in a story fragment (500 words). Think about the power of rooms (kitchens, basements, unfinished attics, walk-in closets) on psychology and conversation. In this fragment, make the house a unique participant (though a passive one) in the unfolding events. The room need not be in a typical house. Think about all the other rooms we become familiar with—classrooms, office cubicles, publictoilets. What are their personalities? How do the more public spaces we inhabit affect our behaviors? You might consider keeping several characters permanently stuck in different rooms in a house, communicating by shouts, cell phones, intercoms, Dixie cups, or telepathy.

11. In the Belly of the Beast. Describe an unusual interior space, one with lots of interesting appurtenances and gadgets sticking out: a submarine, a small plane, a subway tunnel away from the platform, a boiler room in the sub-basement of a high rise building. Again, do not yield to the easy use of this scene. The boiler room, for instance, we all expect to hide a creepy axe murderer-type. Put two innocent children in it instead, romping and playing among the glow and roar of the fire and steam vents as if this were a sunny playground (their father is the superintendent of the building, and he prefers to keep the kids where he can see them). 500 words.

12. Absent. Construct a character who is not present. You have many options here: people may talk about this character before meeting him, or after meeting her; you might choose to examine what this character owns, how he or she lives, under what conditions; you might use indirect approaches, like letters or documents that attest to the existence but not presence of the person. How do we know of people? Examine the ways we build characters in our minds and in our social environments before and after we meet them.

13. Ways of Seeing. Imagine a person with an idiosyncratic way of seeing the world (for instance, an occasional drug dealer, who, because of his amateur status, is more than usually prone to seeing danger where there is none; an entomologist who tends to categorize the world dryly, as if seen through a microscope; a world-class athlete whose clarity of vision is almost hallucinogenic). Have this character witness a traumatic event that does not directly involve him or her. Narrate the event from a first-person point of view, making sure that the perspective is carefully built around the idiosyncrasies of this personality. Also, as a hidden aspect of this character, imagine him or her as some kind of unusual animal. 600 words.

14. Loveless. Create a character around this sentence: Nobody has ever loved me as much I have loved them. Do not use this sentence in the fragment of fiction you write. The sentence comes from Guy Davenport’s aunt, Mary Elizabeth Davenport Morrow, via his essay “On Reading” inThe Hunter Gracchus. Resist the temptation this exercise offers for a completely self-indulgent character. Of course, some self-indulgence will be fun with this character. But don’t write from inside your own wounded sense of the world. 500 words.

15. Loving. Write about a person you love. This apparently simple instruction may be more difficult than you think. What makes us love people? How do we avoid being sentimental when describing the attributes that make someone loveable? You will immediately be faced with the decision of writing about someone you love or loved romantically or as a friend. Or perhaps you’ll choose a family member. Your greatest challenge will be to make your reader love this person, too. 600 words.

16. Improvisation. Put two characters in a situation that demands improvisation, on both parts, which also demands that the two characters interact and compromise with each other in the improvisation. We should be able to observe the surprise, pleasure, and frustration that result from this improvisation. Remember that most of life involves one form of improvisation or another. Beginning writers tend to control their characters too much, so in this exercise you should work hard to let the characters surprise themselves as well as you. 500 words.

17. True Feeling. Using language that is simple and straightforward, describe intensely and exhaustively a moment of true feeling between two characters. Meryl Streep says that when she’s researching a character she’s going to portray, she always gives the character some simple secret that no one on the set, none of the other actors, and none of the other characters knows about. Give the character you’re showing us this moment of true feeling through a secret, but don’t reveal the secret either to us or to the other character.

18. Teacher. In a 500-word scene, have one character teach another character something that changes the teacher. But this exercise asks you to go another step beyond the first layer of reality. It should teach you how to play with more than one level in your fiction. The teacher learning something from her student is surprising, though not so unusual as you may think. The audience is moved by Rose’s tragic learning curve in the movie Titanic. Imagine how much more interesting the film might have been had Jack learned something from what he taught Rose, rather than simply dying handsomely.

19. The Bunny Planet. Rosemary Wells has written a trilogy of children’s books collectively called Voyage to the Bunny Planet. The basic problem she sets for each book is that a child (in the form of a young bunny) has a bad day (in prose). Halfway through each little book, an unseen narrator intervenes and says that the child in question “needs a visit to the Bunny Planet.” Everything alters in this other world, first of all by changing to rhyming poetry. The world is better after we hear the words, “Far beyond the moon and stars/Twenty light years south of Mars,/Spins the gentle Bunny Planet/And the Bunny Queen is Janet.” Wells encourages children, in these wonderful books, to rethink their world, to take an emotional timeout and find a better world than the one children frequently find themselves stuck in—chaos, messes, tantrums, sickness, loneliness. What I want you to do in this exercise is only very tangentially linked to this trilogy. Use this hinge device that Wells employs so deftly. For the first part of your 500-word piece, tinge the world in darker hues, show us a narrative style that reflects frustration, sadness, alienation, whatever. Then, with a phrase a little like this central phrase of Wells’s, change everything—especially the narrative method. Wells goes from a very dense and quite beautiful prose (almost prose poetry, as the best children’s literature is) to this light rhyming style (although she does not stick to one method of rhyme—she uses couplets, quatrains, etc.).

20. The Argument. Two people are arguing—a man and a woman. They don’t have to be a couple. Each is convinced he or she is right. You, as the writer, do not know—and do not want to know—who is right, but you will have exquisite sympathy for both points of view, both sides of the argument. How do men and women argue differently? Couples tend to disagree over relatively minor issues, which often stand for larger issues. Give us enough background and history, but try to stay in the moment as much as possible. Narrative PoV is going to matter here a great deal: writing from one or the other’s PoV is likely to make it very difficult to show both sides fairly. An omniscient narration may seem to be the answer, but I don’t like omniscient narration—I don’t think it’s really possible in fiction about contemporary life. Choose an accidental arbitrator—a third party narrator, either first or third person narration. This narrator knows and likes both these people well, but doesn’t and can’t favor one over the other.� 600 words.

21. Standup. The usual method of the standup comedian monologue is apparently casual connections. For instance, Elvira Kurt once started a monologue with the simple idea of bad hair. “As a five-year old, you never had bad hair days. You woke up with hair straight up, and you said, ‘I look great! I slept in my swimsuit and I feel wonderful!’ Mother made clothes for me—horrible outfits. She probably laughed herself to death. I got back at her. When I told her I was gay I said it was because of those clothes.” Note the deliberate movement from plain detail to plain detail, with great leaps between the details—the mother making clothes to the coming-out declaration. We are not expecting this transition (nor for that matter the simpler transition from bad hair to mother making clothes). But the transitions are funny, and they affect us, shock us even in this day and age. Write a 600-word standup comedy monologue, fitting it into a story situation you’ve already begun working on. Don’t make it obvious to your reader that you are doing a stand-up routine—just tell a story as if you were doing a monologue in front of a smoky, irritable audience, with a Late Show talent scout scribbling notes at the bar in the back.

22. The Joke. End a 600-word fragment of a story with a joke you like or loathe. Use the joke as a way of coloring the whole passage, but don’t just lead up to the joke. The joke should be relatively short, and it might be better if the joke is somewhat odd. A guy walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, “I’ll have one g-g-gin and t-tonic, p-p-please.” The bartender says, “One g-gin and t-tonic c-c-coming up.” The customer glares suspiciously at the bartender, who smiles innocently. Another patron walks into the bar and says, “Scotch on the rocks, barkeep.” The bartender says, “One Scotch rocks, coming right up.” A moment later he brings the gin and tonic to the first customer, who says, “You were m-m-mimick-k-king m-m-me.” The bartender, with a truly pained look on his face, says, “N-n-no. I was m-m-mimicking that other g-guy.”

23. Outrunning the Critic. Write 100 short sentences about a character you are working on in a piece of fiction. The sentences should not connect and should not follow one another in any logical way. The idea of this exercise is to force you to outrun your own thoughts and intelligence and critical mind. Be careful not to be monotonous, using the name of your character or a pronoun to start each sentence. A better exercise would be to write 200 or 500 sentences about this character, but 100 sentences is still enough of a stretch to make this useful. The idea for this exercise comes from a collaboration the poet John Yau did with a painter, which was to match 1,000 small watercolors with sentences byYau. John Yau is the author of Edificio Sayonara, Forbidden Entries, andHawaiian Cowboys, among other books.

24. Rehearsal. Imitate the method of actors rehearsing a scene, repeating lines and whole sections of a speech, going over mistakes, etc., with several familiar characters of yours. Use this social trial and error to find new, submerged material for your story. You should think of this exercise as artificial and behind-the- scenes work, but it may also trigger strangely realistic conversation. Human beings constantly rehearse and re-rehearse their lines. The anarchic rhythm of conversation is more akin to a social science experiment than to the polish of theatrical dialogue.

25. Surprise. Write a short scene about a character you’ve become familiar with over time—either your own fictional creation or a character based on someone you know. Start the scene by letting the character do what you expect this character to do. But at some point in the sequence of events, allow the character to do something completely out of character. Let the character surprise you. This exercise demands that you consider what is expected and unexpected in a character. You may want to make a list, behind the writing of this scene, of the kinds of things this character usually does; and another list of the sorts of things this character would never do.