kudzu jesus
(thanks to Paula in Southport, NC))
sports build character
Texas A&M Commerce coach: He's proud of players for stealing papers
Nearly 2,000 copies of the Texas A&M Commerce campus newspaper were stolen this week by members of the school's football team and the team's coach says he's proud of the players for stealing them.
The newspaper had a story at the top of its front page about team members being arrested in a drug bust. Two team members were caught on video stealing some of the newspaper from inside the lobby of the campus police department.
Coach Guy Morris, left, reportedly told investigators during an interview that, "I'm proud of my players doing that … this was the best team building exercise we have ever done."
The newspaper had a story at the top of its front page about team members being arrested in a drug bust. Two team members were caught on video stealing some of the newspaper from inside the lobby of the campus police department.
Coach Guy Morris, left, reportedly told investigators during an interview that, "I'm proud of my players doing that … this was the best team building exercise we have ever done."
James Bright, editor of the East Texan, thought the coach's comments were "appalling."
"I don't understand how a head coach of a division 2 football team can say things like this -- can advocate his players committing a theft," Bright said.
In his report on the case, KDFW reporter James Rose interviewed the school's president, Dr. Dan Jones, who said discipline would be handed out from the coach on down. Morris, who attended Sam Houston High School in Arlington and played at TCU, formerly was the coach at Baylor University.
- Lance Murray (and thanks to Joe in Cheese)
florida book awards
The winners of this year's Florida Book Awards have been announced. FIU sweeps the poetry prizes! (Almost! Our pal Peter Meinke also placed.) I was one of the judges of the General Fiction.
rules for writing fiction, part 4
Zadie Smith:
1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2 When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3 Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4 Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.
5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.
7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9 Don't confuse honours with achievement.
10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
(via The Guardian)
flo-mar
That's my car wash to the right, my dry cleaners, Flo-Mar, straight ahead. One of my characters lives in the apartment at the top of the stairs. In the foreground, the saddest tree in Dania Beach.
rules for writing fiction, part 3
Hilary Mantel:
1 Are you serious about this? Then get an accountant.
2 Read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.
3 Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.
4 If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.
5 Be aware that anything that appears before "Chapter One" may be skipped. Don't put your vital clue there.
6 First paragraphs can often be struck out. Are you performing a haka, or just shuffling your feet?
7 Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don't notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they're trying too hard to instruct the reader.
8 Description must work for its place. It can't be simply ornamental. It usually works best if it has a human element; it is more effective if it comes from an implied viewpoint, rather than from the eye of God. If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action.
9 If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
10 Be ready for anything. Each new story has different demands and may throw up reasons to break these and all other rules. Except number one: you can't give your soul to literature if you're thinking about income tax.
(via The Guardian)
rules for writing fiction, part 2
Geoff Dyer:
1 Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over – or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: "I'm writing a book so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will probably cost you your job." Publisher: "That's exactly what makes me want to stay in my job."
2 Don't write in public places. In the early 1990s I went to live in Paris. The usual writerly reasons: back then, if you were caught writing in a pub in England, you could get your head kicked in, whereas in Paris, dans les cafés . . . Since then I've developed an aversion to writing in public. I now think it should be done only in private, like any other lavatorial activity.
3 Don't be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.
4 If you use a computer, constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay loyal to my piece-of-shit computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity into building one of the great autocorrect files in literary history. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes: "Niet" becomes "Nietzsche", "phoy" becomes "photography" and so on. Genius!
5 Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.
6 Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.
7 Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.
8 Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.
9 Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don't follow it.
10 Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to perseverance. But writing is all about perseverance. You've got to stick at it. In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That's what writing is to me: a way of postponing the day when I won't do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.
(via The Guardian)
rules for writing fiction, part 1
From Margaret Atwood:
1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.
3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.
4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.
5 Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
6 Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.
7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.
8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
10 Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
You might also like to read her splendid and hilarious story all about plots. "Happy Endings."
(via The Guardian)
news
Registration is now open for the Creative Writing Institute at Florida Tech in Melbourne. Dorm accommodations are available for participants. Anne in Coral Springs tells me that my event at the Coral Springs Festival of the Arts is sold out, but standing room is available. My story"The Cross-Eyed Bear," which appeared in Boston Noir has just been selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2010. The anthology is due out in September and was edited by Lee Child and series editor Otto Penzler.
literary feast 2010
The highlight of the literary year in Broward is the upcoming Literary Feast, March 19-20. Here's a link to the site for more info.
appearances
I've finally updated the Appearances link. Now I know where I'll be soon. And you can too, by clicking the appropriate link above.
is that body lotion in your pants . . .
. . . or are you just happy to see me? Chamil Guadaramma can stuff 75 bottles of body lotion in his pants. This unimaginative Nebraskan stuffed ladies panties in his. Hans Kurt Kubus stuffed 44 lizards down his pants. Three shirts.
j. d. salinger
J. D. Salinger has died. The Times obit here. "I hope to hell that when I do die somebody has the sense to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetary. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.” Here's a piece from the Guardian on Salinger's 90th birthday last year. And here is the heartbreaking story "For Esme--with Love and Squalor." (thanks to Tom in Lehigh Acres)
howard zinn
Howard, activist, historian, professor, voice of the Left, Howard Zinn has died. The Guardian takes note. And so does Daniel Ellsberg.
weird books
ABE Books has a new page dedicated to strange and bizarre titles. Get your copy of The Haunted Vagina now.
phoebe recommends:
Phee has her copy, ordered from Amazon and delivered early.