Dogpatch Writers Collective

by Dogpatch Writers Collective | November 27, 2013 · 5:59 pm

What Are You Eating Right Now?

Hello from the Dogpatch! Being Thanksgiving week, we’d like to give thanks for our readers and also let you know what we are . . .

Eating & Reading.

~~~~~

Laurel Leigh: Having just started doing some work for a publisher of health-related cookbooks, my brain is swirling with low-fat, low-cal, low-cholesterol, low-GI foods not to mention pictures my doc gave me of my own recent colonoscopy. So I’m eating potato chips. I’m so embarrassed, but honesty is the best policy and it wouldn’t be fair to say, while I’m typing in this post right now, that I’m eating eggplant. I did eat eggplant today though, and I put tofu instead of hamburger in the spaghetti sauce I made a couple days ago, and I bought some carrots. So I think I get a few points back. Plus these chips, which are freakin’ good, are zero-cholesterol.

What I’m reading right now is Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern by Selah J. Tay-Song. Since Selah is a Dogpatch blogger, this could seem like a pitch, but I fessed up about the Deep River Original Salted Kettle Cooked Potato Chips in the above paragraph, so you know I’m sticking to the truth today. It’s always so amazing to read a book by someone you know and then forget that you know the writer and just get lost in the story. There’s Stasia, who is an Icer and a Dreamer, meaning she can form stuff out of ice with her mind and dream foretelling visions that are significant for her underground world. This guy Glace, who is dying to hook up with Stasia only he can’t because she’s a princess and he’s her guard, so he has to be all stoic and stuff. But you just know they’re gonna get together at some point. Maybe? The other person in the story I like a lot is Larc, who’s not a very talented ice-molder but she has a great mind for politics and strategy, so she balances out Stasia’s impetuous nature and I think she’s going to factor greatly in what happens during the war that just started. The Icers just got attached by the Flames—they are busy burning through the ice the good guys just used to seal off their city. The cool thing about this book is that I’m not having a hard time believing that Icers and Flames exist. In fact I’m pretty sure they do. This book is just so much fun I know I’m gonna be sorry when it’s over, but the good news is the sequel is on the way. Okay, that last part was a little bit of a pitch, but a well-deserved one.

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Jilanne: The Writer’s Shadow

Jilanne: Um, is it my turn? Well, I’m gonna start with the food. We’re having some folks over for a little bird. Oh, yeah, I should first say that NaNoWriMo isn’t going well (whose idea was it to have it in November??), so I’m going to console myself with food. That said, I’ll be making a 15-pounder with gravy (using golden turkey stock made from scratch- look for it on Epicurious), sweet potatoes, Sausage/Cranberry/Cornbread dressing (yeah, ya can’t call it stuffing if it’s not seeing the inside of a bird), and pumpkin pie with Straus Family Farm whipped cream. Oh, and can’t forget Cranberry Jezebel, a recipe from Cooking Light magazine circa Nov/Dec 1994. It contains fresh cranberries, brown and white sugar, horseradish and Dijon mustard. And does it make those sandwiches zing! Friends are bringing a bacon/brussel sprouts dish, mashed potatoes made with smoked paprika, kale salad, and chocolate and apple pies. Oh, and persimmon-chocolate chip bread. Hmmm, did I forget anything? A little pinot noir, a little champagne, a little of this, a little of that. I’m hungry. Gotta finish this post. Continue reading →

21 Comments

Filed under Howling at the moon

Tagged as Anne of Green Gables, Dan Chaon, Hunger Games, padron peppers!!, Potato chips, Thanksgiving, The Age of Miracles, The Tender Bar, Veronica Roth

by Wes Pierce | November 21, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Every Story Needs a Villain

It’s an old saying: Every story needs a villain. But if you are a parent to a newly minted child, or even a not so newly minted one, then you are probably aware of the work of the Japanese filmmaker and illustrator Hayao Miyazaki.

The Man Himself

And one of the more striking aspects of Miyazaki’s work is the (almost) complete absence of villains in his movies. The characters in his films come into violent conflict with one another and (frequently) with their natural environment; but regardless of the depth or violence of the conflict — and it is often visceral and intense — within the story, what is clear by movie’s end is that, though it might have seemed otherwise at the start, there are no clear-cut villains here. Why?

Because everybody has their reasons.

Even characters that lie, cheat, steal — even kill wantonly — by movie’s end will have been shown to be acting for reasons that make sense to them, and for that reason alone are in a way justified in their actions. And the final justification for any, and all, of these character’s actions seems to be that our environment, both natural and social, requires balance in order to operate properly.

An attempt by the end of each story to strike balance, both between the human characters, and between humanity and the natural world, seems to be a hallmark of all Miyazaki’s films.

The only obvious villain that comes to mind in the entire film oeuvre is the murderously efficient government operative Colonel Muska, from the film ‘Castle in the Sky,’ who by movie’s end — and quite unusual for any Miyazaki movie — is destroyed, killed off by his own plans. And what makes Muska so different from most characters in the filmmaker’s catalogue is that he openly works to pursue his own selfish goals of power and dominance at the expense of family and clan interests. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Craft

Tagged as Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese manga, negative capability, Shakespeare

by Laurel Leigh | November 14, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Can A Colonoscopy Make You a Better Writer?

We’ll try anything, won’t we?

Climb mountains, light candles, drink tea, drink beer, light candles, smoke dope, give up sex (now that last one’s just dumb).

It’s important to take advantage of any personal circumstance. Your best friend’s husband is having an affair with his ophthalmologist—“OMG, that animal! How could he do that? There, there, let me get you a nice cup of tea and a tissue and you sit right here and let it all out so I can take notes for a scene I’ll write later.”

When the celebrated writer Dagoberto Gilb suffered a stroke, he started writing about it, literally before he regained use of his right hand. The story “Please, Thank you” first was published in Harper’s and then in his latest collection Before the End, After the Beginning. It opens with him regaining consciousness in the hospital and includes a bit where he explains about typing entirely left-handed and how that affects his writing. The story is amazing and powerful and makes me cry when I read it. He’s such a show off.

Nonetheless, newly fifty years old, proudly joining the ranks of the middle-aged, I’m ready for my seminal-sparking physical and personal challenge. What I get is a colonoscopy screening.

I go to a dinner gathering where everyone at the table has already had a colonoscopy. I can’t even have an original disease. I don’t think that’s very fair. Do you think that’s fair? Continue reading →

16 Comments

Filed under Howling at the moon

Tagged as colonoscopy, Dagoberto Gilb, hunger, stroke

by Jilanne Hoffmann | November 7, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Notes From Squaw Valley Writers Workshop – Day 1

View of Lake Tahoe from Squaw Valley in Winter

As promised, I’m sharing a few notes from this summer’s Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under Craft

Tagged as craft, fiction, Lynn Freed, novel, Peter Steinberg, Sands Hall, Squaw Valley, Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, writers workshop, writing, writing advice, writing workshop

by Dogpatch Writers Collective | October 31, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Listening Hard: The Puzzle of the Writing Workshop

~ Guest post by Wendy Scheir ~

The greatest analyst in the world can live his own life only like an ordinary blind and driven human being.

– In the Freud Archives, Janet Malcolm

NYU Film School, circa 1987.

We blink in the dim light of the auditorium, dazed and subdued by the atrocious rough-cut just screened by a fellow student. We are sleep-deprived, beset by a feeling of unreality induced by months working on each other’s insular, chaotic film sets, chain smoking, downing Oreos for dinner, hunching over editing tables. Now we’re showing rough-cuts, itching to get done and out onto the festival circuit—eagerly awaiting our sparkling lives to begin.

The student, Steve (I’ll call him Steve), the one responsible for this mess of a movie, stands up front, face grim and ghostly, peering out at us, his critics.

We’re fidgeting, trying to think up what to say. Someone coughs. Someone fails to stifle a snicker. Finally, a voice rises from front row center.

“Don’t cut a frame.”

The voice belongs to our leader, head of the graduate film school. His words are incisive, his pacing deliberate, his tone soaked in a cocktail of boredom, sarcasm, and the purest disregard. Dick—his name is Dick (really)—says no more.

Steve looks like he’s been punched in the gut. I mean he visibly recoils. His lips quiver. These words, this feeling, will sometimes float to mind even years later, after he has groped his way to a fulfilling career in some distant field.

***

It’s thirty years later, now, and we’re in a thoughtful, sophisticated writing workshop where critiques come in forms more muted, with less intention to do harm. But they can cut as deep.

What to do with these comments?

Let me pause a moment to say that workshops can be wonderful. They can support, nurture, inspire. They can help a writer find her voice. They can furnish insight into the craft of writing and bring kindred souls together.

But even the most generous and intelligent of commentaries may be unconsciously laced with the residue of hidden anxieties, skewed by distraction, pride, envy, disappointment, confusion, self-doubt, even by fear. Very often comments packaged in one form actually mask something else entirely.

Critiques and Critics come in many guises. Here’s a sampling of a few I’ve encountered:

The Befuddled Psychologist

is fascinated but wants to know more. “I wanted to know more about the grandmother!” she cries. Plunge in, she urges, probe deeper. Uncover the motivation, give back story, furnish flashbacks from a traumatic childhood. Above all: Explain! Explain! Explain!

The Stereotypist

believes there’s only one way a person would possibly act. “A mother would never let a swimming teacher push her child into the deep end,” contends this critic. A fireman would never turn and run from a fire. A farmer would never get attached to his cattle. It would just never happen. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Craft

Tagged as criticism, Film School, humor, NYU, NYU film school, writing critique, Writing Groups, Writing Workshops

by Laurel Leigh | October 24, 2013 · 5:00 pm

The Back(hoe) Story

You will write a story.

The character will have some really physical job—banging nails or pouring concrete.

Driving a backhoe. For weeks, all you will see are backhoes.

You will ask your writing mates to read the story. They are seasoned writers and editors, familiar with your work, and you trust them to give you great input.

Meanwhile, you will sell the story to a lit magazine. When your friends show up with pages of notes, you will say, “Thanks, but I already sold that story. Would you like a beer?”

Beer, because the character in the story you just sold drinks beer after he punches out. And because you owe your friends several beers for screwing them over, even if not on purpose.

They will drink all of your beer and also have their sweet revenge.

Because no short story is perfect (unless Dagoberto Gilb wrote it).

Your friends will drink your beer and eat the kiss-up pizza you got for them, while they tactfully point out all the things that are still wrong with your story that’s going to get published.

You will go to bed but not sleep a wink over that tired phrase you used in the third paragraph. You’ll get up and write a long e-mail to the magazine editor asking if you can change a line or two, and how about that part where instead of going to the library the character goes to see the Dakota who runs the junkyard? What if tension isn’t building quickly enough in the front of the story, so can you cut some lines to get to the dramatics quicker? And the epiphany is implied but not obvious. Is that okay or should you add a line at the end to clarify?

You will not send the e-mail for fear that the editor will agree to the point of changing her mind about publishing the story.

You will instead e-mail your friends and apologize profusely for not waiting to receive their advice before sending off your story. Your flawed little story.

Your friends will forgive you, because they are classy and wonderful and truly your friends.

You will feel alternately joyful and embarrassed that your flawed little story will soon be in print.

You will vow to never, ever make that mistake again or to treat your friends so poorly.

And you will keep writing, because that is all you know to do, and now all you see are girls with suitcases.

16 Comments

Filed under Notes from the coffee shop

Tagged as Backhoe, Dagoberto Gilb, Milwaukee, Writing Groups

by Wes Pierce | October 17, 2013 · 5:00 pm

A View From the Inside

Click on the following…

…to discover either an essential tool for any writer, or possibly one of the more damnable time-wasters yet devised.

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under You're Welcome

by Jilanne Hoffmann | October 10, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Literary vs. Genre Fiction – The Plot Thickens

Hear ye! Hear ye! The Surgeon General recommends you take a daily dose of literary fiction whether you like it or not!

“For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov,” reads the headline of an October 4, 2013 New York Times article. Scientists find literary fiction improves readers’ abilities to feel empathy, perceive social situations, and respond with higher emotional intelligence.

: Lady with a Dog and Chekhov

Apparently, “popular” fiction (implying that literary fiction isn’t popular) and “serious nonfiction” create no beneficial effect. To be fair, the article points out that “serious nonfiction” was not of the “All the President’s Men” variety but more along the lines of “How the Potato Changed the World.”

My thoughts? Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Craft, Howling at the moon

Tagged as Andrew Pyper, brain studies, creative writing, emotional inteligence, Genre fiction, James Joyce, Literary fiction, New York Times, social intelligence, writing

by Selah J Tay-Song | October 3, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Use the Ancient Art of Storytelling to Write Your Next Novel

~ Guest post by Selah J Tay-Song, author of Dream of a Vast Blue Cavern, Book 1 of the Dreams of QaiMaj series ~

Greetings Dogpatch Writers Collective! Thanks so much for the honor of being invited to blog with you. Woof!

On my own blog, I usually ramble along about whatever I’m thinking about at the moment, be it writing, insomnia, or cute cat videos. (You didn’t hear that, doggies). I thought for such a sophisticated pack as Dogpatch I should post something writing-related with a potential craft outcome for the reader.

Okay, you got me, I didn’t come up with that one on my own. This dog park has some leash-laws. No cute cat video reviews. Yip!

So I thought I’d share an epiphany I had this year that had a profound impact on how I write (writing-related, check!), and could just change how you write, too (potential craft outcome, check!).

I’ve been working on novel-length manuscripts since I was fourteen, and all this time I’ve been struggling with the question of how to manage such a sheer volume of words. I write long-winded fantasy epics that tend to explode from one book into five, so for me that’s a lot of words.

Here’s how my writing process has typically worked:

1. Get an idea for story

2. Start drafting from idea

3. Run out of ideas, attempt to outline the rest of the story

4. Draft a novel which in no way resembles said outline

5. Stare in horror at 150K word mess on paper. Continue reading →