Making the Book #005: A Novel in Progress, Pt. 2

In today’s Making the Book, I talk about how the writing went on the second day of my weeklong sabbatical. If you don’t see the video above, please click here to watch it on Viddler.com.

Read the full article here, and add your comments.

Making the Book #004: A Novel in Progress, Pt. 1

I’m taking a week off from my full-time job this week to work on a novel which, in a sense, I began writing 11 years ago. The video I’ve embedded above offers my take on what I hope to accomplish this week and how I got to where I am with the novel today.

Read the full article here, and add your comments.

Twittering “Two Weirdoes”

I am very busy at the day job today, but on my breaks from work I’ll be twittering the entire text of “Two Weirdoes, a Shovel, and Lots of Open Land,” which I discussed on Making the Book the other day.

The Twitter version of “Two Weirdoes” starts here.

Read the full article here, and add your comments.

Making the Book #003: Two Weirdoes, a Shovel, and Lots of Open Land (Video)

Making the Book is a Web video series where I read and discuss my written work. Each week, I look back at how the stories I’ve published came to be and offer advice based on my experience as an adjunct English instructor and a lifelong writer. This week, I’m reading and discussing “Two Weirdoes, a Shovel, and Lots of Open Land,” a short story first published in The Bradford ReView and later collected in Those Little Bastads.

“Two Weirdoes” was written as a reaction to the pretentious workshop commentary provided by a particular subset of my Introduction to Fiction class at Bradford College (circa 1996). The message of the story was “let’s all stop taking ourselves so seriously,” and, while most of that class found little humor in the jokes being made at their expense, the story went on to find an audience with people who, while they didn’t necessarily understand every in-joke, found great humor in the absurdity of a thirsty suburbanite pow-wowing with two Beckett-quoting weirdoes in the middle of an open field. They may not have known that the inscription on the story’s gun was a nod to Joyce Carol Oates, but it turned out that not knowing that didn’t matter.

If you’ve read Those Little Bastads and would like to suggest which story I discuss next, .

Read the full article here, and add your comments.

Ira Glass on Sucking as a Storyteller (Video)

I listen to the podcast version of This American Life every week (and you, if you’re a storyteller of any kind, should be listening too). So, I found it extremely comforting that the host of that show, Ira Glass, was willing to admit, in the video embedded above, that he once sucked as a storyteller, too. His advice to those of us who know that we can be good, but who feel like we are not yet there: keep at it.

Thanks to Merlin Mann at 43 Folders for linking this up.

Read the full article here, and add your comments.