For Writers (A Grab Bag)

 Read the Winners of American Short Fiction’s 2025 Insider Prize (Literary Hub)

9 Podcasts That Welcome You Into the “Literary World”  (Electric Literature)

Screwing up your endings?

 Mistakes made on page one:

 I do not know who Sarah Perry is, but she discusses her writing here:

A quick Google search found Sarah Perry's website, and that gave me her bio:

SARAH PERRY (she/they) is a memoirist and essayist who writes about love, food culture, body image, trauma, gender-based violence, queerness, and the power dynamics that influence those concerns. She is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; and Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover, a memoir in 100 short essays that came out in February 2025 from Mariner/HarperCollins.  

My takeaways were two - that writing is a craft, and we need to work at it; and technique is a collection of tools.

Subplots -  How to Write Better Subplots - is a lot shorter than reading Shakespeare, the king of subplots.

Southern Literature documentary | 1963–1999. 

Let me say that this Yankee likes Southern writers. Just as about as much as I dislike the South. I do not know if there is a connection, or if it is a connection I do not want to acknowledge. I have been attached to, intimidated by, inspired by William Faulkner since I was 18-years old. Tennessee Williams was another Southern writer I knew of when I was younger. Thomas Wolfe overwhelmed me in my mid-twenties. Then I quit reading. That was what prison and your tax dollars let me do: read. I finally got acquainted with Eudora Welty, William Styron, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor. Following the cast of the documentary, I also read Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison.

What I found in Faulkner was history. That seems to play through the genre. Of course, that history is how the South deals with the Civil War and its aftermath. In that, there is a thing I saw shared with the Midwest. Another was the religious aspect - rampant Protestantism (excluding O'Connor, of course). What I did not see in my Midwest was its history was the effects of capitalism and of winning the Civil War. What I resent is the overshadowing of the Midwest writers and writing - we are the region that gave the country four Nobel winners (Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Saul Bellow, and Toni Morrison). However, The Southerners took their demoralization and turned it into art while the Midwesterners, more generally, turned it into sentimentality. One takeaway from the documentary I want to mention before ending this paragraph; the South seems to have been as accepting of people taking up writing in the same way they accepted musicians; neither was a notable feature in Midwestern culture (we would point out the need for a job first).
 A beat sheet for short stories:

 Okay, if writers are supposed to be reading, and if I am going to stand up for my idea that American writers need to read foreign writers, then I need to post this video here. The most dangerous novel of all time? I cannot think of another novel quite as gruesome in its imagery and imagery that is put in service of its story. Perhaps, the Great American novel needs more metaphor and less realism?

Testing George Saunders' Universal Rules for Stories is a reason I rewrote the end of "Road Tripping" last night after taking a bath in the White River. It is one I am keeping around, it may be the sort of thing that will improve my short story writing.

Another item that YouTube's algorithm turned up for me is I'm an Editor. Here’s What I HONESTLY Think About Your Manuscripts. This one, though, I approached with trepidation. The title given it left me expecting nonsense. Um, whoever posted this video with this title did a disservice to the video. What is actually presented is far more interesting than the clickbait worthy headline. It is also more useful - at least, for me - than expected. What we get is an editor going over actual manuscripts. Yes, the manuscripts are not within a genre I would write in, and maybe not you, either, but listen to the advice given. She has me already understanding better what I need to do - and what I might actually be doing right. 

 Write Conscious has another overheated critique of Stephen King's On Writing. Larry Sweazy recommended the book to me around the turn of the century; of course, I do not read it until I was in prison. As I recall, the memoir section was skimmed (if not skipped over), and the advice seemed sound, but what I thought made the book for me was King including his revising of a story. When young, I thought the first draft could be the only version - the honesty in its immediacy being forefront in my mind. I did not know that the real work is in its revision. Revising possesses its own honesty; maybe its true artistic honesty. Take it on your terms.

 Anthony Burgess interviewed gives me a wholly new view of the man. Working class background with an educated voice; a bit of dissonance. Some talking about writing, some about his novels; some about his life. From 1989, he was closing in on his end. 

 

 sch 10/17