Hello once again readers and welcome as I wrap up the final title from My Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fiction. As with Reading Like a Writer, I wanted to bookend last year’s list with another tome on writing. I decided on Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which had been recommended to me by a few people. The book itself was decent, but had some glaring issues I couldn’t overlook. Lamott is much less funny on the page than she seems to think she is, and I found myself stunned that her editor didn’t try to correct this irregularity. Despite this there were a few portions that did make me laugh, and there are many excellent ideas through the entire book. I want to turn to some of the main lessons I took away from this work:
While there are many excellent pieces of advice throughout this work, I am not going to give it my full recommendation to other writers out there. Lamott really could have used a stronger editor as the book weaves in and out of her rambling considerations of her own talent, her internal feelings, and how nerve-wracking the writer’s life can become. While I don’t doubt many of us have experienced these things, it’s equally if not important to find ways to break through the self-doubt. All of this being said, there is a reason why this book has been a massive bestseller for years and is routinely included among lists of “books on writing.” There is absolutely a lot to gain from reading it, so I certainly would say take a look if you enjoy her previous writing (and I must confess this is the first book of hers I’ve ever read). This wraps up my first year experiment in reading nothing but fiction (and two books on process). Up next, I begin my foray into Another Year of Fiction. I have decided my first book will be Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me. Stay tuned for an essay on that book in the coming weeks, and as always thanks for reading!
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Hello out there readers, and thanks for sticking with me as I wrap-up the final few books of My Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fiction. The last fiction work on my list was the epic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. While I gained some major writing lessons from this epic volume, I wanted to first state emphatically that this was the best Science Fiction book I have ever read. Gibson’s monumental work was a phenomenal mix of futuristic vision and cyber-dread. The fact that he could so clearly see where we were headed as a species, even with the technology available in the mid-Eighties, is astronomical and a great example of how to use the genre to speak about the world. To that end, let’s delve into two important writing lessons I gained from this book.
You will probably notice that I haven’t given much away in terms of the plot of this novel. That’s because I hope those of you out there interested in the genre will give this one a read. It’s that essential of a book, and even if you’re not into Sci Fi I would highly recommend this book as it has much to teach about the nature of writing, not only about the future but of who or what might exist in that future. And with that, there’s just one more book to go from my previous list: Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont’s well-regarded work on writing fiction. I hope to post an essay on it by the end of this month, and then it’s onto Another Year of Fiction (AYOF?!). Stay tuned, and thanks for reading! Hello out there, readers. Happy 2017, and welcome to our Brave New World!
As you are aware, most of my writing for this blog last year concerned a year-long experiment I conducted reading only fictional works, then crafting essays about the writing lessons that I drew from each book. While I learned a ton from this experiment, I also learned about my own ability to set expectations as a reader and a writer. I want to delve quickly into the positive and negative aspects of this experiment, and then outline my plans for Another Year of Fiction (AYOF?!). In terms of writing lessons, without a doubt I encountered more of those last year than any other of my career. Hemingway taught me how to keep things simple; Oscar Wilde showed me how to use a novel to speak truth about your society; and Vonnegut basically schooled me in almost every way possible for a master author. Even the books I wasn’t sure I would enjoy taught me a lot about keeping reader interest. I also read a phenomenal book about the practice and nature of reading, which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in writing. The biggest lesson learned for me in 2016 was: read fiction. There is simply no better path to understanding the work of others and how it might contribute to your own. The writer Austin Kleon has described the importance of how to “steal like an artist,” and the only way to accomplish this is to read all kinds of stuff, then artfully repurpose what you like about them for your own work. As a voracious consumer of all things nonfiction for years leading up to this experiment, I can make this conclusion with full confidence. Despite my wife’s protestations, I will get back to reading nonfiction at some point in my life (I’m going to need it for novel #4, for one reason). But that is not going to be 2017, as I plan on extending this experiment for at least one more year. Which leads me to what I didn’t get quite right about this experiment. I’d have to say the biggest takeaway was: don’t over-promise and then under-deliver. I posted two lists of books to read during the year, but did not make it through the second half by the end of the year. Chiefly this was due to the nature of the final book I read and my underestimating of the slog it took me to finish it. But this also gave me a good idea of how long it really will take me to accomplish a task like this, and of how much I can read in a given year. Obviously people have been able to cram in many more works in a given year, and I can always do better. But for now, I’m not going to put out an “official” list of my upcoming fiction titles. Rather, I’m going to take it one book at a time and see how many I can complete in a year. Last year I was able to get through eleven books. Let’s see how many I can get through this year. And for those of you who have given me recommendations: they are still on my list, I just can’t promise I will get to all of them in 2017. Given how much I have learned already, I have a feeling I may be doing a variation of this exercise for the conceivable future... To that end, I plan blasting through both Neuromancer and Bird by Bird and writing essays on each (hopefully) within a month. Gibson’s epic cyberpunk novel is already blowing me away in countless ways, and I can’t wait to see how Anne Lamont’s recommendations stack up next to Francine Prose. After that, I’ll announce the first “official” title for AYOF 2017! Thanks to all of you who read and commented on my essays last year. I hope my advice has been helpful for those of you who want to give this writing thing a go in your own lives. Let’s enjoy another year of fiction together. It is time once again for what will be the final update in my Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fiction. Those of you keeping score at home will recall I initially promised to read another two books this year. While I will be getting to those next year, I’ll also have more on the major lessons learned from this experiment in a post re-launching this experiment in January.
After taking on Faulkner’s legendary Sound and the Fury I took a decidedly different pivot in my next selection: Exodus by Leon Uris. Published in 1958, it is an epic novel about the creation of the state of Israel after World War II. Uris traveled thousands of miles throughout the Middle East interviewing people and researching places for the book, and this imbues it with a historical sense that engaged me through nearly 600 pages. There are many characters and the book spans half a century, but I will admit the writing is actually quite dry and does just enough to keep the narrative flowing. Here are two lessons I drew as a writer from this monumental work:
While I’m glad Uris was able to keep my interest in the tale, I would be hard-pressed to recommend this book to a contemporary audience. As I’ve already stated, the writing just isn’t that great, and Uris presents the story of the Jewish people in an extremely one-sided way. As just one glaring example, the Arab people making up the states surrounding Palestine are almost uniformly presented in a harsh light, being described as backward and even “dirty” people who only reached salvation through the Jewish farming methods being used in the deserts. While things like this absolutely did happen, anyone who studies history as I have ought to know that things are never as simple as people would like them to be. Especially given the context of recent events transpiring between the US and Israel, it is important to note that this is just one (fictional) version of events, and while the historical narrative is quite engaging, anyone who wishes to truly understand the history of this part of the world would do better starting with some non-fiction sources. So that’s it for my first experimental year of fiction! I’ll be back next year with a post running down everything I have gained from this experience. But for now I’ll say this year was incredibly revelatory for me. I gained some new favorite books and learned a ton from the masters of the written word that have gone before me. I hope I was able to distill some of this into useable knowledge for other writers out there. I would also highly recommend this type of experiment for anyone who wishes to hone their craft. Thanks to everyone who read my posts in this experiment throughout the year, and I’ll see you on the other side of 2017. I want to write today about an important facet of the writer’s life: being alone with your thoughts enough to compose something on the page. While some of you out there may be lucky enough to write by yourself or in a separate room, odds are most people have to deal with this situation simply by dint of having a relationship with another human being.
My wife and I lived in a very cramped apartment for the first five years of our marriage. This led to numerous issues regarding space, and while a lot of it got rectified when we moved a bigger place last year, we still could not avoid the fact that we are occupying much of the same area together, almost all of the time. How can we as writers learn to deal with such a situation? How can we with partners in our lives learn to be alone, together? First I’d like to address the simple matter of how to write even when there is somebody in the same area doing something completely different like watching television. Headphones can be invaluable to cut off the noise, and to place you in the right mindset for writing. For me that’s a heavy dose of classical and/or ambient music. But more to the point, we as writers need to find the proper mindset for working on our craft even in a fairly cramped environment. My wife has her own concept of “alone time,” which she needs just as much as me. Even in a one-bedroom apartment we find our ways of separating, whether that’s moving to the bedroom to read or putting on my headphones and jamming out on a story. While we do have to occupy the same space, we manage to live in our own worlds at certain times. I think this is an important concept for anyone who lives in close quarters with another human being: make sure they too have the space they need from you, when they need it. This can be tough to understand and acknowledge, but believe me, if you can find an arrangement that works out for the both of you, it will do wonders for the entire relationship. But I want to go deeper than that. What does it truly mean to be alone, together? We as writers are basically unable to do our jobs unless we can be solitary and cultivate our thoughts. How is this possible in our world full of distraction and people? Those who work with me have probably come to know me by turns inherently taciturn and, as I’ve been described by too many people to count, “quiet.” This was especially apparent in my previous job, in which personal connections broke down and I became utterly consumed with keeping to myself. While this led to some humorous anecdotes in my current manuscript concerning neurotic behaviour in the white-collar workplace, it did not lead to me connecting very well with my co-workers. I find myself currently employed in a bookstore, surrounded by some of my favorite works but also by people who do a lot more thinking before they speak (not a huge concern of the office-dweller, in general terms). And yet even here I find myself not speaking much more, often because I have a lot of ponderous thoughts about my books going on in my brain. While part of me keeps trying to make myself interact more with my fellow booksellers, many of whom are very deep people with interesting stories to tell, I must remind myself that the work is residing up there in my cranium, and to make sure I allow myself the time needed to grapple with it. Those of us who deign to use the written word to tell a story need not be so afraid of living a withdrawn life. I cannot stress enough how important it is to retain the singular lifestyle required of the writer in various circumstances. I am lucky enough to have a job in which that isn’t too difficult, but I would highly recommend this to any aspiring writer: find ways to keep within yourself and your thoughts as much as you can. That’s not to say you should be inwardly focused all the time, but you will never reach your full potential as a writer unless you can be alone with your thoughts. Whether that’s being home alone, together with your significant other or alone among others in your workplace, it’s imperative to cultivate that mindset as often as you can stand it. On this I can only offer my considerations as I ponder the direction of my writing career. While the first draft of my third novel resides on my hard drive, I have for the past few years been chewing over the direction of my fourth one, and how it can reflect reality. This began as the seed of an idea as I was waiting for the bus some afternoons after the office job, and continued into a bigger notion the more I was able to contemplate it, either when others were present or own my own. The important thing to note here is that I would not have been able to get this far without being able to honestly and deeply appraise my own thoughts. Make sure you are giving yourself the same amount of space. This ties in with what I hope will be my final essay on the writing process this year, which is a doozy: What exactly is a writer for? That is, what are we as purveyors of the written word attempting to do with our careers? I’ll be the first to admit I have expressed utter cluelessness on this score for a long time, but as this year has progressed I have come as close to an answer to that question as I’ve gotten yet. I hope to get that essay out of my brain before this horrendous year has passed. And of course, stay tuned to this space for the final few updates in my year-long experiment in reading fiction, the incredible results of which have guaranteed its continuation into the next year (more on that next month). Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to add your own reactions to these ideas in the comments. Happy holidays, everyone! It’s time once again for another update in my Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fictionally. The previous book covered in this series was Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. I decided to pivot in another direction with my next selection: the great William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Most of you are probably aware of this incredibly difficult novel’s literary significance in the American landscape; as another author I had embarrassingly managed not to read until now I felt it was my duty to take on what is considered his greatest achievement.
And what an achievement! While this book was staggeringly obtuse to puzzle through at times (especially the first two sections) it was without a doubt one of the greatest books I have ever read and clearly established Faulkner’s legacy alongside other great American writers such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I’m not going to spend much time on the plot of the novel, parts of which if I’m being honest flew way over my head and will require a second, more in-depth read at some later part of my life. It centers around a traditional southern family during the first decades of the 20th century and how each member copes with their siblings’ perceived faults and the tarnished reputation the (once respectable) Compson name. What I really want to do is draw out some of the massive literary lessons that can be interpreted from this work. More so than any other book I’ve included on this list, however, is the fact that each reader can perceive their own conclusions about the characters and life itself from these pages, and so I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is looking to delve into a complete work of art. Here are some of my takeaways:
To be honest, these three lessons are just barely scratching the surface of what this book can teach readers. The only way to truly understand and grapple with it is to sit down and read it, and see how it connects to your own life. I will add the caveat that Faulkner, like Twain before him, did not shy away from using the language of his day to provide realism, which sadly does include a huge amount of racial animosity. Some readers may be downright turned off by how the black characters’ dialog is written in an extremely phonetic style, especially given our own present age of racial distrust. Even so, I still would recommend this book as it is an unflinching gaze into a disturbing period in our country’s history. And I cannot state enough what an incredibly rewarding experience reading this book can be for any reader. Next up I am heading in an altogether different direction, tackling a book that was first recommended to me by my father-in-law: Exodus by Leon Uris. Stay tuned for the next update in my year of fiction! It’s time once again for another update in my Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fiction. Kicking off the second-half of my year was Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and next I took on Chuck Palahniuk’s (now) famous first novel Fight Club. Much has been written about this book and its film adaptation so I’ll skip much discussion about its plot or the crazy twist at the end. First I want to hit on the two major lessons on writing I have garnered from reading this amazing book.
Overall, I found this book to be a stunning triumph, and has definitely gotten me interested in more of Palahniuk’s work. Having seen David Fincher’s decent film version in my college years (a viewing that challenged my very perceptions of storytelling back in those days), I still wish I had read the book first. I decided to break my general rule of NOT watching the movie of any of the books I read this year and sit through the Brad Pitt/Edward Norton picture again before writing this, and while Fincher does stuff on-screen that makes the novel come alive in unique ways (splicing images of Pitt’s Durden into the middle of scenes), it still pales in comparison to the raw urgency and devastating prose of the work itself. All in all, I really enjoyed this book, but am not sure I would recommend it to everyone. Just as not everyone would like to romp through a visceral, intense 700-page Stephen King novel (as I would), not everyone might enjoy reading a book about grown-up Gen X-ers creating underground clubs which then turn into a domestic terrorist organization. That being said, any writer worth their salt should be open to books not among their “wheelhouse,” so to speak, so I don’t think I am steering you wrong when I say anyone can get something out of this novel - it is that unique. Ok, looking ahead I have a few more books to tackle in the first year of this experiment, starting with Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I will also be doing a some more media and process posts in the next few months, as well as more updates on my pursuit of an agent. Thanks for reading! Short stories - what are they? I’ll admit that’s a question I still do not fully know the answer to, but I hope to have a much better perspective after this year. As I’m taking a bit of a break from working on my third novel I have decided to work on a batch of stories, some of which I hope will find publication in literary journals. As it stands right now, I should have about ten in good enough shape to send out in the next few months. But I thought a really interesting way of showing this process would be to workshop at least one of the stories through the blog on my website.
And as promised, here is part 2 of “Allison.” Allison moved in next door to me a decade ago. Her parents had the largest moving van I had ever seen in my young life. Her father poured sweat down his lanky back as he attempted to haul her great armoire up to her second-floor room. It was the same piece of furniture I would snoop through years later, looking futilely for her diary and any mention of me it might contain. My childhood had reached a dismal point by the time I watched the ancient house beside ours become populated once more. My after-school experiences involved playing football by myself in our backyard every day or remaining inside to watch Full House. This all changed after the Chalmers moved next door. The days of playing video games by myself in the basement wearing torn up old sweat pants were replaced by those of Allison rushing into the living room with a basketball, bouncing it off my stomach and screaming to come out to this great new court she had found at the back of the Danielson Woods. We did a lot of that kind of stuff together the first year, and I am eternally grateful. If not for this girl I would never have known that a bullfrog will piss in your hand if you hold it too long, if not for her I would never have gotten my stupid groove on at any high school dance I ever attended. “You looked so goofy playing a team sport back there by yourself,” Allison said, leaning on her palms and looking about ten percent guilty for what she just said. Our conversation had relapsed into reminiscence. “There weren’t many other kids in our neighborhood,” I parried. “And most of them played tackle football, which was ‘strictly prohibited.’ Remember?” I wagged my finger up and down in the air, recalling my mother’s set of rules. Allison burst out laughing again, and for a brief moment we did connect. But, it was probably more me watching her. “I have to get back,” she said, jumping up and almost pushing me off the dock playfully in the process. Perhaps something had crossed her plane of thought that she didn’t want to deal with right then. The next time I saw her she would be in the loving embrace of Jeremy. They were inseparable, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Jeremy Shepherds was a basketball stud who won the final game last year with a three-pointer at the buzzer. I didn’t like him. Walking the halls of Winterset High I would shake my head in disbelief, meandering to the other side when his clique and their letter jackets wandered through, talking about how bitchin’ last night’s party was our how fuckin’ fast they sped down that gravel road. On night out on the lake during our junior year, Allison told me she thought his whole group would be lucky to even graduate with the rest of our class. Each time I thought about that night and then saw them together, it hurt so much more. I hated the fact that I couldn’t talk to her anymore. We still hung out a few times that summer, but it was overshadowed by the “other” man lingering in the background. The ominous six-foot presence that had to call her whenever just the two of us wanted to hang out. He wasn’t right for her. I believed this to be true, and by the time August rolled around I decided to finally tell her how I felt. It’s funny how things work sometimes. Each day I found torment thinking of how she might react. On the last week before we both were to leave for college, I took her out to the lake on the hottest day of the summer. Her reaction was one of laughter: the kind she used to bark at those stupid jokes I told. Before Jeremy took her away. “Josh,” she said, pulling a strand of auburn hair from her shutting eye. “You’re kidding, right?” I felt like a sharpened spike had been pre-selected for me and shoved right through my heart. I didn’t know what to say. There she was, sitting there, the smile that once took up that gorgeous face leaving as the realization that I wasn’t kidding slowly dawned. “Josh...I...you and I...we can’t…” she was stammering now, just like she did when it cost her a speech medal six years ago in the regional final. She turned, her lengthy hair shining amid her stunning eyes. The shock of my admission had left its mark on her face. Suddenly I felt guilty for putting such a burden on my best friend. Now it was my turn to falter through the words. “I...I’m sorry, Allison. I just thought it would be better to tell you now than to regret it for the rest of my life. We’re going to be away from each other for four years, at least. I didn’t have a choice.” It was the wrong thing to say, but it sure as hell was true. I could see the sadness in her eyes. “Who says you didn’t have a choice? I could have gone our entire friendship without you saying that, you know. Jeremy and I...we’re together. You know that. And I really like him, Josh. You should respect that.” She took my hand in hers. Her beautiful face was downcast, as if she couldn’t face up to what she had to say to her best friend. “Besides, you’re better at being my friend,” she whispered through choked tears. I saw a vision of my room, Allison running and tackling me, shouting to get moving and play some dang football. The first pinpricks of tears clouded behind my brown eyes. For an awkward moment we sat there and watched the sunset, as we always had. Then I managed to say my final words to Allison Chalmers: “I understand. I’ll see ya…” I have been to college for almost a year, but I still cannot get that fucking conversation out of my head. It plagues me all the time, but mostly in my dreams. I know she was right, but part of me can’t deny the feelings I had for her. The hell was I didn’t want those feelings to go away. I did meet someone: a tiny bombshell with goldenrod hair named Jamie. We met at a frat party a few months ago and hit it off. Maybe it was her thin glasses frames or my stupid jokes made more moronic with alcohol, but we got along pretty well. I kissed her two weeks after that, alone in my dorm room, and the only thing I could think about as her chapstick covered lips graced mine was how much I wished I had kissed Allison on that dock. After that it was all over. I still woke up to the fleeting images of the girl I was in love with, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror each day and realize I was someone who couldn’t get over a simple rejection. So I decided to call her. My fingers developed a nervous twitch as I pulled up her contact information on my cell phone that night. I held my breath, leaning against the cheap wooden dresser our benevolent college decided was good enough for all incoming freshmen. Jeremy Shepherds answered Allison’s phone. I let out all the air I had collected in my lungs like a steam engine. “Ward! What the hell is up, man?” I had forgotten the high school tradition of jocks addressing everyone by their last names. I managed some type of weak reply that must have sounded ridiculous, because Jeremy was laughing on the other end. “Ward, she’s not here right now. She’s getting ready for our big date, considering how far I had to drive up here to see her. Want to leave a message, or something?” I declined, saying that maybe I would get in touch with her some other time, and hung up the phone. Our big date. I slowly wafted my body down into the leather chair my roommate must have traveled back in time to pick up from 1977. I stared at the wall, thinking about Jeremey Shepherds and that stupid red Chevrolet he used to drive. I haven’t thought much about Allison since that evening. My life has begun to rescind into the kind of childhood days I had before I met her. I play a lot of video games and smoke a lot of reefer, and have more or less forgotten about class. I guess I never got over the fact that she saw less in me than I saw in her. In my dreams I still see things like the old swing set her folks bought when she was ten, how she would dare me to jump off when I reached a high enough altitude, and how I always chickened out at the last second. There is one dream I have a lot more often now. I’m sitting on the dock. Except this time Allison is not there. This time it’s only me staring across the briny deep. I can only sit there in desperation, waiting for someone to arrive whose only aspiration is a simple conversation. Then I realize she will never be there with me. I will always be alone, watching the waves. Short stories - what are they? I’ll admit that’s a question I still do not fully know the answer to, but I hope to have a much better perspective after this year. As I’m taking a bit of a break from working on my third novel I have decided to work on a batch of stories, some of which I hope will find publication in literary journals. As it stands right now, I should have about ten in good enough shape to send out in the next few months. But I thought a really interesting way of showing this process would be to workshop at least one of the stories through the blog on my website.
The story I chose for this workshop is one I crafted way back in my college days. Back when I was an aimless youth I took a class specifically on Creative Writing (those really into my work will recognize this as one of the classroom settings in Last Man on Campus). While to this day I feel I never put enough into the class, I did wind up with one story that I think could eventually stand on its own for publication. I now present part of that story to my audience, with some slight editing from its previous incarnation, in the hopes of kick-starting an interactive workshop. Without further ado, here is the first part of the short story “Allison:” I told Allison Chalmers I loved her the summer after our senior year. I told her I had loved her since the third grade, when our entire class was forced to distribute little pink paper valentines to everyone but I had saved one for her that stated: “Will you be mine?” I told her I loved her when I saw her scorching down the Winterset High asphalt track, piercing April rays of sunshine floating over her back and her competition from the surrounding schools left in the dust. I told her I had loved her since we held each other at our last prom, blue streamers hanging askew around us in the gymnasium. I told her I loved her even after Jeremy Shepherd had entered the fray. I told Allison these things the afternoon of a desperate, hot August day one week before I was to leave for the state university. My voice sounded freshman-year shaky and my body trembled as if some hidden brute within wanted to leave my presence to avoid this conversation forever. I told Allison I had loved her the entire ten years we had known each other, and that even though she had found another, I knew she belonged to me. And how did she react to this confession? This statement of trust that I conveyed to her on that scorching day at the end of summer? It wasn’t what I expected. * * * The real reason these feelings began to make their way into my heart, levelling any thoughts of friendship I ever kindled for my best friend, came the summer before we both went to college. Allison and I had a special place in Winterset that was just for us: Lake Clarmont. This summer was different because it contained the final few months we would get to spend laying out on the dock watching the boats sail over the foamy waves, birds scattering everywhere and fish fighting for their lives within the briny deep. Allison always called it the “briny deep” like she was floating on a pirate ship in the middle of the Atlantic, not sitting on the rough rocky shores of a reservoir. One night stands out in my mind, playing on repeat like a film projector gone mad. It was a week after the big graduation jamboree, and I was very glad to have the final futile exercise of high school finished. The two of us were sitting on the cement dock where the amateur fishermen of Winterset attempted to catch the big one and make the others jealous. This was how we released the pressure of having to attend school for twelve years. What amazed me that summer was how Allison and I kept each other so close even while our thoughts of college in the fall loomed overhead like a booming thunderclap. Most nights I was sure Allison would be tearing down the main drag of town instead, seeking a real man unlike my skinny-ass self, but she never did. This was why she was my best friend in that entire God forsaken town: she never wanted more of a friend than me. This was the last real night both of us had stayed out there for such a long period of time. It wasn’t long after this that Allison hooked up with Jeremy at our senior keg in the Danielson Woods. He swept her off her feet, offering more for her brilliant life than I could ever hope to give. I’ve never had a girlfriend for my entire 18 years on this planet, and no matter what anyone else tells me, it still sucks. If the subject is broached in conversation I’ll shrug my shoulders, crack my knuckles and say something nonchalant. But the truth is that I can’t get over it. Like a specter that I can only see in the mirror at night, it haunts my soul, voicing my inferiorities and how I could never hope to attain her. The same spirit was creeping around my brain’s storage area the night Allison and I sat there on the concrete, the small waves lapping up against the flat gray wall. “Why do they make little bubble caps like that?” Allison asked, the sun’s reflection in her glasses impeding any sense of what her eyes were trying to say. “Because they get so mad at each other they begin to foam up. Like rabid water.” For some reason my lame jokes always got her to laugh, and she couldn’t stop. The sound was symphonic to my ears that evening as the sun began losing its battle with the stars for the horizon. Allison was stunning there before the setting sun, now a dark red blot on the far side of the lake. Her glasses reflected light in the most peculiar ways, and were now emanating the moody spasms of lake water. At this moment some kind of starter’s gun went off in my head and I decided I had to tell her before summer’s end. It was either that or risk the ghost coming in the night and chopping off my head, ending it for all eternity. So that’s it - part 1 of the short story “Allison.” I will be posting the second half in the coming days. Until then, feel free to take a stand in the comments (or email me) regarding what you liked or did not like about the first half of this short story. I will take all comments into consideration as I revise this story and try to make it presentable for publication. Thanks for reading! It’s time once again for another update in my Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fictionally. To kick off the second-half of this experiment I began with Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer-winning 1991 novel A Thousand Acres, a rich narrative of life on the Iowa plains that takes place around the time I was born. This book hit me personally in a few ways that I will discuss later, but first I wanted to draw out the two major writing lessons I gained from this amazing novel.
I would highly recommend this novel for anyone who is looking for examples of how to write intricate descriptions and tell an amazing tale at the same time. But what really hit home for me with this book was the story. Essentially a modernization of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Smiley tells the story of a father with three daughters who decides to leave his farm to two of them, and the consequences of that weighty decision over the course of a farming season. Needless to say this does not go down easily, and causes the daughters to each remember and respond to their awful histories in various ways. This reminds me of what I also face in the future: the passing down of a stake in my own family’s farm in Iowa. Many were the months I spent working hard in the hog fields or in tractors during the harvest, and yet I must admit feeling ambivalent about the prospect of taking on that land when my parents’ generation passes. Another character named Jess returns to his family after spending years away in Canada to avoid fighting in Vietnam. When he gets back, he irritates the farmers that have been there for generation by speaking about organic farming and how much the chemicals used to kill weeds probably affected his friends’ abilities to have children. This character really resonated with me as I have struggled with these same issues. Things I took for granted as part of the family business (using Monsanto’s GMO seeds, spraying copious amounts of chemicals, etc) I now see as a principle reason for many of the food-related problems in the world. Coming to terms with this was no easier for Jess, who (*spoiler*) also does not stay to run his family’s farm. All of this being said, this book was a great start to the second-half of my fiction year. Next up I will be reading Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. And stay tuned to this space for more updates on my third novel and for some discussions on short stories and other topics. Thanks for reading! |
AuthorJohn Abraham is a published author and freelance journalist who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Mary and their cat. He is writing a speculative dystopian novel and is seeking representation and a publisher. Archives
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