rewrite
Considering I’ve got a new daughter and a lot of other things to do, I think it’s a nice accomplishment that I finished a long draft of “Love and Gore in the Tea Party Mob.” Not quite so nice is that it didn’t work. I liked some of the pieces but as a whole it didn’t come together. I think it was in some ways too timid but in other ways insincere. I didn’t want to write a black and white sort of morality tale. On the other hand, trying not to do this left it muddy and, like I say, not as honest as it could be. There’s a framing story that wraps around the whole piece: an uninvited guest shows up at a party and the party ends in violence. But I’m not sure if it’s the key to the story or completely unnecessary. Most of the action takes place chronologically before that. I guess I’ll work just a little bit more on it, then put it aside for a while.
The “Unwholesome” Side of MFA Programs | Lionel Shriver | Big Think
I was really interested to hear what Lionel Shriver has to say about MFAs in Creative Writing. I’ve always been torn on the topic. I applied right out of college to a number of schools and didn’t get into any of them and I’ve never been sure if it was a bad break or if I got really lucky.
jabberwocky
Reading back through LAGIITPM, I came across this sentence, “Hot, tired and slightly sticky, they rested their homemade protest signs against their legs, crow and along the walls.”
Crow?
love & gore in the tea party mob
That’s its title. No longer “Fanged Frog.” I still like that but it just doesn’t mean anything. A funny note. I had written this sentence–”Callie loved him so much it nearly hurt on the inside.”–before Zoe was born. It was a nice try but tonight, reviewing it, I deleted the word “nearly.”
renamed
To this end, I’ve come up with permanent names for the misnamed characters in “Fanged Frog.” The dangerous boy I had named after one of my little-known Facebook friends, I’ve renamed “Ryan Fitzhugh.” I like the subtle reference to Confederate history.
The other extremely dangerous character I had been calling Caravaggio (like the great artist) which didn’t fit at all. (“When he frowned, you could see the sharp tips of his teeth.”) I’ve renamed him Jake Trout, a name I just love for its sharp punchy sound.
(A Google search reveals there’s a musician named Jake Trout…no relation.)
Placeholders
You can’t go too long with placeholder names. A professor I’d had had tried to warn me about this. But if you don’t come up with the real name soon enough, the fake one becomes real. This might be true of everything.
Do MFA Programs Hurt Poetry?
On one of my favorite sites, bigthink.com, Edward Hirsch discusses what seems to have been asked a lot in very places lately, “Do MFA Programs Hurt Poetry?” Interestingly his answer reflects on the number of poets and the effect on the culture as a whole. He doesn’t interpret the question the way I would which would be something along the lines of “What do MFA programs mean for the quality of the poetry?” I take it he wouldn’t agree with this:
The best thing that could happen to poetry is to drive it out of the universities with burning pitch forks. Starve the lavish grants. Strangle them all in a barrel of water. Cast them out. The current culture, in which poetry is written for and supported by poets has created a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that resists innovation. When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader public, then we may begin to see some great poetry again – the greatness that is the collaboration between audience and artist.
Or the quote from John Barr immediately following:
[Contemporary poets] operate on a network of academic postings and prizes that reinforce the status quo.
I do think there’s a sameness to most of what you find in literary magazines. That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of great writers with MFAs and in MFA programs, but for me–I always throw my lot in with the pitchforks.
the ending
I’m 15 pages into the latest draft of “Fanged Frog.” (I’ve written over 30 all told.) I know some awful bit of violence takes place at the story’s chronological end. I’m just not sure that it will be a part of the story. I’m hoping the right ending reveals itself: maybe the ending in gory detail, maybe only the knowledge that it is violent in the end.
six words from me
My six word memoir is included in It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure
Then NPR’s Talk of the Nation highlighted my quote (among others) on its website.
Dare I say…. “w00t”!
stop thinking
Start writing. My problem with this story has been over-thinking it.