More on Stephen Elliott and Discoveries in Writing

Speaking of Stephen Elliott—as I was yesterday, getting ramped up for his DC reading on November 20—Maud Newton’s blog featured an interesting interview with Elliott. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here are a few tidbits I found especially interesting:

“But when I started writing The Adderall Diaries I had no idea the book would have anything to do with my relationship with my father. I think you do come to conclusions if you’re honestly exploring your motivations, but they’re not the ones you think….So yes, that’s the wonderful thing about writing (because it isn’t the money), that you achieve moments of insight and you realize things that are important, that you might not have known were important to you and who you are.”

AND

“People say you can write about them. They encourage you to be honest, and what they mean is you can write about their good side and their bad side, but not about a side they didn’t know they had. People don’t see us as we see ourselves. I think Janet Malcolm put it best, that being written about is like failing a test you didn’t know you were taking.”

Read the rest here…and come to the reading on November 20!

Play Scrabble with the "Word Freak" Himself

This event that combines Scrabble and books was tucked away in the recent Politics and Prose bookstore newsletter:

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT
Saturday, November 14, 8 p.m.
We will host a Scrabble tournament led by Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak. Come early and enter the drawing for a chance to play Stefan one-on-one, get a signed book, and learn from D.C.’s resident Scrabble expert. Email Conor Moran for more information.

I’m not much of a player, but I know you Scrabble fiends are out there!

Thanksgiving Stuffing Follow-Up

I posted my favorite Thanksgiving stuffing recipe last week, noting that the original recipe called for sausage that I omitted. I’ve had a few questions about that missing sausage, so if you’re interested in the sausage (and, honestly, when has sausage ever made anything worse?), the recipe calls for “3/4 lb bulk pork sausage” that you brown in a skillet. Remove it from the pan—leaving the fat—and proceed with cooking the onions, etc. in that same skillet. Add the sausage to the stuffing at the end, when you combine the cornbread and scallion with the onion mixture.

Stephen Elliott to Read on November 20

Writer Paula Whyman sends along this message:

“After reading an advance copy of Stephen Elliott’s new memoir, The Adderall Diaries, I offered to organize a local reading/discussion for the author. It’s a raw and edgy book, a combination true crime story and memoir about Elliott’s troubled relationship with his father. The author’s touring around the country, primarily on his own dime, to promote the book. It’s received praise from numerous quarters, including Kirkus, Vanity Fair, and Time Out. Many of you may be more familiar with his novel, Happy Baby, which also received wide acclaim, and was selected as a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lion award.”

Here are the details of the reading. I’ll be there for sure; Happy Baby is one of my favorite books of linked stories…and Teaism makes great oatmeal cookies!

Stephen Elliott: Featuring a talk by the author and readings from his highly praised new memoir THE ADDERALL DIARIES: a Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder.

Friday, November 20, 2009
Program: 7:00-9:00 p.m., (please arrive at 6:30 p.m. to place food and beverage orders)

TEAISM Penn Quarter
400 Eighth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20004
(202) 638-6010
RSVP to: rsvp@aiwriters.org or paula@paulawhyman.com.
Co-sponsored by American Independent Writers (AIW)

In the spring of 2007, a brilliant and well-known computer programmer named Hans Reiser stands accused of murdering his beautiful, estranged wife, Nina. Despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, he proclaims his innocence, and the body is yet to be found. The case takes an unusual twist when Nina’s former lover, and Hans’ former best friend, Sean Sturgeon, confesses to eight unrelated murders that no one has ever heard of.

When a reporter contacts Stephen Elliott about Sturgeon—whose path he has crossed in San Francisco’s underground S&M scene—Elliott is paralyzed by writer’s block, in the thrall of Adderall dependency, and despondent over his inability to maintain a stable romantic relationship. The reporter’s questions spur Elliott to rethink Sturgeon, and to wonder exactly what kind of person confesses to murders he likely did not commit? Perhaps a man like Elliott’s own father.

So begins a brave and riveting journey through a neon landscape of false confessions, self-medication, and torturous sex. Set against the backdrop of a nation at war, in the declining years of the Silicon Valley tech boom and the dawn of Paris Hilton’s celebrity, The Adderall Diaries is at once a gripping account of a murder trial and a scorching investigation of self. Tough, tender, and unflinchingly honest, it is a breakout book by one of the most daring writers of his generation.

“Elliot may be writing under the influence, but it’s the influence of genius,” Vanity Fair

“A refined, beautiful work of art,” Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Harrowing, riveting,” Amy Tan

Stephen Elliott is the author of seven books including The Adderall Diaries (September 2009) and Happy Baby, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lion Award as well as a best book of 2004 in Salon.com, Newsday, Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice. In addition to writing fiction he frequently writes on politics. In 2004 he wrote Looking Forward To It, about the quest for the Democratic Presidential nomination. He is the editor of The Rumpus.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

There is no charge for this event, but you are responsible for your food and beverage purchases.
RSVP to: rsvp@aiwriters.org or paula@paulawhyman.com.

Work in Progress: Enduring, Prevailing

Writing isn’t hard like digging ditches (or raking leaves!) is hard, but it most definitely can be hard on the spirit sometimes. It’s bad when the words aren’t coming, but it’s a different, perhaps deeper and harder kind of bad you’re feeling that the world doesn’t care* about all your work: No one understands. No one believes. Geez, no one even reads anymore!

What’s a writer to do during those rough patches?

I turn to other writers and books. What wisdom might I find there? There’s Rilke reminding me that “patience is everything,” and there’s the crazy-funny, crazy-smart Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird reminding me that shitty first drafts are okay, and there’s the master, John Gardner, who combines inspiration with practical advice (the chapter in The Art of Fiction about plotting is superb), and there are any number of books on my “writing book shelf” that have dog-eared pages and underlined sentences that will speak to me.

But, honestly, the best antidote for this sort of deep-dark darkness is Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel award ceremony. I may have posted it before, but it’s time to look at it again. Read it out loud, if you have to. I defy any writer not to feel stirred by these words.


December 10, 1950: William Faulkner


“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

“He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

"Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”


Go forth and write!


*Sad reality: Actually, the world doesn’t care. The trick, always, is to find ways to ignore this fact.

Late Bloomers

The Glimmer Train newsletter includes a nice piece by Barb Johnson called “On Getting a Late Start,” for late bloomers everywhere.

Enticing excerpt:

“At the University of New Orleans, I was not the oldest person in the program. Nor the most or least talented person. Nor the only person with a sense of being a late bloomer. Writing is a great equalizer. Writing classes are not easier because you're younger or older. We all make the same beginner's mistakes. One day, over beers at our neighborhood bar, a couple of classmates and I talked about how we felt like late bloomers. They were in their early thirties at the time, and I was almost fifty. Thirty-three seemed young to me, but I could remember being that age and thinking I was on the downward slope. Then others—some in their twenties and some in their sixties—told me they had this late-blooming feeling, and I came to realize that the feeling isn't about age so much as it is about finally paying attention to what it is you really want in life.”

Read the whole piece here.

Early Bloomers

Here are some contests for college undergrads and high school students…the previous post is about how it’s never too late to get started, and it’s also never too early, either!

For college undergraduates:

Spires Intercollegiate Arts & Literary Magazine at Washington University in St. Louis is now accepting submissions of poetry, prose, and artwork for the Fall 2009 issue! We've been in print since 1995, putting out a magazine every semester, and we're proud of what we do, but we couldn't function if it weren't for the talent and work of creative students here and abroad.

Should you like to heed our call and submit, please send your writing in Word document form or your artwork as .tif images in email attachments to:
spiresmagazine@gmail.com
Subject: Fall 2009 Submission.
Message body: Name, year, school.

The deadline for submissions is FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6th.

The only limits on submissions are that prose may be no longer than 15 pages double spaced, and we only accept submissions from undergraduate students.

**********

For high school students:

Sandra Caron Young Adult Poetry and the Rita Williams Young Adult Prose Prize are for writers in grades 9-12 or equivalent age thereof.

Up to three poems for Poetry category and up to 3,000 words for Prose. Cash Prizes.

Deadline November 30, 2009.

Rules: www.SoulMakingContest.us