Check Out the Writer's Center at the Open House

The Writer’s Center invites all to the Open House, this Saturday, January 12, 2008 from noon to 3 p.m. Meet workshop leaders, board members, staff, and other writers; join us for light refreshments, a raffle, and good conversation.

Free admission. Details here.

While at the open house check out these among the many other workshops coming up at the Center very soon!

Going to School on Great Fiction, a workshop with Robert Bausch, meets on Monday evenings, 7 to 9:30 p.m., starting January 14.

This workshop will examine 12 to 16 of the finest short stories ever written to see what can be learned by applying workshop methods for the exemplary work of some of the greatest modern practitioners of the short story. Robert Bausch's fourth novel, A Hole in the Earth, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Washington Post Favorite Book of the Year. He has been awarded the Fellowship of Southern Writers award for fiction for his fifth novel, The Gypsy Man. His most recent novel, Out of Season, was published in the fall of 2005.

Getting Your Nonfiction Articles Into Print, a workshop with Ellen Ryan, meets on Thursday evenings, 7:30 to 10 p.m. starting January 24.

Learn and practice the skills you need to get your nonfiction articles published. Taught by a longtime freelance writer and managing editor of Washingtonian magazine, this course covers finding the right markets for your ideas, attracting editors' attention, getting published and paid, researching, reselling, networking, understanding contracts, and keeping correct records for tax purposes.

Please visit our website www.writer.org for details on these and other workshops.

Selected Shorts Contest

This looks like a good contest. And I like the writing prompt, "Are we there yet?" I may have to steal that one for future classes!

2008 Selected Shorts Writing Contest Selected Shorts
The 2008 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize
with guest judge Amy Hempel

The winning submission, selected by Amy Hempel, will be read as part of the Selected Shorts performance at Symphony Space on May 21, 2008. The story will be recorded for possible later broadcast as part of the public radio series. The winner will receive $1000.

Story requirements
Submit a single short story that addresses the question or the general theme, Are We There Yet? You may interpret this question however you please. Note that the other stories in the Selected Shorts program on May 21, 2008 are all stories that take place in transit - in cars on road trips, on planes and trains, or walking from one place to another - but we also welcome submissions that use the theme of the evening, "are we there yet?," as a diving board into other literary territory.

Your story must have a title.

Make sure your name and contact information appear on the first page of your story. If you are submitting by email, this information needs to appear on the first page of the attached Word document. Include page numbers.

Your story must be no more than 4 double-spaced typed pages in length (we recommend 12 pt, Times New Roman font).

Deadline
All submissions must be received by March 14, 2008.

To be specific, email submissions must be received by 5pm Eastern Standard Time. Mailed submissions must arrive with the day's mail.

Where to submit your story
Email your submission as a Word attachment, with "CONTEST" in the subject line of the email, toshorts(at)symphonyspace.org (replace (at) with @)
OR
Mail to
CONTEST, Selected Shorts
Symphony Space
2537 Broadway
New York, NY 10025.

Please do not send duplicate copies (email or snail-mail is sufficient). We cannot allow revisions to your story once we have received it. Due to the high volume of submissions and the small size of our office, we will not be able to notify you when we receive your story. The winner will be selected by Amy Hempel and notified by mid-May. As soon as the winner is selected, his or her name will be posted to this page. More details here.

Contestants who submit by email or provide their email address will be added to the Selected Shorts email list - please let us know if you do not wish to receive email about upcoming programs.

The Prize
$1000 and two tickets to the May 21st closing night of the Selected Shorts series at Symphony Space, when the prizewinning story will be read.

About this year's guest judge
Amy Hempel is the author of four collections of short stories: Reasons To Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home and The Dog of the Marriage. Her fiction has appeared in Harper's, Vanity Fair, GQ and The Yale Review and has been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has also served as a judge for the National Book Award, The PEN/Revson Award, The PEN/Hemingway Award and the Mary McCarthy Prize. Her first published story, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried," has been translated into 18 languages. Her most recent publication is The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. She is currently a faculty member in the graduate writing programs of Bennington College and The New School University.

I'm Terribly Jealous...

…that literary blogger Maud Newton got to attend the Baltimore premiere party for the new season of The Wire (one of the best TV shows ever). Fans should check out her post to get the links to see how the Baltimore Sun is reacting to being put under the microscope (hint: unbiasedly but unhappily).

My opinion of last night’s episode: Eased us in nicely to the conflicts facing the characters while touching on past events to remind forgetful viewers of what happened in the past. Nice parallels: all are facing difficulties with their personnel—dealers, editors, cops—and having to “do more with less.” Masterful introduction to the character of the new metro editor: we see what makes him tick, his passions, his flaws, who he is...and feel connected to him after one episode.

Prediction: Something bad is going to happen to cute Bug, Michael’s beloved little brother.

Comments from a Guest Who Can't Be Refused

Hi there....it's a different Pietrzyk here. Specifically, Susan Pietrzyk (Leslie's sister) wanting to put my two cents out there. Most of the time, Leslie is the literary genius in the family, but every once in a blue moon, I, too, speak up on “all things literary.”

I want to recommend a beautiful novel — Teahouse Fire (Riverhead Books) by Ellis Avery. Set in the decades during which Japan opened up its borders and culture to the “modern” West, this is a story with characters of immense depth. It’s a novel inspired by history and cultural transitions, with stunning writing nothing short of artful lush detail.

AND the author is giving a reading in the Washington, DC area this month…AND there’s a tea ceremony.

You can’t go wrong. Make the trip to Borders and you’ll find yourself immersed in 19th century Japan and mesmerized by the powerful story of two women who live, love, and change the course of tea ceremony in Japan.

Here are the details about the reading:

Friday January 18, 2008
7:00 PM -- A Reading and Tea Ceremony
Borders -- Crossroads Center
5871 Crossroads Center Way
Baileys Crossroads
Falls Church, VA 22041
Phone: 703.998.0404
Directions and more info

~~Susan Pietrzyk

(Editor’s bragging note: Susan [Fulbright Scholar!] is headed back to Africa, to Zimbabwe, in the next few days to continue her research for her PhD dissertation in anthropology. She’s a brave and remarkable woman…and a fabulous sister!)

Get Your Whole Novel Ms. Critiqued

Renowned writer/teacher Richard Peabody is offering his highly-regarded novel workshop this spring. This is a great chance to have your whole novel read and critiqued in one fell swoop (vs. the frustrating experience of handing in a few chapters in a workshop). For more information, please contact him directly: gargoyle@gargoylemagazine.com

Here’s the announcement:

Critique Your Complete Novel, Not Just a Couple of Chapters: Peabody's Novel Class

Limited to 5 students. We meet every two weeks on Thursday nights 7:30 until 10pm at my house in Arlington, Virginia. Four to five blocks from Virginia Square Metro station.

February 28
March 13
March 27
April 10
April 24
May 8
May 15

Cost is $500 to be paid before the first night. Due to people dropping the class at the last minute and forcing me to cancel the entire session I now require that $125 of this fee be non-refundable and paid before the class begins.

Every participant turns in their complete novel and synopsis the first night along with 5 copies for everybody else and me. That way you get handwritten notes on everything from everybody. And you should feel free to recommend cuts, improvements, make suggestions, mark the manuscripts up at will. That's what this class is all about. By meeting every two weeks each participant should have plenty of time to complete their critiques.

If you can't attend every meeting (which I demand save for unforeseeable illness or death in the family as it's a question of fairness and honor) please don't bother signing up.

Why do I teach this class? Because you can go to your favorite bookshop and lift any number of contemporary novels off the shelf and read a few chapters only to discover that they fall apart at chapter four. Why? I've found that most MFA programs only critique the first three chapters of your manuscript. Plus, I've learned from the hands-on experience of teaching this course that a complete reading and critique is absolutely the best way (dare I say only way) to go. What's the advantage of a small class like this one? There's nothing quite like having five people discuss your characters as though they were living people for 2 ½ hours. What sorts of novels are eligible? Generally I handle serious literary fiction (both realism and experimental works), but the class has included YA , Sci-Fi, Mystery, Horror, Thriller, and Romance novels.

If you are interested do please email me a chapter and a synopsis. I'm only considering completed novels in the 250-350 dbl. spaced page range. (That's one-sided, double spaced, 12pt. in Courier font.) Anything longer than that is pretty much wishful thinking right now due to grim market economics and politics. Most first novels are 300 dbl. spaced pages which equals 200pp. in book form. Simply a fact of the biz. Second novels are frequently a different story.

Alumni from Peabody's 22 years of university, Writer's Center, and private classes with filmed screenplays and/or books in print (or forthcoming) include: Mark Baechtel, Doreen Baingana, Toby Barlow, Maggie Bartley, Jodi Bloom, Sean Brijbasi, Peter Brown, Robert Cullen, Priscilla Cummings, Katherine Davis, Lucinda Ebersole, Sandy Florian, Cara Haycak, Dave Housley, Catherine Kimrey, Rachel King, Adam Kulakow, Nathan Leslie, Redge Mahaffey, Charlotte Manning, Meena Nayak, Matthew Olshan, William Orem, Mary Overton, Saideh Pakravan, Carolyn Parkhurst, Sally Pfoutz, Nani Power, Carey Roberts, Lisa Schamess, Brenda Seabrooke, Julia Slavin, David Taylor, Lisa M. Tillman, Sharlie West, and Yolanda Young.

Richard Peabody wears many literary hats. He is editor of Gargoyle Magazine (founded in 1976), has published a novella, two books of short stories, six books of poems, plus an e-book, and edited or co-edited fourteen anthologies including: Mondo Barbie, Mondo Elvis, Mondo Marilyn, Mondo James Dean, Coming to Terms: A Literary Response to Abortion, Conversations with Gore Vidal, A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, Grace and Gravity: Fiction by Washington Area Women, Alice Redux: New Stories of Alice, Lewis, and Wonderland, Sex & Chocolate: Tasty Morsels for Mind and Body, Enhanced Gravity: More Fiction by Washington Area Women, Kiss the Sky: Fiction and Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix and Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women. Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by Fifty DC Guys is forthcoming in spring 2008. Peabody teaches fiction writing for the Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Program and the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He lives in Arlington, Virginia. You can find out more at www.wikipedia.com and/or www.gargoylemagazine.com. Email: gargoyle@gargoylemagazine.com

Work in Progress: Titles

See? I can’t even come up with a good title for this post. I am TERRIBLE at titles. Some people are naturals (I’ve noticed that many poets are excellent at titles; I knew someone who claimed to have a thick file of titles just waiting for a poem). Not me. I have written down a few titles that I thought might make appropriate story titles, but they’re really not all that good either. Plus, that was way back when when it seemed like a good idea to spend my time and energy concocting a 20-page story around a catchy phrase. (Okay, I confess to a certain fondness for the title—though not the resulting story—that came from one such experiment: “In the Desert Heat, I Burn for You, Burn for You.”)

Ever since I started this third novel, the working title has been Prodigal Daughters, because, well, the book is loosely based upon the parable of the prodigal son except with daughters. (Perhaps this overly literal mind is part of the titling problem?)

Now that the reality seems to be that I’ll actually one day finish this book, I seem to have latched onto my title as a new obsession (replacing the “no one will like my book” fears that are far more terrifying and unmanageable). I have at least a hundred new options, most of them significantly worse than Prodigal Daughters. My husband has learned to run from the room when I get that certain look in my eye and start a sentence with, “How about….?” (He has found the title he likes and is sticking with it, responding to all my queries with a shake of his head: “Still not as good as my idea.”)

To find all these title options, in the past few weeks I have googled: Scottish quotations and folktales; Chamber of Commerce slogans; quotations about forgiveness, estrangement, point of view, and the past; Robert Burns; and Abraham Lincoln. I have skimmed a book of science factoids; read the box of a fancy single-malt scotch; examined the song lyrics of the Sex Pistols, the Talking Heads, Pet Sounds, and “Begin the Beguine”; offered my writing group $25 cash to anyone who comes up with the title; offered my husband $25 cash if he comes up with a title; and spent all hours of insomnia keeping myself awake longer by obsessively running through title options in my head.

I even had a dream in which I was worried about what to name a new food blog I dreamed I was starting. When I woke up, my first thought was, “High on the Hog,” which, yes, would be an absolutely delightful title for a food blog but which has no relevance to my novel. (Just my subconscious getting back at me for calling it surly back here.)

I know this is the point where I am supposed to offer some pithy tips about how to come up with titles and reveal that I have now come up with the perfect title and rewarded myself with the $25 cash.

Alas, no.

Instead, when I was in New York, we went to see Jack Kerouac’s original scroll of On the Road (very cool) and I read that he had come up with his own obsessive list of 100 titles before coming up with On the Road (which seems so obvious and perfect). And last night when I was reading the new issue of the AWP Chronicle, I came across this in an interview with Madison Smartt Bell and Elizabeth Spires. The title of his recent novel, The Stone that the Builder Refused, comes up and Bell says, “There was a feeling that the title was too long, which I shared to some extent, and my agent and my editor and I set out to find something better if we could. We got into a three-way discussion—all well-intentioned people—that went on for weeks, and we were coming up with the most terrible titles for this book. They were just awful…Beth [poet Elizabeth Spires, Bell’s wife] encouraged me to stand up for my original title, which was better in her eyes than anything the ad-hoc committee had come up with.”

So, I suffer, but I do not suffer alone. I’ll keep you posted. And the $25 cash offer is still on the table, BTW.

(Okay—now that you’re depressed and doubting your own [undoubtedly perfectly fine] ability to title, here's a previous post about my titling angst, with a helpful link written by someone who DOES know how to title.)

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2008! (Every year that passes seems to require more training on my part to make that shift from writing the old year to the new year, so expect to see me type out “2008” early and often!)

For those who are resolution-minded, here are my New Year’s resolutions for writers, posted back in November. You can add on with this great post at poet Deborah Ager’s blog, 32 Poems, “Do You Make These Mistakes in Poetry?” which also apply to fiction—i.e. “2. Writing a poem about an Edward Hopper painting.” I’ve never written a story based on an Edward Hopper painting, but I will confess to having thought seriously about doing so. (Okay…full confession: about the girl in the movie theatre—but I tell myself that would be okay because I actually WORKED in a movie theatre way back when!)

And if one of your resolutions is to promote your work more or to get up to date on how the brave new world of technology can work for you, Deborah also has written up a helpful—if slightly intimidating—guide on how to use Facebook for networking purposes. I’m still a bit scared of the whole thing…and can’t decide which is more frightening, asking someone to “be my friend” or using “friend” as a verb, as in, “please friend me”? But she offers good, solid advice for those ready to jump into the Facebook waters.

2008. I have a good feeling. Happy writing!