Category — On Reading

Happy April, writers!

In honor of National Poetry Month, I’m happy to offer this week’s writing prompt by Seattle poet Susan Rich. Susan is the author of three books of poetry: The Cartographer’s Tongue, Cures Include Travel, and, most recently, The Alchemist’s Kitchen. She has received awards from PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement, and Peace Corps Writers. Her fellowships include an Artist Trust Fellowship from Washington State and a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, among them the Antioch Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Northwest Review, Poetry International and The Southern Review. Susan teaches at Highline Community College, where she runs the reading series Highline Listens: Writers Read Their Work. Be sure to visit Susan’s blog this month — for National Poetry Month, she’ll be posting a Poetry Giveaway on her blog that will include a copy of The Alchemist’s Kitchen! And do check out her web site as well.

I love that Susan has chosen an exercise on interviewing — one of a writer’s greatest skills, right along with listening. Susan’s exercise is inspired in part by her interviews with new Somali citizens for the Somali Voices project (these poems appear in her second book, Cures Include Travel).

Enjoy — and don’t miss Susan’s lovely poem “Interview,” which appears after the exercise.

Applying Creative Research

Recently I’ve discovered a new love: interviewing. I think the type of deep listening required in the role of interviewer is something many writers – many people crave. StoryCorps is an independent non-profit which has made interviewing a part of the national conversation examining what makes us human.

In my work as a poet, a human rights worker and now as a teacher, asking good questions is key to understanding the woman (or man) who sits right in front of me. I love the feeling when the interviewee makes a discovery about their life prompted by my question. In some cases, I can see the flicker of awareness literally alter my guest’s expression. Isn’t this what we, as writers, want our work to do? Don’t we want to prompt our readers, our listeners into understanding their lives anew?

So here’s your mission should you choose to accept it: Begin by interviewing someone you know. Or someone you would like to know. Draw up a varied set of interview questions. I’m often surprised by which question prompts the best response. Once the conversation is moving, feel free to follow it wherever it goes. I’d suggest taping the interview (with permission) as well as jotting down notes. After you listen to the tape and look over your notes, write out the passages that resonate. Your final piece will be a mix of words directly from the interview as well as words of your own.

In my work, I often use phrases from the original interview, but then pour the words into a different form – a villanelle, a sonnet, or a two-lined call and response in order to take the interview somewhere new. The end goal is not to be a journalist but instead use the interview as a jumping off point for a poem or a story. Here’s a villanelle I wrote based on an interview with a young woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Just out of high school,  “Lara” had been an ambulance dispatcher at the beginning of the Bosnian war. The facts in the poem are all true – the words are a mix of Lara’s and mine. Fans of the villanelle will notice I broke the form to leave the story unfinished – the final line of the form has been removed.

Interview
~ for Lara

In her mind, she needs to cross the boundary
navigate clear water, sleep again, be whole ~
she’ll erase her Muslim name, forget life’s memory.

Why not Bavaria? Why not the travel remedy?
Study without the Sarajevo Rose.*
Her mind a boat; she floats across the boundary.

Everyone said, the conflict? only temporary ~
She’ll call her family often; keep close by telephone;
pour the past away, skip the shit of memory.

But each night she pays, this is not her country.
The thoughts shoot back and forth, a mental palindrome.
Her mind: ocean without boundary.

Other students stare in disbelief as she leaves, quietly~
a homing instinct, streams; she charts the map alone.
Is the past no more than present memory?

For one moment, her return is almost celebratory.
Mortar rounds and shelling, a kind of pleasure dome.
Her mind circles round blue boundaries.

* The Sarajevo Rose is the pattern made by a mortar shell exploding; specifically, it is the imprint left on the tarmac.

Published originally in Harvard Review and republished in The Alchemist’s Kitchen, White Pine Press, 2010.

Photo of the author by Rosanne Olson.

I’m thrilled this week to present a guest prompt by the amazing Elizabeth Austen. Elizabeth’s poetry is always a joy to read — and even better is to hear her perform her work live (if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, scroll down for Elizabeth’s upcoming events). I love the way she inspires us to pay attention to language, whether we’re reading or listening, and I always find myself reading each of Elizabeth’s poems many times over to capture the depth of the worlds that each of them contains.

A poet, performer, and teacher, Elizabeth is the author of the poetry collection Every Dress a Decision, forthcoming from Blue Begonia Press next month, and the chapbooks The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet (part of the 2010 Toadlily Press quartet Sightline). She is a dynamic performer of her own and others’ poems and frequently teaches the art of poetry aloud. For more than 10 years, she has produced literary programming for KUOW, 94.9, one of Seattle’s NPR affiliates, introducing recordings of Pacific Northwest literary events and interviewing local and national poets, and she has received grants from Artist Trust, 4Culture, and the City of Seattle.

This prompt is perfect for all writers — enjoy!

Cultivating Opposites
One of my favorite starting places for poems involves working with opposites – or, as the poet Marie Howe put it in a recent workshop, “contraries.” Whatever our background, we all have stories that we’ve carried around so long we can’t even remember a time before we knew them. These may be stories about our own family or romantic history, stories handed down by our church or religion, etc. Telling these stories in the usual way can lead us into predictable territory –  “I have my point of view, and I’m sticking to it” – and into clichés of thought or feeling. But what about entertaining the opposite point of view, or taking a contrary position to the one we’ve always held (or always been told)?

So, here’s your starting point:  pick a familiar story. Now, pivot your frame of reference 180 degrees, and re-tell that story from another – an opposite, a contrary – point of view. This works equally well for any genre. (And on a side note, this can be a very potent tool for revision. Take a poem or story that just isn’t working, and either write the whole thing from a completely opposing point of view – reversing all the details – or inject a contrary voice. See where that takes you – at the very least, it’s sure to give your draft new energy.)

Here’s a poem from my collection Every Dress a Decision that takes a contrarian view of story from Genesis:

It Didn’t Happen That Way

Unless the apple itself, longing
to be known, can be blamed
for the light bent
across its skin
for the mid-day heat
transforming sugar to scent.

And him? She didn’t say
a word to him. He found
her, slack-jawed
skin flushed and damp
as if he had lain on her
pressed into her—

he found her, swallow by swallow
savoring the taste of knowledge
her eyes fixed, focused

somewhere beyond him
as if he no longer existed.
And one more thing—
she didn’t tempt him. In fact
she never offered it.

He pried the fruit
from her hand, desperate
to follow, and bit.

If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, be sure to mark your calendar to attend at least one of Elizabeth’s readings:

- Saturday, April 2, at the Silverton Poetry Festival

- Sunday, April 10, at 7 p..m at the Doe Bay Cafe on Orcas Island (part of the SPLAB series)

-  Thursday, April 28, at 7 p.m. at Cheap Wine and Poetry at Richard Hugo House

- Friday, April 29, 7 p.m. at Bellingham’s Village Books

I recently adopted my friend Kelli Russell Agodon‘s resolution in which she decided not to log on to Facebook except on Fridays. (I have cheated once, and I have confessed. Otherwise, I’ve been pretty good. Though as Kelli pointed out, I can actually cheat any time and she wouldn’t know unless she was also cheating.)

As Kelli points out on her awesome blog, Facebook takes our time away from other things we could otherwise be doing — and while these things will be different for everyone, for writers there’s always one thing we could be doing while we’re on Facebook. We could be writing. And we probably should be.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Facebook. And the reason I cheated on my resolution in the first place was because I had a little separation anxiety; I wanted to see what friends were up to; catch up with those in different cities, states, countries; post random thoughts or photos. I also must admit that I wanted something to distract me from tackling a tricky scene I’ve been struggling with.

It’s that last thing that has made me realize that Facebook Fridays are a very good idea indeed.

So I’ve resolved to do better, and I have. And it’s like starting an exercise routine or a diet or some other equally challenging resolution — it takes some getting used to. But once you’re there, you realize how well it works — and how glad you are that you tried it.

This isn’t to say I’ll keep it up forever — I’ve already allowed for a couple of exceptions, such as brief log-ins to reply to messages or respond to friend requests, and eventually I may decide that it makes more sense to log on to Facebook once a day for ten minutes than to spend several hours catching up on Fridays — but so far I love how it’s going. For one, it’s forcing me not to use Facebook as an excuse to turn away from the page when things get difficult (as tempting as it may be). Better yet, while it’s valuable to stay connected virtually, it’s even more important to be connected in reality. Instead of relying on my Facebook mobile app while standing in line at the post office or waiting for a friend, as I used to do all too often, now I keep the phone hidden and absorb the world around me. And this is the best possible scenario for any writer.

So if you’re on Facebook, come visit me. And if I don’t catch you today, I’ll see you next Friday.

Given the way our culture celebrates youth (including writers), I really enjoyed this post by Randy Susan Meyers in the Huffington Post: a list of 41 writers whose debut novels were published after they turned 40 (among them: Meyers’ own book, The Murderer’s Daughters, as well as National Book Award winner Julia Glass and Pulitzer winners Paul Harding, Edward P. Jones, and Elizabeth Strout).

Many authors, both emerging and established, are choosing to self-publish these days, and those of you who are emerging D.I.Y. authors will want to check out this post by Alan Rinzler on literary agents taking on self-published writers to see what agents are saying, both pro and con. Of course, many self-published authors (like John Yunker, author of the The Tourist Trail) already have agents; they just weren’t able to find publishers. For those of you in that category, also be sure to see Rinzler’s list of top genres for multi-book deals in 2010, along with his tips on how to “make publishers drool.” And then there are those self-published authors who are already successful and decide to go solo; this article highlights a couple of these writers.

For those of you who love short stories (and who doesn’t?!), check out Storyville, an iPhone/iPad app that brings stories directly to your device. It’s $4.99 for six months’ worth of stories — one each week. And even better news for short story (and literary novel) readers: Andrew’s Book Club is back! And there’s already a new pick for the new year.

Maybe it’s our diminishing attention spans, but stories seem to be getting shorter and shorter and shorter. Along with flash fiction, micro fiction, and prose poems, we now have “hint fiction” (check out this NPR story for samples).

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, The Paris Review has made its interviews available online — an amazing series of author interviews all the way back to the 1950s.

If you draw inspiration from seeing where writers work, in the U.S. there are 73 writers’ houses open to the public, including Norman Mailer’s and Edith Wharton’s.

And did you know that for 90 percent of what we communicate, we use only about 7,000 words? We’re losing words from the English language every day, and Oxford University Press hopes to save them with Save the Words, where you can visit with long-lost words and offer up your own words for safekeeping.

Now that 2011 is here, I’m thinking ahead to the events and readings I hope to do this summer — and also looking back on the fantastic and generous bookstores that hosted me in 2010 (among them, Pilot Books in Seattle and Warwick’s in San Diego). This has led me to think about other fantastic bookstores around the country and the world — which, as it turns out, is something a lot of readers and writers think about.

Here’s one of my all-time favorites, El Ateneo, housed in a converted theater in Buenos Aires:

This Huffington Post list of readers’ favorites includes many of my own, as does Flavorwire’s top 10. And El Ateneo is on this list of converted bookstores (if you think converting a theater into a bookstore is creative, how about ships, trailers, and manure tanks? not to mention castles and movie theaters) — as well as Lonely Planet’s top 1o greatest bookshops.

And one of the best things about an independent bookstore, of course, is the bookstore cat (or cats). I loved doing a workshop and reading at King’s Books in Tacoma, Washington, along with two feline attendees:

(I did not take it personally when both cats fell asleep on the tables during my workshop.)

For Bay Area readers and cat people, the San Francisco Chronicle compiled a list of bookstore cats that includes some very important stats: the cats’ favorite food, favorite places/genres for sleeping, and estimated amount of time spent sleeping. And in this article, Mental Floss features 12 bookstore cats with hilarious photos of them sprawled over the new fiction or snoozing in the stacks. So far, I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting one of these cats (Guthrie from Boston Book Annex), but wish I could meet them all.

I hope 2011 brings us all to many more fabulous independent bookstores — let’s not forget how much we writers and readers need them, and how much they need our support, too.

Forgetting English finally has a book trailer! It’s actually more of a short story than a trailer, and it’s the result of a collaboration with my husband, whose book The Tourist Trail plays a major role. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun.

It’s called “Love in the Time of Amazon.com.” Enjoy.

I recently discovered a new toy online: Wordle, which generates nifty “word clouds” from text that you provide on its web site. Input your text or a URL, and you’ll see where your passions lie: The largest words in your cloud are the ones that appear more frequently in your source text. Here’s the word cloud created from my blog:

And speaking of discovering your passions, Poets & Writers has listed its Top Ten Topics for Writers, a compilation of the most important issues for writers today. The list includes literary magazines, publishing a book, literary agents, vanity presses, writing contests, book publicity, and copyright, among others. Check it out — and even better, support P&W and subscribe.

You may have heard the sad news about the end of Andrew’s Book Club, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy all its fabulous content, from more than a year’s worth of short-story picks to author interviews to author dialogues, like this conversation between Tracy Winn and Robin Black, to name just one. Visit the ABC web site to enjoy the archival treasure.

I liked this NYT article about wandering minds, which finds “daydreaming to be remarkably common — and often quite useful.” As you already know if you’re a writer, sometimes the best ideas come to us when our minds are wandering, and it’s always reassuring to have an expert like Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, tell us that “for creativity you need your mind to wander.” Thank you, Dr. Schooler.

For pure enjoyment (as well as what not to do if you’re looking for an agent), check out Slush Pile Hell, a hilarious blog by a “grumpy literary agent” who answers writers’ questions as well as posts some of her weirder author queries. A sampling of the helpful tips: do not send agents shirtless photos, demands for seven-figure deals, or tell them how God helped you write your manuscript. A sampling of actual letters received: “Greetings agent. I have written the most important book on earth”; “Readers of Eat, Pray, Love; Twilight; Tuesdays with Morrie;  and The Da Vinci Code will love my book” [correct usage of semicolons added by me]; and “After reading my manuscript I think you’ll agree that I may be the next generation’s greatest author.”

Equally amusing is this post about writing “a lot” as “alot,” which has always been one of my pet peeves, along with “alright.” (Two words, people. Two words.) Anyway, this inventive grammarian created an imaginary creature “to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar.” I love it and feel a lot less peevish already. (And thanks to my writing buddy Sean A. for sending the link!)

And finally, to leave you with a writing exercise, check out One Word, a beautifully simple web site that offers a one-word writing prompt with the instructions, “Don’t think. Just write.” Enjoy.

This LA Times blog post titled “Fiction is dead. Again?” was accompanied by a gripping image: a hearse. This photo  sums up this topic so well: every few years, someone somewhere claims that fiction is dead. And then we all move on.

Yet each time, the notion seems a little more alarming.

In this Mother Jones article, Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, writes about the struggles of literary magazines to keep publishing amid declining subscribers and “an even greater dent in their cultural relevance.” The most interesting statistics in this article are those that add up to one simple fact: today’s writers are not reading. In other words, they are not supporting the literary magazines to which they submit.

Earlier this year, the New York Times covered the struggle of Harper’s magazine, another sad story in the fiction world (the Atlantic has already ceased publishing monthly fiction).  In order to keep readers and draw new ones, many prestigious journals are offering online content in addition to the print editions — Mississippi Review, Missouri Review, Harvard Review, and AGNI among them — while others, such as TriQuarterly and Shenandoah, have been forced to go exclusively online. As Genoways notes, many magazines facing deep cuts or extinction are among the best.

The LA Times post, in response to Lee Siegel’s Observer piece calling fiction “culturally irrelevant,” this post outlines in detail — from the book-based “Twilight” craze to the lively conversations generated by The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40″ list — why fiction doesn’t need a hearse just yet. But if readers don’t support the books and magazines that keep it alive, its future may be more tenuous than we’d like to believe. On The Huffington Post, Anis Shivani chats with the editors of seventeen literary journals that he thinks will survive the digital age. It’s good to see, amid the challenges, that most of the editors are hopeful about keeping their magazines going — and of course I hope the list of journals that survive and thrive goes well beyond these seventeen.

In this economy, it’s hard to justify the extras that many of us need to go without right now. But if you’re a fiction reader — and especially if you’re a fiction writer — this is the time to support these magazines in any way you can. If you give up only one month’s worth of lattes, you can subscribe to a literary magazine. If you enter a contest, you’re supporting a literary magazine or a small press. If you can’t afford a subscription, buy a journal at an independent bookstore, supporting both bookstore and the journal. We all have to make trade-offs in a poor economy — but for writers, these are choices that could make a big difference for the future of our work.

I hope this post finds you writing … if not, here are a few things perfect for a little helpful procrastinating.

This post on The Elegant Variation offers advice for writers, which sort of segued into advice for the lovelorn — and shows how interchangeable the words love/writing can be when it comes to advice, from “Love should bother you” to “Every day you will have to recreate your love.”

And Janet Fitch offers 10 Rules for Writers on the LA Times blog — from killing cliches to stretching out your sentences for variety.

I enjoyed reading Charles Stross’s blog on being a working writer, with insights into what the full-time writing life is really like. It’s not all writing, all the time — “we work in bursts, and the rest of the time gets filled up with administrative junk and social fluff” — and the solitary nature of it can be trying –  “I have office-mates, but they’re not co-workers: at best they’ll stand on the keyboard and meow at me.” After outlining the drawbacks of this “wildly unstable, lonely occupation with an insane income spread” — Stross concludes that “it sucks,” a refreshingly honest conclusion about the true nature of writing as a full-time job.

Writers of fiction should check out this post on Alan Rinzler’s blog about how to eavesdrop to help with writing dialogue. I constantly assign fiction students to eavesdropping as a way to practice getting an ear for dialogue — and often they look at me rather strangely. So I loved seeing this post, which points out, first of all, that Norman Mailer did it (and not very subtly either), and offers tips and possible haunts for good listening.

I recently discovered StereoMood, which offers playlists for just about any type of mood (from energetic to sad to sexy) or activity (from cooking to road-tripping to making love) you can come up with. Readers and writers, check out its playlist for writing and playlist for reading.

And finally, I was initially intrigued by the idea of I Write Like, which (supposedly) matches your writing style with famous writers. At first, I was a little confused by the writers I was paired with, which I think would surprise most of my readers, too: I tested out excerpts from different stories and discovered that, apparently, I write like Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace, and/or Stephen King — all flattering comparisons, of course, but not at all what I’d expect. Oh, and my novel-in-progress is evidently in the style of Dan Brown. (Clearly, the excerpt I entered is a very rough first draft. And too bad this little algorithm isn’t measuring commercial potential.)

Naturally, I found myself wondering: Where are the women writers? So I tried a little experiment and pasted in excerpts of a few of my favorite writers to see what would happen. The results? According to this web site, Ann Patchett and Joan Didion both write like Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Hempel and Lorrie Moore write like Stephen King, Toni Morrison and Annie Proulx write like James Joyce, Jane Hamilton writes like Chuck Palahniuk, and Melanie Rae Thon writes like Vladimir Nabokov. Hmmm.

I recently received an email from a writer who suggested I devote a column to answering writers’ questions — starting, naturally, with his.  I thought this was a great idea (thanks, Jerry!), and I’m looking forward to making this blog more of a dialogue.

So consider this the first official “Ask Midge” column — and I hope you’ll write with your questions on everything from grammar to characterization to narrative structure. I won’t claim to have all the answers, but whenever I don’t, I will point you in the direction of someone who does.

Please send all questions (on writing, publishing, grammar, and all other things writing-related) through this form on my web site — and please let me know whether you’d like me to use your full name, first name only, or initials only. I’m looking forward to your questions!

And here is our first…

Q: How does a writer make the narrator sound like a juvenile without making the writing sound juvenile? — Jerry Guern, San Diego

A: Voice is one of the biggest challenges for writers, especially when tackling a voice that’s very different from one’s own. And it’s especially important, as Jerry is realizing, to make sure the writing itself is separate from the character, i.e., that the character can sound like a child without the writing sounding childish.

First, I suggest getting to know the character well, as sometimes this is the problem. If you’re writing from the POV of a juvenile, for example, make sure you’re seeing the world from this character’s eyes; try living in this character’s head as much as you can while you’re writing, as if you’re an actor playing a role. Our sense of a character’s age comes from the way he/she sees the world: a teenager will look at something very differently from the way a six-year-old would, or a thirty-year-old, or an eighty-year-old — so think about how your character (from the POV of age as well as his/her unique history) sees what happens around him/her, and describe it in detail. Everything that your reader perceives will come through the details.

Second, choose a POV that fits well what you’re trying to get across in the story — i.e., do you want an intimate, first-person POV (think Catcher in the Rye), or a more distant voice (if the kid is much younger, for example, you may find it easier to use third person to get across things that a child may sense but not be able to articulate in his/her own voice)?

Third, think of your audience — it’s often challenging to create a young voice that appeals to adult audiences, and this appeal (or lack thereof) will depend not only on the voice but on the story itself. There are always exceptions, clearly (not only Catcher in the Rye but books such as The Lovely Bones and the entire Harry Potter series). So try taking an objective look at your story; you may find that if your writing doesn’t sound adult, perhaps your story’s audience isn’t meant to be adult. And if it is, we’re back to POV: third person might be best, as you don’t need to limit your vocabulary as much as in the first person voice.

Also, read as much as you can in the POV you’re going for — this will help you get a feel for what works well. As you read, consider the ways in which these writers succeed in making their characters vivid while at the same time giving them authentic voices.

And finally, make use of a writing partner or writing group to help you judge how well you’ve succeeded. Ask, for example, how old your group thinks your character is, and see how this feedback helps you find that perfect pitch.

Happy writing!

This totally random photo is courtesy of Tim Ellis of Seattle Bubble, a real-estate blog which every month or so posts “some of the most bizarre listing photos from around the Seattle area.” This is only one of many, many rooms in a 7,000+ square-foot house on the market in Kenmore, Washington (visit Tim’s blog for a link to the actual listing). I must say I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Okay, now on to Day 2 of the Richard Hugo House Writers’ Conference.

After much coffee on Sunday morning, I presented Think Outside the Book — a session on the myriad ways to market one’s book. We talked about Web sites, social media, blogs, building one’s platform, and the importance of “think not what your local bookstore can do for you, but what you can do for your local bookstore.” Here are a few DOs and DON’Ts from the session:

• DO be generous (with readers, other authors, bookstores, etc.).
• DO be flexible. Be open to new ideas for events, readings, etc.
• DO team up with other authors for support and joint events, and to share ideas.
• DO be prepared not only to do your own legwork but to spend your own money. Depending on your publishing contract, you may have to cover many promotional expenses yourself, from travel to your web site to postcards and bookmarks.
• DO keep your blog open to comments, and DO take the time to respond.
• DON’T be all about you, all the time. Don’t tweet or update Facebook so incessantly that you risk tiring your followers/friends. Be relevant and interesting.
• DON’T automatically connect all social media; think about how you can use each platform to best highlight your work to different audiences.
• DON’T take bad reviews or nasty comments personally, and don’t respond to them. You can’t please everyone, and you don’t need to. Engage only with those who are positive and supportive.

After my own session, I sat in on poet Kelli Russell Agodon‘s fantastic workshop on applying for grants and residencies. As both a winner of numerous grants and residencies as well as a panelist on award committees, Kelli had some terrific advice. Among the gems: Set yourself apart (selection committees read hundreds of applications, so it’s important to stand out); keep it simple (don’t offer too much information, which can be distracting, and remember that committees can be very diverse — send a work sample that connects with people on a human level rather than a strictly artistic one); and follow the guidelines exactly (one of the surest ways to be disqualified for a grant/residency is to have an incomplete application). She also emphasized that often winning is all about luck and timing, and quoted Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”

Attorney Mark Wittow’s session Know Your Rights provided a great overview of legal issues for writers, focusing mostly on copyright laws. I learned a couple of new and interesting things — for example, that research data is not protected by copyright (only the expression of the facts is protected). Copyright laws are fairly complex, but writers with questions can visit the U.S. Copyright Office web site for more info. Also, for a $20 donation, Washington writers and artists can visit a free legal clinic run by Washington Lawyers for the Arts.

This blog can in no way summarize the entire weekend, and it can’t capture the wonderful energy of so many writers together for two straight days, sharing ideas and information and enthusiasm. If you couldn’t make it this year, stay tuned to Hugo House, and register early for next year’s conference.

I spent the entire weekend blissfully immersed in all things writing at Richard Hugo House’s first writers’ conference, which centered around the theme of Finding Your Readers in the 21st Century. Panels and sessions were divided into three tracks: publishing, self-promotion, and writers’ tools. Other than the fact that I was, sadly, unable to be in two (or three) places at once, it was a fantastic weekend — and I thought I’d share a few highlights.

Saturday morning’s plenary with Matthew Stadler was inspiring. A novelist as well as a longtime publishing pro and co-founder of Clear Cut Press, Stadler believes that, despite all the current woes and gloom currently surrounding the publishing industry, the twenty-first century will be better for writers than the twentieth. He believes publication should be cheap and easy, and that our goal as writers should be to connect to our audiences one person at a time, one book at a time, and to develop lasting conversations within our communities. His current project, Publication Studio, is “an experiment in sustainable publication” whose books include works by Seattle authors Stacey Levine and Matt Briggs.

After the plenary, I sat on a panel about support networks for writers with Janna Cawrse Esarey, Tamara Kaye Sellman, and Jennifer Culkin, in which we shared our experiences of how writing networks have helped us market our work, from the submission stage through book promotion. Most important, we all agreed, is having clear goals in mind, meeting regularly, and not only sharing ideas but joining together for events and conferences.

Publicist Alice B. Acheson offered an invaluable session on book marketing, speaking on everything from a writer’s “pre-pub platform” to filling out that seemingly endless Author Questionnaire (and yes, every single paragraph of that thing is important for one reason or another). She had good, practical advice for planning events (BYO postcards and posters; always confirm in advance that books have been ordered), reminded everyone that marketing starts when you begin your book (think of your audience), and encouraged good karma: visit independent bookstores often.

Priscilla Long‘s Tricks of Virtuoso Creators focused on the balance between creating work and getting it out into the world, and she pointed out that most masters of their art are able to create masterpieces because they are constantly creating. She set herself a goal of submitting one work each day, and while she fell a little short, she did finish 300 submissions, and got 11 acceptances. Doing this, she points out, not only gives you an idea of your acceptance rate but also keeps the cycle going: In order to submit, you must create; once you create, you then have work to submit. A couple more tips from this session: Keep a list of everything you’ve ever written, and write for at least fifteen minutes a day.

More coming soon, covering Sunday’s sessions…

While most writers know that book titles can’t be copyrighted, we have yet to see another Moby-Dick or Gone with the Wind. What’s far more common, as this site shows, is using same cover art for many different books.

Doesn’t every writer love a good malapropism? This NY Times article reminded me of my days living in Taipei, when I’d encounter various bizarre English translations. Visitors to Shanghai won’t be able to enjoy similar mistakes much longer, thanks to the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use, which is fixing everything from menus to street signs. So long to menus listing “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and restroom signs reading “urine district.” Check out the Times slide show for a few hilarious examples, including the one below.

Speaking of being lost in translation: From Jhumpa Lahiri to Chuck Palahniuk to Donald Barthelme, authors’ names are often mispronounced with such authority that soon even the correct pronunciation sounds wrong. Click here for a guide.

I rather enjoyed this Life magazine slide show entitled “Famous Literary Drunks & Addicts.” If nothing else, it made me feel pretty healthy by comparison.

Having trouble jump-starting your latest story? The American Book Review lists the best 100 first lines from novels here … it’s inspiring, if a little intimidating.

And finally — and definitely inspiring — is this blog from Alan Rinzler on finding courage as a writer, with such advice as not being afraid to talk to yourself, to let things simmer, and to start over.

Enjoy.

It’s been only a couple of years since National Short Story Month was designated by Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network — and as this Poets & Writers article notes, the idea was first floated by The Story Prize‘s Larry Dark back in 2003: “I think the story needs advocacy as a cultural institution the way poetry has done … There’s a national poetry month, and I think there should be a national short-story month, too.”

While National Short Story month may not yet have the organizational and institutional support of, say, National Poetry Month, it still deserves recognition, celebration, and support. Here are a few ways in which readers and writers can do just that …

– Read and support the literary magazines that publish short fiction. There are far too many to name here, but this month, consider one of the many magazines devoted solely to short stories — Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Freight Stories, and Fiction Magazine, to name a few.

– Visit web sites devoted to short stories, such as Andrew’s Book Club and The Short Review. Check out the many diverse collections highlighted on these sites, and treat yourself to one (or more).

– Mark your book club calendar. If you’re in a book club, designate May as the month you read a story collection, if you haven’t already. If it’s too late to make this month’s pick, mark your calendar for May 2011.

– Think about the last short story you enjoyed, whether it was in a journal or a book-length collection, then talk it up: tell your friends, family, colleagues, and/or book club about it. Share the love; spread the joy.

Happy Short Story Month to all.