First published in 1973 as ‘The Summer Steelhead’ (Seneca review, Vol. 4, no. 1 (May, 1973) and later as ‘Nobody said anything’. Smudging was widespread practice amongst Yakima fruit-farmers. Pollution stopped crops being frost-damaged. (Source: Carol Sklenicka: Raymond Carver – A writer’s Life 2009.) In the original story the final lines are different referring to…
fiction
Keeping the Aspidistra Flying – Self Promotion
Will Self paraded his verbal skills with a reading at NTU on Saturday which proved that there is some content behind the bravado, solipism, debauchery and sheer profligacy. Looking at SELF’s career it hard to find an entry point such is the sheer weight of verbiage trundled ad nauseum across every promotional page available. The…
Daily Short: John Romano – King of the Wild Frontier
Available online here: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/king-of-the-wild-frontier-0000346-v21n6 I recently picked up the Fiction issue of Vice magazine. http://www.vice.com/magazine/21/6 Recommend these annual issues all of which are available online. They have a tendency to lean toward the Lad/Ladette market but contain some interesting works. Especially from the film/fiction crossover area. This year’s issue also contains Nabokov’s unpublished Lolita screenplay and…
My Book Grid: 1975- present
Interesting exercise came out of class last night. Hard to recall some of this and I genuinely cannot remember reading anything but web design manuals and music magazines for at least five years at NTU…scary.. Feel like Rumpelstiltskin.
Daily Short: Bernard MacLaverty – A Foreign Dignitary
In ‘Friendship: 12 masterpieces of short fiction’ for John McCarthy, Ryan Publishing Co. Ltd; First Edition edition (1990) Also collected in: “A Foreign Dignitary,in Best Short Stories 1989, edited by GilesGordon and David Hughes. 1989; as The Best English Short Stories 1989, 1989. Walking the Dog and Other Stories. 1994. A tricky one this. I have…
Daily Short: Ron Hansen- Playland – 1989
I had the idea of reading at least one short story a day. It sort of working and I have managed three so far this week. The first on Tuesday was Ron Hansen’s ‘Funland’ from ‘Nebraska’ a collection of short stories published in 1989. I purchased it at the time because of the cover which…
Edwin Smith photograph commission
35 Hallam’s Lane, Chilwell near Nottingham, 1937 A strange day. I was going to go to studio and write all day but I got knocked sideways by this request. Apple and Snakes and R.I.B.A. have commissioned me to write a poem on one or more of the photographs on show at RIBA from the Edwin…
Short Story and CW useful links
‘I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.’ William Faulkner Short Stops website http://shortstops.info/ Long Story, Short website http://longstoryshort.squarespace.com/ Blot the skrip blog ( Dr. Stephen Carver) http://blottheskrip.wordpress.com/ Lorrie Moore Interview Paris Review http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/510/the-art-of-fiction-no-167-lorrie-moore
Joseph O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut on writing
Kurt Vonnegut Eight rules for writing fiction: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only…
How Novelists Work..how mine don’t
The first fiction session last night and a shock to the Belcher system…(unecessary elipsis there) asI am not a practicing fiction writer. The samples (vignettes, prose poems) I offered for appraisal were three very old items that I happened to have. ( ellipsis attempted but stopped mid-dot….!) I quickly understood that writing fiction feels very…