On Days You Are Feeling "Small"

Some wonderful writing advice from writer Sean Ferrell for those times you are convinced you can't carry on writing any longer.

When You Are Struggling to Stay in a Writing Routine

The other day a good friend and former student (thanks, Jessika) emailed asking for the name of a classmate who had a writing process she had always remembered.  I came up with the name almost immediately (something nothing short of astonishing given my poor recall for names).  I remembered likely because this classmate's writing ritual is one I shared frequently with other classes through the years.  I tended to rely on this story when students were full of complaints about writing blocks, or when they simply weren't producing.  Call it motivation; call it embarrassment; call it what you will.  They tended to remember her story, as I have, all through these years.

She remains an inspiration to me.  Her name is Leslie.  When Leslie was my student, she had returned to college a couple of years before after taking some time off having nearly failed college once before.  In the intervening years she had served her country in the military, she'd married, had become a mother.  When I knew her she volunteered an extraordinary number of hours at a local middle school on top of her own courses.  She worked evenings delivering pizzas.  She raised children.  Several times a week she drove one son over an hour to the nearest city with a good children's hospital for leukemia treatments.  She was a remarkable student and a remarkable woman.  She was serious about school and she was serious about her writing.

Taking me at my word about the need for consistent work habits as a writer, that year she set her alarm to go off early in the morning.  I mean early.  Like 4:00 or 4:30 such that she could get some writing time in before the rest of the house woke up and she had to start making breakfast and kid's lunches and get ready for her own long days.  One of her sons caught on to her quickly and soon tried to join his mom in the early morning dark and quiet, brought with him his own pen and pad and wanted to join her in writing.  She insisted that he needed his sleep.  And since the plan for alone time to think and to write hadn't panned out, she left the house.  She started writing in the play fort her husband had constructed at the top of the slide for the kids.  This was Colorado in the winter.  It can get cold in a Colorado winter.  Her methodology:  for every page she wrote, she rewarded herself with another blanket.

And how she wrote.  Before the semester was done, not only was her growth as a writer with each piece she submitted to the class, she sold a piece to a national magazine.

My charge to future students was simple:  if Leslie could find a way to write, they could.

On the bad days, I remember her lesson for myself.  I have time now.  I have a warm place, indeed a room dedicated to nothing but writing.  I don't have a child battling cancer.  If Leslie can write, I can find a way to write today.

bioStories Call for Submissions

bioStories, the on-line nonfiction literary magazine I edit has placed a new call for submissions that appears in the October 1st New Pages classified:
http://www.newpages.com/classifieds/calls/.  Please consider submitting.

Visit bioStories at http://www.biostories.com/

Artwork to the left appears on the site and is by my daughter, Jennifer Leichliter.

NewPages Blog: New Lit on the Block :: bioStories

NewPages Blog: New Lit on the Block :: bioStories: "bioStories is a new online literary web publication edited by Mark Leichliter, writer and freelance editor who publishes fiction, poetry, a..."

Jennifer Egan Interview/Chat Session at Goodreads

For members of Goodreads, Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan graciously took reader questions in a video chatroom session on August 2nd 2011: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/video_chat/9

Reaction to the Debt Ceiling "Compromise" Deal

This Pat Oliphant cartoon from Tuesday, August 2nd about says all that needs to be said about what transpired within our "representative" government in the last number of days:

Book Recommendation: Volt by Alan Heathcock

Volt, Alan Heathcock's debut collection of stories is one of those books that makes you celebrate the continued existence of small presses.  Volt is a 2011 release from Graywolf Press, and sadly, as a debut collection, it is one of those books likely passed over by the large houses, and as a result, unnoticed by most readers despite outstanding reviews.  That Mr. Heathcock will not benefit from a larger marketing budget and greater distribution is a shame, for it is a collection that should be on every one's "best of" lists for 2011.  Graywolf has a long history of championing such fine writers, and they've got a winner here.  It is a stunning collection of stories linked by a common setting and frequently featuring common characters.  The collections are a study in realism done right.  All may not want to face that characters who so often demonstrate such profound loss and sadness such as these, but we would be missing a glimpse at our own towns and our own lives if we turned from such realism.

Heathcock is masterful at offering more plot than many contemporary literary writers without sacrificing anything in depth of character or lyricism of language.  We may turn away in our own lives from characters such as those who people Volt, but we will be wiser and more compassionate if we face them.  It is a fairly thin collection with only seven stories, and you will be tempted to read the book straight through in one sitting, but you will fight that urge only because you want to savor each story.  Indeed the stories are likely to haunt your dreams.  Heathcock writes beautifully.  He  develops realistic characters who offer complexity and depth.  He is the sort of writer who other writers will be copying sentences from in journals just to study craft, and yet you would hardly know it, for the pace of the stories keeps the reader bolting through them and the grip of the narrative carries such truth that most readers will have to stop once and again to remember how beautifully Heathcock writes.



Alan Heathcock

 Heathcock also reveals himself as one of the first and certainly the most dexterous writers to begin and face the homecoming realities for some veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.  Largely those lives have been ignored, not just in our newspapers but in our novels.  It is not exactly a pretty picture of these lives as painted here, but I suspect, at least for many, it is an accurate one.  Such lives are not the focus of the collection but they seem to inform it throughout and certainly they echo its themes of morality and mortality, of guilt and shame, of bravery and persistence.  Heathcock's deftness in managing such complicated themes with understatement and his ability to rescue lives that we might dismiss is reminiscent of another debut writer I have championed--Josh Weil (The New Valley) and both writers will rightfully earn comparisons to the early novels of Cormac McCarthy and to Andre Dubus (both II and III).

Support a debut writer while supporting a small press and buy Volt.  While you are at it, buy one or two more copies for friends.  They will thank you.  And you will thank yourself for helping make possible more books from this fine writer in the future.