YET ANOTHER WRITING COURSE; DO I NEED IT?
Abraham Verghese, doctor, Stanford professor and accomplished author (if you haven't read his Cutting For Stone, a masterpiece novel, please do) once famously lamented about the endless writer workshops he has attended and how he now resists them with little success. I recall this as I embark on yet another course in writing that I downloaded from the The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company) entitled Writing Great Fiction, Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes, a series of lectures by a university professor.When it comes to artistic endeavor I have always been a lone wolf and shunned the company[...]
ON MULTIPLE PROJECTS, MEMOIR CONVERSIONS AND CHARACTER NAMES
I no longer have the luxury of writing at a leisurely pace and taking a year to complete a story. I have set a deadline of Autumn 2015 for publication and engaged an editor. I now have to work like a pro. While I am presently indeed more productive, I grapple with several issues. Foremost among them is my inability to work on more than one project at a time. Once I start a story I live in its fantasy world which I frequently visit day and night, while driving,bicycling, waking up from sleep, shaving, drinking coffee or wine. I[...]
1601 BAR AND KITCHEN; THE FRUITS OF GLOBALIZATION
My wife Julie has recently been hitting the jackpot with her selection of offbeat restaurants in out-of-the way corners of San Francisco. She did it again last weekend with 1601 Bar & Kitchen.It was an easy reservation on Open Table, at prime time Saturday, on short notice, either a sign that the restaurant is on a downswing, or that it is a hidden gem. In this case it was the latter. A quick internet search revealed it to be Sri Lankan cuisine, something we've never experienced, with tapas style servings, prepared with French cooking techniques. Intriguing.When we arrived at 12th[...]
THE TROUBLE WITH TESTICLE TALK
My first five stories came back from my editor Mim. We communicate by e mail. The stories go out to her as a Microsoft word document, all in black print and return to me splashed all over with red, her corrections. I quickly perused these and discovered good news and bad news.The good news was that she liked most of them, and thought they were worth publishing. The bad news was that the one I thought would be my flagship story, Testicle Talk, she had issues with. This is a dialogue driven story in which two different pairs of people[...]
READERS
Unexpected feedback from one of my readers, Ahmet Senol Ozbek of Istanbul delighted me this past weekend. He sent me kudos, but also some specific, useful advice on scene details. His advice complemented those from two earlier readers.Every writer needs readers. These are volunteers who have the thankless job of reading raw, unpolished drafts, often with grammatical and spelling errors, and then returning honest feedback to the writer at the risk of injuring their mutual relationship. I have mine. They are a curious assortment of Americans and Turks.Readers come in three kinds. One group is what can be called cheerleaders.[...]
A NEW BOOK ON THE RUNWAY
New year, 2015. I take stock in my completed short stories. A total of fifteen for 85,000 words. Holy crap! It's already bigger than Dogmeat, my first book, and we don't have an intro, acknowledgements, and other trimmings that fatten the word count. I e-mail Mim.Mim Harrison is my editor. We've never met face-to-face, but I consider her a good friend and a terrific editor. We have a certain special rapport, almost all by e mail, a bit by phone. Carpe diem, she responds. I look it up. Seize the moment. With that, I set my second book, my anthology[...]