Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Poem. Poetry Reading
Poetry Reading
All I could see after my attention was directed were the tight, black curls on the woman in front of me.
All I could hear for the first ten minutes was the sound of the microphone banging against the podium and the screams of the sound system.
After the first “poet” read, I thought my version of a memoir would go like this: The quaint, noble villagers wore crisp, white shebatis and the soft, leather merkibas so popular with the upper class while they shot songbirds in the garden.
And I would add something about the sun. The sun is always relentless when it is a story-tellers sun.
After a half hour of the work read by the missionary’s daughter , I didn’t hear a thing I hadn’t heard or read before, and I didn’t learn anything new.
I was validated. A mediocre writer throws a lot of sadness and death at their audience for affect and if animals are killed or if water or someone’s life is poisoned, they do their best to show emotion, to apologize, or to censure.
All I could see after my attention was directed were the tight, black curls on the woman in front of me.
All I could hear for the first ten minutes was the sound of the microphone banging against the podium and the screams of the sound system.
After the first “poet” read, I thought my version of a memoir would go like this: The quaint, noble villagers wore crisp, white shebatis and the soft, leather merkibas so popular with the upper class while they shot songbirds in the garden.
And I would add something about the sun. The sun is always relentless when it is a story-tellers sun.
After a half hour of the work read by the missionary’s daughter , I didn’t hear a thing I hadn’t heard or read before, and I didn’t learn anything new.
I was validated. A mediocre writer throws a lot of sadness and death at their audience for affect and if animals are killed or if water or someone’s life is poisoned, they do their best to show emotion, to apologize, or to censure.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Mount Hope homepage
Mount Hope homepage
Mount Hope Magazine is a literary magazine based out of Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI. The publication prints twice a year, and is also available in PDF format.
Mount Hope Magazine is a literary magazine based out of Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI. The publication prints twice a year, and is also available in PDF format.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
Chapbooks Online: Authors
Chapbooks Online: Authors
Resources for writers - incl. self publishing, tools, etc.
Resources for writers - incl. self publishing, tools, etc.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Creating a Fiction Chapbook « Flash Fiction Chronicles
Creating a Fiction Chapbook « Flash Fiction Chronicles
Marko Fong This is Part 3 of an intermittent FFC series on Chapbooks and Part 1 of “Electronic Chapbooks” by Marko Fong. His Part 2 will appear tomorrow, October 19. Part 1 of the Chapbooks series was written by Bonnie ZoBell. ”Creating a Fiction Chapbook“ appeared at FFC on September 10.
by Marko Fong
Electronic publishing has one clear disadvantage when compared to paper– once you’re done reading, you can’t use it as toilet paper. Apparently during the 16th century, personal hygiene was one of many secondary uses for early chapbooks. Until recently, I’d never thought a lot about chapbooks much less their secondary uses. They were just something that poets printed up so they’d have something to sell at readings. In case you’re wondering, my answer is “No, I’ve never done that to someone else’s chapbook.” I’ll swear it on my copies of Fifty Shades of Grey and Paul Ryan’s budget plan.
Fifteen months ago, Jo-Anne Rosen, asked me to help her with e-Chapbook.com (the “e” is for “electronic”). I became fiction editor which basically means that Jo-Anne does all the work and I do the fun stuff. Before we published electronic ones, I had to learn more about traditional chapbooks.
The English-language chapbook was the product of three historical developments, the paper mill (paper got much cheaper), printing, and the rise of literacy among the poor. The difference between inexpensive paper and quality paper today is much less extreme than it was then. We now assume that paper will be high contrast, take and hold inks readily, resist tearing, and maintain uniform size and thickness. Even as recently as the sixties, some paperbacks were printed on paper that failed to meet all those standards. If an ordinary person in the 16th century, wanted to share a broadside, a ballad, poems, nursery rhymes, or stories, the options were limited. Alongside the printers who produced those King James Bibles with the gold-leaf edging, leather covers, hand-stitched bindings, and smear-free ink, a “people’s” medium for publication emerged that,
Didn’t have a binding or hard cover Was made by folding sheets of low-quality paper multiple times (32 pages or 5 folds came from this tradition) and was physically smaller than a printed book. Used quick-inexpensive production and printing techniques (illustration was limited to simple woodcuts) with low quality ink on cheap paper. The product was meant to last about as long as Rock of Ages stayed in movie theaters.
These were “chapbooks.” The middle English word for “cheap” was “ceap.” They sold for anywhere from two to twelve pence a copy and instead of being sold through booksellers were distributed in pubs, on street corners, at markets, and other public gatherings by a new sort of peddler called a “chapman”(not to be confused with the guy who killed John Lennon). The form became phenomenally successful. Because few examples of early chapbooks survive, we forget how much more prolific the chapbook publishing industry was than its bound-book brother.
If you had a pub song, a political complaint, a poem, or a story, the chapbook was the most efficient way to “get the word” out before daily newspaper, radio, television, or Facebook. The chapbook became the information medium for “ordinary” people. As the British economy shifted to manufacturing, the literacy rate rose dramatically. An estimated 60% of adult males in England were literate by the mid-1700’s, a figure considerably higher than the rate for Fox News viewers (fwiw I wish Fox had a paper publication). Most of those who could read lacked the income necessary to buy bound books.
Perhaps the most famous chapbook ever, though it’s usually called a pamphlet, was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a publication that made the case for American independence from England. In the years 1775-1776, an estimated 500,000 copies of Paine’s Common Sense were printed and distributed when the total population of the colonies was 2.5 million. Chapbooks weren’t intended to be physically permanent, but some definitely aren’t forgotten.
The chapbook form faded after the emergence of the cheap daily newspaper, a new kind of disposable print that spawned a writer named, Charles Dickens. The tradition, however, has continued in poetry and for fiction writers. Notably, Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped to revive the form in the fifties by publishing the Beats through City Lights’ Pocket Poet series, an homage to the traditional chapbook’s smaller physical size. It’s still common for writers to put together up to sixty pages and distribute it as a “chapbook”, but modern chapbooks frequently aren’t intended for ordinary readers, aren’t meant to be disposable, nor are they currently the cheapest way to distribute writing. The modern paper chapbook has become a niche medium often intended for a highly-sophisticated audience. _______________________
Marko Fong This is Part 3 of an intermittent FFC series on Chapbooks and Part 1 of “Electronic Chapbooks” by Marko Fong. His Part 2 will appear tomorrow, October 19. Part 1 of the Chapbooks series was written by Bonnie ZoBell. ”Creating a Fiction Chapbook“ appeared at FFC on September 10.
by Marko Fong
Electronic publishing has one clear disadvantage when compared to paper– once you’re done reading, you can’t use it as toilet paper. Apparently during the 16th century, personal hygiene was one of many secondary uses for early chapbooks. Until recently, I’d never thought a lot about chapbooks much less their secondary uses. They were just something that poets printed up so they’d have something to sell at readings. In case you’re wondering, my answer is “No, I’ve never done that to someone else’s chapbook.” I’ll swear it on my copies of Fifty Shades of Grey and Paul Ryan’s budget plan.
Fifteen months ago, Jo-Anne Rosen, asked me to help her with e-Chapbook.com (the “e” is for “electronic”). I became fiction editor which basically means that Jo-Anne does all the work and I do the fun stuff. Before we published electronic ones, I had to learn more about traditional chapbooks.
The English-language chapbook was the product of three historical developments, the paper mill (paper got much cheaper), printing, and the rise of literacy among the poor. The difference between inexpensive paper and quality paper today is much less extreme than it was then. We now assume that paper will be high contrast, take and hold inks readily, resist tearing, and maintain uniform size and thickness. Even as recently as the sixties, some paperbacks were printed on paper that failed to meet all those standards. If an ordinary person in the 16th century, wanted to share a broadside, a ballad, poems, nursery rhymes, or stories, the options were limited. Alongside the printers who produced those King James Bibles with the gold-leaf edging, leather covers, hand-stitched bindings, and smear-free ink, a “people’s” medium for publication emerged that,
Didn’t have a binding or hard cover Was made by folding sheets of low-quality paper multiple times (32 pages or 5 folds came from this tradition) and was physically smaller than a printed book. Used quick-inexpensive production and printing techniques (illustration was limited to simple woodcuts) with low quality ink on cheap paper. The product was meant to last about as long as Rock of Ages stayed in movie theaters.
These were “chapbooks.” The middle English word for “cheap” was “ceap.” They sold for anywhere from two to twelve pence a copy and instead of being sold through booksellers were distributed in pubs, on street corners, at markets, and other public gatherings by a new sort of peddler called a “chapman”(not to be confused with the guy who killed John Lennon). The form became phenomenally successful. Because few examples of early chapbooks survive, we forget how much more prolific the chapbook publishing industry was than its bound-book brother.
If you had a pub song, a political complaint, a poem, or a story, the chapbook was the most efficient way to “get the word” out before daily newspaper, radio, television, or Facebook. The chapbook became the information medium for “ordinary” people. As the British economy shifted to manufacturing, the literacy rate rose dramatically. An estimated 60% of adult males in England were literate by the mid-1700’s, a figure considerably higher than the rate for Fox News viewers (fwiw I wish Fox had a paper publication). Most of those who could read lacked the income necessary to buy bound books.
Perhaps the most famous chapbook ever, though it’s usually called a pamphlet, was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a publication that made the case for American independence from England. In the years 1775-1776, an estimated 500,000 copies of Paine’s Common Sense were printed and distributed when the total population of the colonies was 2.5 million. Chapbooks weren’t intended to be physically permanent, but some definitely aren’t forgotten.
The chapbook form faded after the emergence of the cheap daily newspaper, a new kind of disposable print that spawned a writer named, Charles Dickens. The tradition, however, has continued in poetry and for fiction writers. Notably, Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped to revive the form in the fifties by publishing the Beats through City Lights’ Pocket Poet series, an homage to the traditional chapbook’s smaller physical size. It’s still common for writers to put together up to sixty pages and distribute it as a “chapbook”, but modern chapbooks frequently aren’t intended for ordinary readers, aren’t meant to be disposable, nor are they currently the cheapest way to distribute writing. The modern paper chapbook has become a niche medium often intended for a highly-sophisticated audience. _______________________
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Road To Grammar --- Your Road to Better Grammar
Road To Grammar --- Your Road to Better Grammar
Quizzes, practice, etc.
Quizzes, practice, etc.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Video: SNL's iPhone 5 Bit and 10 Other Hilarious Tech Skits | News & Opinion | PCMag.com
Video: SNL's iPhone 5 Bit and 10 Other Hilarious Tech Skits | News & Opinion | PCMag.com Great skit.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/widget/widget.html?vid=1420759" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.nbc.com/assets/video/widget/widget.html?vid=1420759" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Monday, October 15, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Innovative Fiction
Innovative Fiction A monthly literary magazine that reviews innovative novels in the context of Surrealism and modern art.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Why Sex Doesn’t Sell | Copyblogger
Why Sex Doesn’t Sell | Copyblogger
In his essay It’s Necessary for the Scene, American Playwright David Mamet
explains why no play or movie he writes or directs include explicit sex scenes.
Friday, October 5, 2012
The Pinch Literary Journal
The Pinch Literary Journal
The slush must flow, and our pile is going strong, but lately we’re feeling the pinch (sorry) when it comes to shorter fiction and creative nonfiction. We just aren’t getting enough of it, and we like to include a few pieces in each issue. In fact, we’d like it now more than ever,
The slush must flow, and our pile is going strong, but lately we’re feeling the pinch (sorry) when it comes to shorter fiction and creative nonfiction. We just aren’t getting enough of it, and we like to include a few pieces in each issue. In fact, we’d like it now more than ever,
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Essay from Flash Fiction about Flash Fiction
Posted: 04 Oct 2012 01:01 AM PDT
by Erin Entrada Kelly
Flash fiction has an underbelly. Don’t believe me? Scour the Internet and read the flash fiction literature that’s out there. You’ll find some really weird stuff. Stories that would never grace the pages of the Paris Review or New Yorker. Stories that don’t necessarily follow all the conventions, but find their place anyway. That’s why I love flash so much. The already-vague rules are constantly being broken.
Sometimes there are concepts that are intriguing enough to be written, but won’t work as a traditional short story, novella or novel. Sometimes that’s not what we want, anyway. We just want to provide a peek of someone’s oddball life; we don’t want to delve full-force into it. (The more delving, the less interesting that life can become, after all). Flash fiction allows us to do that — it provides a platform to stretch our creative fingers and let loose our own weird underbellies that have nowhere else to go.
We’ve all heard the old adage: Write what you know. In flash, that doesn’t really matter. You can throw it out the window. You don’t have to write what you know. You can write what you create, what you imagine, what you conjure, what you pull out of thin air. You can break the rules, because the rules don’t really exist anyway.
Have you ever sat in a silent room and wondered what would happen if someone – maybe you – suddenly stood up and screamed like a maniac? Write it. Ever attended a wedding and considered objecting, just to see what would happen? Write it. Been at work, lounged back in your cubicle, and considered the possibility that all of your co-workers were synthetic androids? Write it.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a master of quirky fiction, even if you feel most comfortable within the confines of “traditional literature” (or maybe especially so), write it. Stretch your imagination. Push your limits. You’re a flash fiction writer — you have the avenue, you have the opportunity. See where your mind will go. Break off the chains of writing rules. Forget what you’ve learned.
How? Here’s a few thoughts:
___________________________________________________________________________________
Erin Entrada Kelly is staff editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles. Her fiction has been published widely in places like Keyhole Magazine, Monkeybicycle and the Kyoto Journal. She was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer National Fiction Prize and the Philippines Free Press Literary Award for Short Fiction. She works at Swarthmore College and has a debut novel forthcoming from HarperCollins’ Greenwillow Books. Read more at www.erinentradakelly.com. If you’re on Facebook, find her here.
Flash fiction has an underbelly. Don’t believe me? Scour the Internet and read the flash fiction literature that’s out there. You’ll find some really weird stuff. Stories that would never grace the pages of the Paris Review or New Yorker. Stories that don’t necessarily follow all the conventions, but find their place anyway. That’s why I love flash so much. The already-vague rules are constantly being broken.
Sometimes there are concepts that are intriguing enough to be written, but won’t work as a traditional short story, novella or novel. Sometimes that’s not what we want, anyway. We just want to provide a peek of someone’s oddball life; we don’t want to delve full-force into it. (The more delving, the less interesting that life can become, after all). Flash fiction allows us to do that — it provides a platform to stretch our creative fingers and let loose our own weird underbellies that have nowhere else to go.
We’ve all heard the old adage: Write what you know. In flash, that doesn’t really matter. You can throw it out the window. You don’t have to write what you know. You can write what you create, what you imagine, what you conjure, what you pull out of thin air. You can break the rules, because the rules don’t really exist anyway.
Have you ever sat in a silent room and wondered what would happen if someone – maybe you – suddenly stood up and screamed like a maniac? Write it. Ever attended a wedding and considered objecting, just to see what would happen? Write it. Been at work, lounged back in your cubicle, and considered the possibility that all of your co-workers were synthetic androids? Write it.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a master of quirky fiction, even if you feel most comfortable within the confines of “traditional literature” (or maybe especially so), write it. Stretch your imagination. Push your limits. You’re a flash fiction writer — you have the avenue, you have the opportunity. See where your mind will go. Break off the chains of writing rules. Forget what you’ve learned.
How? Here’s a few thoughts:
- Revisit an old concept that you thought you couldn’t write, or thought was too ridiculous. Consider ways to morph that concept into a piece of flash.
- Observe people. Think: What if?
- Go beyond your comfort zone. Try something you’ve never tried before. You have nothing to lose, really. The more we push our limits, the more versatile we allow ourselves to be.
“Write what you know?” Fuggetaboutit. Try the what-ifs. You might surprise yourself.___________________________________________________________________________________
Erin Entrada Kelly is staff editor for Flash Fiction Chronicles. Her fiction has been published widely in places like Keyhole Magazine, Monkeybicycle and the Kyoto Journal. She was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer National Fiction Prize and the Philippines Free Press Literary Award for Short Fiction. She works at Swarthmore College and has a debut novel forthcoming from HarperCollins’ Greenwillow Books. Read more at www.erinentradakelly.com. If you’re on Facebook, find her here.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Home | filling Station
Home | filling Station
Wicked writing for intense writers.
fS is Canada's alternative literary magazine.
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