Friday, April 25, 2014

Entry # 210 - "What I am Reading for May"

Tulip's from Alex & Aline for Jeanne's Birthday
I am off to Rehoboth Beach, DE in May for a week of reading, walking, and spending time with my partner as we celebrate our first anniversary. We are looking forward to quality time reading and talking about books, so I ordered some books that I long to read.


First, on my list is Elizabeth McCracken's new collection, Thunderstruck & Other Stories This is her first story collection in twenty years, but she is an amazingly talented short story writer and teacher whose work I have admired since I read her collection, Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry, many years ago. I recently read the lead story from the new collection, "Thunderstruck" in the new Story Quarterly, Vol. 46/47, which is (by the way) a dazzling collection of stories, essays, and an interview with Colm Toibin. I read another of Elizabeth's new stories, "Hungry"that was just published in the new Ploughshares, Spring 2014, Vol. 40, No. 1. Both of Elizabeth's two new stories are rich with the kind of wisdom that comes from surviving life's heartbreaks. So I can't wait to read the whole new collection.

And if you catch the light just right . . .
Second & Third, on my list are two collections, Starting Over: Stories and Collected Stories by Elizabeth Spencer, who won the 2014 REA Award last week.  She is probably one of the most amazing short story writers that no one knows. I have read individual stories over the years but never sat down with an entire collection so I am longing to do that.

Fourth, on my list is Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams. 
And Jeanne is reading Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning to Walk in the Dark. We will read, compare notes and share books. We won't likely read them all in one week, but I will plan to follow up with our impressions at end of May on all of these and perhaps others. 
Tulips are Almost Translucent
 
About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award.  Glimmer Train named a recent story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New Writers.  A recent story was a finalist for the 2013 Broad River Review RASH Award for Fiction, another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest.  Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others.   She is working on two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection, Mermaids & Other Stories.  She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers.   Learn more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com or  visit blog:  http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

So What's On Your Reading List? Feel free to drop me a note if you'd like to share your impressions.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Entry # 209 - An Experimental Nonfiction Piece on WATER

Photo Credit - Jan Bowman - 2013
The Truth About Water

Drink up. Water is wealth. Water heals. Mends the cells. Flushes toxins.

Drink water from plastic bottles thick with toxins. Bound for recycling or landfills.

Water flows freely in our world into sinks, bathtubs and showers. We stand over cleansing basins of water, flushed with complex chemicals. We drink deeply and dump the rest casually into a sink. We wash vital organs clear of toxins with water taken from bottles and tidy faucets. Faucets quench thirst, but bottles travel better. Even so, in many parts of this world, water does not come from bottles or faucets.


Drink water. We have so much. Water holds it all together. The great earth’s landmasses press, just as we do, against oceans, rivers, tides. Think of parts of China or the Sudan. Earth’s poorest people value water more than riches. Water is wealth.

And whether woman or child, she who bends her back and kneels to touch the shallow stream or river with dry, cracked lips will live - unless disease, hunger, or toxins do their work.

Drink water. But how much?  It depends. Where do you live? How old are you? How healthy or wealthy? How much is enough? Perhaps eight or nine cups are enough, unless you’re thirsty, or tired, or your urine’s darker than light yellow. Or unless it’s early in the morning, or you’ve just swallowed a handful of vitamins, or you’re terribly ill. Then you might need more or less.


We can't imagine needing it, wanting it, or dying from lack of it. Unthinkable. Drink more water. Lose weight. Flush out those toxins. Toxins destined for the rivers of reclaimed water flowing into glasses and tubs. Don’t worry that you’ve taken too much, more than your rightful share. Go for it. Water your lawn. Wash your car. Flush and flush, because you can.

What could possible stop you from doing whatever you wish with water?

Drink up. Water is wealth. Water heals. Mends the cells and flushes toxins.

Or you could drink wine. You’ll live longer, they say. But it takes water to make wine.

I previously posted a version of this work. Not sure whether one should call it poetry or prose. It seems to be some sort of hybrid at this point. Since I usually write fiction, this presents different problems when I think about revisions.  Thought I would share a work embryo for Easter. 


Jan Bowman                                                                              Flash Creative Non-Fiction

5659 Vantage Point Road                                                          approx. 350 words - revised

Columbia, MD 21044                                                                April 18, 2014

Blog site: http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com
This has been a particularly difficult week - environmentally - so I have thought quite a bit about water and its importance.  If you follow me on facebook you know of what I speak.
janbowman.77@facebook.com
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About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award.  Glimmer Train named a recent story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New Writers.
Jan aboard ship - 2013
A recent story was a finalist for the 2013 Broad River Review RASH Award for Fiction, another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest.  Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others.   She is working on two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection, Mermaids & Other Stories.  She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers.
 

Friday, April 11, 2014

Entry # 208 - Turning Character Inside/Out


Hawaii - April 2013 - Jan Bowman
This week I am exploring the evolution of a character in a story I am writing, looking for that organic moment in events when everything changes. So I returned to my craft reading to reread for inspiration an excellent essay by Megan Staffel, "In the Garden: Revealing a Character in a Moment of Change" found in A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft. As I distill the most useful ideas that apply to my current story, I am struck by Staffel's observations that modern fiction moves beyond Aristotle's Poetics that focused upon tragedy. She says that "fiction in the twenty-first century has a different purpose and our generalizations look more like this: Art Imitates Life and Character determines plot, whether it's simple or complex."

Hawaii - April 2013 - Roof Gardens - Jan Bowman
Staffel paraphrases sections from scholar Gerald Else's work on Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument (1963), in which Else, (358) says, "A recognition is a change from ignorance to knowledge. It's recognizing, a remembering of something you already knew. . . And that moment causes an unexpected shift, a reversal of expectations." The resulting shift or reversal leads to a new understanding. 
 
Staffel says that ". . . if we show the movement from inside to outside, subjective to objective, we can portray this moment (of change/knowledge) in a fluid, believable, and entirely contextual manner that introduces insight without contrivance."  

The writer then is trying to show an invisible event, a moment of insight or recognition that takes place in the mind of the character and/or the reader. This is not easy to do well and that seems to separate the good stories from the great stories I read.

Hawaii April 2013 - Jan Bowman
As a reader I look for these moments in the fiction I read. As a writer - if I am lucky - I discover these moments sometimes after-the-fact. After I have written and rewritten for weeks - until I find I have written my way into the kind of person who fails to realize or comes to realize something new, something startling, something true. Then I am left with the task of doing this in a fluid, believable, organic way and this is a skill I continue to learn.
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About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award.  Glimmer Train named a recent story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New Writers.

A recent story was a finalist for the 2013 Broad River Review RASH Award for Fiction, another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest.  Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others.   She is working on two collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection, Mermaids & Other Stories.  She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers.   Learn more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com or  visit blog:  http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com
Facebook:  janbowman.77@facebook.com


Friday, April 4, 2014

Entry # 207 - "Finding A Small Press Publisher: Not A Small Task"

Finding a suitable publisher for a collection of short stories proves to be among the more challenging tasks for a relative unknown writer who specializes in writing short fiction.  Most of us who write prefer to spend our time writing, rather than marketing. But I have decided to try a new approach, using current technological trends available, in my quest to finding a publisher for my collection of ten stories. 
As part of a large community of writers, perhaps we might have more success if we  explore new approaches to help each other connect to readers and publishers who might appreciate our particular efforts. I would like to try an experiment. Here is a synopses of my story collection:  Mermaids & Other Stories. 
If you know someone who might be interested in publishing this collection, please send them the link to this or have them contact me directly at the links below. Also - if you have any suggestions that might be helpful to me or others, please share them with me. In a couple of months, I will plan to report on the progress of this project.

Synopses of --- Mermaids & Other Stories
 A Collection of Ten Short Stories Offered For Publication Consideration

In her poem “Kindness,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes that, when you know sorrow as “the other deepest thing . . . then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.”

The dynamic mix of characters that comprise the stories of Mermaids & Other Stories know about sorrow. They know it in the burden of looking after a war-injured husband and the obnoxious boy he never helps to raise, when all you really want to do is fly away. They know it in the struggle to hide away from the violence of the world, when the violence will always find you. They know it in the anger of a seventy-six-year-old woman whose son-in-law can’t even wait until she’s dead to try to take her farm away.

But they know kindness too. They know it in the unspoken understanding between a young man and his elderly aunt. They know it in a small gesture between friends, and through unexpected connections found on the other end of the phone or at the end of a deluge. Moreover, they need it, as we all seek kindness to comfort us if we are to press on against the sorrows of ordinary lives.

The ten stories of Mermaids & Other Stories, Jan Bowman’s first collection, include award finalists and honorable mentions, and “Mermaids,” the winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Seven of its stories have been previously published. Two of the three unpublished stories have been finalists in recent contests. Most importantly, Bowman’s stories reveal the power of small gestures in those necessary moments of human contact. Explored from childhood through old age, and without sentimentality, Mermaids & Other Stories is a window into the kindness all people seek and need in the face of loss.
  • This collection of short stories by Jan Bowman is seeking a suitable small press publisher.
  • If you are interested or know someone who might be, please contact Jan Bowman.
  • Email:  janbowmanwriter@gmail.com      Blog:  janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com
========================
About Jan Bowman
Winner of the 2011 Roanoke Review Fiction Award, Jan's stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best American Short Stories, and a Pen/O’Henry award.  Glimmer Train named a recent story as Honorable Mention in the November 2012 Short Story Awards for New Writers.
A recent story was a finalist for the 2013 Broad River Review RASH Award for Fiction, another story was a 2013 finalist in the Phoebe Fiction Contest; another was a 2012 finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest.  Jan’s fiction has appeared in numerous publications including, Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, The Broadkill Review, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes and others.   She is working on two new collections of short stories while shopping for a publisher for her completed story collection, Mermaids & Other Stories. 

 She has nonfiction publications in Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers.   Learn more at: www.janbowmanwriter.com or  visit blog:  http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com