Entry # 89 - "Imagine A Beginning"

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Today for those of you who write or intend to write, I offer a new challenge for you.    It's an exercise in imagining the beginning of a story or a scene of a story built on a photograph of a moment in time.  Imagine an opening camera angle for the story. Is it going to be a close shot or will the camera move in closer after a long shot of the picture? You can click on the photo and play with moving in closer or out.

Select one of these photos. 

Read the questions. Who sees this scene? Are they leaving or arriving? 

Read everything before you start.

Photo credit - Jan Bowman - Summer 2012

 Your objective is to write for at least 20 minutes without stopping to reread or cross out on this first cut.   Don’t think too hard. Just go with your initial reaction. No need to be clever or critical of what you write for this. 

       JUST get words on a page.

Later you can play with the details, but not at first. No one sees this but you, unless you decide to show someone.  And at this stage of the process why would you do that!   

Photo credit - Jim Wilson - Alaska- August 2012

Get your notes, journal or computer ready.  Close your eyes for about 5 minutes and imagine. Now plan to write for 20 minutes without stopping. Set a timer.

                                                 

OKAY!  Ready. Set. Go.

Now Stop! Time's up. So how did it go?

Hey Stop, I said. Leave it alone. 

Come back to it in a week. After a week reread and add more details. Then spend 20 minutes at some point  working on a second draft.  Do you have a promising possibility yet? What else happens?  And then what happens after that? 

Photo credit - Alex Dunn - Alaska - August 2012

 

Today I am revising a story for an August 31, 2012 deadline. So I'll go back to work now and leave you to your writing!      

REMEMBER - YOU'RE INVITED - 
to send me your thoughts about what you've read and want to share and I'll plan to post it on the first Tuesday of each month.  Here's what you do:
 
Write a couple of paragraphs if you would like to talk about a book.  Don't worry about being particularly academic.  This is not intended to be a formal review, unless you really long to write one, and in any case - write what you wish from your own impressions and reactions.  

Then send an email to me. I will collect these, edit a bit, if necessary, before posting your comments on the first Tuesday of the month under the title: READERS TALK.

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

Entry # 88 - "Imagine a Story from a Photo: Use 'What If' Questions"

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Nova Scotia

Today for those of you who write or intend to write, I offer something a little different. Here’s a challenge for you. 

It's an exercise in imagining a story or a scene of a story built on a photograph of a place and a series of questions.  Write them down on a piece of paper and don’t think too hard. Just go with your initial reaction.  No need to be clever or to be critical of what you write for this.

JUST get words on a page. 

Select one of these photos. Read the questions. Read everything before you start.

Scotland

                    IMAGINE

WHAT IF – you were writing a mystery and a scene is set at this location in the photograph?

What has happened?

When did it happen?

Where is this place? 

(Here’s a clue – Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia & a lake in Scotland.)

Why is this place important to the story?

Who was involved? What makes this story worth telling?

What time of the year is it?

Who is the main character?What does he/she want?

Who is the secondary character?What does he/she want?

Now add another person because you’ll need at least one more person to pull the tension into a triangle. What does he/she want?

What is the problem? 

(Clue: it comes organically from conflict and clash of desire and possibility.) 

Get your notes, journal or computer ready.  Close your eyes for about 5 minutes and imagine. Now plan to write for 20 minutes without stopping. 

OKAY!  Ready. Set. Go.

Try and write for at least 20 minutes without stopping to reread or cross out on this first cut. Later you can play with the details, but not at first. No one sees this but you, unless you decide to show someone.  And at this stage of the process why would you do that!

Now Stop! Time's up. So how did it go? Hey Stop, I said. Leave it alone. Come back to it in a week. After a week reread and add more details. Then spend 20 minutes at some point working on a second draft. Do you have a promising possibility yet? What else happens?  And then what happens after that?

If you come up with something about this experience that you’d like to share with readers, write me a note on the blog site or send me an email. You can talk about it. But don’t send me the actual piece of work. Okay?

You don’t want to send me your actual piece to post on the website here, even as a draft, because …WHAT IF… you ended up writing a story or essay from this writing exercise and used this piece? If you published it by sending it to my website – many publications will not take it because they want first publication rights. So keep it and keep working on it and let me know if something good comes of this exercise for you.  Good Luck!

Today I am revising a story for an August 31, 2012 deadline. So I'll go back to work now and leave you to your writing!      

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

Entry # 87 - "Conflicts Make The World Go Round"

As a person, I avoid conflicts as much as possible.  I dislike a sturdy fight. I enter confrontation thoughtfully, in defense of those in need of justice or protection. Squabbles and quarrels give me a headache. Mean people make me physically ill. Cruelty makes me cringe in horror and recoil in anger. Maybe that's why I avoid scary movies and books.

And yet our cultural language is powered by words of conflict. We are told to fight everything from all manner of disease, as well as poverty, terrorists, and Internet porn and spam. Words of war find their way into the private and public conversations all around us. Sit in any coffee shop, anywhere in this country and listen in on conversations. Everything is a battle and politically we are influenced by an ongoing national agenda that encourages violence to address even the most benign aspects of the human condition.

So it is with regret that I must come to terms with the fact that conflict is an essential component of any fiction worth reading. Opposing forces lead to complications that drive fiction to come to some kind of resolution. It may be a happy resolution or a sad one, but it should bring insights to readers. The showdown between opposing forces, whether internal (inside characters hearts and minds) or whether external (outside and layered), brings the reader to a new place after reading the story. Oddly enough – braving conflict is in itself - a reward for hanging in, and reading and hoping for some kind of sensible ending.

It seems to me that writers have a shared responsibility to provide an ending worth the conflict. If the conflict is worthy, the results can provide a new clarity, without using coincidences or short cuts to resolution. So writers can make the experience of dealing with conflict, a moment of growth. Readers and writers are cheated when they struggle through the rigors of conflicts only to find the ending concludes with some sort of gimmick, a trick, a slight of hand move that ends with something like, “He woke up as the morning sun streamed into his bedroom and realized it was all a dream.”

I continue to hope that eventually the world will notice how much we need more compassion, shared respect, mutual civility, and generous acts of kindness, all of which would do much to make the world better. And maybe the paradox lies in the power of fiction to help bring that about in the hearts and minds of readers.

This photo is viewed through a screen.
Maybe it is an effort to avoid the harsh reality of life.  But it changes everything! Is that a good thing?

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

Entry # 86 - WRITERS TALK - Phyllis Duncan - Part 2

Part 2 of an Interview with Phyllis Duncan.

Phyllis Anne Duncan (Maggie to her friends) is a retired Federal Aviation Administration safety official who has been writing since third grade. A commercial pilot and former flight instructor, she writes fiction from her home in Staunton, VA. She is a graduate of Madison College (now James Madison University) with degrees in history and political science.

She is the author of two short-story collections, Fences and Blood Vengeance, and has had stories published in eFiction Magazine. She is a submissions reader for eFiction Noir and eFiction Sci-Fi magazines.

She has studied writing at Writers.com, the Gotham Writers Workshop, and the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop.

blog: http://unexpectedpaths.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Phyllis-Anne-Duncans-Author-Page/136645693053020

Twitter: @unspywriter

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/maggieduncan1/

Jan:     Let's continue our interview that we began last week by talking about your current work. What's your working style? What are you working on now?

Maggie:     Because I have so many novel-length works (at least five), I work on one until it stalls, then I move on to another. Right now, I'm trying to "zip" two manuscripts into a single one. Coincidentally, they're both 9/11-based, but I wasn't satisfied with either one. As I merge them, I like the subject matter more. The bulk of both works was post-9/11 events, both military and political, so I'm trying to pull the best from both into a single novel. It's not as easy as I thought.

Jan:     So you move back and forth between works.  I do that too.  It helps.

Maggie:      Yes. I think it's good to set something aside; especially something you've worked on for a while. It helps you get better perspective on it, and, frankly, you can get bogged down in a manuscript. Stepping away for a while is sometimes the only way to get a handle on what needs to be done with it. 

Jan:     Who are your literary influences?

Maggie:     Too many to name, but I'll highlight Harlan Ellison and Margaret Atwood. Both write speculative fiction, which is my favorite to read. Both Ellison and Atwood have such a grasp on the human condition and human frailties; their works always awes me. Ellison, in particular, can write something that sticks with me, plays in my dreams, and muddles me for days. He's that good at disrupting the everyday world. Atwood's language just flows so wonderfully that often after I read something by her I figure I should just give up writing, but what she's really doing is inspiring me to write better.

Others include Vonnegut, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Austin, the Brontes, Thomas Hardy, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Stephen King, not to mention his son, Joe Hill. And, as I said, many more. I think every writer I’ve ever read has influenced me in some way.

Jan:     What were your favorite childhood books?  Do you ever reread them?

Maggie:     Black Beauty was the first book someone gave me as a child, and I still have it, though the cover is missing and I'm afraid the pages might fall apart. I have re-read that over the years, and I cry every single time. If I re-read it tomorrow, I'll cry. Little Women, The Pickwick Papers, and anything by Edgar Allen Poe were my childhood favorites. I had to sneak Poe home from the Library because my mother thought he was too lurid, but I was reading him in fourth and fifth grade. Even now when I want to scare the bejesus out of someone in a story, I think about Poe, not King. I went through a stage of "horse" books starting with Black Beauty, so there was Misty of Chincoteague, The Horsemasters, and The Black Stallion. My first horse's name was, of course, Beauty. I had the entire collection of Nancy Drew stories, but I also loved the Hardy Boys stories.

I have re-read most of these over the years, and I'm looking forward to another re-read with my grandkids, though I may hold off on the Poe with them! 

Jan:     What books are in your ‘to read soon’ stack by your bed?

Maggie:     It's a good thing I have a Kindle because my many bookcases are packed with the books I've read, and a stack of my 'to read' books would be in danger of toppling onto the bed! The 'to read' books go from the classics (Sherlock Holmes) to the modern (a series about the last Druid left on earth and he's 2,000 years old) to books on the craft of writing. On this particular day, I'm reading V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton and Our Divided Political Heart by E.J. Dionne. I've a good split between fiction and non-fiction, and I majored in history, so I have many history books in the queue, including a memoir dictated seventy years ago by Joseph Stalin's mother.  

Jan:     What’s the most useless advice anyone has ever given you about writing? 

Maggie:     Frankly, the most useless piece of advice was when I paid attention to a writer friend (a man) many years ago who said my female character was too harsh and strident and that I should soften her and make her more vulnerable. Because he was a friend, I followed that advice, and I ended up abandoning that character for a long time. I didn't know exactly what was wrong, but I just knew I didn't want to write about her.

Jan:     What is the best advice that guides your current work?

Maggie:     I went to a talk by Sara Paretsky, who writes the V.I. Warshawski mysteries. She told a story about how an agent tried to get her to "soften" her female character and make her more "vulnerable." Paretsky went back and gave it a good try and found it just didn't work. She was starting to hate her protagonist, so she switched agents and wrote V.I. Warshawski just the way she wanted to, no arguments. After that talk, I went home and redrafted everything with the softer, more vulnerable character. I left her flaws in, but I made her a no-nonsense hard-ass, and I'm more comfortable with that character now, because that was how she was supposed to be.

Jan:     Any other words of wisdom to share with our writer friends that might encourage them in their writing life.

Maggie:     Only you know who your characters are, their likes and dislikes, their quirks and worldview. Don't let anyone else tell you who they are; the characters will tell you exactly who they are. Listen to them.

I'll add, don't adhere to the "write what you know" maxim. I write about spies, and I've never been one, but what I am is a political scientist who was an aviation safety investigator.  So start from what you know, research, let your imagination go, and try something you don't know. You'll unleash yourself, and it's fun, too.

Jan:    Thanks for the interview, Maggie.  I hope people will check out your writing blog. It does contain 'wise advice' to those trying to set aside time for their writing life.  And - of course - your political blog's insightful and interesting, also.

blog: http://unexpectedpaths.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Phyllis-Anne-Duncans-Author-Page/136645693053020

Twitter: @unspywriter

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/maggieduncan1/  

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

Entry # 85 - "The Amazing Possibilities of Hope"

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Author Kim Barnes says, “The possibilities of hope and the probability of loss drives fiction and compellingly leads to discovery for both readers and writers.”

Atlantic Storm Front - Summer 2012 - Jan Bowman

A friend recently said,  “I wish you’d write more happy things, Jan.  Why do stories need to have some kind of problem? You ‘writer types’ just focus on conflicts and disaster. Somebody is always losing something. Why is that?”

So I’ve been thinking about all the ‘doom and gloom’ in fiction, and I’ve concluded that fiction isn’t well served unless there is a problem.  Without a problem to resolve, there is no story. There is only an anecdote, which has no beginning, middle or ending that brings hope or epiphany or satisfaction. If a character has nothing to lose, if nothing is at stake, a story ceases to be interesting. Readers need to have hope for the characters in fiction. Loss drives fiction, or even the slightest risk of loss drives fiction, but so does hope. Without hope there’s little reason for readers to turn the pages. Adding a struggle requires the reader to connect, to hope for the best. Conflicts cause characters to gain purpose.  It gives them a sense of direction and helps hold the reader’s interest.

Without conflict, without a problem, a story has no forward motion.  Nothing happens.  And even if you are an old Seinfeld fan (or you grew up watching the reruns), it was a show that described itself as ‘a show about nothing,’ and yet something always happened. And that something was what we recognize as life. Perhaps no one seemed ever to grow up or grow old or evolve in most of the episodes, and shallowness marked the full measure of the characters, but issues and conflict drove the story lines. And viewers held out hope for Jerry's friends, hapless and clueless Elaine, or George or even Kramer.

Challenges and conflict are life! Basic descriptions of conflict in fiction abound, but the three essential ingredients require: characters who want or need something (emotional or material or spiritual); loss can occur over what is at stake, if they don’t get it; and in the progress of the story something or someone gets in the way. As characters interact to gain their desires, their goals either connect or clash, and how they respond becomes the basis for plot. And what readers hope for while reading about this conflict drives the story.

Atlantic Hope - Summer 2012 - Jan Bowman

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” 

 --- Vaclav Havel.

“Hope is a good thing—maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies.”

 -–  Stephen King.

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

Entry # 84 - WRITERS TALK - Phyllis Duncan - Part 1

Part 1 - Interview with Author Phyllis Duncan. Part 2 will be posted Tuesday, August 21, 2012. 

Phyllis Anne Duncan (Maggie to her friends) is a retired Federal Aviation Administration safety official who has been writing since third grade. A commercial pilot and former flight instructor, she writes fiction from her home in Staunton, VA. She is a graduate of Madison College (now James Madison University) with degrees in history and political science. Phyllis is the author of two short-story collections, Fences and Blood Vengeance, and has had stories published in eFiction Magazine. She is a submissions reader for eFiction Noir and eFiction Sci-Fi magazines. She has studied writing at Writers.com, the Gotham Writers Workshop, and the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop.
 
blog:http://unexpectedpaths.comFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Phyllis-Anne-Duncans-Author-Page/136645693053020

Twitter: @unspywriter

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/maggieduncan1/

Jan:     Thanks for taking time for an interview.  Let's begin by talking about your interesting background.  What about your background influences your writing?

Maggie:     Ultimately, I think everything about my background somehow appears in my writing. I'm half Scot, half Irish, so rebellion has been a part of my psyche since I was born. I grew up on a farm where my dad wouldn't let his kids laze around, so I think that work ethic helps my writing life. Also, it was my father who said, "Do whatever you want, and don't let anyone stop you." That not only embodies my approach to writing, one of my main characters lives her life that way as well.

I've written about family events--fictionalized, of course--in my collection of short stories, Fences, and writing has always been therapeutic for me, so that's a nice full circle.

Also, my allegory of self when I write is my strong sense of social justice, enhanced by the fact I'm a knee-jerk, bleeding-heart, foaming-mouth liberal and proud of it. That imbues everything I write.

Jan:     Where were you on that terrible Tuesday when the horrors of 9-11 unfolded? 

Maggie:     I was the general aviation significant event coordinator for my section of the Federal Aviation Administration, and when the first plane hit, the initial thought was it was a large business jet, so I was called into the Accident Investigation operations center just in time to see the second plane hit. When it was evident this was no accident, my main concern was for the people I was responsible for, and I sent them home immediately. It was the most difficult day of my professional life, having to stay there while my brother and my then-husband were begging me to leave. I stayed because my father, a career soldier, had imbued me with a deep sense of service to country, and I knew I couldn't leave. After things settled, I was so angry that terrorists had used what I loved, what I spent most of my life involved in--aviation--to disrupt our sense of security.

Jan:     And what impact does that have on your work?

Maggie:     As for the impact on my work, I found I couldn't sleep or come to terms with what had happened until I wrote a story where someone escaped from one of the Twin Towers. It's loosely based on some firefighters and civilians who survived and were rescued, but it was very cathartic for me. I've since turned it into a novel, actually two, which I talk more about below. 

Jan:     Tell us about the status of your current writing work.

Maggie:     I've been trying to have short stories published and have had very modest success--one last year, two this year, so that's promising for next year. In the meantime, I go between several different longer works, which are in various stages of completion, editing, revising, adding, and cutting. I'm never satisfied.

Jan:     Why will people like reading your novels?

Maggie:     I hope people will like reading my novels for two reasons. First is that I usually take a current event and come at it from an unusual perspective, e.g., the events leading up to the Oklahoma City bombing from the bomber's point of view. Second, I've been told I have two, very memorable characters in my works. I think so, too, and I hope that the female character, who is strong and self-assured (i.e., everything I'm not), will be appealing. 

Jan:     So when you begin work on a novel, what comes first for you, characters or plot?

Maggie:     Since I've written several manuscripts about the same two characters, I'd say they come first, and then I find interesting situations and settings to put them in. I'm very familiar with their back-story, of course; so seeing how they react to these situations and settings is exciting and often unexpected. My work, even my short stories, are very character-driven, and that's also the kind of writing I love to read. I think that's because I've always been a people-watcher, so characters will always take center-stage in something I write.

And writing about current events doesn't necessarily mean the plot is already established for you. I may take something like, say, a Soviet mole in the FBI, which people are familiar with, but then riff off a subplot that's purely fictional but which ties into the main plot. Whereas my characters come from picking traits and histories from real people and other fictional characters, the plotting for me is intuitive. Something comes up, I start writing it, and it gels. What results may be completely different from what I originally had in mind. I'm sure that's not "kosher," but it's what works for me.

Jan:     What do you know now about your writing that you didn’t know five years ago?

Maggie:     I'm more comfortable with my writing now. Even though I had a book published in 2000, five years ago, the thought of sharing what I'd written was scary. My writing is who I am, and, well, what if someone doesn't like what I've written? Does that mean they don't like me? As I've grown as a writer and accepted the premise that you have to write for yourself, not someone else, I've become more accepting of my own writing. However, it still shocks me when someone says my writing is good. 

Jan:     What is your writing process?  What does a good writing day look like for you?

Maggie:     I write something every day, either a blog post or a new scene for a novel or a short piece. I have a work schedule, since writing is now my job: four hours in the morning, four in the afternoon. I do occasionally take time off to spoil grandkids, but being retired from the daily grind means if I want to write from eight in the evening until midnight, I don't have to feel guilty about it.

Those stretches of writing also involve research, a lot of it. Since I write about current events or recent history, I spent a lot of time on Google making certain I get my facts as accurate as possible. (Of course, sometimes the facts need a little "enhancement" to be interesting, but that's why they call it fiction.) When I break from writing or researching, I read for pleasure, though, as a writer, can you ever really read for pleasure?   

Jan:     You have a lovely writing blog as well as a political blog and you devote a fair amount of time to keeping these current.  Tell us a bit about how you balance online blog time and work on your novels? 

Maggie:     I actually have a detailed writing work schedule. I blog on writing on Mondays and Fridays. Wednesday is the day for my political blog (aptly named "Politics Wednesday"). Occasionally, I'll do extra posts if something inspires me. On blogging days, I try to get the posts done in the morning, take a break, then edit, revise, or compose in the afternoons. I will occasionally write a post ahead of time and set it up to "go live" on its usual day, but I've been pretty consistent in keeping to that schedule. I found I needed to do that. Otherwise, I played around too much in my free time--computer games and television--and I wasn't being as productive in my writing as I wanted to be. So, every month, I print out the schedule and stick it where I can see it when I'm at the computer, and I track my hours, as if I'm on a time clock, so I make myself stick to it.

Jan:     And how important is a blog to a writer’s life? 

Maggie:     I think blogging is important for establishing that new writer requirement, "The Platform." I've been pleased with the number of followers and hits on the writing blog, Unexpected Paths. Its tag line is "Random thoughts about writing, the writing life, and the journey to publication," so that leaves it open to many different topics. I try to do a "craft"-type post a couple of times a month--setting, character, and the ever-important grammar. I share my writing joys and frustrations, and the good thing is, people comment to let me know I'm not the only one. Writing can sometimes be so insular, so internal; you forget there are others out there with you on the journey. They can inspire you, and you can learn from them.

Stay Tuned for more of Maggie's Interview in Part 2 on Tuesday, August 21, 2012. Maggie will tell us more about her current work and what she plans to write next. 

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com

Entry # 83 - "Sheldon Lee Compton - Place: Not Just A Location"

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Recently I read a collection of short stories, The Same Terrible Storm, (2012) by Sheldon Lee Compton that caused me to think once again and more deeply about the power of place in fiction. 

Place is so much more than a location. Place includes the inhabitants - and yes - the events that are precipitated by the cultural structures and strictures of place. 

Plot flows organically from place in good fiction. And it seems a paradox that every ‘place’ in fiction is generated by the writer’s creative efforts to draw fine lines of descriptions with words that reveal the unique ‘place pressures’ that cause people to do what they do. And yet, part of the effect of that process requires that the experience will ultimately connect to ordinary and extra-ordinary common events of human lives. 

The writer’s descriptions of sense impressions that are specific – never generic – to a particular place, takes a place, even an imaginary place, and renders it so real a reader can, not only see it, but also feel it, smell it, hear it, touch it and come away carrying that experience. 

After having been fully engaged by Compton’s fictional stories, I believe in the world he’s constructed. For a writer to write successfully about place in this deeper way, such a writer must find and notice what a particular character in that particular place would notice, and yet not notice, because that feature has always been there. It’s what the character knows and sees and feels and smells and touches daily.  Perhaps one way to think of it – at least for me – is to say it is the ‘there and the not there.’ Yes. This does sound a bit like I’m channeling Gertrude Stein. But I’m talking about characters’ ‘in-the-moment’ process of living a life that adds depth to a writer’s work.

I believe in the quiet desperation of people of Compton’s world, living in despair, but with dignity and grace, in spite of grinding poverty. I taste the grit of coal dust coating Kentucky mining communities. I smell and hear the local train hauling away slag and debris. I see mighty trucks driven by thick-handed men roaring down steep mountainous roads, hauling ass and coal.  I hear the chronic wheezing of black lung disease in gnarly men bent over cups of thick coffee in a diner.  I smell the oily sickness of it all, and although I find myself somewhat reluctant to do this kind of feeling, I did feel it. 

Now it is as if I’ve visited another country. I know things now – at an intuitive level – gut level, if you will, that I’ve previously known mostly at an intellectual level. And isn’t that what fiction that marks us with the unique, organic qualities of place can do?  Yes. I believe that is exactly what good fiction should do.

Interview by:  Jan Bowman  -  August 7, 2012   

Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of 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:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com