Rarely Likable

Its Necessity Snuck Up On Me Linkbucket

-- The literary influence of Ursula LeGuin. (via Largehearted Boy)
-- Trailer for Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie, starring Robert Downey, Jr.
-- You Must Be This Tall to Ride.
-- OMG FINAL FANTASY XIII IT'S REALLY HAPPENING!
-- Carrie Spell on Mary Robison, and her newest novel in particular.
-- Keyhole 7 is out!
-- Lily Hoang's comfortable-looking writing place (though she says she's a cafe writer).
-- The Dollar Redesign Project.
-- Ethel Rohan on storytelling craft.
-- Matt at Scrubbles on 1979's mall of the future.
-- "Doll Talk," by Nicole Henares.
-- Faces of Math.
-- The Family Guy scene that is also the Writer Serenity Prayer.
-- "The Museum of Whatnot," by Kevin Wilson.
-- A sneak peek at 1Q84. (via TMN)
-- We all know the feeling.
-- "Ava Gardner Was Born in Grabtown," by Laura Ellen Scott.
-- No riding shotgun in the Google Street View car.
-- Good advice on unblocking.
-- Finally, and 100% for my kid: Shots of Aang and Zuko (aka Dev Patel) from The Last Airbender.

Like today, for example.

I have a story up at Monkeybicycle.

This story's fun fact: The title is something a friend said to me once. I wrote the story with nothing in mind for a title...and was reminded of that aphorism a couple of days later. I *love* when things like that happen. It almost makes the crappy writing days worthwhile.

A Linkbucket before I Go Work on, Well, Stuff.

Misreading the end of literary culture.
Micah Ling of Keyhole interviews Michael Martone via postcards.
Why writing workshops for kids can be awesome.
The Millions interviews Joe Meno.
I love a good analogy.
Gordon takes inventory, four years out.
Recession comes to university-based litmags.
Laura van den Berg why submitting to litmags is a good thing (including some words on rejection).
I'm hanging around my mailbox, waiting for my spy camera.
Small Beer Press on Scribd.
I wish this post had been around six months ago.
Tim meets Kyle Minor. Read a story of Tim's here, read a story of Kyle's here.
Logan Crowell discusses Braid in depth.

And finally: I have no problem resisting commemorative plates and coins, but I'm having trouble resisting this.

In which I talk about myself talking about myself!

Marcelle Heath* interviewed me about The Northville Review at Luna Park.

For this edition of fun facts, some elaborations on pop culture:
-- The Wrestler is one of the most unnerving depictions of New Jersey that I have ever seen.
-- Found out this week that Margaret Atwood's got a new novel coming out in September. The Year of the Flood. It sounds like a prequel/sidequel to Oryx and Crake.
-- I can no longer listen to Guns n' Roses songs without paying attention to the drums, and contemplating Steven Adler.

*Marcelle's got a great story at Pindeldyboz, which made me very glad I am a nosy Googler.

A Tale of 12 Points

While you were having lots of wild and crazy fun in high school? I read magazines. Lots of them. I'd talk my parents into taking me to Village Green Bookstore on Sundays, and I'd load up. Then I'd come home, reattach my Walkman to my head, and read read read.

There were four constants: SPY, Harper's, Star Hits, and Poets & Writers. The first three fed my pre-Internet appetite for affected hipsterdom. The last was all about dreams. P&W was a stapled black and white quarterly publication back then, but it struck many of the same chords it does now -- an obvious litfic/poetry slant and a focus on craft, with less emphasis on publication than the closest mainstream equivalent, Writer's Digest. It had a broader circulation than most literary magazines, which were nearly as impossible to get in bookstores then as they are now. But it had advertisements for them, and calls for submission. Perhaps most important, it had the promise that there was a community of readers out there who cared about those things.

While many things have changed about P&W in the last 20 years, I am fairly sure the P&W Directory of Writers has always used the same criteria. You can read it here. It appeared in every issue back then. I would read it, do a microscopic amount of tabulation, and sigh. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was fogging the glass of a trophy case, but I did find myself wondering what it would be like to have those 12 points...instead of what I had in 1986, which was zero points. I didn't even really think or care about where they could come from. It was too mind-boggling of a concept to consider, particularly when I was also thinking about haircuts, boys, John Hughes movies, Harper's Index, Separated by Birth, and wondering what the hell Michael Stipe was singing on Lifes Rich Pageant.

Life happened, as it does with 16 year olds. College meant Star Hits wasn't necessary, and Harper's was more necessary. SPY came and went with their various economic woes. P&W got a cursory glance when it arrived.

Then the Internet came. Everything went crazy, in mostly good ways.

A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to find an article on the pw.org site because the post office occasionally likes to take its time with my reading material. I ran across a link to the Directory of Writers. After all of those years? It hit me. I probably now had the 12 points.

I filled out the application. I hesitated before I hit the send button. I now know of so many writers who aren't in the Directory, for whom this would be utterly trivial. The Directory itself is so vast at this point, someone like me applying for it is little more than a self-congratulatory gesture -- particularly when you look at the profile questions. Saying I'm willing to travel for readings? Thinking that anyone will give a rat's ass where I was born? C'mon.

I owed something to that obnoxious 16 year old suburban hipster wannabe, though. Even if I'm now old and boring and eminently uncool, I wouldn't be who I am today without her. And who I am is not so bad, if I take the long view. Click, send.

A few days ago, I got word that my application for the Poets & Writers Directory of Writers had been approved. My entry is here.

Short Story Mixtape II: Some Influences

Side 1: Realism
The Little Girl -- Grace Paley
Revelation -- Flannery O'Connor
The Guinea Pig Lady -- Russell Banks
For Esme, with Love and Squalor -- J.D. Salinger
Fits -- Alice Munro
People Like That Are the Only People Here -- Lorrie Moore
An Amateur's Guide to the Night -- Mary Robison

Side 2: Something Else
Harrison Bergeron -- Kurt Vonnegut
The Veldt -- Ray Bradbury
The Raft -- Stephen King
A Real Doll -- A.M. Homes
Orientation -- Daniel Orozco
The Lady of Moge -- Ursula LeGuin
Sea Oak -- George Saunders

The Spirit Awards of flash fiction, minus the Mickey Rourke acceptance speech

The Wigleaf 50 is up today, and is required reading. Really. Go now.

Some purely self-centered trivia fun facts:

There are three Northville Review contributors in the 50, all forthcoming. Four more contributors (one forthcoming) are on the long list.

Number of times I got to be smugly satisfied because I like stories already: Lots!

Short Story Mixtape I

Marcel Jolley made a short story mixtape over at Emerging Writers Network, where the celebration of this holiest of months is in full swing.

I loved the idea (as did Readerville). I'm going to try my hand at making a few this month, and I'm kicking off with nostalgia:

If You Were in a Writing Workshop in the Late 80's - Mid 90's, You Read These:

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
Cathedral - Raymond Carver
Wants - Grace Paley
The Shawl - Cynthia Ozick
Gryphon - Charles Baxter
Sarah Cole: A Kind of Love Story - Russell Banks
The Way We Live Now - Susan Sontag
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler

The other beauty of the Internet mixtape, besides being able to delete it, is being able to add to it. So please do. (HINT: There is no Alice Munro here...what the hell is WRONG with me?)

What I Talk about When I Talk about Pens

I have always loved pens. I have more of them than I will ever use in a lifetime. Some of them, like floaty pens, are really fun to look at and collect. But this post is about the pens that I use.

My pen fetish is constrained by three things: budget, fondness for bold lines, and left-handedness. My "nicest" pen is a Mont Blanc roller ball, and it IS nice -- but anything besides name-brand refills for it (at $6-8 a pop) pretty much sucks. I have a couple of Watermans, and they're probably the best looking pens I own...but good luck finding anything for a Waterman that's bold point. I also have some handmade pens that I really like for their looks and their weight. Weight is about the only thing that makes me want to use a ballpoint.

When it comes to choosing what to single out, pens are like books. There are pens that I've loved for a long time for technical reasons. There are pens I love for sentimental reasons. There are pens I've picked up in the last few months that I've thought were great...and time will tell if they stay in my traveling pen case. There are pens I pick up after a long hiatus, and fall in love with them all over again.

Currently in the case*:

Pilot G-2. This one has a Facebook fan page for a reason. Smooth writing, almost never globs up, available for a reasonable price in a wide variety of colors. No cap to lose. It's so great that even the lesser known similars like Zebra Sarasa are pretty good. (I grew up loving the Pilot Precise V5/V7, but it's now hard to find in anything besides extrafine and fine.)

Lamy Vista with Noodler's Ink. This pen/ink combo -- and I'm sure it's the combo -- makes me look forward to writing. It's ridiculously smooth, and I love the line. There's no mess whatsoever.

Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pen. This is a backup in case the Lamy runs out of ink, but it's a terrific pen in and of itself. I think the only Pilot pen I've ever had that I thought was crap was the VBall, and that was mostly because it reminded me of a Uniball. Funny name, but I don't like the pens -- except for one, the Jetstream Premier, and that just might be until tomorrow...when the inkflow starts to skip and the brand overall annoys me again.

Platinum Preppy Sign Pen, brown. It's a Flair pen for grownups. It bleeds through the page sometimes, but I've got it that badly for bold line pens. I had a Platinum Preppy fountain pen for a while and I liked that too, but I dropped it on the floor and cracked it...an occupational hazard for a pen that's less than $3 (though I don't think the Pilot Varsity would do the same).

Parker I.M. roller ball. I picked up one of these not too long ago and so far, I'm liking it a lot more than I usually like Parker pens. The appeal here is the heft -- this sucker weighs a ton, especially compared to the other pens currently in the case.

Since I was lazy and made you click for pictures, here are some pen blogs I follow**:
Cheap Pen Review
Good Pens
The Pen Addict

*I always look at pens wherever they're sold, but a number of these are from Jetpens. I've been very happy with their delivery speed, and particularly their customer service.

**I know there are tons more pen blogs, forums and sites, especially for the high end stuff...but there's only so much time in my day. Of course I drool over Namikis from time to time over at Fountain Pen Hospital, but I have to draw a line somewhere.