October 24-25 at REDCAT in Los Angeles:

Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing.

Untitled is a two-day conversation about writing which in some manner exceeds the printed page: word-art onscreen, the book as object, material appropriated from newspapers, hand-drawn texts, or writings on the wall. The full schedule for this daytime panel discussions and evening performance/reading is now available.

Young writers think all they need is time, but give them that time and watch them implode. After all, there’s something basically insane about sitting at a desk and talking to yourself all day, and there’s a reason that writers are second only to medical students in instances of hypochondria. In isolation, our minds turn on us pretty quickly. I have two writer friends, successful novelists who could afford not to teach, who insist that rather than detract from their writing, their lives as professors are what allow them to write, and that given more free time, they would crumble. The job provides a safety net above the abyss of facing the difficulty of creating every day, making an irrational thing feel more rational.
[…]
I don’t know how long I can survive in captivity. For the time being I will continue to throw myself into teaching and try to take Stegner’s advice about the summers, while hoping my job doesn’t get in the way of my work. I do love teaching and recognize how lucky I am to be living for at least a part of each day in the real world, but while I try to be commonsensical, lately I have begun to feel something rising up inside me. A part of me misses the glee and obsession and even the anger. And a part of me worries that my work has become too professional, too small, and worries that I don’t spend as much time as I should reading or brooding or even fretting. Yes, my lifestyle is more healthful, but is health always the most important thing? The part that answers no to that question is now lying in wait, looking for ways to undermine my so-far-successful teaching career. In fact you could argue that that part of me had a hand in writing this essay, which I am finishing now, a few weeks before going up for tenure. After all, what would that part, my inner monomaniac, like more than to tear off his collar and sabotage the job that keeps him from running wild?

– David Gessner, “Those Who Write, Teach,” NY Times

I enjoyed the article very much but it seems to me that LeGuin and others would suggest that the idea of being able to focus solely on writing, without distraction, has always been an idea held by and for men.

I’m blogging from the beloved Star Lounge on Chicago Avenue, which has installed an organ since I was last here – and waiting for a phone call to begin writing another grant. It’s very exciting. Feels like being an agent or something, waiting for my operating instructions. Since I began freelancing as a grantwriter in June I’ve done three. This will be my fourth, a complete proposal for an institution for which I wrote the original letter of inquiry.

Grantwriting appeases my sampling instincts, since you have this huge body of shared text to draw on in the form of past grants, and it’s understood that you can and should take at will. It’s collage writing, or in the word I like using the best for what I do with those pesky Greek texts, “cross-adapting.” It relieves me that we do recognize instances of authorship where copy(wrong) is not primary. Every time I find one, there’s more hope.

I also have new gadgetry – a wireless mouse, which makes me so 007 right now. (If by 007 you mean 2003 – Krist3l had one then…)

Writing, this time, in the lobby of a mixed-use condo and office building, across from Mt. Normandale Lake, with wireless from a nearby coffee shop.. There is a piano sitting to my left, businessmen on cell phones to my right (as I write those directions, I realize I have unconsciously made them stage left and right) and the lake behind me. My entire post-Stanford writing career is about discovering computer clusters where none exist. It’s a familiar, but lonely, landscape – enough to almost make one turn to the “ambient awareness” of Facebooking and Twittering to bring community to being a freelancer. Almost. SK challenged me (well, suggested, but I take it as a welcome challenge) to write something about that article, and I haven’t done it yet. But I will.

As for getting work done by staying up all night, I’m officially too old to do it any more. Yesterday’s midnight writing session devolved into reading my former roommate’s father’s blog, a rare Chicago conservative. Some interesting stuff from the other side of the aisle. And this morning, death warmed over would have been putting it kindly. I suppose if I had known that my body was going to rebel against this kind of usage, I might – might – have developed other work habits. Maybe.

I have a short story, SPINET, up on Six Sentences now. 6S is a blog I found out about through Gmail text ads, believe it or not, and I’ve read it regularly since then. They publish a very particular kind of microfiction – pieces exactly 6 sentences in length.

Writing this story was a lot like writing a monologue. I found that having an even number gave the paragraph a sort of up-and-down fall, which I tried to fight by having the sentences generally get longer. I found that the speaker was fighting his tendency towards run-ons, but let himself go at the end, when he finally imagines getting exactly what he wants.

PS. One of the commenters (commentators?) on 6S mentioned that he wondered how two of the
minor characters in the story would ‘hit it off’. Maybe this is the opportunity I’ve been wanting to write a serial – I could keep developing this guy’s voice and try to send them more micro-monologues. I hadn’t even thought about that. But I love the idea!

I’m in Minneapolis this week, which is dotted with lakes large and small like holes in a piece of cheese. It’s my first trip since settling in Chicago. Being a stranger on a plane again got me writing. I was worried that I wouldn’t want to travel any more, that I’d overdosed on the experience in the year of assistant directing. However, I enjoyed it. And knowing I have a proper home to come back to made it feel less dangerous.

So I wrote. Zack knows that I’ve been trying to get back to some science fiction / fantasy material for quite some time, and my seatmate was reading a Mercedes Lackey, so I tried to follow up on an idea I had about “earlids” – a biology where you could close your ears, but not your eyes.

This is the first time I’ve messed around writing a longer short story since fiction class in college, and especially one which isn’t just a glorified short play. It was fun – I just scribbled everything I could think about the idea of “earlids,” including some sample dialogue and some questions to ask a biologist.

I would like to have the power of hearing be limited, and the power of sight be unlimitable – so that you could see, but not hear, through closed doors.