Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, January 15, 2010
Published at disenthralled
My story The Bust appears in Walter Conley's literary journal disenthralled, Issue #4. His e-zine has a noirish feel, and he did a great job in giving this issue an international flavor. I'm especially thrilled to be appearing there along with Nora Ibsen, AJ Dresser, and Michael J Solender, and some other writers who are new to me.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
MDJB's Picos
mdjb's picos
In his native tongue he could toss off bon mots con los mejores, yet he sounded windy and dull in anything outside of English. Por eso.
by mdjb on 8:08am, 7 Jan 2010
Beau couldn't make a move without Dolly until the day he pulled the plug and she went brr-rapping around the room like a balloon losing air
by mdjb on 9:54am, 16 Dec 2009
And Who died and left you in charge? Jesus asked Peter on one of those latter days. He was attempting irony, but The Rock missed the call.
by mdjb on 9:33am, 29 Nov 2009
He was always taking others to task for doing things He would never do not realizing they could not do everything His way without being Him.
by mdjb on 9:31am, 29 Nov 2009
Although he angrily demanded she return only the expensive engagement ring, she sent him the cheapest postcard from Niagara Falls instead.
by mdjb on 1:41pm, 5 Nov 2009
All the stories in the world are here in my pen. I only hope I don't run out of ink too soon after I start writing them.
by mdjb on 9:38am, 3 Nov 2009
When I felt a spurt of writer's block coming on, I recalled my own approaching senility, and couldn't figure out how I was supposed to...
by mdjb on 1:59pm, 13 Oct 2009
Marred by past relationships, he took her on. She left him when he pointed out her only fault, but not before telling him his.
by mdjb on 7:06pm, 11 Oct 2009
In his native tongue he could toss off bon mots con los mejores, yet he sounded windy and dull in anything outside of English. Por eso.
by mdjb on 8:08am, 7 Jan 2010
Beau couldn't make a move without Dolly until the day he pulled the plug and she went brr-rapping around the room like a balloon losing air
by mdjb on 9:54am, 16 Dec 2009
And Who died and left you in charge? Jesus asked Peter on one of those latter days. He was attempting irony, but The Rock missed the call.
by mdjb on 9:33am, 29 Nov 2009
He was always taking others to task for doing things He would never do not realizing they could not do everything His way without being Him.
by mdjb on 9:31am, 29 Nov 2009
Although he angrily demanded she return only the expensive engagement ring, she sent him the cheapest postcard from Niagara Falls instead.
by mdjb on 1:41pm, 5 Nov 2009
All the stories in the world are here in my pen. I only hope I don't run out of ink too soon after I start writing them.
by mdjb on 9:38am, 3 Nov 2009
When I felt a spurt of writer's block coming on, I recalled my own approaching senility, and couldn't figure out how I was supposed to...
by mdjb on 1:59pm, 13 Oct 2009
Marred by past relationships, he took her on. She left him when he pointed out her only fault, but not before telling him his.
by mdjb on 7:06pm, 11 Oct 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Published at Out of Ruins
My story Mack's Kids appears at Michael John Grist's site Out of Ruins, a mixed 'zine of dark fiction stories and Haikyo photography.
I consider this my first published piece because unlike the work at Six Sentences, it is on a site to which I am in no way affiliated. M.J. Grist, thank you for helping me climb out of the dark ages.
I consider this my first published piece because unlike the work at Six Sentences, it is on a site to which I am in no way affiliated. M.J. Grist, thank you for helping me climb out of the dark ages.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The Last Lesson
Dear Haojun:
Thanks for your nice letter. I can tell from your tone China is very excited about the return of Macao. I hope the transfer is as smooth as that of Hong Kong. You seem all caught up in the festivities and they seem less worrisome than the Y2K business and millennium madness we are experiencing over here. I wonder how you are doing vis-à-vis computer problems. We have not exchanged e-mail in quite some time.
It has been a long time since we last communicated. I know you have been very busy redecorating your new home. It must be coming along beautifully. Perhaps you can send me a photo.
Let me tell you why I have not written. Just as you are trying to improve your English, I have been trying to better my writing abilities in my native language. As I told you before mostly I write fiction. There is much need for improvement if I wish to capture a readership. I wish I had the abilities of our mutual favorite Lu Xun, but that is another story.
I signed up for a six-week online writing course and have made many new friends. Each lesson required us to approach the craft of fiction writing from a specific perspective. One week we had to pretend to be one of our characters so as to introduce ourselves to each other. I found it difficult trying to discover my own personality as if looking at myself from the outside. Another time we had to focus on point of view and how to use it to tell a story. For that one, I wrote the assignment three times before I settled on telling it in the second person. I wrote, "You say..." and "You go..." as if I were telling the character what to do. It was critiqued positively so I guess the rewrites paid off. And once, we had to interview one of the characters we'd created as if he or she were applying for a job in our stories. That piece took me a while before I settled on a magazine type interview wherein I pretended the reporter wanted to speak to "the man on the street" rather than a celebrity.
Each week I struggled along slowly and painstakingly trying to get better at the craft. However, this last lesson I found most difficult of all. It was concerned with conflict, complications and plot. How to build to a crisis and then resolve it. And I was at a loss. My conflict was I could not come up with a plot I liked well enough to post and perhaps develop later as I go into further courses.
My friend John suggested I use the tension filled story I wrote about the boy and the unlocked window, but I had written it so long ago, I found it sophomoric. I really felt uncomfortable using any of my very early writing.
Then he advised me to use two characters who have been floating around in my head for a long time without a story, but as I explained to him, they don’t have a story yet. They are just colorful characters without conflicts of their own. I need to think up some interesting situations to place them in, but for this exercise I was drawing a blank.
I thought of writing to you to ask for help with something that would seem exotic to my friends over here, but there wasn’t enough time and besides, many of the online students are not from America, so if I wrote of something I was unsure of I would just look foolish.
What to do? What to do? Time was running out.
I came up with a plan, which I am not proud to tell you. I cobbled together an unbelievable labyrinthine plot from a book I purchased a very long time ago. It wasn’t much help back then and I should have known better than to try to make it work for me now, but I was desperate to end this course with a completed assignment. I used the book’s suggestion to string together little bits of action that were supposed to coalesce into a complicated tale of vengeance. What I wound up with was a tepid second rate murder mystery and it was so badly put together and underdeveloped, it read more like a summary than a story. As the final day approached and no other ideas were forthcoming, I threw up my hands in exasperation and went ahead and posted my work.
I regretted my action immediately.
As was to be expected, it was met with a lukewarm reception. We critique each other’s work and a few of my fellow students said some kind things, but most, including my mentor, made it clear they did not think it was my best work. They were right.
I was ashamed. It’s only a writing course, you might say, and there is always tomorrow to do better. It’s true, but my pride would not allow me to let this hodgepodge represent me in my final assignment of my freshman course. I was not being true to myself, and so, I deleted it from the postings. Now, I had nothing to represent me.
What to do?
I went out to take a walk to clear my thoughts and saw all the signs of the coming millennium celebration. I also saw a dead pigeon in the street. It made me heartsick to think of how many hours flying the poor useless creature had put in to arrive nowhere, and here it was, a pile of crumpled feathers someone had brushed off the sidewalk into the street.
When I returned to my apartment building, your letter was waiting for me and it made me feel so much better. Every time we communicate, I realize how big this world is and how insignificant some of my “problems” are.
I read your letter and like a flash, I came up with an idea and must run now to re-post my final assignment. I realize where the conflict is and how it could be resolved. I must thank you for writing and unknowingly helping me to see what was under my nose all the time.
Thank you very much for the stamps and the magazine clippings.
Please extend my greetings to your mother and the rest of your family.
I will write to you again soon now that this course is finishing up and I will have some free time.
Your friend,
Michael
Thanks for your nice letter. I can tell from your tone China is very excited about the return of Macao. I hope the transfer is as smooth as that of Hong Kong. You seem all caught up in the festivities and they seem less worrisome than the Y2K business and millennium madness we are experiencing over here. I wonder how you are doing vis-à-vis computer problems. We have not exchanged e-mail in quite some time.
It has been a long time since we last communicated. I know you have been very busy redecorating your new home. It must be coming along beautifully. Perhaps you can send me a photo.
Let me tell you why I have not written. Just as you are trying to improve your English, I have been trying to better my writing abilities in my native language. As I told you before mostly I write fiction. There is much need for improvement if I wish to capture a readership. I wish I had the abilities of our mutual favorite Lu Xun, but that is another story.
I signed up for a six-week online writing course and have made many new friends. Each lesson required us to approach the craft of fiction writing from a specific perspective. One week we had to pretend to be one of our characters so as to introduce ourselves to each other. I found it difficult trying to discover my own personality as if looking at myself from the outside. Another time we had to focus on point of view and how to use it to tell a story. For that one, I wrote the assignment three times before I settled on telling it in the second person. I wrote, "You say..." and "You go..." as if I were telling the character what to do. It was critiqued positively so I guess the rewrites paid off. And once, we had to interview one of the characters we'd created as if he or she were applying for a job in our stories. That piece took me a while before I settled on a magazine type interview wherein I pretended the reporter wanted to speak to "the man on the street" rather than a celebrity.
Each week I struggled along slowly and painstakingly trying to get better at the craft. However, this last lesson I found most difficult of all. It was concerned with conflict, complications and plot. How to build to a crisis and then resolve it. And I was at a loss. My conflict was I could not come up with a plot I liked well enough to post and perhaps develop later as I go into further courses.
My friend John suggested I use the tension filled story I wrote about the boy and the unlocked window, but I had written it so long ago, I found it sophomoric. I really felt uncomfortable using any of my very early writing.
Then he advised me to use two characters who have been floating around in my head for a long time without a story, but as I explained to him, they don’t have a story yet. They are just colorful characters without conflicts of their own. I need to think up some interesting situations to place them in, but for this exercise I was drawing a blank.
I thought of writing to you to ask for help with something that would seem exotic to my friends over here, but there wasn’t enough time and besides, many of the online students are not from America, so if I wrote of something I was unsure of I would just look foolish.
What to do? What to do? Time was running out.
I came up with a plan, which I am not proud to tell you. I cobbled together an unbelievable labyrinthine plot from a book I purchased a very long time ago. It wasn’t much help back then and I should have known better than to try to make it work for me now, but I was desperate to end this course with a completed assignment. I used the book’s suggestion to string together little bits of action that were supposed to coalesce into a complicated tale of vengeance. What I wound up with was a tepid second rate murder mystery and it was so badly put together and underdeveloped, it read more like a summary than a story. As the final day approached and no other ideas were forthcoming, I threw up my hands in exasperation and went ahead and posted my work.
I regretted my action immediately.
As was to be expected, it was met with a lukewarm reception. We critique each other’s work and a few of my fellow students said some kind things, but most, including my mentor, made it clear they did not think it was my best work. They were right.
I was ashamed. It’s only a writing course, you might say, and there is always tomorrow to do better. It’s true, but my pride would not allow me to let this hodgepodge represent me in my final assignment of my freshman course. I was not being true to myself, and so, I deleted it from the postings. Now, I had nothing to represent me.
What to do?
I went out to take a walk to clear my thoughts and saw all the signs of the coming millennium celebration. I also saw a dead pigeon in the street. It made me heartsick to think of how many hours flying the poor useless creature had put in to arrive nowhere, and here it was, a pile of crumpled feathers someone had brushed off the sidewalk into the street.
When I returned to my apartment building, your letter was waiting for me and it made me feel so much better. Every time we communicate, I realize how big this world is and how insignificant some of my “problems” are.
I read your letter and like a flash, I came up with an idea and must run now to re-post my final assignment. I realize where the conflict is and how it could be resolved. I must thank you for writing and unknowingly helping me to see what was under my nose all the time.
Thank you very much for the stamps and the magazine clippings.
Please extend my greetings to your mother and the rest of your family.
I will write to you again soon now that this course is finishing up and I will have some free time.
Your friend,
Michael
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