Resistance Manifesto

As I prepare for my thesis defense, I'm going back through my materials from the classes I took at UAF. In particular, I'm reading through my binder from Forms of Fiction, taught by the amazing David Crouse.

David assigned a writing project during this course that I particularly loved. We each had to write a resistance manifesto. In writing, you're defined not only by the writing styles and ideals that you embrace, but also by those that you reject.

I took Forms of Fiction in the spring of my first year as a graduate student. The first semester of grad school is hell. It's wonderful in many ways, too. But it is an overwhelming load of coursework, learning to teach, and trying to write. The first semester breaks you down and makes you realize that you're going to have to work at writing if you really want to write well.

Then after that first stretch, you begin to rebuild your writing self.

This exercise was very cathartic at that stage of my writing development, but I believe it can be useful anytime you're feeling lost in the crowd of writers. Define who you are, and who you are not as a writer, and keep steering by that star.

RESISTANCE MANIFESTO

I do not want to have my work described as "good writing." Fuck that.

I do not want to be any part of literary snobbery that denies entrance to form or genre.

I will not pass through the charnel houses just to be published.

I will not camouflage myself in the gristle and shards of "good writing" to earn any position or award.

Fuck that.

I resist the urge to retreat into the safe arms of academia and forgo the world of the real.

I resist the urge to forget my childhood, the Southern strangeness that is part of my story.

I defy the division of images and text.

Booyeah.

I support the proliferation of writing through public forms. I will write and share my writing through unfamiliar means.

Saddle-stiched. Hand threaded spine. A copy machine mage.

I will share my life with my family and friends through zines full of images and words.

I will write as well as I can, changing the lens until I get the correct prescription.

I will structure these lenses in thick black frames and blue striped socks.

I am not writing for an editor. I am not writing for a magazine.

I am not writing to be entombed in a print quarterly.

I am writing to be found on a bus seat, a chance library sale find, on a table in a cafe. 

I am writing for the girl in the closet who speaks to her sister through the walls while her parents rage outside.

I am writing for the boy with long hair who lives in a house full of doors that are always closed. 

Studying for the Thesis Defense

Every true work of art - and thus every attempt at art (since things meant to be similar must submit to one standard) - must be judged primarily, though not exclusively, by its own laws. If it has no laws, or if its laws are incoherent, it fails - usually - on that basis. 

~ John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

I've got a little under two weeks until I defend my thesis, the last step I need to finish my MFA in Creative Writing.

The defenses are open to the public, but only the committee can ask the defender questions. Graduate students are encouraged to attend thesis defenses given by their classmates well before it is their turn to sit in the hot seat.

So how does one defend a creative thesis? Isn't it all subjective?

Yes. And no, not at all.

You have to write consciously. Lucking in to good characters and structure won't hold up over the course of a publication-length work. In the thesis defense, you have to describe the decisions you purposefully made as an author, whether you think they worked well or not, and how you learned from these choices.

The examiners also ask you to place your work in relation to the rest of the genre. Which authors are you learning from? Which writers do you reject?

And finally, how does your work intersect with the craft issues of your genre?

The books on my desk right now

To prepare myself to answer these questions, I'm reading over my stories, my revision notes, my notes from my graduate Forms of Fiction class, and a few craft books.

• The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as it Takes by Joan Silber
• An immensely helpful book that makes me want to experiment more with different forms of time in my short stories. 

• The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter
• The essay "Unheard Melodies" in this book completely changed the way that I approach writing dialogue. 

• The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner
• The first time I read this book, I thought it was hopelessly droll. But as I get better at writing, I begin to understand more and more of what he is saying, and can understand why it is a classic (and appears on my university's graduate comprehensive exam).

• Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter
• Another text that is on the graduate comprehensive exam list at UAF. There are so many amazing essays in this book. Here's a snippet from the first essay, "Dysfunctional Narratives":
• "Sometimes - if we are writers - we have to talk to our characters. We have to try to persuade them to do what they've only imagined doing. We have to nudge but not force them toward situations where they will get into interesting trouble, where they will make interesting mistakes that they may take responsibility for. When we allow our characters to make mistakes, we release them from the grip of our own authorial narcissism. That's wonderful for them, it's wonderful for us, but it's best of all for the story" (Baxter 12). 

• The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by Robert Boswell
• The title essay of this book is wonderful:
• "I come to know my stories by writing my way into them" (Boswell 4). 

The English department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has guidelines posted as to how to prepare for the defense, and also this bit of encouragement:

Although the examination might seem intimidating, it should also be rewarding: this is your chance (perhaps one of the few you will ever have) to discuss your work with experts in the field who are familiar with your writing.

I'm nervous, of course, but also very excited. It's been a long journey to get to this point, and I'm glad I was able to get here with a set of stories that are the kind I would like to read.

100 Years of Von Braun

The US Space and Rocket Center has a travelling exhibit on Dr. Wernher von Braun open until May. I went with my father, hoping that this exhibit would be more museum-ish than my last visit. 

I started out with paying my respects to Miss Baker, the squirrel monkey who traveled to space. She's buried near the entrance to the Space Center. I remember when I was a kid, there were always bananas at her grave. There weren't any there this time, though. I suppose it is getting too hot and buggy here in Huntsville. 

Inside the Space Center kids ran around. It was the last day of Space Camp, and some kids were dropping some serious cash in the gift shop on t-shirts and little stuffed monkeys in space suits.  

I was a little bit worried about the exhibit when we walked in and this is the first thing we saw:

a "Rocketpedia" entry on von Braun. Coupled with the bicycle "believed" to have been used by von Braun's younger brother as he pedaled in search of Americans to surrender to at the end of World War II, I was worried the whole exhibit would be full of non-items. 

There was a cool documentary video playing in segments throughout the exhibit, so I was sure I'd know a lot more about von Braun by the time I reached the last display case. But I was worried that the inspiration level would be on par with bupkis. 

But around the corner the cool factor started climbing. Check out this group of badasses.

Wernher B. is the second from the right.

This is what gets me excited. Old ephemera. You can feel the past. 

WvB's calender for  July, 1969

Von Braun's calendar from 1969 was one of my favorite pieces on display. He drew through each day with a red pencil and a ruler after it was finished. Each line matched up precisely. 

Next was von Braun's desk. 

Von Braun's desk at the USSRC

There's his Hugo award in the foreground. If you look just behind it, you can see his daily to do list. He would write everything he had to do for the day on a sheet in his notebook. As he completed the tasks, he would fill in the bar that ran through the center (those are the red bars in the center of the pages). 

Von Braun also had a pretty awesome Moon globe on his desk. 

There were lots of photographs of von Braun - looking dashing, cutting ribbons, trying out spacesuits in submersion tanks, and walking on the Moon. 

There was also a section that had "the inspiration of the rocket scientist as a young man" as its theme, with lots of amazing retro art. 

And one of his journals, open to a sketch he made when he was 15 years old, of a manned rocketship.

At the end of the exhibit, there were three giant panels with a quote from von Braun:

My friends there was dancing here in the streets of Huntsville when our first satellite orbited the Earth. There was dancing again when the first Americans landed on the Moon. I'd like to ask you, don't hang up your dancing slippers. 

I was rather sad when I read these words. It was only a few months ago that I attended a celebration at the Space & Rocket Center for 30 years of the space shuttle - and its end. 

Overall, I enjoyed and learned a lot from this exhibit. I hope the US Space & Rocket Center has more exhibits like this in the future, and less traveling shows like CSI and such. What would I like to see an in-depth presentation on next?

Space Lab!

Structure and Story Shapes

During my high school and undergraduate writing classes, I largely ignored Freytag's pyramid. It was just a grammar rule for writing, like when to use apostrophes - important to know, but not something I would want to print out and hang on my wall.

Freytag's Pyramid

This is the image of story structure I grew up with. It's angular and uninspiring. The sections of story feel separated, and the climax is too neatly placed in the middle.

Writing shapes really begin to come alive for me when they focus on character instead of story elements. Kurt Vonnegut draws the shapes of a few timeless stories in this video:



But what really speaks to me is the story structure outlined in screenwriting. When I took a screenwriting class as a graduate student, I felt like all of the secrets of fiction writing hidden for years had been revealed.

Screenwriters aren't shy about discussing story structure and plotting in a straightforward way.

What this story shape conveys to me, more than anything else, is the concept of forward momentum. The turning points push the character farther and farther into story. You can't write unimportant scenes, because every action needs to walk the character closer to the point of no return. Your character is going to change, or this isn't going to be a story.

I also like that the climax is right at the end of this story shape. It is something your story should build to for a long time. Freytag's pyramid throws my sense of story-balance off-kilter with its centrally-placed climax.

Stories are less like a mountain, more like a train. You have to keep stoking the engine, fueling it as you push your character through each new barrier that falls on the tracks.

If you're writing a screenplay this month for Script Frenzy, then make sure you visit their Writer's Resources page (you don't have to sign up in order to view these documents, so go ahead and peruse the guides if you're interested!)

One of the best resources on this page is the "Hollywood Formula" Worksheet. This worksheet walks you through plot structure, explaining each plot point. Whether you're writing a screenplay, comic book script, or a short story, I think this guide can be extremely useful. Frenzy on, my fellow writers!

Five Screenplays I Recommend

During my MFA degree, I signed up for a beginning screenwriting class because I thought it would help me learn to write comic books. 

To my surprise, I completely fell in love with screenwriting. Screenplays have their own language, their own method of communicating images that is different from short stories and novels, but registers on the same deep, emotional level.

If you've never read a screenplay before, I challenge you to try reading one. The one caveat is, that just like a movie, screenplays are better when you set aside a few hours to read them straight through. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how satisfying a screenplay can be. 

Here are my top five suggestions, in no particular order:

1. The Station Agent by Tom McCarthy
2. Tender Mercies by Horton Foote
3. Changeling: A True Story by J. Michael Straczynski
4. Rachel Getting Married by Jenny Lumet
5. The Verdict by David Mamet

Where do you get screenplays? Lots of places. You can download them from Drew's Script-o-Rama, buy them from the Writer's Store, or even visit the film section at your local bookstore. However, keep in mind that the selection at a brick and mortar store will most likely be very small, with only recent movie scripts for sale. 

If you've already seen the movie, then don't read that screenplay. At least, not as your initiation into the world of screenplay writing. Choose a movie you have not seen before, preferably one that you don't know much about. You'll get to experience the Movie of the Mind that screenplays do so well. 

It's like NaNoWriMo,
but for screenwriters. 

Why am I talking about screenplays all of a sudden? April is Script Frenzy. It's a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) type project, sponsored by the same people. All during April, screenwriters try to write a 100 page screenplay. The Script Frenzy website has all of the same tools as NaNoWriMo - community boards, web badges, manuscript counters, and ways to connect with your local screenwriters. 

If you're feeling stumped or sluggish while writing your short stories or novels, or if you've always wanted to try writing a screenplay, then Script Frenzy is a great chance to give it a go. You'll have a built-in community of people who are working on their screenplays, just like you.

Even if you aren't interested in writing screenplays, there are a lot of great tricks of the writing trade you can steal from this format (like structure and dialogue). I'll be posting all through April about screenwriting resources, tips, and tidbits. Let the script frenzy begin!