Write Or Die (Or Be Very Startled)

Many times I’ve said that I needed a man with a gun to stand behind my desk and keep me writing (also to chase me around the park when I’m out for a run, as I tend to run for a minute, then walk, then walk more slowly, then lie down in the grass). 

Now someone has invented a Web version of my dreamy gunman!  Check out the Write or Die Web site.  It’s an application that keeps you writing by punishing you (to the extent that your computer can) when you start to lag. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but (depending on the level you’ve chosen) overlong pauses will be punished by: 1) gentle reminders to get at it; 2) a most unpleasant sound; 3) the gradual deletion of what you’ve just written. 

Haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but it looks like some scary writing fun!

-AMR

 

Poet Heather McHugh Wins a Genius Grant

Heather McHugh–a poet I must admit I am not all that familiar with–just received a MacArthur Fellowship, which, for a poet, is winning PowerBall. The sum total: $500,000. (I wonder what the taxes are on that payout?)

Anyway, listen here for an engaging interview with Ms. McHugh on NPR.

And here’s a link to her Web site, where she’s got a few poems: http://www.spondee.com/poems.html.

Once, when I got a grant, I went right out and bought a mountain bike. Wonder if she’s going to splurge on anything?

–MJH

 

Oprah’s going to save us all.

Okay, saving us all is a bit of an exaggeration (hyperbole is the best thing ever!), but goodness bless that Oprah: she’s selected a short story collection for her latest book club read. I can’t say how many articles I’ve read that wax harbinger of the state of the short story: it’s alive, it’s dead, it’s experiencing a resurgence. As a short story writer myself, I had resigned myself to the sad knowledge that the only people who really read short stories any more are those who write them (yes, that too is an exaggeration; didn’t we already establish me as a truth-stretcher?). Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it would be nice to think that there’s a smidgen of hope that I may actually be able to support myself through this passion of mine. The fact that a collection of short stories is in all likelihood going to shoot to the top of the bestseller list pretty shortly here is quite encouraging. Thanks, Oprah!

 

Great Opportunity for Veterans

Lighthouse is very honored to take part in an amazing program–Operation Homecoming–which is sponsored by the NEA. (Look here for a video about the program.)

So, if you’re a vet–or if you know one–please consider this as your mission for next weekend.

We’re Looking for a Few Energetic Writers

To take part in a free writing workshop for veterans of all stripes, walks of life, and areas of service.

Do you have a story to tell? Want to express your experience as a combat veteran?

Who better to tell the story of the armed forces than the U.S. troops and veterans who have served? That’s the idea behind a new series of writing workshops for veterans hosted by the Denver’s Lighthouse Writers. The workshops are open to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as veterans of earlier conflicts., and are part of the NEA’s Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, a groundbreaking program that documents and preserves the wartime experiences of men and women in uniform and their families.

When: Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27
10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
(Lunch included)

Where: Lighthouse Writers Workshop
2123 Downing Street, Denver (Free parking across the street)

Register now by calling: 303-297-1185!

Operation Homecoming is presented by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with the Southern Arts Federation, and is made possible by The Boeing Company.

 

R.I.P. John Updike

In what caps a tough few months for literary writers, we bid adieu too early to the man I always wished was my uncle (in addition to my real uncles, of course), John Updike. He was only 76. Lung cancer. 

Here’s a goodie he left behind:

At the age of 73, I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness. The special value of these indirect methods of communication — as opposed to the value of factual reporting and analysis — is one of precision. Oddly enough, the story or poem brings us closer to the actual texture and intricacy of experience.

Damn. He’ll be missed…

 

Lit Fest In Review

For some well-put reflections on the 2008 Lit Fest, we refer you to the blog of Lighthouse member Laureen Harris.  Thanks, Laureen!

http://delphinia.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/lit-fest-2008/

 

Poetry Like Bread? Thoughts at the DNC Special Salon on Writing and Politics

by Sara Aboulafia

“The crossroads of poetry and politics is a place where craft
encounters commitment, where the spirit of dissent encounters
the imagination, where we labor to create a culture of conscience.”
–Martin Espada

Last fall I took a class called Poetry and the Political Imagination with poet Martin Espada. Espada is large, bearded man who cuts a rather imposing figure – on one of my first days in class, he stood at the teacher’s podium and presented himself as a man who had muddled through plenty of dirty work, from his job as a bar-room bouncer to his long-time career as a lawyer, before he landed what he considered to be a rather cushy teaching job. He was unapologetic, someone who took his subject seriously, and at first he left me more than a little intimidated. Over the course of the first few days of the class, I learned that he was acquainted with virtually everyone on his reading list – from writer Carolyn Forche to Allen Ginsberg, whom he referred to simply as Allen, “because I knew him.”

One of his lesser-known writer-friends on his reading list, Vietnam war veteran’s Doug Anderson’s poetry left me shuddering and on the verge of tears. I can still remember vividly his description of the small Vietnamese girl bathing in water as Anderson’s troop moved across a bridge in his Bamboo Bridge, and the troop’s reaction to the girl’s look of disgust as their white men’s gaze fell upon her:

We cross the bridge, quietly.
The bathing girl does not see us
till we’ve stopped and gaped like fools
There are no catcalls, whoops
none of the things that soldiers do…
For a moment we all hold the same thought,
that there is life in life and war is shit….
And then she turns and sees us there
sinks in the water

 

More Strands

Here’s the opening to Mark Strand’s intro to Best American Poetry 1991 (One of the first poetry books I bought, outside of school):

“It is 1957. I am home on vacation from art school, sitting across from my mother in the living room. We are talking about my future. My mother feels I have picked a difficult profession. I will have to struggle in obscurity, and it may be years and years before I am recognized; even then there is no guarantee that I will be able to make a living or support a family. She thinks it would be wiser for me to become a lawyer or doctor. It is then that I tell her that although I have just begun art school, I am actually more interested in poetry. “But then you’ll never be able to earn a living,” she says. My mother is concerned that I shall suffer needlessly. I tell her that the pleasures to be gotten from poetry far exceed those that come with wealth or stability. I offer to read her some of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens. I begin with “The Idea of Order at Key West.” in a few minutes, my mother’s eyes are closed and her head leans to one side. She is asleep in her chair.”

Has anyone else had a conversation like this? Feel free to post your own as a response….

(My Dad, circa 1987: “What the hell do you want to be an English major for?” His sincere expression of love and concern–and I mean that not sarcastically.)

Cheers,
–MJH

 

Holy bag-o-doughnuts!

Just received this note about our very own Lighthouse short story workshopper Gary Schanbacher’s first book:

Dear Mr. Schanbacher,
 
On behalf of PEN New England, congratulations!  I have the pleasure of informing you that your book, “Migration Patterns ”, has been selected as one of two Honorable Mentions for the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award for a first work of fiction.
 
The Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award winner this year is Joshua Ferris for “Then We Came To The End”.  There were two finalists: Ravi Howard for “Like Trees Walking” and Rebecca Curtis for “Twenty Grand”. Two other books received honorable mention:  Margot Singer for “The Pale of Settlement” and your boo k. The judges this year were Ana Castillo, Jennifer Haigh, and Ernest Hebert.

With this honor, Schanbacher gets a one-month residency at Ucross in Wyoming.  He’ll hardly notice some of us stowed away in his luggage.  What an honor, and what a deserving recipient.  Buy his book if you haven’t yet, folks.  You won’t be sorry you did!

 

 

Or…

maybe we’ll try not blogging.

Our bad…