Author: Steve Himmer
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Authors Marching In
So here’s what trouble I’m causing behind the scenes. I’ve pestered a few willing writers out there and handed them an assortment of prompts and assignments. I’m stirring ‘em up. Soon, I’ll be posting some brand new writing from these talented folks. You’ll see. Stefanie
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Forever Plastic
Fifteen minutes before closing, we pushed our way through a three–deep crowd at Deal Club to get the last ones. At the register we ask, “Stupid question, but what is it?” The clerk laughs, “Relax, everyone asks that. Forever Plastic’s got a lifetime warranty, break it or lose it and the company gives you a…
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October, Without A Chill In The Air
Hello writers and readers!!! I am extremely thrilled to be the Writer-In-Residence for the month of October. October is one of my all-time favorite months because you can sense the anticipatory change in the air. There is certain stagnancy to the summer that drags me down, but come October, I awaken from my stifled summer-slumber.…
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The White Goddess
In his preface to The White Goddess: An Encounter, before descending into layers of memory, Simon Gough warns that he will not be bound by “precise dates and times,” and that “the narrative itself is far more important than whether or not an event or conversation happened on such-and-such a day.” Such a caveat created…
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A conversation with Tara L. Masih
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? Well, I try to work on my own voice. But there are authors who make me excited about what writing can achieve, incredibly talented writers who inspire me to try to be half as good as they are in terms of their command…
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A Conversation With Lee Rourke
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? When I write I read as much fiction as possible, so the good stuff naturally seeps into my writing. Nothing is original so I’m not worried about what does or doesn’t seep in. For The Canal I was reading a lot of Heidegger…
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A Conversation With Jürgen Fauth
What books and/or authors have had the most influence on your writing? Some of the most obvious influences on Kino are probably writers like Thomas Pynchon, Alan Moore, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, my teachers Frederick Barthelme and Mary Robison, my wife Marcy Dermansky — but I’ve also drawn a lot of inspiration from the movies:…
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Radio Iris
Novels of work, particularly those that take on modern laboring in all its absurdity and confusion, are a favorite subgenre of mine. From Magnus Mills’s fence builders and bus drivers caught in bureaucratic nightmares to the bizarre and often brutal administrative interactions of Lydie Salvayre’s Everyday Life or Stacey Levine’s Dra—, it’s a fictional category…
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Thoughts on Revision
A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. There is power in a first draft, but Hemingway was mostly right: first drafts are shit. Maybe it’s not that way for everyone, but for me and what seems like many people, first drafts are a start; you find your story in…
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Answers? Part II
A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. Today more answers, from the inimitable Sean Lovelace, who has written about revision on his blog here. I am in a bit of a funk. How do I work myself out of it? Usually I do one of a few things: 1.…
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Answers?
A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. A few of the writers who answered my call for revision thoughts chose to directly address the questions I had mentioned I was thinking about. Below we have Nicolle Elizabeth and “Jimmy Lo“http://jimmylorunning.com/. + Nicolle Elizabeth on Revision I think that revision…
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Editing, Teaching, and Revision
A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. We go through changes, as people, as writers. We go through MFA programs. We go through workshops. We go through drafts and drafts. We become editors. We become teachers. We go to conferences. We go to colonies. We get rejected. We get…