Story-Interruptus

I have always been frustrated by non-endings in literary fiction stories. They are such a convention in lit journals (and a few collections that I'm read for school). Maybe MFA programs teach their students to do them? This would explain why it occurs so often.

I feel so unsatisfied by these things whenever I read them. They come out of nowhere and it's like a punch to the gut. What is slight becomes dramatic. The author tries to force into finding meaning in the meaningless. What I feel is lazy writing is supposed to sound profound.

A reader develops an emotional detachment to a novel. The reader must be satisfied or the book will be considered a failure. All the time spent reading will be considered a waste of time. So an author must put in a lot of effort into creating their ending. But with a story, endings aren't as important. And considering the state of literary short fiction, I assume most readers don't care about the ending. They only care about what has come before it. So they give the writers permission to be lazy and write lackluster endings.

Have realized that I hate reading stories online but enjoy novels. It's more difficult for me to get into a piece of writing when it's on a computer monitor, but once that happens, it's smooth sailing from there. With stories, I'm usually unable to get into them before the story ends. I think Noah Cicero is probably my favorite writer to read online.

Once I went half deaf after trying to wax my ear out my a tube of ear wax removal stuff that I bought in the grocery store. My hearing isn't the greatest, so I wanted to see if it would improve it. And then I had swimmer's ear for a couple of days until it got so annoying that I went to the doctor and they flushed out my ear and it was wonderful. So I didn't have anything to read for those couple of days and felt too crappy to leave the house, so I bought a few ebooks from Raw Dog Screaming Press. I think they were all short story collections. Two books by Harold Jaffe, which were easy to get into because of his clear writing style. And one book by Darren Speegle, which I really should have been reading in print. His style was way too rich and baroque to be read on a computer screen. And years before this, I bought a couple of ebooks by Carlton Mellick III books and one by Kevin Donihe because they were cheaper than the physical books and was not sure they would be good. That's my origin as far as getting into bizarro fiction.

Right now I'm at my job in my college's computer lab. Part of my job seems to be spelling the word "boredom" for a woman and telling her what the glass is called at the front of a car: "windshield."

Also, five bizarro books are now available for download as free PDFs until Thanksgiving: Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, Super Fetus, Sausagey Santa, and both volumes of The Bizarro Starter Kit. I have a novella that appears in the "blue" edition. It is called Cheesequake Smash-up. It concerns a city-wide demolition derby between levitating buildings. Winner gets total supremacy over the fast food industry.

Carlton Mellick III wrote Sausagey Santa and it's a really good time. A light read so it's friendlier on-screen reading. The two Starter Kits also have a lot of good stuff, although each page consists of two columns of text, so the reading isn't as friendly. Here is the link:

www.jeffburk.wordpress.com/free-books

Spiritual Cramp

How come I can never go to sleep at the same time each night? How come when I wake up by alarm I always feel miserable and exhausted? It wasn't like this back when I was doing overnights, sleeping during the day, and waking up at ten pm for work. That was the one benefit of working graveyards.

You can now pre-order my short story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! Do it here: www.rawdogscreaming.com/myheart.html

Here are some descriptions of haunted houses:

From The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson-

Chapter 1 (omnipresent POV)

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Chapter 2 (third person limited POV)

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

From Hell House by Richard Matheson:

It stood before them in the fog, a massive, looming specter of a house.

From "Terror in the Haunted House" by Bradley Sands (from My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!)

Black-wearing men wheel out a house that is just a little too large for a miniature and just a little too small to be a house. Six stories of pure trial and error, an ungainly spire growing out of its roof that really should be checked out by a doctor, a fog machine that won the Regional Spelling Bee with “doom for asthmatics,” grass that has been overgrown ever since accepting a contract put out on the readers of Better Homes and Gardens―this is what awaits Crispin on The Price Is An Unspeakable Agony.

Also, I have been having trouble connecting with experimental poetry lately. I take a class where it is often workshopped. It is tough on me. This is my theory of experimental poetry:

1: It is not narrative-based. Instead, it is written with the intention that the language/words/rhythm will trigger emotions and memories in the reader. Unfortunately, it does not work like this for me.

2: There is no clear POV. No protagonist or multi-protagonist. No I, you, he, she, the man, the woman, the mongoose. I feel like a POV is a key that opens a door for me. Without POV, a poem remains inaccessible to me.

3: It is often entirely composed of predicates and devoid of subjects.

Also, I came up with a phrase while revising a particular letter entirely too many times: "Revision is the most essential nutrient for typos." Eh...something like that. It was better when I came up with it. Now I'm paraphrasing.

Also, The &Now Awards Anthology came in the mail today. Looks good. I have a story in it. You can buy it here: www.lakeforest.edu/press/lfcp/&now/awards.html. Or here: www.amazon.com/Now-Awards-Best-Innovative-Writing/dp/0982315600

And this just in! Mel Bosworth reads things. This time, he reads my prose poem, "The Time Traveling Giraffe is on Fire."



Thanks, Mel!

Here's the back cover text my publisher wrote for my story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! I like it:

"Have you ever had one of those nights when you could swear in front of a court of law that you haven’t had a wink of sleep, but the prosecutor would have a field day with details concerning your alarm clock going off after what seemed like only an hour and your lingering memories of mischievous lawn furniture?"

Forget everything you know about life, the world and all the objects in it. Bradley Sands can bend them to his will with a frightening disregard for reality. You never know who, or what, is lying in wait behind the next comma. Whether it's Super Noxious Air Man and his sidekick, Kid Centrifugal Force, or the next episode of Teddy the Rottweiler Spayer, Sands keeps you off-balance with laughter and astonishment. These stories are crammed with the delightfully odd and the scurrilously silly. From moment to moment My Heart Said No requires the most unexpected, perplexing and hilarious leaps of faith. But you'll be glad you took this exhilarating jump into uncharted territory.

------------------------------

Have been in a creative funk lately. Feel like I do not have the capability to write well at the moment.

What do you do when this happens to you? Do you keep pushing on?

Working on a novella. Really like the concept. Feel like it is wasted because my writing is not up to snuff. Should I continue, hoping things will change? I feel like it doesn't matter what I work on. It's not the novella that isn't working. It's my writing that isn't working. If I switched to another book, I would probably have the same problem. And I would probably be working with a concept that was as dear to me as the current one. So another one would be wasted.

Maybe I should go back to prose poems for a while. Those are fun, easy. Focus on language. No concern about the plot. Little investment in each piece. Maybe I'll solicit titles like I did a while back.

How do you guys feel about writing when you're tired? I have trouble with it because it cuts down on my confidence. But if I motivated myself to write when tired, I would have a lot more time to write.

I think the main thing about the writing process is whether or not you are confident in what you're doing. It doesn't matter how good it is as long as you're confident. If you feel this way, writing is easy and pleasurable. You can lack confidence and think what you're doing sucks, but end up writing something fantastic even though the process was pure torture. And vice versa. The process may be enjoyable, but the end product may suck, and I don't think that's such a big deal because you had a swell time and at least got some practice out of it. I hate perceptions.

Hate Mail to Someone Who Isn't Me

Just spent an hour looking for this. It's hate mail to my friend's zine. It was accompanied by a few poetry submissions. Here it is:

Editors, Chiaroscuro:

I'm stymied as to how you could even name a magazine a word you doubtless can't pronounce, and it's a miracle you spell it right, since you're all obviously demented and ignoramic orangutans.

It's beyond my ken that grown American men, ostensibly holding the high-school diploma or beyond, could found a magazine so blatantly and unabashedly vile and rotten and illiterate as this Chiaroscuro debacle, which if I had founded or put out monthly wouldn't have the nerve or the gall to show my face outside a black paper bag.

How is it possible for grown American men to be so downright and outright stupid as to produce this thing--without being so ashamed as to want to kill yourselves?

You make an apology for typos! Hell, typos are the least of your worries. You can't even pick the right words you mean from the English language! You're masters of malopropism. It isn't even that, it's outright ignorance! Done with pride, yet!

When I saw "uncomprehendable" I thought, is that misspelled? Hell, misspelled? It isn't even the word. The word you want is incomprehensible. In the adjacent column you've got "compliments," meaning "complements." In the swatch above that (they're not really columns--your format stinks) you've got "temporally," meaning "temporarily." Do you engage your brains at all before you start writing? On p. 7 of August issue you've got "who's" meaning "whose," "tradition" meaning "traditional," and you think it's spelled "cubical." Could you have less gray matter? I think not.

The verb is "outdid," one word, not "out did"--what puerility!

Last page: only an ass thinks the word is "alright." "Others opinions" is senseless--do you think you want to make it possessive somehow instead of plural? Would you even know how to begin? You don't use "etc." in formal prose. You say "and so on." "Was is possible"? Could it be "it"? Do you use your eyes there, or are they on vacation along with your brains?

Whom do you think you're kidding with this whole vile, rotten, putrid, disgusting piece of dried-up, stinking, caked-white little dog turd each month? Do you have some notion you're "literary," or have the vaguest inkling about English or how to write? What a crock if you do! You're frauds! I wouldn't want a butterfingers doing either my piano-concertizing or my neurosurgery, and that's how you equate, you complete charlatans and stupid asses, having no shame about it!

Whom do you think you're kidding tossing around extreme vulgarities totally extraneously and gratuitously with no meaning to them but to display that you think you're smart? You don't approach the ability to apply to be smart. The f-word as you pepper it is not smart, not funny, not cute, not interesting, and a crashing bore. If you think you're coming off smart by "insulting" readers with it, calling them by it every few lines, you're mistaken. All you're doing is displaying your idiocy and the nearly complete absence of any kind of heart, brain, or soul--as writers. You're not writers, you're frauds, and stupid frauds, at that!

If you think that boring, asinine, monotonous and illiterate elephant diarrhea you print each month and call "fiction" is fiction, you need brain burial. Nothing could be a bigger bore than these maggotty slices of tripe you serve up as "literature." You're the laughing stock of the nation, and all you're doing with Chiaroscuro is blatantly and shamelessly advertising ignorance. Why do you wish to do that? I can't predict anything but failure for all of you if you continue to support this vile, deteriorating form of social anarchy and chaos--failure as writers, but most of all, failure as souls. Right now, you're asses--and I'm flummoxed that you could even come up with the word "chiaroscuro." Is there one staff member who can pronounce or spell it or know what it means? If you want a chiaroscuronic magazine, then learn to write chiaroscuronically. Judging from the last two issues, you're writing with your anuses--and the earth would be better off you were on Uranus.

A Real Winner / Salt Lake City

gasoline

Feeling kind of depressed. Trying to write a shitty story for class that's keeping me from writing a novella that I actually want to work on. So I thought, Hell, I should write a blog entry instead even though I don't have the goddam internet at my house. Blog entries don't matter, unless they do and I am unaware. I am not obsessing over every little keystroke. It does not take me ten minutes to compose a sentence. I am typing without thinking about what I am typing. It is like someone saying, "Think before you speak." "Think before you type." I am not thinking before I type. I think if I put much thought into my words before I speak, it would take a very long time to have a conversation with me. I think I can be pretty awkward to have a conversation with. Sometimes I say things that don't make sense and use awkward phrases. When I am responding to someone's email, my answers are succulent, well thought out. Two things are bothering me but I will not discuss them because this is blogspot not livejournal.

I've been reading a lot of Stephen Dixon lately. I just finished Frog and it was fantastic. Probably one of my favorite books now. I've always been obsessed with writing and reading about a character's entire life and the novel satisfied me in this aspect. It was super-long.

Listening Nick Cave's soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James. Really like it. Didn't start listening to it until recently because I had previously tried doing it on my laptop and it sounded like shit on the speakers, so I had assumed the audio quality was bad. But I tried it on my desktop a few days ago and I was wrong.

When I visited my parents in NY before moving to Colorado, I had a lot of free time and nothing to read. So I looked in my brother's bookcase. Found an uncorrected proof of Stephen Dixon's Old Friends. I must have been really desperate to have read it considering how dull the title was, but it was really great. Especially liked the narrator talking about all the horrible things that happened to his family, and then matter of factly mentioning it was just him worrying + his imagination. It tricked me every time. My brother probably got the book from the newspaper that he edits.

Then I spent must of the summer reading Dixon. I realize the summer is a memorable time when it comes to reading. I will look back at this summer as the summer of Dixon. Last summer, I read The Dark Tower series. The summer of 2000 was Infinite Jest.

I can't understand why I like Dixon so much. His is the sort of writing that I should hate. Mundane, dull. But he's not dull for some inexplicable reason. His books excite me. I think he's sort of like a minimalist in form and a maximalist in content and I found that pretty intriguing.

I just ordered a big book of his short stories. They have it at the library, but it's too long to read before the due date and the stories are too same-y to plow through. I've probably read a tenth of it.

The impression I get from Dixon's protagonists is that he always uses himself as a template and the characters are different variations of himself. And different books tell the same stories in various ways. The man seems to be extremely obsessed with certain events in his life, as I suppose we all are.

I think I want to read his book, Gould, too. I've read maybe six of his books since the summer. He has so many I feel like I'll be reading him for the rest of my life and this excites me. I usually find an author that I like a lot and read everything they have written and have to wait five years for another book and it is never worth the wait. I wonder if I will get burnt out on Dixon.

I've noticed picking up some writing habits from him lately. Like putting exchanges of dialogue in one paragraph rather than many. Gonna make it harder to get to desired page lengths this way.

I saw Christian Bok perform on Saturday. There's two dots over the o in his last name, but I don't know how to type that. His last name is pronounced "book." I do not know why. He was entertaining. I've never heard anyone do sound poetry before. I only went to meet Daniel Bailey. We went to a bar afterward where they try to trick you into going into the wrong gendered bathroom. I ate a peanut butter burger. That's the second peanut butter burger I've had there. They are good.

Going to Portland tomorrow to attend Bizarro Con. Doing a reading and a panel on humor writing. Participating in a workshop. Also did it last year. The exercise this time and last time was to come up with a conceptual book: title, pitch line, back cover synopsis. I like this exercise, which is the reason why I'm doing the workshop again. Forces me to come up with a great concept for a book, and I need to be forced.

Started working with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics Went great. Doing a writing workshop. In class exercises.

oh

Started writing this as a goodreads comment, then realized I hadn't written a blog in ages.

I only seem to get into Dennis Cooper’s books when I’m a college student. Now I’m back after eight years. I always find a lot of his books in city and college libraries. Was really into him when I was a young undergrad. Until, Period, which really put me off. Found it to be too experimental or something. Grew out of all the gruesomeness.

A few month’s back, I read, God Jr. Stumbled across the premise somewhere and it sounded intriguing. Was a wonderful book. Then I went back and read Period. Loved it, particularly because of its experimental nature. Cooper’s how deal with the concepts of identity is intriguing. It made me want to go back to read Frisk assuming that’s his “My name is Dennis Cooper and I am a serial killer” sort of book. Loved that one. Haven’t reread it yet. But I reread Closer because that was one of the handful of novels the library had. It was pretty alright. Not as good as the first time I read it. Lacked the intriguing innovations or whatever you want to call them of Period. Now I’m about to read Try because it’s the only other book the library has that I haven’t reread. Will probably feel the same way about it. I put in an inter-library loan for The Sluts. Looking forward to that.

Here’s some newly published stuff. I usually like to link to them at the end, but this blog entry seems pretty tedious and I don’t know if people will get that far.

New publications

“A House” at Word Riot

mud luscious issue nine is up & frantic including the work of kate wyer, peter schwartz, christina farella, meg pokrass, bradley sands, mel bosworth, andrea deangelis, zachary tyler vickers, cortney mclellan, richard osgood, david peak, roxane gay, gregory sherl, steven j. mcdermott, & kimberly e. ruth alongside reviews of ANTHEM by c. l. bledsoe, DAYS OF DESTRUCTION by gary beck, & BIG AMERICAN TRIP by christian peet.

Here's Brandon Duncan’s cover art for my upcoming short story collection through Raw Dog Screaming Press: My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes!


Strange how it's not showing the colored bars and my name at the bottom right corner.

Do people actually use Myspace anymore? Wondering if it's worth promoting the new Bust on it. Usually takes a while, but I might buy an evil program to save myself the time. If it's worth the cash. If people still use Myspace.

In my garage, door open. The people in my neighborhood love to wonder around after dark and chant the names of their pets.

In other news, recently I have been able to determine when I will be waking up with TMJ pain beforehand. When I experience a feeling in my brain around bedtime—stress, anxiety, whatever—I know I will be waking up in pain. But I also know there are techniques I can use to eliminate or reduce this pain such as trying to relax, meditation, showering, drinking calming teas, and going to sleep a little later than usual to broaden the time between weird brain activity and sleep. Whenever this happens, I also take a particular pill that I can only buy from Whole Foods which I do not take every night because it is a little expensive and I develop a tolerance to it if I take it a bunch of times in a row each night.

So last night I got all riled up by a piece a student turned in for workshop. Had to write a letter to them about it. Caused me anxiety because every little thing in this world causes me stress and anxiety. The trick is to avoid every little thing before bedtime. Unfortunately, there are not enough hours in the day and sometimes I need to do school work at night. Stress was so much easier when it did not cause me physical pain.

So I took a shower, drank soothing tea, swallowed a Whole Foods pill, stayed up a bit later, and went to sleep. Woke up in pain, although not agonizing pain like I used to. Haven’t had that in a while, perhaps due to the techniques I mentioned earlier and this magical juice thing that my parents send me. It is nice not to experience agonizing pain. I once had that for three months straight. It ended once I figured out what was wrong with me and took precautions.

So I woke up with pain, but not agonizing. When this happens, I am able to read and do other stuff, but not write. I hate it when this happens when I had planned to write. When I am in pain, the music, the rhythm of language is missing from my head. I am tone deaf. I do not have very high self-esteem, but when in reference to my writing, I think, “I am the shit.” I believe thinking this way is necessary to write well, to have the confidence to write well. When I am in pain, I lack this confidence.

Today I had intended to start a novella. It will combine a getaway story with a haunted house story in a manner that is totally ridiculous, illogical, and AWESOME. I have been meaning to start this for a while. I have not done any work on it. I had planned to write the outline first, but I was motivated to start on the actual prose (and will probably only write a few pages before pausing to outline) because one of my professor’s assignments was to bring in ANY piece of creative writing for next week, and I jumped at the opportunity because I have done very little writing since the semester started late last month. Besides a few short assignments—nada. Oh, and the thing I did this weekend. Contacted about writing a proposal for a YA horror novel. Wrote the plot summary and the first 500 words. Hope I get the gig. Because I have no source of income.

So back to this morning. Really frustrated that I wasn’t able to write, which makes the pain worse, probably more so psychologically than physically. So instead, I finished reading Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, which was excellent. Read The Subject Steve a while back and found it incredibly annoying. Wonder if Lipsyte has come far as a writer or I have come far as a reader. I also read a few stories in Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff, which were pretty alright. And then I took a nap, because TMJ pain often induces napping. And fifty percent of the time, I will wake up from a nap and it will be gone. So I woke up and it was gone (although it is back now to a mild extent). Then I took a bus and ate at Quiznos. Drank a bunch of Dr. Pepper because I wanted to get caffeinated up to start on the novella. Probably a bad idea because caffeine has a tendency to cause pain the next morning. Better to drink it in the morning rather than afternoon/evening. Coffee is out of the question.

Went back home. Tried to write. Had one of those days where it doesn’t come easy. When everything is a struggle. When everything seems to suck. Hate days like this. But at least I got it started. Maybe tomorrow I will read it and think it’s good. Think days like this may have more to do with my perception than my ability to write well. So we’ll see. Glad I didn’t have one of these days on Sunday when I wrote the first 500 words for the YA novel. Everything seemed to go right that day. It was easy. Wrote it in no time. Today, seemed to take me forever to get all this crap into my computer. Suppose that sort of thing is much more likely to happen at the beginning of something new rather than when I’m in the meat of it.

So I wrote a page of possible crap, then used my caffeine high to finish a five page paper that’s due on Friday which I’ve been putting off. Think it’s a piece of shit also, but I don’t care. Haven’t written a paper in eight years, so I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Sure I will figure out along the way. There’s something about my grad school workload that seems so overwhelming, until I finish it. Which always takes very little time. I guess I have no conception of how long something will take. Just see all the stuff I need to do and mildly freak out.

Now I’m going to stay up late, because of this goddam caffeine and the desire to resist pain when I wake up tomorrow. Read some more of Knockemstiff. Maybe start Try. Tomorrow, I have to fill out some paper work and take a tuberculosis test. It’s for a volunteer job I’m doing: teaching recovering alcoholics and drug addicts how to write. Looking forward to it. It’s for a particular class that I’m taking.

Might go see Brian Evenson and Joanna Howard read this weekend, assuming I can get a ride to Denver. Will hopefully meet Daniel Bailey. Write something that I need to get done and keep putting off. It’s non-creative and semi-super secret.

Think maybe going back to school has made me boring blog-wise.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Brain frazzled. Using free wireless in supermarket.

Started classes last week. Taking three. Two on the same day: noir and experimental fiction. Three hour break between. Polar opposites. Noir is pretty conventional. Nuts and bolts-y. Experimental is like whoa.

Also doing a class where I'm supposed to volunteer to teach writing in the community. Might be a library or a mental health place or something. Will be nice to get teaching experience. The reason why I was turned down by the college's writing center for a position. Was bummed. Figured going to college is about getting the opportunity to gain experience without first having the experience. The old catch 22. But I guess only to a small extent.

Still looking for work. Have only done so on campus for work study stuff. Did five interviews. Turned down by all. Tired of interviews. Driving me insane.

Now I need to start looking for off-campus employment. Whole Foods or some shit.

Finished editing another novelette today.

Figured out the Yerba Mate on campus gives me terrible gas, unlike the store-bought kind.

Think I want a smoothie.

Crazy busy last week. This week, not so much. Not at all since I only go to school two days a week.

Next week, two of my classes fall on memorial day, so it's like a one week vacation except for one class. Too bad it isn't more middle of the semester.

Going to bizarro con in October, Portland. Will sleep on a floor.

Got first bad review of It Came from Below the Belt on Amazon. Surprised it didn't happen earlier. Wonder why the person bought it. Assume the synopsis or look inside feature would have been a major turn off.

Gonna go back and space this out so it's easier to read.