Pete Pazmino

Just a quick update on my application for a spot at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). I was informed last month that I’ve been accepted for a residency running from April 2 to April 29, and I’m practically giddy with the idea of having a solid month of writing time to finish up my novel. It’s going to be fantastic.

Sewanee was nice enough to publish a little update on me, too: http://sewaneewriters.org/updates/2012/01.

For years now, I’ve been a huge fan of singer/songwriter Josh Ritter. If you haven’t listened to him before, two quick things:

1. What’s wrong with you?
2. Look him up. Start with this clip and go from there:

Josh Ritter, \”To the Dogs or Whoever\”

What I’ve always liked and admired about Josh is the exact same thing I like and admire about artists like Bob Dylan (one of Josh Ritter’s self-admitted musical inspirations), Ani DiFranco, John Prine, and others like them. Their music is poetry, and their poetry is story. When they perform, their songs are so much more than catchy tunes; they’re full of characters and scenes and lessons that stay with you long after the last note has faded. Josh actually takes that a step further, in that he is one of those very rare performers who always seems to exude pure, joyful energy when he’s onstage. If you’re in the audience, you can’t help but have it rub off on you. I’ve seen him play five times now, all over Virginia and Maryland, and every single one of his shows has been remarkable.

You can imagine how excited I was, then, to hear Josh announce his first novel. It’s called Bright’s Passage, and I’m almost finished with it. My point here is not to review his book, other than to say that it’s an amazing first effort and I’m enjoying every one of its 200 pages. Throughout the book, he manages to take the clarity and imagery that conveys so beautifully in his music and, somehow, apply those same techniques to prose. I’d probably be jealous if I wasn’t such a fan.

My point here is to mention that, a few days ago, Josh published an article in The Wall Street Journal on his own editing process. Entitled “Seeing Red: To Write is to Edit,” it’s an inspiring short piece on how his father’s red pen inspired him to become the disciplined writer he is today. He writes:

Doing good work and having creative thoughts means very little unless you’re able to express that work and those thoughts to others in as straightforward a way as possible. To edit yourself isn’t an admission of lack of talent; it’s sticking up for that talent by taking the time to make sure that everyone can understand what you’re trying to say.

Perhaps the most aggravating part of the process to me was that my dad never wrote anything for me. “You know how it should be—you write it,” I can imagine myself saying then. But instead, he was doing what all great editors do; he was posing questions for me to answer, giving me problems to solve.

I absolutely love that line of his: having creative thoughts means very little unless you’re able to express that work. It’s so completely true, though I’m fairly certain that a great deal of writers out there — professional and amateur alike — wish very much that it was not. I also love the definition of “editing” as “sticking up for that talent.” It’s such an inspiring way of looking at the editing process, which so many writers — and I do include myself in this number — often view as an interminable slog. Creation, after all is fun. It’s a rush, it’s exciting, you feel like you’re spinning worlds and setting constellations in the heavens. Making everything fit together like it should, though, answering the questions that need to be answered and solving the problems that need to be solved … that’s hard. Doing that, in the end, is what separates writers from people who write.

Check out Josh’s article here. And if you’re interested, check out Bright’s Passage on Amazon here. You won’t be sorry for doing either one.

It’s actually been open for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve been distracted lately. Anyway, if you’re looking for an utterly memorable experience next spring, the registration period has opened for the 2012 Sirenland Writers Conference. You can register online. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s completely worth it. You’ll get incredible writing workshops (taught, this year, by Dani Shapiro, Jim Shepard, and Susan Orlean), you’ll meet some really amazing fellow writers, and you’ll be spending more than a week in Positano, Italy, which is easily one of the top five Most Beautiful Places in the World.

Seriously, I’m not kidding. I mean, this is the view from my hotel balcony when I was there back in April:

Pretty amazing, huh? So what are you waiting for? Just think of it as a well-deserved vacation. One where you’ll be immersed in writing, surrounded by writers, and living high on the Amalfi Coast. I won’t be able to make it in 2012, but I’ll definitely be going back there again.

Here’s the logo for a new writer’s group that I’ve been helping to get off the ground in the local area:

As you can see, it’s called Write by the Rails, a nod to the rail line that runs through Old Town Manassas and, I suppose, the train station there that Stephen Stills made famous in 1972, the year I was born. No, really, I’m serious:

Do they even make album covers like this anymore?

Anyway, Write by the Rails isn’t a writer’s group in the ordinary sense, by which I mean a group of like-minded writers who get together and respond to each others’ work. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But what we’re trying to do with WbtR (I’m just trying out that acronym, actually; we haven’t yet decided on a shorthand version of our name and I think it’s important to test drive various options before you settle on a model) is form what I suppose is closer to a writer’s guild. One that serves not only writers who live close enough to the Manassas train station to jog on over and re-create a 40-year-old album cover, but writers who live throughout the region. All of Prince William County, in fact.

The idea, basically, is to create a group that can network and provide one another with opportunities that might not otherwise reveal themselves. We’ve had one very friendly meet n’ greet already, at Okra’s in Old Town Manassas (yes, barely a block from that train station), and we’re planning another one at La Grange winery in Haymarket for September. We’ve also got a pretty cool event planned for October 29, a more networking-oriented meeting that will also possibly include some early brainstorming for an area writers’ conference we’re thinking about holding next year. There will also be some open mic reading and the opportunity for local authors to sell their books. Or, rather, the opportunity for you to buy books written by local authors. If you’re in the area and would like to know more about it, take a look at our flyer:

Write by the Rails Flyer

Feel free to post it elsewhere or forward it on, too.

I should, of course, also mention that I am only one out of an original four who started WBtR (there’s a second acronym possibility) one afternoon around a table at Simply Sweet on Main (also in Old Town and, yes, also near the train station). The one who really deserves credit for the idea is Cindy Brookshire – freelance writer, editor, and director of Prince William Study Circles. There’s also Katherine Gotthardt, founder of Writers for a Cause and author of Poems from the Battlefield; and Sheila Lamb, whose novel Once a Goddess is about to enter the world. Look for it.

Interested in knowing more about WBTR (third choice!)? Look us up on Facebook. No acronyms there; just look for Write by the Rails and send us a message asking to join. Don’t worry, we’re friendly. And if you’re into Stephen Stills, all the better.

I’ve been terrible about posting lately, but that’s mainly because I feel like I’m finally coming down the home stretch of the novel I’ve been laboring over for almost five years now and have been loathe to give up any time I might spend working on it. But there’s a couple of cool things in the works, so I wanted to take a moment to get them up here.

First, I just received notice a few days ago that Gargoyle Magazine will be publishing a new story of mine in an upcoming issue. It’s still a little up in the air over which issue it will be–either the next one or the one after that–but either way, I’m tremendously psyched. I’ve been a fan of Gargoyle for years, and Richard Peabody, its very long-time editor, is someone whose opinion and influence I hold in great regard. I can’t wait to see my work appear there.

I’ve also decided to apply for a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). The current deadline for a residency taking place between February and May of 2012 is September 15, so what I’m thinking is that if I continue at the pace I’m currently keeping, I’ll have a good, solid, workable draft of the novel finished by then. So if I get accepted (and I’ll just keep my fingers crossed), I’d be able to seclude myself in southern Virginia, well away from all my normal distractions, and spend maybe two or three weeks focusing on nothing but a thorough revision. We’ll see how that goes.

To help with that, I’ve also decided to apply for a grant being sponsored by the Virginia Commission for the Arts. They’re doing fellowships in fiction this year, and the reward is a pretty hefty $5,000. Which would make disappearing for a few weeks (and paying the suggested donation VCCA requests of its fellows) all the easier. The competition is apparently fierce for this thing, but I figure it can’t hurt to try. And who knows…maybe I’ll finish this year on a glorious roll.

Also wanted to throw out some good words about two books I’ve recently read, both of them by workshop leaders who were at Positano. First, The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti. Hannah was my workshop leader, and her insights on a story of mine that I’ve been working on, submitting, and having rejected (good rejections, though) for years were invaluable. The Good Thief is her first novel (she’s also published a short-story collection, Animal Crackers), and it’s a great read. You’ll see the word “Dickensian” used in a lot of reviews of it, and I think that’s a very appropriate description. The characters are fun, memorable, and jump off the page at you, and the story will keep you interested. Pick it up if you’re looking for a good summer book.

The second, a short-story collection by Jim Shepard entitled you think that’s bad, is another animal altogether. It’s hard to really put a single descriptor to this collection–the stories are all over the place, but they’re all fantastic, and they’ll leave you somehow heartbroken, horrified, amazed, and overjoyed all at the same time. He spoke in Positano about how important it is for an author to really know his material, to be able to write about his subject as if it’s an integral part of his own life, and this collection could serve as a textbook for that very principle. It’s not “light” reading by any means–I don’t know that I’d recommend it for the beach, in other words–but my God, it’s great reading.

I’ll also say that one of my favorite singer/songwriters in the world, Josh Ritter, has just released his first novel. It’s called Bright’s Passage, but I haven’t picked it up yet. Soon, though…maybe in time for my next post. But if you haven’t heard Josh’s music, you really need to. You don’t know what you’re missing. Here, I’ll leave with a link to one of his great ones (he did this one on Letterman last time he was on): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4aBD0z0iaY&feature=relmfu.

Enjoy!

It’s about 11:00 in the morning, Eastern Time, on what’s looking to be a beautiful day. Sunny and clear skies. The forecast says we can expect 80 degrees by late afternoon; ideal weather for the end of the world. Well, not the end, precisely. While the Rapturists are expecting to be beamed off this rock in about 7 hours to live blessed and immortal lives of goodness in Heaven, the world itself will hobble on, a diseased cripple too dumb to die ahead of the bad times facing it: the Anti-Christ, global tribulations, the Ark of the Covenant opened. Remember Indiana Jones? We’re in store for a global hurricane of death and misery and despair, a Biblical rendering of our souls. Armageddon, in other words.

Except that’s not going to happen, of course. By 6:30 today, the only vanished Christians on Earth will be the ones who have chosen to hide out of their own embarrassment at being such gullible fools. Assuming they have the capacity to feel embarrassed by their actions, which is, admittedly, no easy assumption. I would likewise assume that the leaders of this movement who’ve spent the past few months fleecing their flock, people like Harold Camping, will keep a very low profile over the weeks ahead. Can we say awkward?

It’s so easy to mock these people, so easy that it’s almost not worth doing. On message boards all over the internet, on spoof Web sites, on late-night television and news broadcasts, the mockery goes on. I can’t say it’s not deserved, although there’s something unsatisfying in it, too, something that I imagine as being close to what hunting cows with an assault rifle might feel like. But there’s something else about these Rapturists, too, something that goes beyond their innate ridiculousness and becomes another thing entirely. In fact, I have to say that, on some level, I envy them.

To quote President Obama, let me be clear. I do not envy the Rapturists for being gullible enough to believe some huckster when he tells them that Armageddon will begin with a rolling rapture that takes place at 6:00 in each time zone. What I envy in them is the purity of the emotion that this absurd belief must create in their minds. I envy the fact that this fool’s path they’ve been following, in the end, allowed them to experience something that most of us, maybe all of us, never will: the last night and the last day of the world.

Think about that for a moment. We’re talking about believing—and I mean utterly believing, believing with every fiber of your soul and your body and your mind (although there may be doubters among them; even Jesus himself had to deal with those)—that the world as they know it is going to end. We’re talking about believing that these hours, these hours passing right now, are not only their last hours on Earth, but the last hours of Earth.

Can you imagine that feeling? We hold to this idea of the moment before we die as being a sort of “white flash” in which your entire life, all of your failures and successes and lies and loves and hates, everything gets played across the movie screen of your mind. One single moment that is the essence of you. Now take that concept and make the moment not just about you, but about everybody—all of us, the human race, existence as a whole. Can you imagine that? The purity of that feeling? What it must be like to not just think but to know that everything is about to end?

Like I said, most of us will never experience that sort of emotion. I imagine that it’s like a drawn-out version of a rollercoaster’s slow crest, or that long breathless second before you parachute from a plane or bungee from a cliff. Except it’s not, because in neither of those examples do you expect to die. Closer might be the suicide jumper as he shuffles to the building’s edge, or the cancer patient with one night to live waiting through those last long hours. But even those don’t really compare; it’s a matter of scale. It’s Ray Bradbury’s The Last Night of the World come true—but not really. It’s the experience without the fallout.

And so I have to admit that a part of me does envy these people, these believers, these Rapturists. I envy them that, come tomorrow and the next day and all the days after that, after the embarrassment of still being here has faded and they’ve settled back into whatever drudgery delineates their normal lives, they will have had this moment. They will have lived the last night on earth, lived it and experienced it as only someone who truly believes it ever could. They will have experienced it with a singular purity that I don’t think can be reproduced by any drug and the rest of us, those who mock them now, will never know that feeling for what it is. We can imagine it, sure, but we can never really know.

And that’s too bad. I mean, my God, what a party that could have been.

It’s day four in Positano, and it’s hard to believe that time is passing so quickly. Well, maybe not hard to believe, really, because time always seems to go by so much more quickly when you’re enjoying yourself. I mean, how could I not be enjoying myself in a place with views like this:

Yesterday morning, Hannah Tinti — editor of One Story, author of The Good Thief, and my writing workshop leader here at Sirenland — said that writing good descriptions is all about being a good liar. She used as her example one of my favorite movies, Reservoir Dogs, specifically the series of scenes over which we see Tim Roth’s character, Mr. Orange, first learn and then claim as his own the story that he uses to convince the other gangsters of his criminal identity. That made-up story — he was carrying a large amount of drugs and nearly busted in a restroom during a chance encounter with a group of police and their dog — begins as a sterile script that his partner forces him to learn. Over time, it evolves into a fleshed-out, detail-rich story. The details that he chooses to add to the script are what makes the lie become his own, and once the lie becomes his own he can convince others that it’s real.

This was part of a larger discussion about the importance (and proper use) of sensory images in writing — the importance, for example, of being precise, of paying attention to the rhythm of language, of valuing the quality of descriptive language (one good simile) over quantity (three mediocre ones). Information I’ve certainly heard before, but I certainly appreciate the reminder. It’s so easy to forget the importance of precision. To let your writing grow lazy. To forget the importance of lying well.

In any case, what’s no lie at all is that this has been an amazing experience so far. It’s hard to believe that there’s today and tomorrow left, and then I fly home Saturday. We worked on my story in this morning’s session, and I’m so full of ideas for it right now that I almost don’t know where to begin. But that’s a nice dilemma, I think, to have.

I recently (this morning over coffee, in fact) started reading a book called The Writing Life, a collection of short reflections by very famous authors on why and how they write. It was assembled and edited by Marie Arana, former editor of The Washington Post’s Book World, and published in 2003.

What’s funny about this is that I’ve had this book for at least five years. Maybe longer. It’s just been sitting on my bookshelf, and somewhere along the way I forgot that I’d put it there. I don’t really know what made me pick it up this morning, either. Just noticed it on the shelf, I guess, though I’ve certainly noticed it before. I mean, I’ve moved those bookshelves at least twice in the past three years, and the only way to move those suckers is to unload them first. So I’ve handled that book at least four times, but never opened it.

This morning, though, I pulled The Writing Life off the shelf and opened it and started to read the first piece. It’s a short reflection by Pulitzer-prize-winning author Francine du Plessix Gray on how she approaches the teaching of writing, and I was hooked from the very first sentence:

For some years now, whenever I’ve been asked to teach the craft of writing, I’ve told my prospective hosts that I would consider their invitation, on one condition: that the term “creative” — a word so stagnated by overuse that it should be confined to naming goldfish — be excluded from the title of my course.

Her point, as she goes on to explain, is that the very notion of certain genres of writing (such as fiction) being more “creative” than others is, at its heart, absurd. And I love this idea. Francine du Plessix Gray herself is a cross-genre writer, someone who has written both fiction and nonfiction at the highest levels, and I have such admiration for people who choose to do this, who elect to stand with their feet firmly planted in both writing “camps” (and all the various sub-camps that exist within each). Her declaration reminds me of my own time teaching high school English, the frustration I always felt at this so-often entrenched idea that there are but two kinds of writing in school: “academic, real-world writing” (which so often seems to manifest as that dreaded 5-paragraph essay) and “creative writing” (whimsical stuff belonging only in elective classes chosen by students trying to avoid gym). What a terrible, false reality we communicate to young students by cleaving all writing in two!

Her final sentences are a delight:

…never worry about what “category” your texts might fall into. The world, alas, will pigeonhole you before you know it, griping and caviling when you stray from the niche into which they’ve glued you. For the time being each of you is free to gambol and frolic in the delectable, Lord-given fields of human language. How we envy you.

So inspiring. I can’t wait to read more. I leave for Sirenland in three days; I think I’ve found my airplane book. And it was right under my nose the whole time.

Just found out from the Sirenland organizers that Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage (which I read and loved) and The Confessions of Max Tivoli (which I have not read but now plan to) is going to be the visiting writer at this year’s Sirenland conference. I can’t wait! That’s one of the most exciting things about these sorts of conferences; back in 2008 at Sewanee I was fortunate enough to have John Casey as one of my workshop advisors, and you can’t help but learn something when you’re rubbing elbows with a writer of that caliber. I’m looking forward to a similar experience with Andrew.

Another bit of happy news; I was recently awarded the Mark Farrington Personal Writing Award for 2011 by the Northern Virginia Writing Project. While the $500 award will not pay for all of my Sirenland-related expenses, it’s certainly a nice boost. I’m honored by the award and grateful to the Project for selecting me from among this year’s applicants. I’m also grateful to Mark Farrington, now the Assistant Director of the M.A. in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins, for endowing the award three years ago.

It’s hard to believe that I’m just over a month away from Positano!

It’s funny how things balance out, how good and bad events so often seem to pair themselves, to follow on each others’ heels despite having no apparent connection beyond the fact that they’re personally happening to you. At least, that seems to happen to me all the time. I have to assume that it happens to others, too, that I’m not some karmic divining rod. It’s like a religious tenet to me, in fact, an aphorism proven true through experience: When good things happen, bad things are on their way. When the bad things come, good follows. Each leads into the other, like endless waves crashing ashore.

I’ve had quite a few story rejections lately. That by itself is nothing new, and I think that any writer worth his salt treats these like a duck does water on its back. After all, getting rejections as a writer really amounts to little more than those mindless “how’re you doings?” from strangers on the street. They mean nothing. They barely warrant response. They’re a necessary part of the background, like clouds.

But just like not all clouds are equal, some rejections mean more than others. Like the one I had the other day from a small press that had been making some very promising noise about the short story collection I’ve finally pulled together. Crushing, really, because it seemed so much like a go. Surprising, too, to discover that you can still be stunned, that your leathery skin isn’t quite so thick as you’d imagined.

And then, bam bam, head and gut, two more fast blows. First, learning that the reading for A Cappella Zoo at this year’s AWP conference in DC has been canceled. What a fun night that would have been. Then, to finish off the day, two fresh story rejections sent within 15 minutes of each other waiting in the evening’s email.

Those sort of things start to add up.

But a new day brings sunrise. I applied a while back to the 2011 Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Filled out the application, sent some writing samples, paid my fee, then waited. Waited long enough that, eventually, I forgot that I’d applied. Which, really, is the best way to deal with waiting for anything—forget about it, then get surprised. In my case, the surprise was an emailed invitation to attend. March 27 through April 2—my birthday. It is expensive. A week in Italy at a nice hotel in what looks like one of the most beautiful seaside villages on earth. Food and travel expenses. Spending money. Not to mention a week off work. I’ve been waffling all day, trying to decide whether the whole thing would really be worth it in the end. I was, truth be told, leaning toward a “thanks, but not this year” response when I started composing this post.

But I think I’ve talked myself out of that. I think I’m going to take this good news and run with it. And I’m going to hope that I’m due at least a little more of the same before the waves turn bad again.