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Another legend of American literature died yesterday. John Updike, one of the generation of great writers who helped shape the entire genre of voice in our relatively young writing culture, lost his battle with lung cancer at the age of 76.

There are any number of people more suited to write about the impact of his works and the sadness surrounding his loss. Surely this is becoming an increasingly common trend. I personally was very saddened when Vonnegut died, as he more than anyone other than my parents has driven me to take pen to paper. 

But I, and all Americans who write, owe a debt to the generation of Vonneguts, Updikes, Sallingers and Capotes. 

I hope that our generation will produce greats that are likewise  remembered as having left a legacy so meaningful to those who come after. 

Rest in peace Mr. Updike.

Mental Floss had a great article on six open letters that had a huge impact on the world.

MLK’s Letter from a Birminham Jail is a given, but I also have to give much credit to the Letter on Corpulance… mostly because I love the word corpulance.

Now that letter writing is an increasingly dead art, I wonder if anyone will be able to muscle out a response from society with a well-worded and concise treatise outlining a social problem.

More likely, the art will be replaced with the viral video, wherein eloquence isn’t so much the goal, as cheap laughs or sideshow oddities that get you links.

Well, who am I to judge what’s the higher art, right?

That’s a good one. I think it comes up every year.

Maybe aspiring writers are inclined to be procrastinators more than other types of people, like firefighters (that would be terrible wouldn’t it?)

New Year’s resolutions are great for me, becuase they don’t give me one month or so to set out for change, which I will prompty abandon. Oh no. New Year’s reminds me that the transition from one year to the next is no different from the transition from one day to the next, or the work day to the off hours day. Or writing time to nap time.

Any day can bring renewed commitment, should you really want it.

That’s where New Years comes in. It reminds me another year went by. It gives me a number to associate with achievements (for those of you keeping score at home, 2008 had 0 for me.) That lights the proverbial fire, which should get me to write again.

Hopefully this will mark a renewed effort at posting, since it is about time I do a little more of that. Try to ignore that the last post was two months ago… nothing to see here… move along.

Wallace Stevens had every reason to not be poetic. He went to law school because his dad told him to and then he worked in insurance. Those two lifestyles jostle around in my brain for the distinction of least artistic professions I can imagine (such that it writers often us those as a professional hell to resign their characters to.)

But despite this, he was emerged one of America’s most respected poets.

Stevens would walk two miles to and from his office every day, and in that walk, he would compose poetry. That walking poetry eventually won him a Pulitzer and a National Book Award.

His job wasn’t glamorous, but he felt that going to work grounded him in life making him a better observer.

The genuine artist is never “true to life.” He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life. - Wallace Stevens

So keep that Stevens in mind when you think about the writers life. You can investigate insurance claims, you can clean auditoriums, or you can do nothing at all, but you will still find something beautiful to write.

We say God and the imagination are one… How high that highest candle lights the dark. - Wallace Stevens

Maybe the difference between a novella and a novel isn’t that clear to you. How short is a short story before it’s too short and has to be called something else –shorter?

These questions don’t really need hard and fast answers. No one likes being pigeonholed, after all. But that doesn’t mean a little guidance isn’t helpful.

I found this page that gives some good averages for different manuscripts. I wouldn’t buy into the idea that they are as set in stone as the author says, but they do give you a good rule of thumb.

Some take aways that come from it are that a short story is something that you can read in one setting. A novella might take a little more, but will still be too short to cover a lot of characters, and should instead be a really in depth view of a narrow topic.

Then there is writing for the internet. In that case, shorter is probably better, unless you can really hold the reader’s attention.

Since I’m not sure this post is doing that, I think I’ll leave it there.

I sometimes think the fear of criticism is my biggest obstacle to writing. It’s a terrible dilemma: I want people to read my work, but I’m worried that when they do they will realize my flaws and mock me endlessly for them.

I doubt I am alone in that fear.

But a friend of mine shared a favorite quote of his by our illustrious former President and man’s man Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Roosevelt was a pretty impressive guy so I could see this having some credibility. After all, as my friend Roberto pointed out, he finished a ninety-minute speech after being shot in the chest by a would be assassin. With critics severe enough to shoot him during speeches, he had to know a thing or two about keeping a positive attitude.

I lived in Houston for large, non-consecutive portions of my life. I’ve got lots of friends and loved ones there right now. I’m exceedingly thankful that they all made it through the storm unharmed, with their homes (mostly) intact.

Unfortuantly, not everyone was so lucky.

I’ve been following the news closely, and augmenting what I hear from the folks who can get calls out. It’s no cakewalk down there. But to the credit of the people of Houston and it’s surrounding areas, they really are coming together to help one another.

I hope that you all can do the same, even if as neighbors you may be a little further away.

Donate to the Red Cross or Houston Food Bank if you can. It will make an impact on someone’s life.

You can take my word for it: these folks are good people who will leverage whatever you give to help the most possible and make the best of a bad situation.

Not many people read this blog, as it is in it’s infancy. But if I can implore one of you to help, it will be worth it.

As always, thanks for reading.

I have a poet friend who was told me once that ideas are ours only for so long. If we don’t use them, our muse takes them to someone else. Then we forget about them until we read them in another writer’s words.

Fortunately, we don’t need to lose our ideas to the aether. We just need to write them down, and preserve their freshness until we are ready to dash them onto the page.

Any aspiring writer should keep an idea file. Most can use a small notebook kept on hand at all times. For those moments of random beauty, irony or curiosity, you need to be able to jot them down for later exploration.

Keeping a long record of good ideas, interesting sightings or sayings that were overhead not only gives you material for when you can’t seem to come up with anything, but it builds your understanding of the world around you. The more nuanced your view, the more layered and original you’re writing will be.

Here are notes that I find in my notebook:

• Premises: I have ideas that seem like they would make great short stories all the time. Whether or not they can, that’s debatable. Doesn’t matter though, they’re lost if they don’t get written down so anything that seems interesting goes in here.

• What ifs? Sometimes conversations can raise interesting questions that are worth exploring in prose. Those “What Ifs?” make a lot of great stories. You probably have these conversations all the time (what if Aliens invaded earth just for our Boston creme pie? What if we elected a president that was nine feet tall and mostly made of steel?) so why not get some writing fodder out of it.

• Observations: Funny/interesting/ironic things creep up on us whether we’re eating or sitting at home watching the animals chase things that don’t need to be chased. Mundane, everyday observations get life through exploration. Writing is about giving life to a point of view, so seeing something worth infusing with meaning is always good for the notebook.

• Strange speaking conventions:People have unique ways of speaking -rhythms and cadences that sound so particular they resonate in your ear and brain. When you notice this, it’s great to note them for when you are writing dialog for your characters. Creating a unique voice for them is hard, but borrowing it from a real person isn’t!

• Imagery: You’ll know it when you’ll see it, and it will be incredible. Those glimmers of images will help you through tough sines or lack of inspiration.

Even if these notes don’t amount to work in and of themselves, they might fit nicely into another piece I’ve been working on, so it helps to review the notebook pretty often. In fact, an interesting idea file can be the greatest cure for a case of writer’s block.

I like using Moleskine notebooks because they are the right size and they look the part. Using such a stylized and traditional writer’s notebook makes me look the part so it’s sort of validating of my choices.

Of course it doesn’t need to be that fancy or historically pertinent. Any easily-carted notebook will do.

And of course the pen. You can never forget the pen.

I’ve been giving some thought to the struggles a writer faces throughout the process of writing. The frustration of the blank page, writer’s block, ideas with a beginning and no end, unrealistic dialogue…these can serve as a real downer, bruising a writer’s already fragile sense of confidence. A really determined writer will brush the dust off and work through these problems. However, I find there is one problem writers face that is toughest to work through: starting the writing process.

I have found this to be my biggest obstacle. An idea really doesn’t count for much until it hits the paper. I can blame my hesitation on a lack of available time, incomplete ideas, my inner editor, a lack of exigency or deadlines…but really, maybe it’s just a lack of will.

So I’ve decided to turn to the old 90’s NIKE slogan, “Just do it.” When I hear that phrase I think of a conference room with a long shiny expensive wooden table surrounded by the CEO, CFO, secretaries, and really nervous marketing types trying to come up with a slogan that will make people want to hop into overpriced shoes, work out, and change their lives. And I picture an intern in the back holding two steaming cups of coffee waiting for a break in the intense discussion about the company slogan so he can hand the cups to their owners. And as the debate builds and his hands continue to burn, his sweaty face yells out, “JUST DO IT!” There is a complete silence, which makes the intern forget about the burning coffee. And in that classic Hollywood moment, the CEO breaks the silence with one word: “Brilliant!”

But back to my point…there is no fix for a writer’s inability to begin writing. It’s all in our heads. Maybe we shouldn’t start writing until we have something we have to say, something that can’t go unwritten. And I’m sure we all have something we really want to say.

If we don’t, then we have bigger problems than struggling to start the writing process.

Hemingway’s shortest story (For sale: baby shoes, never worn) is the best evidence of the power of concise fiction. Six words can break a heart in a way some novels can’t even touch.

Wired had a fantastic collection of similarly short strings of six that they posted here. None match the elegance of Hemingway’s, but if it weren’t for that elegance, we wouldn’t be concerend with brevity.

There was a time when the novel was seen as cheap, because the novelist was given so much room to craft a character. The art, it was said, was in telling a story in just the space that needed.

The writer wasn’t making a world, just an emotion. An impression.

Maybe that’s not a fair critique of novels or long-form fiction, but it is certainly an endearing challenge to fans of the short form to muscle in every word into a lattice work of emotion.

Maybe all short writers should aim for six –even if we miss be a few or three thousand.

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