Report from South Carolina Writer's Workshop

Actually I am still here, with one more day to go, but I am pleased to report that I won third place in the short story contest with my story "Antlerless".

Also my agent critique went very well - she wants to read the rest of my novel!

having a great time - excellent workshops and inspirational speakers. Will report more when I get home...

South Carolina Writer's Workshop

I am off to the SCWW tomorrow morning at 0dark:30. This will be my very first real writer's conference, where I get to meet actual editors and agents. The schedule looks great, the faculty impressive, and the location excellent. Can't wait. Full report when I get back.

Novel by George Singleton

George Singleton is a nut and this is not a serious novel, and I mean that in more ways than one. The protagonist is named Novel (hence the title) and is writing his memoir and also the history of Gruel, South Carolina. Novel stumbles through the novel in an alcoholic haze - much of what he reports is questionable.

Singleton is the master of the comic short story  and this novel reads exactly like one of his stories, just, you know, longer. Non-sequiturs and lists of unrelated objects are his techniques. Yes, it is funny at times. At other times it is tedious. And there is no plot, really, just a sequence of opportunities to introduce humorous Southern settings.

I'm going to the South Carolina Writer's Conference this weekend, and he is one of the faculty. Hopefully I will get a chance to meet him in person and gauge for myself how crazy he really is.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Forty years ago I read, for school, an abridged version of this classic. I seem to remember it was just the first few chapters, the tragic, yet still comic, account of Master Copperfield's childhood. I determined to read the whole thing, complete, unabridged, and I am so glad I did. Do yourself a favor, slow down your hectic life, attune yourself to the slower, politer, more refined pace of Dicken's England, and read the whole thing.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome falls in love with his wife's caretaker, but it all ends in tragedy.

A little heavy handed from my modern viewpoint. The symbolism of the cat taking the wife's place while Ethan consorts with the caretaker is particularly obvious. And the commitment of the two to commit suicide? That's a little tough to swallow. It seems to me that the caretaker had other choices, if she was as pretty as Wharton implied. In other words, I don't think the novel convinced me that two had enough motivation to make the fateful decision they did.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Two tailors, a landlord, and a student struggle to survive in India during the political and social upheavals of the mid 1970s. The cultural extremes of Indian society form a rich and varied backdrop for this novel. It's also very Dickensian, in that the characters lead lives of misery and disappointment, yet there are memorable characters and plenty of comic relief and dark humor.

But be warned - unlike Dickens, there are no happy endings here. And the events are horrific in nature - lynchings, murders, accidental deaths, oppresive poverty, caste ugliness, and so on. In fact, there are very few moments when the characters can be said to be truly happy. The two tailors go from miserable incident to miserable incident, yet rebound every time with humor and hope.  Only one character is unable to cope with the miserable world that he witnesses.

The writing is superb, the setting highly detailed, the characters excellently drawn. But the fatalistic tone of the book is excessively depressing for me -- perhaps that is the difference in the cultures of author and reader. I found it very difficult to read, although I was never disappointed by the book, like I have been by other dark novels. Just depressed when I finished it. Only recommended for those with the strength of character to read it and survive.

Emma by Jane Austen

The original chick-lit novel. A modern reader really has to slow down and get into the right mood to read Austen. I don't think that Emma and her "lover" ever touched before they were engaged. When they finally make their hearts know to each other he holds her hand. She agrees finally to call him by his first name once and once only - on their wedding day.

Poor Emma, so misunderstood, so hopelessly inept at deciphering the intentions of the men around her. Hidden here, just below the surface but obvious to the modern reader, is the fact that the women of the period were really just the property of the men. Worshiped, provided for, protected, but still merely property.

Highwire Moon by Susan Straight

An illegal alien inadvertently abandons her toddler daughter when she is deported. The daughter goes through the foster care system and ends up with her white trash father. After twelve years the mother and daughter try to find each other.

There is no break in the unending misery of the characters in this novel. The author doesn't believe in comic relief, obviously. Fiction does affect the mood of those who read it - I was depressed and in a funk while suffering through this novel.

The author knows her craft and does write well, but in my opinion the novel has several serious flaws.

• The constant melancholy tone and the incredible string of bad luck for the characters required me to force myself to finish the novel.


• Every major character has childhood trauma that they harp on constantly. This has become such a cliche in literary fiction. The character of the daughter, for instance, cannot have a single thought without relating it to the fact she was abandoned by her mother. This became excessively tiresome.


• The non-ending ending is a disaster. The author takes us to the brink of getting the mother and daughter back together, and then lacks the courage to go through with it. Instead she opts for a pseudo-sophisticated non-ending. Does this make sense? Tell a story, but stop just before the ending? A story without an ending is not a story.

Sorry if I am being harsh, but after suffering through the misery of this novel, I really have to speak my mind. Not a big surprise that this was a finalist for the National Book Award - the more of those novels I read the less is my opinion of that award.

NaNoWriMo starts again

Signed up for the National Novel Writing Month again, a little reluctantly. I've done it the last two years without any real problem, but I wanted to take my time with the next novel, code named Life Portraits. I'm worried that I might not be able to stay focussed without the deadline of something like NaNoWriMo, so I think I will shoot for 50k words on the novel next month. That is really less than half of what I need for a first draft anyway.

Atlanta Rising by Frederick Allen

An intriguing and well-written book about the historical and political events in Atlanta from about 1946 to 1996. You get a real behind the scenes look at Atlanta's journey through the years of integration and wealth-building, with special emphasis on the political deal, successes, and miss-steps. Allen analyzes what happened and why it happened in easy to understand language and common-sense insight.

Primarily of interest to students of Atlanta history, it's also a great reminder of the way that politics works, a lesson that can be applied anywhere and anytime.  For instance, I learned how Jimmy Carter essentially rode the coattails of segregationist Lester Maddox to the governorship of Georgia, even engaging in race-baiting. Hard to believe, looking at the things he has done since. Or maybe not so hard to believe after all, since he has not proven himself to be above doing whatever it takes to get and keep power.