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Why Tilt the World?
So, I have a new book out. It’s not for kids. At least it’s not for kids in the traditional Disney-Channel-no-inappropriate-material sense. There is plenty of inappropriate material, because it is a book about the world and, well, the world is typically inappropriate (and if you’ve ever watched footage of slugs mating, you know what I mean). The book is called Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, and it is a collection of creative non-fiction essays and sketches arranged (structurally and thematically) around the seasons. And the seasons are just the different quartiles of space through which this freakishly tiny sphere of ours does its circular zipping.
In high school and then college and then graduate school, I never focused on the study of creative writing. Read the rest of this entry »
Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl (The Book Trailer)
Check it out, yo.
Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl trailer from Gorilla Poet Productions on Vimeo.
So You Wanna Be a Writer, Pt. 2 (For the Critics, These Pearls . . .)
Let’s say that you are more than a dreamer. You’ve actually finished a story. Now that you’ve finished it, you’re eager for feedback. You show it to friends. They read through it, and (just as you suspected), it turns out that you’re a genius. They all loved it. So did your mom. At this point, you should be growing suspicious. Is it at all likely that you’ve written the perfect book? Bet against it.
Where’s the criticism? You should be begging for it. You should want resistance. You should want people to try to tear your work down. You should want people with slender fingers and long nails pick, pick, picking at your cheap sweater. Read the rest of this entry »
FAQ #3: My Recipe
What literary influences/ancestors spawned 100 Cupboards?
I’ve already talked about the situational cause of this series (that late night chat and wifely challenge). But that was the story equivalent of knocking over a large pot of boiling, goopy somethings. But what were those somethings? Who put them in the pot, and why was the burner cranked so high? I blame it all on my parents. And on my teachers. But then my parents were both my teachers at some point or other, and they helped start the school where I simmered K-12. So it all lands on them.
I will now practice a little self-discipline and see if I can let a poor, exploited metaphor go. Unlikely. Read the rest of this entry »
FAQ #2: 100 Cupboards, the Origin of
What gave you the idea for 100 Cupboards?
A few years back, a college buddy of mine (holler, Mark Beauchamp) dropped by for some nostalgic laughter. The hour got late and the caffeine was flowing. At some point in the evening, while discussing his innate need to salvage strange things (and how that need affected the overall aesthetic charm of his apartment), he threw out the phrase: “One Hundred Little Cupboards.” I latched onto it, responding with something like, “That sounds like a book title.” Now, to be quite honest, I would have let it die right there. We both would have happily moved on, and the snappy book title could have gone to live where thousands of other snappy book titles had gone before. But instead, my wife chimed in. She laughed. Her eyebrows showered skepticism. “A stupid book,” she said. “Who would read a story about cupboards?” Read the rest of this entry »