In an earlier post, I presented the synopsis of my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. As noted, the novel is haunted by the figure of Jacques Rigaut, the French Dadaist, gigolo, addict, and suicide. Though I'd long had an interest in the Dadas, I didn't hear the name "Jacques Rigaut" until I stumbled upon…
Craft Notes: Mind Mapping My Work, Then and Now
Before I knew what a mind map was, I was mind mapping. Using scrap paper and pen I worked out some of the more difficult lines of association comprising the worm hole structure of my novel Flicker in the Porthole Glass. The following artifact shows a mind mapping exercise I completed sometime in 1993 over…
Craft Notes: Waste Not, Want Not
Years ago I took my first writing course, an undergraduate intro fiction offering taught by a high-strung, tenured loon whose own aspirations as a playwright had burned out along with his ability to comport himself civilly in social situations. His over-the-top insistence on a kind of Victorian propriety, combined with his inability to suppress his…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 