Updated Yesterday, I wrote about the elusive source of my ideas, then followed up with a second post introducing an opening line that came to me from who knows where. "And from that line come other lines," I wrote. "If there are enough lines, I discover a voice and a work of short fiction." Today,…
Craft Note: How Things Begin
Two craft notes in one day--a record. Asked where my ideas come from, I shrug, "I don't know." Asked whether I start with plot, or a character, or a setting, or a description, I usually respond, "None of the above." What comes to me first is a line, a sentence. And from that line come…
Talking Paul West on Mark Seinfelt’s “Word Patriots”
I'm happy to have had the opportunity to join Mark Seinfelt and Jason Charnesky on Mark's "Word Patriots" program. In this installment, we discuss the early work of novelist Paul West. All three of us worked with West in the 80s and 90s, and listening to our exchange transports me back to the seminar table…
Seinfelt to Host Bill Gass on “Word Patriots” Webcast
Mark Seinfelt will host one of America’s foremost writers, whose innovative works of fiction include Omensetter’s Luck, Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Cartesian Sonata and The Tunnel, on the November 21 edition of his Word Patriots webcast on WebTalkRadio.net. Maximum Fiction received the following press release concerning…
I Add a Bit of Myself to Housebreaking the Muse
Hot on the platen of my Smith-Corona Coronet, a chapter serving to "sign" the work begins to emerge. Who is this Ed Desautels, anyway? [If you keep clicking the photo, you'll eventually find a size you can comfortably read.]
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 