There are deadlines, and there are deadlines. All of us face an ultimate deadline we (sadly or happily, depending on your point of view) cannot foretell. If you stick around long enough, this deadline begins to weigh heavily on your conscience. Wags call this the "mid-life crisis," and I suppose there is a crisis involved.…
Housebreaking the Muse: Enter Simone Kahn
Simone Kahn was the first wife of André Breton, founder of Mouvement Dada in Paris and more famously known as the lifelong "pope of Surrealism." But before she knew Breton, Kahn, a young student at the Sorbonne, was the close friend of Jacques Rigaut, the dadaist poet, gigolo, drug addict, and suicide who haunts the…
Experiment in Public Fiction Writing (installment 4)
This experiment arose from a Craft Note post I published last week, titled How Things Begin, in which I described how my work arises from a single line, to which I append more lines. To demonstrate the process, and as something of a challenge to myself, I'm attempting to write a story "in public." What…
Experiment in Public Fiction Writing (continued, installment 3)
Here are some new, rough lines to add to the last. Not sure if I'll be adding more daily, but I'll use the above title format to indicate further developments. Ed. [updated 12/6/11] It occurred to him the sophisticated code on top of which everything runs included a randomizer and so the possibility of orderly,…
Craft Note: Even More On the Beginning, “Manganese Reek”
(This post continues my series of posts in which I experiment with "public writing." To view more posts on this topic, use the "Topics" dropdown menu above and select "Experiment in Public Writing." Thanks, Ed) I'm thinking about the following line: "... the manganese reek of an aluminum casting works that drained down through the…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 