Word Café

a master class for readers and writers

Elisa Albert “Fearless Fiction”

By

WORD CAFE EVENT ARCHIVE
ELISA ALBERT 11/12/15 – “FEARLESS FICTION”

elisa-albert-nina-shengold-word-cafeElisa Albert read the opening of her extraordinary novel After Birth. Nina read a selection of phrases culled from rave reviews–blistering; merciless; edgy; ferociously funny, confrontational and dark; scathing; caustic; a romp through dangerous waters; scaldingly and exhilaratingly honest–including Elisa’s favorite quote by Shalom Auslander: “Bukowski wrote that he preferred people who scream when they burn, and nobody I know burns, or screams, like Elisa Albert. Dark, wise, funny–she is Bukowski with a vagina and a motherfucker of a hangover.”

Well, welcome!

Asked how it feels to be hailed as a literary Bad Girl, Elisa noted that she spends more time talking about that at author events than her characters and story. She attributes it to societal discomfort with anger and truth-telling, with women not toeing the line. “I get both ends of the spectrum–people crying and thanking me for writing this, and people who are furious and offended.” She calls After Birth “a female war novel, with the women in the trenches, and the men left at home.” Readers often want to know “how autobiographical” it is, and we talked about the double bind of assumptions that novels are thinly disguised autobiography, and memoirs are fictionalized. So you might as well write what you want. “If you’re invested in people liking it, or liking you, you’re in a bad place,” Elisa says. Writing is “between you and yourself. If you don’t tell your truth, what’s the point?”

For Elisa, that’s “subjects that come to me, whatever I’m obsessed with.” After she gave birth, it was the abrupt, falling-off-a-cliff life change and isolation of new motherhood. She noted that, as a culture, we prefer to avoid the messy beginnings and ends of lives. When her baby was born (as when her older brother died), she lost some friends, while others–including some surprises–“came and sat with me.” That phenomenon, the politics of birth, and women’s friendships became fertile subject matter, “a giant ball of clay. What can be done with this?”

Elisa talked about the importance of finding writers who spoke to her “without bullshit” when she was young: Maya Angelou, Ani DiFranco, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, and more recently Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back.

THE EXERCISES:

Elisa asked participants to recall “the last time you totally lost your shit, an illogical, outsize, not admirable reaction” and write a first-person piece (fictional or not) in that voice. Don’t smooth it out to get to a place of calm acceptance, just let it rip.

Nina asked participants to write about being stuck in a place with something you fear, physically or emotionally.

Bonus quote from Abigail Thomas, speaking with Kim Wozencraft and Nina at SUNY Ulster’s writing panel this Tuesday: “Don’t try to put the whole Thanksgiving dinner on a slice of pizza.”

Nicole Quinn “World Building” 11/5/15

By

WORD CAFE EVENT ARCHIVE
NICOLE QUINN, 11/5/15

nicole-quinnThis week’s reading was a special treat–alongside her credits as screenwriter, playwright, and author of The Gold Stone Girl trilogy, Nicole Quinn is an award-winning audiobook narrator(http://nicolequinnnarrates.blogspot.com/). She read a brief selection from each of the trilogy’s three books (It’s a Nightmare, Disbelief, and Rewire), addressing our topic of “World-Building,” along with intertwined issues of character, narrative voice, and creative process

The trilogy unfolds in a far-distant future in which women are treated as breeding livestock. The earth’s continents have shifted into a single Pangaea-like mass ruled by the demonic Night Mare. Most of its inhabitants–human and otherwise–live in a massive urban sprawl, but reluctant hero Mina was born inside a willow tree and raised by folksy, quietly rebellious “off-gridders” Dee-Dee and Bubba.

Nicole’s impetus for the trilogy came from an image in It’s a Girl (http://www.itsagirlmovie.com/), Best Documentary winner at a festival that awarded Best Narrative Feature to her own film Racing Daylight (http://www.racingdaylightthemovie.com/home.htm). The documentary opened with a shot of brightly wrapped bundles bobbing in an Indian river; a title card identified them as cast-off baby girls. Nicole was horrified and galvanized.

She chose the far future as a way to avoid finger-pointing and lecturing, and to make things that are extreme in our world the norm. Nicole built her future’s culture organically and intuitively as she went along, often using everyday things she observed (a heron fishing, the word “housewife”) and putting a spin on them. She asserted that an invented world needs “really strong rules. You’re God in your world, but a good reader will notice if you break your rules.”

Nina pointed out that although the term “world-building” comes from fantasy literature (think Middle Earth, Narnia, Oz, Earthsea) the writer of any narrative needs to create the specifics of the world where the story takes place. What’s its history, culture, environment? How do its creatures behave? What well-chosen details–“brush strokes,” Nicole called them–will paint the whole picture, transporting us to another place or time?

Nicole does a lot of revising, and presented the terms “down draft” (as in getting it all down) and “up draft” (cleaning it up) as used by writing teachers Peter Bricklebank and Anne Lamott. (I couldn’t find the terms’ origin online, but here’s Lamott’s delightful essay on “Shitty First Drafts” from her book Bird By Bird.

As usual, everyone’s questions were excellent, and the conversation ranged from world-building to character and language. Which is as it should be, since they’re all joined at the hip. As Nicole said, “It’s all just storytelling.” Amen.

nina-shengold-nicole-quinn-word-cafe
THE EXERCISES:

Nicole: Look inside your purse or pockets and describe the objects you find there as if to a being that has no familiarity with them at all.

Nina: Describe a place you used as a getaway or hideout as a child. Try to remember what you imagined there. If you want to make the imaginary element a step or two more literal, feel free.

MARY LOUISE WILSON “GETTING IN CHARACTER” 10/29/15

By

WORD CAFE EVENT ARCHIVE
MARY LOUISE WILSON, 10/29/15

mary-louise-wilson-nina-shengold-word-cafeThe divine Mary Louise Wilson treated us to a spectacular reading from her new memoir My First Hundred Years in Show Business. Our topic was “Getting in Character,” and the chapter she read about her Barrow Street neighbor, friend, and gadfly George Furth were a brilliant demonstration of how well-chosen details can paint the whole picture. Who can forget him shampooing his hairpiece and donning a towel and golf cap while it dried, or barging in on Mary Louise and her new beau “with a canned pear floating in a green plaid dish. ‘I thought you might want this,’ he barked, giving my boyfriend the once-over.”

Mary Louise is the subject of Ron Nyswaner’s Woodstock Film Festival Audience Prize-winning documentary about character acting, She’s the Best Thing In It, which follows her into a classroom full of beginning actors at Tulane University. We talked about parallels between teaching acting and writing: truth, specifics, connection.

Mary Louise talked about finding a natural voice for the memoir through the stories she’s told at parties for years; reading aloud as she wrote also helped. When she writes other characters, in memoir, plays and monologues, “It’s always the language.” How does this character speak? She also talked about finding the physical quirks of a character she plays onstage, or creates as a writer.

When I asked if anyone had questions for Mary Louise, the first response was, “Will you read more?” She did, treating us to a chapter called Fuschia Moon, about her “introduction to camp” in the company of her closeted brother Hugh, his witty circle of friends, and their living room “drag chest.”

my-first-hundred-years-in-show-business-mary-louise-wilson-word-cafe

THE EXERCISES:

Mary Louise suggested a daily practice called “aide-memoir,” in which you write continuously, whatever comes into your mind, without editing or censoring your thoughts. Nina compared this process to letting the rust out of the pipes till the water runs clear. See where it leads you. You might be surprised.

Nina’s exercise: Think of a person who drives you crazy, for good or bad reasons. How does he or she speak, move, behave? Write a monologue in that person’s voice that begins with the line, “Is this seat taken?” The work people got up and shared was specific, sharp, and hilarious. Takeaway: Irritating people make good characters.