submissions wanted

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Writers Read – Stage & Studio

Stage & Studio is looking for writers IMMEDIATELY as part of its 2011 development into a regional arts show. Writers and musicians are requested to submit their work for a curatorial process. All entries will be considered for technical and editorial review.

Writers Read – Stage & Studio, hosted/produced by Dmae Roberts, will begin a regular Writers Read segment starting in February featuring Northwest writers exclusively. Poetry and prose segments must be no longer than 1-2 minutes. Writers are asked to identify themselves and their city/town and the title of their work before reading their piece.

iPhone users may use a numerous audio apps including Audioboo (which also allows you record online), iTalk and even memo apps as long as recordings have no distortion, p-popping or handling sound. Video recordings are also accepted if close miked in quiet room and can be uploaded on YouTube or Vimeo.

Writers will receive on-air and online credit with links to author sites. Any genre or style of writing is acceptable but must adhere to FCC guidelines, (PG-13).
For complete submission guidelines visit this link:

http://stagenstudio.com/2011/01/writers-and-musicians-wanted/

Pointed Circle

Portland Community College's annual literary magazine, Pointed Circle is seeking submissions for its 2011 issue. We publish poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and artwork. Please email Lutgarda Cowan to receive a submission form with all guidelines. Manuscripts will not be accepted without a submission form attached. Deadline is March 11, 2011.

Lutgarda Cowan
Dept. of English
Portland Community College/Cascade
lutgarda.cowan@pcc.edu

Call for *Plein Air* Writers

Thank you to Soapstone for sending this out on their announcement list. It looks amazing - I've never done it but will try to participate on one day. Off to check my schedule and see when I can be there. I love this idea!

Pacific Northwest Plein Air

Columbia Center for the Arts (CCA) will host its sixth annual PACIFIC NORTHWEST PLEIN AIR 2010 in the Columbia River Gorge, from August 26 to 30, 2010. As in previous years, the event features both a “Paint-Out” for artists, and a “Write-Out” for writers.

The writing portion of the Plein Air show is an open-call event that culminates in publication on the CCA website and a public reading in the CCA theater. Writing can be prose or poetry (or any combination thereof). The registration fee is $15, or $25 to include admission to the Painting Preview party on Thursday, September 2.

August 10 Registration deadline
August 26 – 30 Write-out days, locations TBD
August 30 Submission deadline
September 19 Public reading & online anthology launch party, 7 p.m.

Locations for the Plein Air Write-Out/Paint-Out are:

Text Box: Photographs by Darryl Lloyd Top: Columbia Gorge Bottom: Mt. AdamsThursday, 26 - The Gorge White House - Hood River Valley

· Friday, 27 - Timberline Lodge - Mt Hood

· Saturday, 28 -Springhouse Cellar Vineyard - Mosier

· Sunday, 29 - The Dalles Mountain Ranch at Columbia Hills State Park – Washington

· Monday, 30 - Downtown Hood River

NOTE: The gallery exhibit (which will also include posting one piece from each writer) will open September 3 and run through the end of the month.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is plein air?
En plein air is a French term for painting in the out-of-doors with the goal of capturing a moment—the lighting, the clouds, the mood—as quickly as possible.

How does a writer do this?
The idea for writers is essentially the same as for painters, but with an important difference: capture a moment before it disappears. Of course, writers are not bound to re-create visual portraits of the landscape—the “moment” might involve other people in the area, sounds or conversations overheard, smells and sensations, or even inner thoughts. The goal is to capture a snippet of time as deftly and quickly as possible and paint a picture for others to “see.”

Do I have to be present each day to participate?
It’s the most fun to go to the scheduled venue and join the other writers and painters at work, but it is not a requirement. However, it is a requirement that the piece you submit for publication and/or present at the public reading be something that was created during this year’s plein air event.

Should I revise my piece before I submit it?
Minimally—while you want to present your best work, you don’t want to lose the “in-the-moment-ness” with which you wrote it.

book release announcement

The Lit Star Collective anthology is now published and available for sale. Click on the title to go to the website for ordering.

On the Fly: Stories in Eight Minutes or Less

A collection of short fiction and creative non-fiction -- each written in eight minutes -- these gems range from the raw as originally put to paper, to the peer edited and polished story. The writing shows the strength and energy that can be generated by writing quickly and honestly using prompts. The Collective's hope is to inspire writers in the sitting-down-and-writing-process and to provide enjoyment to both readers and writers. Introduction by Ariel Gore.

event: Alltopia Antholozine's launch and reading

from, Lara, the founder of Alltopia:

It's my great pleasure to announce the first public performance of Alltopia Antholozine's contributors. May it be the first of many! Our Spring issue, "Home," is currently in the capable and creative hands of our publisher, Eberhardt Press , and will be reader-ready in about a week. We will be celebrating the release of this issue at The Press Club, located in SE Portland, on April 25th.

Details:

When
Saturday, April 25 - 6:00 PM until 7:30 or so...

Where
The Press Club - 2621 SE Clinton St.
(503) 233-5656; they have a full bar, plus a great menu (think: crepes, bistro sandwiches, etc.) and an extensive selection of wines, but are also an all-ages venue.

What
The Spring issue - Home - will be available for purchase at the reading for $8 / copy. It will also be available at a few local purveyors of quality independent publications. Check our website for details, soon.

One of my poems is being published by the 'zine and I am planning on being there to read on the 25th.

Anthology Release Party

Last night I attended another Write Around Portland anthology release party and reading. Wow; again. This organization is amazing in their vision, their ability to carry out that vision, and their commitment to the community in which they live and in the communities their create with their writing workshops.

The evening to celebrate the completion of another round of workshops which gave voice and built another community of writers was a success for participant and listener alike. Each 10-week session of 15-17 groups Write Around Portland runs, concludes with this celebration, in which all participants have the option to read their piece in the publication. The individual writings cover nearly every genre; some made me laugh, some brought tears, some made me remember and some made me thankful. Each one touched me in some way. You can read more about the content and process of the programs here.

The staff of Write Around Portland run this celebration very skillfully and smoothly. Not a single participant nor facilitator nor audience member has any inkling of the amount of work that has been poured into making sure each person who decides to read their piece is a star for those two minutes. The staff's confidence and calm, their ability to support and organize, makes this a night of pleasure for everyone. And especially the participants, who each receive a copy of the publication with their piece included.

The readings last night were amazing and the courage and strength of everyone involved apparent. I feel both humble and proud to be a part of the volunteers who support the writers - on the staff and in the workshops.
Each session also spotlights one writer and a line from his or her selected piece is used as the title for the anthology. The featured writer for the newest anthology, A Rare and Necessary Time, is Reuben Alvarez-Paris. You can read his entry on the Write Around Portland website, as well as an interview.

I AM

A spoken word piece by Eric Mata

I want to update my K-inspiration image (K as in a mathematical constant) and I want to preserve this video in my blog, so I'm moving it to the contents section.

6S update

Last week I wrote about 6S, the Six Sentence online publication, and included the piece I submitted. I heard back from them today (yep, in six days from date of submission) and they are going to publish my six sentence story, "Slice of Heaven." It will appear on March 29th at SIX SENTENCES.

I can write that story in ....

In 1953 there was a television show called, "Name That Tune." (Don't worry if you remember it but swear you aren't that old - there were several incarnations of the show during the 70s into mid- 80s!) It was a contest to see who could identify a song in the least number of notes.

Several times over the past two weeks I've run into articles or conversations about writing where the goal is something like "I can tell that story in..." some minimal number of words. The most extreme was an article I read last week about an entire book of six word biographies. Then, again, yesterday at the writing seminar the topic of abbreviated story telling was raised. The facilitator started us off with a story about someone challenging Hemingway to tell a story as succinctly as possible. Hemingway said he could do it in six words and wrote: "For Sale: baby shoes. Never used." Hmm!

The seminar facilitator did not challenge us to do it in six words. He did challenge us, however, to do it in six sentences and gave us 30 minutes to write. There is a website, Six Sentences, which publishes pieces that are, obviously, six sentences long. So we wrote and I had a basic story flowing. I had the closing idea, but not the exact structure at the end of the 30 minutes. Perhaps that is my next step: to do some practice at sketching out a short write quicker and then go back to fill out the details and tweak the "colors". I like that process in art, the quick sketch to capture movement and impressions, then add the layers while maintaining the initial gut-level laying down of the vision. We left the seminar with the challenge of developing a piece over the remaining time together which is six paragraphs; I haven't started that one.

This morning an email from the facilitator urged me to tighten up - or "snap," as he put it - the end and then submit it to the website. I will admit with minimal embarrassment that the email was needed and, once again, synchronous. Because of the reminder, I stuck the nearly completed six sentence story in my bag and headed out to my various appointments today. One of them was to facilitate my Write Around Portland group - always a boost of creative energy and something I love to do. Even if it's a day with things happening in the room which prevent me from going deeply into my own writing, it primes the pump for creative juices later. Which is what happened today.

I left the writing group with enough time to get to my next destination and to grab a cup of soup and some coffee. I thought I'd take a look over the six sentences and see how I could convey what I wanted more concisely. I was in line behind a person who couldn't decide between the raspberry jammers or the cheese danish. My phone vibrated once, signaling a text message. It was the student interpreter I was supposed to be observing shortly telling me that the client wasn't going to attend tonight, so we needed to reschedule my observation.

There it was - the extra time I needed. I decided to just order coffee and go to one of my favorite writing spots where I knew I could spend two hours, if needed, to finish up this little piece. And I did. It didn't take two hours, although if I count the thinking about it time while I ate dinner, it was two hours. I wrote it up at the restaurant, then came home, typed it up and submitted it. Now I get to wait - I bet you can guess - six days to see if it is accepted.

It was a good exercise. Some of my sentences are longer and filled with visual detail. I did it.

There is more to come on this topic of short shorts, flash fiction, and our very busy lives. But, for now, I wrote a piece in six sentences and it contains all the elements of a story. Good for me. And I wonder...

Slice of Heaven

by Dot.

Billy Jo reached into his brown paper lunch sack and pulled out the expected unidentifiable sandwich in a pleated baggie. He sat down on the metal beam, dangling his legs over the edge, and balanced the sandwich on his left knee. He peered into the mouth of the bag to see what else Doris had managed to scrape together: a too purple Red Delicious apple, a bag of Granny Goose potato chips, a can of Select cola, and a pair of her godawful oatmeal raisin cookies. Billy Jo removed the soda and dropped the sack between the beams, where it would join the unwanted remains of previous lunches and piles of construction debris. With the first bite of sandwich his gaze moved from the cars and cabs and buses below to the sumptuous feast in his hand: braunschweiger with stone ground mustard, red onion, and butter lettuce winked back at him. Without looking he knew Doris had found the ten dollar bill hidden in the lining of his wallet and with the second bite, he didn’t care.

[top] Bamboo : a Sumi-e painting by Dot.

from the mouth of the Spittoon

In case you haven't visited it yet, I thought I'd give you a taste of what can be found at WordLush, a website with word games. My writing, generated from the Daily Word Spittoon's word list on 1/24/08:

"flailing through time"

As he tossed feverishly in his bed, sheets and blankets threatening to choke or strangle due to flailing limbs, his voice suddenly shot out. Suspended between the crying cat’s howling in the window and the ringing of the telephone, the acronymic words, guttural and raw, wafted down the stairs to the guests sipping tea in the living room. Their host emitted an uncharacteristic onomatopoeic utterance, excusing herself from their presence, to check on her nephew hollering from the guest bedroom on the second floor. She couldn’t remember why she had agreed to let herself be saddled with this boorish lout. Placing one foot in front of the other, she laboriously climbed the stairs, his shouts growing louder in a cacophony with the crazy cat and his Blackberry screeching on his desk. As she entered what used to be her study, the inscription on the doorway sent her back to the day she agreed to take in her sister’s only son.

“Your debt is paid; bless you sister.”

[The word list: *unruly, *saddled, *suspended, *acronymic, *feverish, *onomatopoeic, *inscription].

To see the word list for today, hop on over the WordLush and take a peak. You never know what is going to be found in the spittoon!

Play with the Pros(e): a writing exercise

Pick a book, nearly any book will do: your favorite author; an ecology textbook; how to paint landscapes. Open the book randomly to a page in the first half of the book.

Starting with the page you’re on, write down the first complete word on every fifth page until you have a list of about twenty words.

Write! The list of words may appear as a poem with very little additional words needed; or a story may jump out at you from off the page; or it's the sketch for a character. See what’s there, move the words around, and see where the words lead you. Enjoy!

pen and ink drawing
"Dot's Desk" by Dot. c. 1994

Saint or Martyr or just plain numb?

On Sunday I attended the ongoing writing group I recently joined. I emailed my piece earlier in the week so everyone could read the entire story, since we would only focus on one portion. The story concerns a dying parent, and the adult daughter and her partner, who are involved with the end of life care. I chose a middle section of the story to work on with the group; I feel the opening scene is strong and the end is what I want in essence, with a little tightening up needed.

Much of my current prose writing is about the everyday: who we are, where we work, what we notice, riding the bus, walking down the street – momentary slices of life.

The narrator is the daughter’s partner, who, in this small slice of the event, is in a “doing what needs to be done” mode. This means observing what is in the scene, reminiscing and changing the dying mother-in-law’s diapers.

Although it was not the point of the story, one of the main discussion topics was the narrators demeanor. My intent was to present the narrator as observer, without judgment or resentment, because the narrator is there in the moment to support the partner and the father-in-law and help take care of the parent who is dying. The lack of conflict within the narrator or between the partners was a sticking point for the writing group.

Is my narrator truly a saint, with no feelings about what is happening? Or is the narrator a martyr, trying to rack up points to call in at a later date? Or, could the narrator be in a place devoid of those emotions at a conscious level, while being present with the person who is dying, without resentment toward the partner who is still in the early stages of grief and unable to perform some of the required tasks? Narrator = Saint? Martyr? Or merely numb?

I am still mulling over this – and the other – feedback. I will try some of the suggestions and see where they lead. And I don’t want to change my narrator into a judgmental martyr *grin. I’ll keep searching for that magic place between the oppositions and see where the characters want to go. I also want to think about what it is I want the narrator to convey and if I have done that.

Or perhaps I didn’t pick the best section on which to focus!

The painting at top of the post is
"St. Caterina of Bologna" c. Serena Barton