Sheryl Monks

Thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of a day-long writing exercise, provided by the folks at Dzanc Books. I wrote a story called "Crazy Checks" in its entirety, a first for me. It's a draft, obviously, but it felt good accomplishing so much in one day. Some of you may regularly sit down and write a story in one day, but I don't. Or seldom have I. There have been those stories that come burning through another dimension and I sit down and dictate them. But that's only happened once really, and I've since learned that even those stories that feel like gifts are not really stories until you sit down and thoroughly work them over. I opted out of having my story posted on the Emerging Writers Network blog. I don't want to be embarrassed by the many better writers who participated. I'm just happy for the chance to stretch. If you get a chance, you should do one of these.

I finally got the opportunity to do the surrealism workshop I'd been hoping to do for a while now. I met with Marcia Cham and about 30 other writers in Boone yesterday at Grace Lutheran church. What a nice place to meet, and what a nice group. Thanks, guys, for the generous lunch afterwards at Mike's Inland Seafood.

Most of what I talked about centered on the techniques and games Surrealist writers in the '20s used, although I couldn't help including Pinckney Benedict's advice on "the Unfiltered Dream" and the "Impossible Probable."

Here are a couple for you: Critical Paranoia and Exquisite Corpse.

You know Critical Paranoia, the attempt to force a waking dream on yourself by staring at ink blots, clouds, optical illusions, scribble drawings, checkerboards, anything that will momentarily hypnotize you, make you forget where you are and move you into your imagination. Try it the next time you've got a few minutes to spare, standing in line or sitting at Starbucks. See if some critical part of your story or poem will offer itself up to you there in plain sight of the whole world. No one will even know.

Or try this one that Henry Miller liked, Exquisite Corpse. Write one sentence on a sheet of paper; then fold it down and pass it to another writer who will do likewise, back and forth until the whole page is filled. Open the page and see what the two of you have created. You've probably done this in class at some point. Check out the "Synesthesia" festival at www.electricpear.org when you get a chance, too, for the same idea applied to art across all mediums. Very cool stuff here. Look closely and you'll see Benjamin Percy in the mix. Go, Ben!

The party with skirt! magazine at WhiteSpace was unbelievable.

Sara Wilson and I met early that Saturday morning to pick up food at Costco and were met by the good David Wainer who generously lent us his card (shhh)and helped us choose the menu. Thank you, David! And thank you, Sara. Whew, girl, what a day.

She, David, and I then proceeded over to WhiteSpace to meet Marlon Hubbard, the other half of the WhiteSpace incredible duo. Marlon and Chevara's son William was hanging out, or trying to, but we overran the place and he helped us carry up tables from the garage. Thank you, William.

Then Chevara Orrin arrived and we all got busy. I forget how much work it is to throw one of these bashes. But boy was it worth it. The place sparkled. Take a look for yourself:

So many people to thank, Atlanta artist Eric Mack, Chevara and Marlon, Sara Wilson, Angie Gibson, Jana Conover, Black Men for Change at Winston-Salem State, James, the Women's Fund of Winston-Salem, Quinn Dalton, Joseph Mills, Denzil Strickland, Miss Kitty, Jacinta White, Lisa Williams Kline, Laura van den Berg, Cathy and Kevin Watson, and all of those good people who came out. I'm probably forgetting someone, but thank you. It was a really nice night.

Don't forget. Tonight's our big party with skirt!. 401 E. Fourth Street, Winston-Salem, NC in the Piedmont Leaf Lofts at WhiteSpace Gallery. Plenty of parking out front.

Quinn Dalton, Denzil Strickland, and Joseph Mills will be reading. We'll present P53 Open Awards to Jacinta White, Laura van den Berg, and Lisa Williams Kline. A portion of book sales will be donated to The Women's Fund of Winston-Salem. Black Men for Change, a student organization at Winston-Salem State University, will assist. Chevara Orrin and Marlon Hubbard will be our hosts. (Wait until you see their gorgeous condo and art gallery!) Lots of time for mingling. Please come out and help us celebrate three great years of local small press publishing.

It's my last official event with the press, so I'm looking forward to seeing you all.

We had a great crowd at Borders last night for Kyle Minor and Denzil Strickland's reading. I was a bit worried that our party with skirt! magazine tonight might take the wind out of the event's sails. Fortunately, we had a nice room full of people who were really engaged (no surprise there) with lots of good questions for both writers afterwards.

Later, Kyle, Kev and I headed out for a bite to eat. Foothills Brewery was packed and ridiculously loud, so we headed up Fourth to another new restaurant, and it, too, was overcrowded and smoky. So we went across the street and ate outside at a little sandwich joint where we enjoyed a bit of Guns-n-Roses blaring from the billiards room nearby. Kyle liked that a lot. :)

It was great to finally meet you, Kyle. Come again soon.

The good Vishal Khanna at GoTriad magazine, a hip, literary-leaning community insert to the News & Record, has written a very gracious article about us in the most recent issue. Check it out here.

Thank you, Vishal, Carla, and GoTriad. I will miss working with you all. You guys have been great champions of the press, and I really can't thank you enough.

Kyle Minor and I have corresponded a lot by email and social networking sites, but we haven't yet met face to face. Tonight, we finally will.

He'll be joining one of our authors, Denzil Strickland, for a shared reading of their work at Borders Books & Music in Thruway Shopping Center on Stratford. The event starts at 7:00 pm. Please join us.

Kyle will be reading from his new collection of stories In the Devil's Territory, published by another wonderful small press, Dzanc Books, led by Dan Wickett of Emerging Writers' Network fame.

Kyle Minor's work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, among them Best American Mystery Stories 2008, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Surreal South, and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006. His work has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Press 53's own Denzil Strickland will read from his debut novel Swimmers in the Sea, a book that Indie booksellers are raving about.

Here's what one, Laney Blancard at Sundog Books in Florida, said:

"As a serious reader, it is rare and exciting to find a book that is both personally moving and, as a bookseller, easy to recommend to a variety of customers. Swimmers in the Sea is so beautiful, familiar and engaging, I truly look forward to sharing this book."

Author Sena Jeter Naslund calls Swimmers in the Sea "contemporary writing at its best: clean, hard-edged, mysterious and moving. This novel has the classic lines of Hemingway but as much clout as Ian McEwan's Atonement."

Silas House agrees, saying "Denzil Strickland's Swimmers in the Sea is a rollercoaster ride of a novel. It is compulsively readable, with vivid characters and a slow-burn tension that continues to build throughout this literary page-turner. Strickland has an amazing ear for dialogue and a keen eye for all the little details that paint a gritty, beautiful portrait of the damaged lives populating this book. This is a thrilling, moving novel, and I couldn't put it down."

Please join us tonight to hear these two very talented writers read their work.

I was looking forward to hearing Dan Chaon read tonight at Salem College, but unfortunately I just received an email from Ginger Hendricks, the director of the Center for Women Writers, saying the event is cancelled due to illness. Hopefully, I'll see him another time.

Read Emily Raboteau's story "The Structure of Bubbles," the story of the week at Narrative magazine.

"The Structure of Bubbles" by Emily Raboteau

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Few writers talk openly about theme. And rightly so, I suppose. Theme is pricklier than the other elements and requires delicate handling. You can't just go plugging it in. It's supposed to arise naturally in our work. Naturally.

My good friend Susan Woodring has written an essay that is the most practical advice on theme I've ever seen. If you get a chance to take her workshop "Martians on Main Street," do yourself a favor and go. I mean it. This is true revelation. If I watch her closely enough and listen to her advice carefully, I just might figure it out.

Here's a summary of what she discussed on Wednesday night:

While theme may be seen as a "happy accident" or by-product of good writing, it isn't purely inadvertent. We can, and must, Susan suggests, "cultivate the knowledge, and more importantly, the writerly instinct that is smarter than our conscious selves, that knows more about our own minds than we do, and that certainly knows more about the truth of the story we're really telling, and not just the one we think we're telling."

Training the Subconscious to Construct Subtext

1. Read and Write. Do both with abandon and you will hone a skill you're not aware of, that is "the ability to sense and, eventually, to highlight, the themes arising in your own story."

2. Acquire your own quirky stash of odd facts. "Whatever it is you love to learn, steep yourself in it: this again is your subconscious talking to you, telling you what it needs to know."

3. Create a plausible impetus in your story for including this seemingly unrelated info. Someone hears about it on tv or the radio; someone reads about it, or studies it in school.

4. Now, bring out the odd fact in your stories and let it deepen your work for you. Include a bit of folklore, a legend, a symbol, a scientific or historical fact.

5. Resist the urge to help the reader understand. Don't connect the dots. Simply include the quirky info. alongside the rest of the story.

Voila! Subtext.

How simple and direct is that? Granted, a pro like Susan makes it look easier than it actually is for an amateur like me. I'm pulling my hair out at the moment on a story I thought I might easily revise with this new information.

But at least now I have a sense of what's involved. Now I can read with an eye for subtext and develop, just as Susan suggests, that instinct that comes from reading and writing with abandon.

For more advice from Susan, check out her MySpace Page or visit her website.

Came across a new print journal this morning while I was perusing Duotrope. Duotrope is a great resource if you're looking for places to submit. This one's called The Long Story and accepts only longer pieces of fiction (8,000 - 20,000 words). Most of my stories run almost exactly to 5,000 words, which makes them hard enough to place. I have a couple that are getting even longer, so I'm glad to discover TLS.

Duotrope is a database with a search function that allows you to look specifically for magazines by genre, length, theme, etc. Check it out. I love it.