John Woodington The official site for the author.

America Loses a Giant – J. D. SalingerPosted by John Woodington on January 28th, 2010

We lost Salinger today.  His short stories are, for me, some of the best examples of creativity in the form.  I’ve got Catcher in the Rye on the shelf, waiting to be read later this year.  Salinger avoided the public eye, and apparently wrote a bunch of books that he never brought out for publication.  Maybe we’ll see them posthumously, like Pirate Latitudes.

There’s a writing competition over at Writer’s Digest that’s worth checking out, though apparently I should’ve known about this competition prior to this, considering it’s been going on for 79 years.  My bad.  I’ve only been around for 26 years and a few months, so you can’t blame me too much.

I’m still enthralled with Fictionaut, and the quality of the writing posted there just keeps getting better and better.  It is so far the only site I’ve found that has users posting literature worth reading.

Time for sleep.

Rigged Puzzler and Cool Google DataPosted by John Woodington on January 27th, 2010

I’m not going to dwell too long on the Narrative Puzzler for this week.  It’s fine, it’s not answering a quiz, it’s creative, though it’s just a little lame.  And the whole thing might be a little rigged.  I mean, if Misha Hoekstra can win with the submission she sent, and continue to lead the leaderboard overall for all puzzlers, then I’d say there’s something fishy.  I mean, what was clever about the winning entry?  “Reading?”  Give me a brizzake.

In far more interesting news, check out this blog about what men and women really think, as can be seen by the searches that Google populates when you type in a few words.  Now that’s fodder for debate.

Condolences to writer Neil Gaiman for the passing of his cat, Zoe.

In writing news, I’m about thirty pages into the revision of my novel, AlieNation, and it’s going all right.  I really want this to be a poignant novel and a novel that turns pages, and finding that balance is always a challenge.  But I enjoy it.  Not as much as I enjoy meeting dead coyotes (see the post before this one) but pretty close.

Coyote Ugly. Really Ugly.Posted by John Woodington on January 25th, 2010

I live in Minnesota.  Been here since birth.  And yet, each year, Minnesotans surprise me with the things they do to pass the time in the winter.  They drive their cars onto the ice and take bets as to when said cars will break through in the spring.  They entertain false hopes of the Vikings ever winning a Superbowl (Six fumbles in one game?  Come on!).  They make a castle out of ice every few years and let people walk around it on tours.

I thought I’d see it all, until I drove out onto Lake Charlie in Alexandria for a day of ice fishing with my uncle.  We saw a dog standing off to the side of the ice road in the distance.  As we got closer, we realized it was not a dog.

It was a coyote.  So, of course, we got out to take a look.

And not just any coyote–a frozen coyote.  Here’s our theory: Some dude hits this coyote with his truck and kills it.  Some other dude sees it the next day, after it’s been sitting out in the freezing cold air all night, and decides that it would make a really nice accoutrement to the entrance to Lake Charlie, throws it into the back of their truck, and props it up in the position in which you see it above.

Next day, a city boy and his uncle stop by to do some ice fishing, and the city boy decides he needs a picture with the frozen coyote.  So there you have it.  The white thing in its mouth is not a rawhide bone as I had first suspected, but is instead its frozen tongue.  Pretty cool, huh?

And my understanding of my fellow Minnesotans becomes even more cloudy…

“Visitation Hour” Up at FictionautPosted by John Woodington on January 22nd, 2010

A quick Friday post to tell you that if you didn’t get a copy of the recent issue of Eye Contact containing my short story “Visitation Hour,” you can now view that story on Fictionaut.  It is right here.

I love weekends.

Men’s FictionPosted by John Woodington on January 21st, 2010

There’s a really interesting interview up at Luna Park right now with Jarrett Haley of BULL: Fiction for Thinking Men that I think’s worth a read.  They discuss gender issues in modern (and classic, canonical) fiction, and whether the publishing world today is skewed in favor of male writers over female writers.  They make the point that most classic works of literature are by male writers, and that Publisher’s Weekly named their top 10 books of 2009, and all of the authors were male.

So things might get heated, as you could imagine.

I’ve looked around at BULL and have read a few of their stories, and think that they have a very unique position in the publishing world.  I also think that this is one of those debates that could go on forever, and that possibly no one could benefit from it.

That said, I think it’s a debate worth having.  Luna Park makes the valid comment that most consumers of fiction are women, though writers of published fiction are about 50% women, instead of a similar majority.  My take on that is that more men should be reading books instead of soaking in ten hours of football every Sunday.  Even if it is the Packers and the Vikings….

New Puzzler Backronyms and Novel UpdatePosted by John Woodington on January 19th, 2010

The new Puzzler competition at Narrative sounds like a good one, and I’m pretty excited to see what kinds of “Backronyms” I can come up with.  What is a Backronym you ask?  Why, it’s a normal word whose letters have been used to make and appropriate acromyn.  Such as “Cop” – Constable On Patrol.  So you take any word you want, and come up with a spiffy acronym for it.  I can’t wait to try.  Off the top of my head:

• Blog – Bad Listing on Google
• John – Just Open His Novels
• Acronym – A Crappy Reference One Never Yneeds Mbecausetheysuck

 Or something like that.  At least it isn’t trivia this week.

I’ve rewritten the first chapter of my novel AlieNation, and I think it is much better.  Turns out I didn’t have much dsescription about…anything, which was pretty crucial considering what goes down in Chapter One.  Or, I should say, what goes up.

Be on the lookout for an unbelievable picture of me confronting one of the scariest beings in Minnesota on a lonely, frozen lake.  It may involve beer….

Finally, I love Fictionaut.  Have I said that before?  Well, nevertheless, it bears repeating.

Funny FictionPosted by John Woodington on January 15th, 2010

After reading through the full draft of my novel AlieNation, I found that I have to change up the humor somewhat.  The initial idea for the novel was to have a humorous plot that revolved around the humorous incidents that happen in an office and the humorous things that might happen when people take things (like alien abductions) seriously.  After reading through, I found that a lot of the humor is forced, and a little juvenile, which undermines the credibility of the main character.  So I’ve got to work on that.

That said, I think the humor is going to be a good things as far as the readability of the story goes.  I know that when I’m reading something funny, I can’t stop, and can’t wait to find out what other humorous things happen later.  I hope that same driving force will drive readers through my novel.  In order to generate that narrative desire, however, I’ve got to polish the humor up a bit.  Give it some shine.  Take away the stuff a fifteen-year-old would say and replace it with more sophisticated, grown-up humor.

And I’ve got to change that title.  My wife said that when she saw it, she thought it was pronounced “Ally Nation” instead of “Alienation.”  So that’s not good.

That’s what rewriting is for.

Not New Narrative PuzzlerPosted by John Woodington on January 13th, 2010

Last week’s Narrative Puzzler competition was for people to write a six-word story and submit it.  This is what happens when all the six-word stories that get submitted to a competition like this end up sucking:

While we received many entries last week, few were complete stories with a full narrative arc: conflict, action, and resolution.

So guess what this week’s Puzzler competition is?  THE SAME THING.  So fear not, if your story sucks this week maybe everybody else’s will too, and they’ll redo the whole competition.  Craziness.

In writing news, I’m almost done reading through the first draft of my novel AlieNation, and it’s reading pretty smoothly, though there are definitely some things  that need improvement.  Like that weird title…

Beginning Work on the Novel – AlieNationPosted by John Woodington on January 11th, 2010

It starts.  Or restarts.  Last year I drafted a complete novel, entitled AlieNation, and now I am going to begin the work of rewriting and redrafting and reworking it into a saleable novel.  I’ve written five novels in first draft form, but I’ve really only taken the time with one of them to get it into final draft form.  The others I’ve given up on as juvenile, uninteresting, or needing serious rethinking and re structuring.  The one novel that I got into final draft form before this landed me a literary agent who was unable to sell it during our two-year stint together.  AlieNation will  hopefully find both a new agent, and a publisher.  That’s the goal at least.

To this point, I have four short stories that I am going to continue to submit for publication while working on AlieNation, though I don’t plan to do any more short story writing for a few months, until the novel is either completed, or close to driving me insane.

Someone asked me what the novel is about.  I told them it’s about working in an office, impending divorce, and alien abductions.  I wrote it after coming up with this question: What if someone were abducted by aliens, and then given the job of choosing who gets abducted by aliens?

I will continue to blog as normal during this novel time (ha ha, right?).  Here’s hoping the next few months prove fruitful.

Malahat Novella Competition and Narrative PuzzlerPosted by John Woodington on January 8th, 2010

The Malahat Review has a novella competition open right now, and it’s submission period ends February 1st, so get your 10,000 to 20,000 word stories into the mailbox (no email for this one, suck) soon.  The only problem I have with this competition is the submission cost.  Most competitions have submission costs, though they don’t typically exceed $20.00 per story.  The submission cost for this competition is $40.00 (if submitting from the US, since Malahat is in Canada).  That’s a lot of money.  In writer money, that’s the equivalent of $176.50.  In college money, it’s $212.07.  Don’t ask about the conversion rate–it’s accurate.  I’d understand this hefty submission fee if the prize for winning the competition was comparable.  A lot of competitions I submit to have a $20.00 submission fee, but a $1000.00 to $3000.00 top prize.  The top prize for this competition is $500.00.  Then again, they also pay $40.00 per printed page for the winning story, and since it’s a novella, that’s a lot of pages, so that may make up for it.  Had I the requisite $40.00, I’d submit, but I think I’ll save my money for groceries and beer.

Unrelatedly (not a word, but go with it) Narrative has a new Puzzler challenge out, and it is actually one where you are charged with writing something, as opposed to answering trivia.  The challenge for this week is to write an entire story in six words.  Sounds awesome.  And challenging.  The shortest story I’ve ever written is around 300 words, so I’ll have to trim it down a smidge.  Or write something from scratch, which is most likely what I’ll do.

Entries are due next Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 (pronounced “twenty-ten”, as you know).

Finally, I’m very much enjoying chatting with people on Goodreads, and am looking forward to future discussions about short stories, novels, and writing in general.