John Woodington The official site for the author.

The Best Weight-loss Plan EverPosted by John Woodington on April 7th, 2010

On Monday, I discovered the most effective weight-loss plan in the history of the world.  I call it the “Stomach Flu” plan.  In twenty-four hours I lost about 90 pounds.  At least, it felt like I did.

Glimmer Train has a nice little interview with Thomas E. Kennedy, in which he describes and provides a great little exercise called the “cut-up technique” which gets you to stop thinking logically and start writing better.  Scariest of all is that it makes sense.  And works.  I may have to try it.

The Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction is taking submissions until May 18th, and if you win, you get $1,500.00, which is like $8,765.93 in Writer Money and $12,346.17 in College Money.  Of course, there’s a $15.00 reading fee when you submit, but that’s about as low of a fee as you will find for a prize that size.

My short story “Memorial” was rejected by Crazyhorse, though the rejection email disappointed me a bit.

We are sorry this particular manuscript was not selected for publication in Crazyhorse. We hope you will send us another soon, though. We could not publish Crazyhorse without the fine writing submitted to us. While we regret that the large number of submissions we receive makes it difficult for the editors to respond personally, we want to emphasize that an editor personally read your manuscript. Devoted reading is part of the Crazyhorse editorial mission; it is also our own personal one.

I was really hoping for an image of a truly crazy horse to come violently neighing out of my computer screen to slap me in the face with its oat bag and shriek at me that it hated my story and it had bigger fields to gallop through.  Basically Mr. Ed after a trough of Mountain Dew.  Ya feel me?

Writing for the Money (or not)Posted by John Woodington on March 11th, 2010

I get a daily email newsletter called Publishers Lunch that lists the new book deals that have been signed and gives a rough estimate of what sort of advance the authors get on said deals.  I used it in the past to generate a list of agents to query, but now I just use it for entertainment, as well as honing my email deletion skills.  Reading through Publishers Lunch today, I came across this deal, which surprised me:

Gordon Lish’s GORDON LISH: COLLECTED FICTIONS, the first complete collection of the short work of the celebrated and controversial writer, editor and teacher dubbed “Captain Fiction,” in a nice deal, to John Oakes of OR Books, by the author (world).
john.oakes@orbooks.com

Now, Gordon Lish is a guy I only know because of his connection to Raymond Carver, a favorite author of mine, whom Lish edited (and in many cases edited quite substantially).  I knew he was a writer and did his own stories, and taught creative writing at the university level, so a collection of his short fiction isn’t unexpected.  What surprises me about this particular deal is that amount of money he got for the deal.  Publishers Lunch calls this a “Nice Deal”, which they categorize as a deal in the range of $1 – $49,000.

Now, the high end of that range is nothing to sniff at, but as you can guess, this is the lowest range Publishers Lunch gives for book deals (the high end is categorized as a “Major Deal” at $500,000 and up).  I’m surprised that a collection by someone as literarily (not a real word) accomplished as Lish would be in the lowest category for advances.  You’d think that after a lifetime of work, he’d be able to command higher paychecks.  What this tells me is that critical success doesn’t always translate into dollars.  No surprise there.  How many times do we see novels that are critically slammed sell millions of copies?

In light of this realization, I shall change my writing habits and style to generate less critically-popular work, in the hopes that inferior writing will lead to a brighter career.

Just kidding.

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…

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…

How to Deal with (Tiny) Literary Rejections, and 2010 PronunciationPosted by John Woodington on January 2nd, 2010

Well, in honor of the new year, I thought I’d post something slightly humorous, though slightly disheartening.  I figure it would be a good combination of melancholy and happiness, to mimic the passing of the old year and the beginning of the new one.  So check out this beast of a rejection letter, from a literary journal which shall remain covered by a quarter for scale.

So that’s pretty tiny.  One of the smallest rejections (as far as physical size goes) I’ve ever gotten, no doubt about it.  I refuse to be disheartened, however, and figure that it is this journal’s way of being “green” with their rejections.  I mean, they could probably fit a dozen or more of these little guys on a single sheet of paper.  Woohoo for saving trees.

In more important news (for me, not for anyone else) I am unbelievably happy that it is now 2010, because we can finally get away from saying the words “two thousand” when pronouncing the year.  “Twenty ten” is how it shall be pronounced, and anyone caught saying “two thousand ten” will be immediately slapped in the mouth.  Not by me though, ’cause that’s illegal.

I hope everyone has a great new year and a great new decade.  By the end of this decade, I’ll be 36 years old and ready for the nursing home, so I’ve got to make this one count while I can.

Narrative Puzzler, T.C. Boyle, ePublishing, and War and Peace…whew!Posted by John Woodington on December 2nd, 2009

So there’s a new Puzzler challenge this week from Narrative Magazine, and it’s one in which you have to answer six questions about memoirs.  I think that calling this sort of challenge a “Puzzler” is misleading and inaccurate–it should be called a “Test Your Googling Skills” challenge.  Or something like that.  I knew none of the answers to the six questions.  Then I went onto Google.  Now I know all the answers.  And I sent them in.  We’ll see.

I mentioned I’ve been accepted to write  fiction on the Fictionaut website.  It was nice to see that T.C. Boyle is on there as well.  Everyone is contributing high-quality work, which makes me happy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pros and cons of ePublishing lately.  Here’s one of many places where this topic is discussed.  I want to read up on it some more before I discuss it in length here, but I’m sure I’ll rant about it soon.

Finally, I’ve got a hundred pages left to read in War and Peace.  This thing is a beast, but it’s nearly conquered.  Then I’ll read some critical analysis on it, and transition over to my newest copy of the Missouri Review, which has been sitting on my shelf with plaintive eyes, patiently waiting for me to pick it up and read it through.

Get Writing Already!Posted by John Woodington on November 2nd, 2009

National Novel Writing Month started yesterday, which means you have until the end of November to get 50,000 words written down. Can you do it? Is it possible? Am I doing it?
Answers:
1) Yes, you can.
2) Yes, it is.
3) No, I am not.

I know it is possible to write this amount of words in this time frame, as I’ve done it inadvertently myself in the past. One of the novels that I’ve completed, entitled The Iris Project, took me 41 days to write the entire first draft, which was about 120,000 words (if I remember correctly).  Of course, I spent another year editing it, redrafting it, and changing the ending for my prospective agent at the time.

The reason I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this year is simple.  I already have a completed draft of a novel that I will be editing before I begin writing the next novel.  I drafted this current novel during the first half of this year, and I am planning to begin editing it in a couple months.

It is currently titled AlieNation.

Poe Funeral and a Crazy WordPosted by John Woodington on October 6th, 2009

I guess you could call this story relatively Halloween-ish.  Apparently, for the anniversary of his death, some folks out in Baltimore will re-bury Edgar Allen Poe in a major production that will last an entire weekend.  Sounds like fun, right?

Also, halfway through the story, there appears a word I have never seen before: “splashiest”.  Apparently, however, this is a real word.

They Banned That?Posted by John Woodington on September 30th, 2009

So it is Banned Books Week, and I thought it would be pertinent to post a few links for everyone to see what they should most definitely not be reading.

Here’s a list of banned books and reasons behind their banning.

Here’s a more comprehensive list of the top 100 banned books.

And here’s a great set of charts that show which books get banned and who requests their banning (thanks to Neil Gaiman for pointing me to this one).

edit: After scanning through the list of the top 100, I counted that I had read 25 (so far), and I don’t recall being offended or damaged by any of them.  Though Ayn Rand was close…