John Woodington The official site for the author.

Review of The RoadPosted by John Woodington on June 9th, 2010

So far I haven’t heard anything else from the other two literary journals about submitting an updated version of my short story “Memorial,” but these things take time, especially in the summer, when most universities and their lit journals are off doing crazy summer vacation things.  Like teaching summer classes and preparing for fall classes and taking classes to learn how to teach classes better.

In the meantime, I’d like to mention that I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and I still can’t get over how good this book is.  The writing is on a level that I didn’t know existed.  McCarthy breaks every rule of writing and does it so well that to read by-the-book writing afterward feels dull and uninspired.  Finding a book that reads quickly but contains great depth is really difficult, but McCarthy does it with ease here.  Or at least it reads like it was easy for him.  I’m actually hoping it was wicked difficult and took him endless months to get the narrative to read as well as it does, otherwise I’m going to lose a little hope in myself.  I read a book by Hemmingway about writing where he talked about trying to beat other writers of his day in order to become the best writer in America.  I really don’t think you beat The Road.  “Beatable” is not an adjective I’d use around this book.

I’m currently working on finishing up two short stories, and then getting back into revising and polishing my novel Alien Nation.  I head off to a writers retreat in Pennsylvania at the end of the month, and I’d like to have a few things to show the editors there.  Pretty sure they won’t thing Alien Nation is the next The Road, but here’s hoping.

Does No TV Equal No Connection?Posted by John Woodington on May 14th, 2010

I haven’t watched a TV show in 13 days, and the lack of advertising bombardments and white noise and the extra time afforded to me has been wonderful.  I’ve read two books (Fight Club and The Lemur), worked on a short story culled from a section of my novel-in-progress Alien Nation, and overall have felt that my time has been better spent.  If I could pinpoint the one thing that I miss the most about TV, it would be some sort of ethereal connection with the rest of the country.

I haven’t given myself the stipulation that I can’t watch a DVD once in a while, and while I have a couple seasons of The Office on the shelf, I don’t get the same sense of satisfaction watching them on DVD as I do when watching them on TBS or NBC.  When I watch a show on DVD, I feel like a loser, isolated in his house, watching a TV show on DVD (which is what I am at that moment in time; at other times I am awesome).  When I watch The Office on TBS, however, I know I’m watching the same thing as a million other people, and it gives me the sense that I’m not alone in what I’m doing, even though I’m sitting on my couch in an otherwise empty living room.  There’s a feeling of something greater occurring, a collective decision being made by others across the country, hundreds of thousands of us, all tuning in to the same channel at the same time.  Even though we’re wasting our hours by watching TV and being as unproductive as possible, at least we’re doing it together, and that, in some strange way, feels good.  And that’s what I miss most about TV.

That, in turn, got me to thinking that maybe some sort of collective feeling of connectedness could be achieved through writing, or, more accurately, reading.  If hundreds of thousands of people across the country read the same thing at the same time, would they feel a sense of connectedness with the other hundreds of thousands?  Right now, Twitter folk are reading Neil Gaiman’s fascinating novel American Gods.  I’ve read it before, and have other reading plans at this time, so I won’t be participating.  But I’d be interested to hear from people who are participating, to see if they feel a connection with a greater populace of people, even if they never come into contact with those people.

In college, I read plenty of novels at the same time as my other classmates, though I didn’t feel a connection with those classmates until we actually discussed the novel together in class.  My hypothesis, therefore, is that this whole One Book One Twitter thing will not successfully achieve a feeling of unity among its participants unless they utilize Twitter (or some other form of communication, like talking face to face) to discuss their thoughts and experiences of the novel.  There’s plenty to talk about in American Gods, and I hope that those reading it continue to discuss it after they’ve finished reading it.  How many times do we read a book, close the back cover at the end, and never think of it again.  The books I value the most in my collection are the ones that I’ve discussed in depth with other people.  Those discussions have given me a much greater sense of appreciation for the texts themselves, as well as the authors who wrote them.

Turning off the TV has proven quite beneficial to me, but I know that if I don’t make up for that lost connection with other people, I’ll feel the pull of the TV trying to suck me back into hours of wasted semi-entertainment, not so that I can see Jim and Dwight on The Office, but so that I can feel a connection with a hundred thousand other people who laugh every time Jim pops Dwight’s fitness orb with a scissors.  Every fricken’ time.

A Chekhov Novella – “A Boring Story”Posted by John Woodington on December 22nd, 2009

I just finished reading Chekhov’s novella “A Boring Story,” and it was wonderful.  Subtle, emotional without being sentimental or melodramatic, extremely readable at every page.  Really a joy to read.  I read it in the collection Lady with Lapdog and other stories, which so far has me engrossed.  Chekhov is one of my favorite writers, and may be the person I consider to be the “best” writer of all time.  In writing seminars throughout college, I was taught very few hard and fast rules about writing, though there were two that stand out in my mind that should never be broken.  They are:

1) You may only use ten (10) exclamation points in your entire career, so use them sparingly.
2) Read Chekhov.

Not only does Chekhov provide a beautiful example of what great writing is and how it is to be accomplished, but he does it in a way that makes a writer want to write more and more, and read more and more of Chekhov’s work in return.

Another thing that this particular collection of Chekhov’s work shows us is that one good way to get a novella published is to include it in a larger collection of short stories.  In our lifelong quest to figure out how to publish novellas successfully, this may be the most straightforward way to accomplish the feat.  It works well because it can be disguised as a short story, and therefore included in a book-length collection, which a publisher is more willing to go for than a standalone novella.

Many great novellas are contained within the pages of a short story collection, the foremost of which is probably “The Dead” in James Joyce’s great collection Dubliners.  In more recent times, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have both published novellas within collections of short stories, and have done so quite successfully (from a financial perspective).

There are exceptions to the publish-a-novella-in-a-collection-instead-of-as-a-standalone-book, as can be seen by the new novella by Rick Bass, which has been published by Narrative Library.  But those are the exceptions.

Short Stories, but still no NovellasPosted by John Woodington on December 18th, 2009

The quick Friday post:

1) I have gotten in contact with the people at Eye Contact and they will be sending me extra copies of their latest edition with my short story “Visitation Hour” in it.  So if you’d like a copy, contact me.  I’d also like to apologize for using the word “contact” thrice in that last sentence.

2) I am reading Anton Chekhov’s short stories, and feel both wonderful and wretched.  The stories are so good ( which is good) and they make me realize that mine are not as good as his (which is bad).  So I’ll have to work on making them better.

3) I was going to post a link to a website that offered a plethora of novellas for purchase, since it seemed like a good place to also submit your own novella for publication.  Then I realized they only published classic novellas, so if your last name isn’t Tolstoy or something like that, don’t bother sending them anything.

Publishing Novels and Novellas, and the Unfair Advantage of Holiday ThemesPosted by John Woodington on December 11th, 2009

A quick Friday post for y’all.  The snow has fallen here in Minnesota, and it is quite beautiful.  I say this because I am not forced go outside to use the bathroom as my dogs are, and they are not very thrilled by the -2 degree weather (not counting the windchill).  I used the cold days to finish reading War and Peace, and in light of the fact that no one wants a lengthy description of my feelings on the book, I will just say that it was grand in scope and bold in its achievements, and while it wasn’t a page turner, I do feel the better for having read it.  Since it was a rather lengthy read, I’ve decided to wait a week or so before continuing on my Russian Literature journey, and read through the latest issue of The Missouri Review before picking up Anna Karenina.

In writing news, I’m working on a couple of short stories, and also toying with the idea of trying to publish a novel that my agent was unable to publish before we parted ways.  Not sure how I feel about putting all the effort into getting it published, though it would be nice to see a novel of my own creation in print.  Finding a publisher is the hard part, of course.  Could be a full-time job in itself.

We’ve been talking about the possibility of publishing novellas a little bit here, and I have received scientific proof that a novella can in fact get picked up for publication, as can be seen in this release from  Publishers Lunch:

NYT bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry’s Christmas novella THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS SONG, to Roger Cooper at Vanguard Press, for publication November 2010, by Kimberly Whalen at Trident Media Group (NA).

Yes, it’s a Christmas novella, which means it had an unfair advantage against all the other non-holiday novellas up for publication, and yes, it is by an established writer, but still.  It can be done, and there’s the proof.

Published and Hard to FindPosted by John Woodington on December 7th, 2009

Eye Contact, the literary journal at Seton Hill University, has published my short story “Visitation Hour.” It’s out now, though finding a copy of that journal seems to be a little more difficult than just going to their website and clicking on an order button. When I figure out an easy way to get a copy, I’ll post it here.  I received two copies of the journal in the mail on Saturday, and it looks really nice.  Thanks again to Seton Hill for publishing my piece.

In other news, I’m in the home stretch of reading War and Peace.  About 50 pages to go.

There’s an interesting article in The Guardian about eBooks and ePublishing and eReading and eWriting and Don DeLillo.  In my quest to figure out if I agree with the ePublishing trend of things, this article makes an attempt to steer me away from it, and while it makes some good points about reading and writing the great works of social consciousness, it also seems like it’s clinging to the past in a way that makes the future seem hopeless, which I don’t agree with.

And finally, reviews are coming in for my short story “Lawnmower Boy,” and so far they are positive.  Which I’m not sure is a good thing.  I like it when people give me some unknown-to-me-until-then insight into a story, and it pushes me to redraft a stronger story in the end.  When people say, “this is great!” and “I loved reading this!” that doesn’t help me a whole lot.  Maybe I should just be grateful for the praise.

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, and Read some New CrichtonPosted by John Woodington on November 9th, 2009

Remember that this in National Novel Writing Month, and if you are participating, you should have about 15,000 words written by the end of the day to keep pace with reaching the goal of 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Don’t worry if you are behind.  You can catch up.  The most words I’ve ever written in one day is a little over 7,000, and by the end of that session (six hours, I think) I was pretty wiped.  But it can be done.  So instead of watching Monday Night Football or Antiques Roadshow or reruns of Friends, sit down at the computer (or notebook) and get writing!  Don’t worry if it’s good or bad now.  That doesn’t matter in the first draft.  Just get the words on the page.  You will have to rewrite anyway.  Everyone does rewrites.  Except, or so I’ve heard, for Terry Goodkind, though I wouldn’t consider him a good writer.  A rich writer, yes, but not a good one.

In other writing and reading news, there will be a new book out by one of my favorite pulp authors who passed away not too long ago, Michael Crichton.  It also looks like Spielberg wants to do the movie adaptation of the posthumous novel, which is always promising.

It’s good to see one final piece out of Michael Crichton.  Jurassic Park was one of the few novels that hooked me into reading and, subsequently, writing.

Snowball in FallPosted by John Woodington on October 15th, 2009

While the title of this post could potentially refer to the amounts of snow we’ve recently received here in Minnesota (I did, in fact, make snowballs and throw them at one of my dogs, who decided that he enjoyed trying to eat them mid-flight) it is actually in reference to a cool new Literary Puzzler competition at Narrative Magazine, which is going on right now.  A snowball poem is “a poem in which each line consists of a single word, and each successive line is a word exactly one letter longer than the word above it.”

Here’s a link to the website for the competition, which is four weeks long, and consists of four weekly mini-competitions.

I wrote a little snowball poem and submitted it, and if it does not win, I’ll post it here so y’all can see it.

In other, related news, “Lawnmower Boy” is getting dangerously close to its goal of 4000 words.  About 300 more to trim before I’m there.

And in reading news, War and Peace is a very long book.  I can confirm this.

Halfway ThroughPosted by John Woodington on October 9th, 2009

I’m about halfway through reading War and Peace, and it’s got my attention.  It’s no page-turning thriller, but it gives such a vibrant sense of the characters and their situations and dilemmas, that I find myself going back to it daily for more.  Plus, it has Napoleon in it, which is cool.

Coincidentally, I’m also about halfway through the second draft of my new short story “Lawnmower Boy,” and I think the edits are going pretty well.  I’m trimming out as much as I can, all in an attempt to reach my goal of 4000 words for the final draft.

So far it’s at 5353 words.

In Halloween news, I’m currently planning to dress up as the fashionable Don Draper from AMC’s Mad Men.  I just need to find a hat…