John Woodington The official site for the author.

Who I Write Like, ApparentlyPosted by John Woodington on September 3rd, 2010

Found this awesome thingy on the web: a generator that tells you which famous author you write like.  You paste some of your writing into the text field and it spits out a name.  Couldn’t tell you if it is in any way accurate or not (probably not) but it is fun.  After a few attempts with different pieces of my writing, I apparently write like the following writers:

• Margaret Atwood
• Cory Doctorow
• Chuck Palahniuk
• James Joyce

So there’s an odd combination of writers.  Palahniuk really throws a wrench into the mix, since I would say he and Joyce are about as far apart in style as writers can be.

Still, a ton of fun, and worth wasting your Friday trying.

Gonna Git Edumacated – Hamline MFAPosted by John Woodington on August 23rd, 2010

I’ve decided (with the help of my manager/wife) to go back to school to get my MFA in Creative Writing.  I’ve been toying with this idea since the day I graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, but have never taken the initiative to figure out how to do it without quitting my job/losing my house.

This past February, my wife and I were out to dinner (at Cowboy Jacks, which has bomb sweet potato fries) and she said to me (roughly), “John, I know you want to do this [get an MFA], and you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t.  So you should do it now before we start having children.”

And I said, “You are a genius.  I owe you many diamonds and puppies for this.”

Which left me in need of a school that fit my schedule, which basically eliminated 99.2% of all schools on earth.  Fortunately, I found Hamline University in St. Paul, which has an MFA program designed for working adults.  All of the classes are in the evenings or on Saturday mornings.  I talked to a coworker who just finished his MFA there, and he said he really enjoyed it.

So, I put together a submission package, contacted a couple of my dearest professors from back in my UWEC days, and applied to the MFA program at Hamline.  I haven’t received word yet if I’ve been accepted or not, but I’m very hopeful (and a little over-confident) that I’ll get in.  I say over-confident because I’ve enrolled in a class and start on September 8th, and I would not have dropped the money on it if I didn’t think I would get in.

I am really looking forward to pursuing this degree, and all the challenges it will present.  I told my wife early on that I would not be quitting my day job to go to school, and I will not be quitting my day job after I receive my degree in order to go off and teach at a college somewhere.  I enjoy my day job.  It involves working with great people and getting paid far more than a college professor.  Just sayin’.

While I’m guessing this new workload will impair my ability to finish my novel Alien Nation (in final draft mode finally!) I still plan to finish that beast before the year is up.  Which is good, because I’ll be expected to write another novel as my thesis for the MFA, though that won’t be for another 3 years.  That means I’ll have about 7 years of college behind me at that point.

As “Tommy Boy” Tom Callahan said, “Hey.  A lot of guys go to college for 7 years.”

“Yeah.  They’re called writers.”

New Point of View – First Person VicariousPosted by John Woodington on July 23rd, 2010

So I’m sitting here thinking, “what can I do to bring out this particular narrative idea in my novel,” when all of a sudden, I get a light bulb idea, which leads me to rewrite the ending of my story.  I decided to break a cardinal rule of writing, the one that says you should never shift the point of view of your story.  Well I tried it.  And so far, I kinda like it.  The shift only occurs for about ten pages, but it’s something weird and different and I like the heck out of it.  The first person narrator/main character vicariously experiences something that another character is experiencing, and the narrative captures that.  It’s basically a first person narrator briefly hedging his way into some sort of third person omniscience, without ever leaving his own head, of course.  I can break rules, but I can’t destroy them.

I’m hoping this particular risk pays off.  Right now, I’m feeling like I need to do something coolish and new to get this story recognized, and I figure I may as well throw caution to the ether until somebody tells me it sucks.  Or until a consensus of people who have good, objective judgment tells me it sucks.  Breaking the rules of good-sense English is not usually my bag, so this is out there for me, and I kinda dig it.

It reminds me of a birthday card I saw earlier this year which went something like this:

[picture of two guys]
“Where’s the party at?”
“Dude, that’s incorrect grammar.  You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
[open the card]
Where’s the party at, b*tch?”

Now that’s just good English right there.  Can’t fault ‘em for fixing their own lexical aberration, right?

Happy Friday.

The Return from Seton HillPosted by John Woodington on June 28th, 2010

I’ve returned from the Seton Hill writer’s conference, and must say that I’ve had a wonderful time.  Seton Hill is beautiful, the people were wonderful, and the experiences were invaluable.  Basically what happens is you go to this place that looks like Hogwarts castle, write for hours, nerd out with other writers from all across North America, pitch to some really great agents, and then party the night away with everyone and their brother.

Highlights:

1. Receiving humorous daily death threats from Donna Munro, who is one crazy writer and a super nice person.

2. Me telling Jim McCarthy that I toyed with the idea of scaring him by trying to pitch a short story collection to him.

3. Writer Melanie Card telling Jim McCarthy that his pitch schedule included a 30-minute “potty break”, and then never letting her hear the end of it.

4. Me reading my query letter to Janet Reid (aka the Query Shark) and her responding with, “For the Win!”

5. All of the guest speakers telling all of the writers never to self-publish anything ever ever ever, and if you did, never tell anyone, not even your conscious self.

6. Filling this guy (who I call “Therapist”) with too much Scotch and then watching him try judo moves on people:

Which was pretty much awesome.  As you might’ve guessed.

Now all I’ve got to do is send off query letters and some pages to a few people, and then start saving money to go back next year.

Close Encounters in PennsylvaniaPosted by John Woodington on June 21st, 2010

I’m gearing up for my first writing retreat.  Exciting.  The one I’m going to is at Seton Hill University, and it is a retreat for writers of popular fiction.  I would say that I sometimes write popular fiction, though I tend to have more of a literary slant in my work.  The reason this sort of retreat appeals to me is that I would like some of the financial success of a popular fiction writer, without having to write the shallow, plot-heavy stories.  I’m hoping this retreat will help me out a little in that regard.  It’s way out in Pennsylvania, and I’m flying there Thursday.  And I have to get up at 3:30 am to make the flight.  Yuckity yuck yuck.

Also, my former agent works out of Pennsylvania, so maybe I will have a close encounter of the formerly-my-agent kind.  That would be cool.  I never met her in person, and she seemed very nice, though I don’t think were a good match as far as what I was writing and what she was selling.  There will be agents at the retreat, and I’m hoping to work on my pitch to them while I’m there.  My novel Alien Nation would be the most likely candidate with which to practice, so I’ll bring the first chunk of that along with me.

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.

Where Ya Been?Posted by John Woodington on May 3rd, 2010

It’s time to move on.  Jasper Tilson has been published and the influx of blog readers has subsided, and now it’s back to business.  Already.  Kinda sad, really.  I worked on getting Jasper published for four years, and in two weeks, he’s out in the public sphere and lost to the interwebs.  Maybe he’ll reappear someday in a short story collection.  I’m not currently the kind of writer who moves their characters from one story to another, reusing them like fishing lures.  I get their stories down on paper and move on.  So now we move on.

I’ve finished reading through my current draft of AlieNation, my novel-in-progress about divorce, working in an office, and alien abductions.  I’m pretty pleased with it so far, mostly because I know it has the potential to be the best thing I’ve written in a long while if I stick with it and take the time necessary to flesh it out to its full potential.  Just used the word ‘potential’ twice in the same sentence, and I apologize for that right there.  The next steps I will take with this novel are to go through the many notes I’ve made while doing the read-through and rewrite, and to implement those notes into the story.  Some will take twenty seconds, and some will take twenty days, maybe more.  Once those are in, I’ll go through each chapter and optimize the wording, cutting and trimming and rewriting until the language is sharp and crisp and definite and ambiguous.  Sounds confusing, I know, just trust me.  After that, I’ll consider it pretty much done, and I’ll begin giving it to a couple of my trusted readers for their initial critiques.  After critiques I’ll do another rewrite, then start looking for a new literary agent.

And then I’ll be sixty-two years old.  Just kidding.  I’d like to get drafts out for reading by the end of the summer.  That’s the goal.  I’d also like to polish up a couple of short stories in that time, as well as edit out a short story from a couple sections of AlieNation that I believe would make for a very good short story.  Plus, if I can get a part of the novel published as a short story, that’ll possibly help me get the whole novel itself published.  At least, that’s how I imagine it.

So how will I do all of this in a scant four months?  Well, my wife and I are making a very personal, very deep commitment, and that commitment is to get rid of the TV in our living room.  I sit in front of that friggin’ box for 2-3 hours a night, and I’m sick of it.  We waste our lives watching waste on TV, and it’s time to eradicate the source of our brain-dead distraction.  We will still have a small TV in the bedroom for news in the morning, and a TV in the guest room, where we will watch a select few shows (Mad Men, mostly) and movies.  Other than that, for us it’s radio and books and writing and playing with our wieners.

Wiener dogs, that is.

So far, I haven’t felt any symptoms of withdrawal.  I figured the first omission of a rerun of The Officewould leave me writhing on the floor shivering and shrieking for Steve Carell.  Not so.  Not yet.  I will be strong in this endeavor, and I truly believe it can only lead to good things.  Or ultimate nervous breakdown.  On the immediate bright side of things, removing the hulking TV from the family room frees up a bunch more space for bookshelves, and, consequently, more books.  Right now I’m reading the ever-great Missouri Review, and then it’ll be on to Fight Club, about which I’ve heard mixed opinions.

Finally, thanks to everyone who donated to my wife’s and my team for the Animal Humane Society 2010 Walk for Animals.  We exceeded our personal goal ($1000), and saved the lives of many cute puppies, despite what the protesters at the beginning of the walk had to say (They made a big stink about a 45% kill rate, and I said, maybe if they donated more to my wife’s and my walking team, the AHS could afford to keep some of those animals alive for longer in order to find them loving homes.  Just sayin’.)

Jasper Tilson is Riding the Slow TrainsPosted by John Woodington on April 18th, 2010

My short story “Jasper Tilson” is now published at Slow Trains.  You can read it by clicking the following link:

Jasper Tilson at Slow Trains

I’m really excited to finally see this story in print.  I have to thank Slow Trains for publishing it.  I have to thank Deanna Lepsch and my wife for reviewing it not too long ago, and giving it the last few nudges to get it publication ready.  Finally, I must thank Allyson Loomis and everybody else in my 2006 Creative Writing Seminar at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire for reading and critiquing the initial draft.  This story would be sitting in a computer folder right now if not for the help of all of these people.

Thank you.

Yucky Draft Number 3Posted by John Woodington on April 11th, 2010

I come to this stage every time I edit a novel.  It’s the stage where motivation lags, where other opportunities for satisfaction present themselves, and where, inevitably, my ability to cruise through drafts falters.  I’m 265 pages into my edit of AlieNation, with 160 pages to go.  Outside it is warm and my scooter and fishing rods are calling me.  The Masters is on TV.  My dogs ask me daily to take them for a long walk, and I’m always tempted to oblige them (especially when they give me their best begging face).  I’m getting the itch to drop an old, nostalgic video game into my Playstation.  Sitting inside in solitude and pecking and trimming and cutting a manuscript in solitude does not seem so appealing right now.

It comes and goes, however,  in waves.  Last night, while avoiding writing, I caught the 2009 Minnesota Book Awards on TV.  And then I had the desire to write.  But it was 9:59 pm, and I’d told myself I’d be in bed by ten, so I didn’t flip open the computer.  I’m searching for motivators here.  Maybe I’ll be more inclined to push forward on this novel when I see my short story “Jasper Tilson” out at Slow Trains, though there seems to be some delay in that.  Maybe I’ll be more inclined to write after I eat some breakfast.  Maybe motivation will bloom if I get an out-of-the-blue email from a great literary agent asking to represent me.  I can dream.

In reality, I’ll sit and stare at the open tab on my computer for about ten more minutes, then start to look at it, then find something to change, then something else, then something else, and before you know it, it’ll be June, and I’ll be on my fourth draft of this thing, glad that I pushed through yucky draft number 3.

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?