Tear Your Writing Apart, Not Up (Josh Intro) (07/03/2021)

Tear Your Writing Apart, Not Up | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Intro by Joshua Raff.

I love stories about the lives of creative people—writers, artists, musicians, dancers, chefs. My reading pile almost always contains a few of these. Not craft books (although they have their place) but biographies, group biographies, non-fiction books or novels that explore what drives people to create and how they turn that creativity into finished work—books that offer insights into the lives, personal and professional, of creative people. Bernardine Evaristo’s wonderful Girl, Woman, Other, in which the central character is a playwright, and Lily King’s Writers & Lovers, a novel built around the life of a first-time novelist, are two recent examples. Occasionally, a book will surprise you and you will come away having learned something specific about writing, taken a lesson that stays with you. Edmund Gordon’s biography of the brilliant English writer Angela Carter, The Invention of Angela Carter, is one of those for me. Gordon describes how Carter, at one point, had written an entire novel but, after reading it over, decided it did not work as a book, it did not do what she had intended. Or perhaps her agent or editor told her it could not be sold. So she abandoned it in the most creative way she could: she tore it apart. (Instead of tearing it up or consigning it to a dusty file cabinet). She took the chapters and converted them to stand alone stories which she revised and sold to magazines and literary journals as short stories. I have revisited things I have written, used passages or ideas in new and different contexts, but had not considered doing so with a completed book. My M.F.A. project was a memoir of a particularly important year of my childhood. It was a lovely year and made a huge difference in my life. Over the two years of the program, I wrote a first draft of what I envisioned would be the book, and in the months after graduating, revised a number of the early chapters before I set it aside. The writing allowed me to  luxuriate in the memories of what would turn out to be the last relatively conflict-free year of my childhood, and the intimacy it brought us as a family. Though my writing friends loved the story, the editors and agents I spoke to did not. Apparently, a coming-of-age story without much conflict was of little interest to anyone but me. Or perhaps it was the telling that needed something different. But for me, as much as I would like to put the book out there, the lessons I took from the writing of it, and the warmth of the memories it brought up, were reward enough.Well, not quite enough it turns out. Taking a cue from Angela Carter, I am tearing it apart and breaking it into shorter pieces, which I think might have more of an impact. I am trying  out different tones, voices, even narrators. I am continuing to work on them on and off between other writing and pretty soon may have something editors (and maybe even you too) might want to read.Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here.Joshua RaffCNF Reader

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONTHE KIDS ARE NOT DANGEROUSby Nestor Walters"They’ve inherited neither struggle nor promise, stranded in a world that neither hates them nor needs them, nor even knows they draw breath."READ ON

POETRYHOUSEBOATby Barbara Daniels"Everyone steals. I’d just forgottenthe book in Dutch slippedfrom its case, a Sunday Timesplucked from a snowbank..."READ ON

POETRYA CHICKEN TRUCK JUMPS A CURB AND SOME BIRDS FLY FREEby Barbara Daniels"...clattering. This isn’t the season of despair.In Arkansas silk trees line the banksof streams. Surely the same moon rises..."READ ON

POETRYTHE FLAWED BREASTby Barbara Daniels"...asymmetrically. I wish for each woman healthfor her favorite feature (nose, legs, poutingmouth. Or mind, compassion, ambition)."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONTWO FLASH CNF PIECESby Luke Larkin"Mom wants a wedding dress, grandchildren who have her eyes, a daughter-in-law to get mani-pedis with, or even just a sign those things are coming, that I'm shaping up to deliver. But all I can offer are the his-and-his tuxedos in my closet, the man in my bed, and his ring on my finger."READ ON

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