The Weekly Atticus (03/09/2019)

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

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Off and on I take pottery classes. When I first started, with my son when he was three, it was all hand building. We rolled out slabs of clay, imprinted them with seashells and animal stamps, molded the clay into chunky bowls and mugs and lumpy animals. Two months ago, I, along with two local writer friends, began a wheel class. Now I’m throwing chunky bowls and plates on the wheel.My writer friends, who had not worked with clay before, wanted to get out of their heads a little, balance out writing with a craft/art that is less cerebral. Working with clay is incredibly physical. For one, the clay imprints itself upon you. When I leave the pottery studio, clay is splattered all over my clothes, crusted onto my hands and arms, and, more often than not, my face. Flecks of clay have rubbed off into my car. Throwing pots on a wheel is physical in that it requires a combination of muscle and grace. To center a ball of clay on the wheel when it’s off-center, you have to strong-arm it, but be sensitive to when the clay reaches that perfect center so you don’t push past that and send the clay into a greater wobble. At the end of the first day of class, I was so exhausted when I stood from the wheel, my legs quivered as I washed off my tools.   Because it seems that I relate everything else in my life back to writing somehow, pottery is no exception. I could tell you about how our teacher, Pancho, says it takes between three and thirty years of practice to learn to throw well. Or I could tell you about how the thing I end up making almost never looks like the thing I think I’m going to make when I begin. The connection that interests me most right now, though, is pacing. When throwing on a wheel, you have to be quick. All you get is about three minutes. Take much longer than that to shape your clay, and the clay absorbs too much water. It gets “tired,” Pancho says. When clay gets tired, it doesn’t hold its shape, doesn’t yield to your hands. It wobbles and collapses. A few weeks ago, I and a small group of writers from all over the world did a flashathon together. That is, each hour, one of the group members provided a short writing prompt, and we each drafted a flash fiction from it. The goal was to write complete drafts—beginning, middle, and end. We did this for fifteen hours, meaning that in the end, I had fifteen story drafts. I’ve probably never drafted more than one story in a day before. In fact, most of the time, flash fiction being no exception, I don’t even do that. I write a few paragraphs. I put the piece aside. I take it out and write a few more paragraphs on another day. I went into this flashathon imagining that I would most likely write terrible, embarrassing things that contained nothing but weak beginnings—no middles, no endings. But as with pottery classes, I thought of the flashathon as an experiment, as play. I decided I would just do my best and not stress over it. Surprisingly, every piece I wrote that day had an ending. I didn’t have the luxury of being indecisive, so I didn’t allow myself to falter. I committed to what I began and pushed through to an end. It was fascinating how time stretched that day. Not that many hours into the flashathon, I found myself thinking, it’s OK if I don’t start writing to this prompt immediately, I have plenty of time. I took coffee and food breaks, came back and started writing a quarter after the hour. About a quarter ‘til, if I wasn’t already moving toward an ending, I’d start doing just that. Fifteen minutes felt like more than enough time. The magic of the flashathon is that in forcing me to work quickly, it got me out of my head. It forced me out of my tendency to brood, reworking the same few lines until I realize an entire morning has passed, or worse, an entire week. Brooding isn’t inherently a bad trait in a writer. Sometimes my propensity for brooding pays off. It can transform a pretty good story into something I’m truly proud of. But other times, especially in the rough draft stage, brooding is akin to overworking the clay. The story becomes oversaturated, wobbles, and falls apart.  Maybe not every draft I wrote that day will amount to a finished story, just as not every blob of clay I slap onto the wheel evolves into a finished bowl or plate or whatnot. Some blobs of clay end up as they started: blobs. But then again, clay, words, ideas—they’re all recyclable. I’ve got a growing bag of recycled clay—the too-wet, tired clay that collapsed on my wheel. Over time, it’s losing some of that excess moisture. Pretty soon it will be ready for another spin. Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.Michelle RossFiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

March 17th is St. Patrick's Day, but it's also the deadline for our Poetry Contest.May you have the luck of the Irish.SUBMIT THIS WEEKEND!

Our Print Annual, Volume 2 is off to the printer and now available for preorder!Use code PREORDER2 at checkout for 25% discount.GET YOUR COPY!

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

STEVE

FICTION: I WANT TO BE IN PRISON THIS CHRISTMASby James Smart"When I was born, I was made of glass. On my edges, the doctors cut their hands. Mum had to have an emergency cesarean, twelve stitches; that was the first time I drew blood."READ ON

POETRY: APOLOGIA FOR RICHMONDby Brandie Gray"I’d be lying if I saidI saw God, like the time I watched you dieagain & again then revived as if wakingfrom a dream is some kind of miracle—we’re all capable of it, you know?"READ ON

CNF: THE MORNING THE COTTONWOOD FELLby Andrew Johnson"The earth was bulging, had been bulging beneath the ancient tree for months. You watched the cottonwood lean more and more eastward as you passed it on your walk to work..."READ ON

MIXED MEDIA: MANICOTTIA video based on the poem "Manicotti" from "The Typewriter Underground" by Marc Zegans. Directed by Ellen Hemphill & Jim Haverkamp.READ ON

FILM: REJECTING THE STORYA review of LEAVING NEVERLAND by Alison Lanier"Having watched the #MeToo movement spread from entertainment across numerous professional fields, it’s tough not to see an extremely recognizable cruelty rear its ugly head..."READ ON

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