About “At the MF Convention”

1. What was your motivation for writing “At the MF Convention”?

I love short writing, from haiku to prose poetry, but I don’t love its transformation into an attention-eroding party drug for web readers.  Tldr is a fit four-letter word.  So it was irritation that inspired the piece, someone’s objection to the acid task (I don’t remember the actual instance) of reading to the end of page three.  I wanted to set this elementary urge to capture an image in writing against the writing world’s busy whims.

2. What challenges—if any—did you have writing your story?

Prose is always a challenge for me.  A word in a poem finds its place.  A word in prose wants to have a look around.  When I dragged this piece out after it had sat for some time, I wanted to change one word.  The next night, another.  The next night, one more . . . .

3. What is your favourite line—if any—in “At the MF Convention”?

Every one of these urchins gave me grief.  I would rather pick one out for a kick in the pants than a blue ribbon.

4. What do you want people to walk away with after reading “At the MF Convention”?

Russell Edson wrote in “The Prose Poem in America” about the difference between “time flowing” in prose and “time held” in poetry.  I’m seduced into exploring that whenever I pick up a pen.  This piece makes a little drama out of those two times.

5. Is there anything else you would like to talk about regarding “At the MF Convention” that hasn’t been asked?

The original idea was to fit the story’s arc into a legitimate piece of microfiction, which, according to our latest discovery in the laws of nature, must be less than 500 words.  Including or excluding the title—that is still to be worked out by [the] committee at the Convention.  Anyway, it resisted all of my procrustean efforts, and, in that light, can be seen as a failure.

Reading

1. What are you currently reading?

I’m a librarian, so I’m reading this month’s books for various clubs and discussions (Barbara Kingsolver, Aldous Huxley, Stephen King, and Goethe), but just one for my own delight:  Irene Vallejo’s Manifesto for Reading.  It’s a tiny book but untranslated, so I’m moving through it at a nice, slow pace.  She’s a Spanish writer with an infectious love of reading, stories, books, and language.

2. Do you have a favourite book? If so, what is it?

My standard answer is The Brothers Karamazov, but the last person to ask me this was a dental hygienist with her hands in my mouth.  Try it.  Just the title, let alone my brilliant interpretation of the book.  So I’m in the market for a new favourite.

3. What is your favourite poet or author, if any?

W.B. Yeats is my favourite writer.  As unfashionable as it is, I love the carven line.

4. Do you gravitate towards reading genres outside the ones you write?

I read a lot of novels but lack what it takes to write “He got up and went to the door” over and over again, so I don’t think we’ll ever see novelist on my resumé.  I also read nonfiction of all sorts, philosophy these days, intellectual history, but I’m not [an] expert in anything, and my memoir would be formidably boring, so I don’t see an accomplishment there either.

Writing

1. Why do you write?

Writing was a rainy-day activity as a child that became a life-or-death refuge in adolescence and somehow turned into a way of knowing the world that’s different from the other ways.

2. What do you love about being a writer?

That different way of knowing the world.

3. What time of the day do you write, and do you have a writing routine?

I write when I find time.  Time is always hiding from me.

4. Where do you get your ideas from?

It’s all bric-a-brac:  experiences, thoughts, images, sounds.  Sometimes a sound chases an image, sometimes an image chases a sound.

5. How long does it take you to write your projects?

Some pieces leap fully formed from wherever they leap from, and some come out piece by piece in a gory surgical procedure.

6. What advice would you give to other authors/writers/poets?

I would resist the temptation to advise.  Finding your own way is the main thing.  And even that is surely bad advice for someone out there.

7. What project(s) are you currently working on?

A poem about the languageless communication among a trio of performing musicians.  Accomplishing that in language is presenting an obstacle.