Last week I announced I will be re-launching and moving my blog. I’d like it if you would come along.
Please take a moment to sign up for my email newsletter. I’ll keep you posted with details and special surprises.
Thanks!
PS. The video post below explains it a little more.
Thanks for being a reader. I hope you’ll watch the brief video and click the link below to join the mailing list:
I will post more info here, at this blog in the days and weeks to come. Stay tuned!
Introducing Writecoach365: Creative Writing Coaching.
After hearing from several former students and current writing clients, and in response to their feedback, I am happy to announce a brand new option for individual (and, individualized) creative writing training: WriteCoach365.
Find more about this program, launching March 5, 2014, at http://www.WordsMatterESW.com/writecoach365
Applause.
It isn’t something a writer seeks. Or, at least, it isn’t something a sane writer anticipates. Ours is, most often, a very solitary craft. Few of us will ever stand in front of a throbbing throng of rabid fans and accept, graciously I hope, their thunderous applause.
But, occasionally, some of us stand in a small room or a bookstore or, perhaps, a quarter-filled auditorium where we receive some feedback for our work.
Similarly, when I teach, I do not anticipate an ovation at the end of a class, even in a class where the students have chosen to be there and are happy to be so.
Today, though, I received a warm ovation from the students in my Reading as a Writer class. We had spent Fridays together for the last eight weeks, studying Graham Greene’s classic, The End of the Affair. As class ended today—ten or fifteen minutes late, as usual, because I have been unable to limit myself to the allotted class time—I wished the students well, told them I hoped they had enjoyed our time together, and reiterated just how much fun I had had leading the class.
And, they applauded.
It is a nice feeling. I understand, a little, of why actors and athletes and performing artists do what they do.
Applause is a different kind of feedback than the writer gets used to. There is always something wrong with a written work, so sending even a very strong story or novel to our trusted first-readers is a risk. We have to gird our loins, so to speak, and wait for the hammer blows. Sending stories to editors for consideration most-often ends with a form letter rejection. When we get a personal rejection, most of us do a happy little dance that we can’t explain to non-writers. (“Yes, I’m shaking my groove thing because someone said ‘no’ to me in a kinder, more considerate way than most people reject me!”) Even when my stories are published, I rarely hear any positive feedback, and certainly no one has ever made an audio recording of themselves applauding my work.
I appreciate the feedback I received today from those kind and gracious students.
After they had all left, I stayed in the classroom and erased the whiteboard and gathered my things and sat, for just a moment, in the now-empty room, almost as one does when leaving a long-time home for the final time. It is silly, I know.
Later today, a dear friend asked me, “Do you miss it already?” She knew I had really enjoyed teaching this particular class, and she already knew the answer before she asked it. As, good reader, do you.
Five Stories by Eric Sheridan Wyatt is a book featuring the first five stories I had accepted for publication.
From time-to-time, students in my fiction and legacy writing classes ask to read some of my published stories. Often times I would make digital or copy-printed versions of the stories available. But, recently, I decided to print a small book with the first five stories that earned me the coveted words from an editor: “We would like to print your story.”
Simply titled, Five Stories, this thin volume includes the following: Things He Wasn’t Supposed to Do, Cop-Cop Cop, Dudley’s Sacrifice, Solomon’s Ditch, and Most Dead Birds are Never Found.
The book is available for purchase through my printing partner, Lulu, and if you click on this link, you will be taken to the product page.
Some of you, dear readers, have already read all or some of these stories. If you would like, I would be very happy if you would follow that link and leave a review of the stories and rate the book so that it might attract attention of other readers.
As always, thank you all for your support.
Happy Writing!
P.S. Stay tuned for a big announcement next week. I have a new opportunity I am very excited to share with you.
Occasionally, a story, or poem, or song will move me beyond what it reasonably should.
This heart of mine is tuned to a strange frequency, but sometimes I find just the right point of resonance in an unexpected place.
I’m a big fan of Tift Merritt’s music. I enjoy all of her albums. I got to see her, along with Simone Dinnerstein, in Tampa last year. But there is something about this song, The Feel of the World, that consistently tugs at my sentimental soul. Especially when she sings, “I picture you now, you are beautiful, you are golden, Just like you were when you thought no one was looking. Time will take care of you, love. Time will take care of you…”
I thought I would share it with you.
The lyrics are below. You can buy the mp3 of the original album version or the version recorded with Simone Dinnerstein. (Or, buy both of the albums…)
Listen here:
I’ll tell you what I will miss –
California and horses,
Down by the sailboats where we waded in,
The feel of the world in my hands, in my hands,
The feel of the world in my hands.
And still so many ways that I love the wind –
From a storm in the sails to the breath on your lips,
It’s such a little thing, then again, then again,
The feel of the world in your hands, in your hands,
The feel of the world in your hands, in your hands.
Just like the Sunday we drove out from Houston,
Out to the edge of the world, out where the sky starts to bend,
After awhile in the sun, you’ll be sleeping, sleeping.
I picture you now – you are beautiful, you are golden,
Just like you were when you thought no one was looking.
Time will take care of you, love. Time will take care of you, love.
I will take care of you, love, again, again,
The feel of the world in my hands, in my hands,
The feel of the world in my hands, in my hands.
This is a quick post. A sort of poll question, if you will…
What service or resource have you tried to find to help you with your writing, but have been unable to find, either on-line or in person? Or, another way to ask: What is something you’ve said, “If only I could find _x_ it would help me be a better writer!” but have been unable to find?
If something comes to mind, feel free to post it below, or send me an email. Ask other writer friends to chime in. I’m curious to hear…
There are no wrong answers. 🙂
“I thought you’d already given up blogging,” some of you might say. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve been actively engaged in maintaining this blog, so your reaction is justified.
No, what I mean is, I’m giving up teaching writing.
This is a tough decision, because in the last few years, I’ve seen some really amazing things with my writing students and private instruction clients.
There have been people in my Legacy of Words classes that swore to me they couldn’t write a thing, and yet they hand me these pages full of lovely words that make me laugh or cry or sigh with contentment. I’ve had fiction writers whose eyes flare wide with that moment of recognition and epiphany, then come to me and tell me they finally figured out the ending to that story that’s been bothering them, or that they started a new novel and wrote seven chapters in one week.
So, I thought I was doing a good job. I thought my words, my encouragement, my excitement for the written word was spilling forth in ways that brought people along to their “next level.”
But I found out today: I’ve been doing it all wrong.
How do I know? I stumbled across a video titled, “How to Effortlessly Write the Perfect Short Story in One Hour.”
I’ve been ripping these students and clients off, apparently. I’m a charlatan. A scam artist. Because, I was working under the wrong set of assumptions. Here’s what I believed about writing fiction, which is contradictory to this new method:
1) Writing fiction is hard. The idea of “effortlessly” writing anything is foreign to me. Drafting is hard. Revision is hard. Getting feedback is hard, and knowing just what to do with the feedback is even harder. I don’t even make a shopping list effortlessly. Practice and evaluate and revise. Repeat. Repeat. That’s what it takes. If it was easy everyone would be doing it.
2) There is no perfect story, or novel. Naeem Murr is a great writer, and one of the best teachers I’ve ever had the joy of knowing. He told me, and I believed him, that there is no perfect work. That there is always something that could be done better. That even the best story will seem, to the writer, deficient a few years later, when he or she looks back at the piece and sees how the problems of the story would be tackled differently now. Which leads to…
3) Learning the craft of fiction is an ongoing, never-ending process. The best story you can write today is not the best story you can write. Next month, next year, in twenty years, this “best thing I’ve ever written” will seem a little stale, full of holes, naive, and clumsy. That’s because the more we write, the better we get, and the more we are capable of.
But all three of these assumptions are destroyed with a title like, “How to Effortlessly Write the Perfect Short Story in One Hour.” There is no effort needed. There is no growth in craft, because you can’t improve on perfection. You don’t need years of practice and learning and synthesizing knowledge: it only takes an hour to be set.
I hope this guy is charging at least $30,000 for this information. If he’s able to do in one hour what an MFA program only PREPARED me to do, then he deserves it.
My apologies to those of you from whom I’ve bilked money. I’m chopping my snake-oil wagon up for fire wood and shaving off my handlebar mustache and cutting my plaid-striped carnival barker’s suit into strips to be used as prayer flags for the yurt where I am planning to retire and write, effortlessly, one perfect story every day for the rest of my life. I may take the day off, occasionally, for holidays and such. There is no reason to over-burden the world with perfect stories.
My website, Words Matter Creative Writing Instruction, has information about my publications and creative writing teaching and coaching services.
Hey, I know it’s not cool to over-promote one’s self on his or her own blog, but I do, from time to time, like to remind people that I have a website which features not only links and information about some of my publications, but is also packed with info about my creative writing teaching and coaching services.
I always enjoy meeting new writing students and clients. Working with other writers, and helping them along the path to their own creative vision, is always a learning experience for me. Whether it is Legacy (personal history, non-fiction) writers or fiction writers, there is always something new I learn about the world, and my place in it.
So, I hope you’ll forgive this little moment of shameless self-promotion. And maybe, if you haven’t stopped by my website in a while, you’ll want to take a minute to do so, or to pass my information along to a friend.
Have a great week, folks.
Happy Writing!!
According to WordPress, it’s been 182 days since I last paid attention to this blog. (If you are an agent looking to represent me, and doing your research on my social media skills, please ignore that sentence…)
And, it had been a few more months, before that, when I was last truly active as a regular blogger.
It would be easy to make a new year’s resolution, here, and promise to return to these pages and continue to provide content to this blog which has been in existence since January of 2010. I should feel compelled to keep it up… Over 300 posts and 60,000 views and comments and emails and, and, and…
And, a lot has happened in the four years since I began writing here. And, a lot has happened in the last four months.
I don’t know what 2014 will bring, and the many options are such that I won’t even pretend to promise regular blog posts or anything else. There are enough missed opportunities and broken promises in life, without adding to that with a statement I know will not bear fruit.
I do want to say, though, if you are a subscribed (or otherwise regular) reader of this blog, I have certainly appreciated your comments, input, emails, and contact through other social media. Thanks for sticking around. And please, know you are always welcome to drop me a line, no matter if this blog is active or not.
Issue 30 of Ruminate Magazine is centered around the theme of “The Body” and it features my short story, Dog Years
Also, if you are interested, I have two new fiction pieces out and about in the world.
Dog Years, the short story of Keith Hutcheson, a vet who is compelled to go off into the woods to weep after every pet euthanasia, is featured in the current issue of Ruminate Magazine. I’d be happy if you were able to let the kind folks at Ruminate know you appreciate seeing my story featured there. (There is some great artwork in the issue, and poetry as well.)
And, coming up in late-January or February, my story called, It’s Never Quite What it Seems, will appear in Saw Palm, Volume 8. (The link here is to their homepage, which currently still reflects the content of Volume 7, but hopefully soon that will change!) I thought this story was a perfect fit for Saw Palm, and I was very happy they agreed!
I wish you all a very prosperous new year in which you become a better version of yourself— just a little closer to the person you are meant to become. Happy writing!
Stories I Read, Stories I Tell 