On Thursday, I was elated to learn that my short story “Oasis”  had been nominated by Ruminate magazine for a  Pushcart Prize, a PEN/ O. Henry Prize, and for the 2012 Best American Short Stories.

As a short story writer, these three anthologies are like the Academy Awards for literary work: it’s amazing to win, but to be nominated is an honor in and of itself.

I was ten years old when I read my first smattering of stories in an O. Henry collection, 21 when I devoured a Best American Short Stories edition, and 25 when I read my first Pushcart anthology — and, in the case of each, I remember saying to myself, “man, what I wouldn’t give to write like this, to be included among these amazing writers one day.”

Now, with “Oasis” in the hands of these committees, I may just have a shot at inclusion — but, even if I don’t, it’s a dream come true to simply be among the piles of stories that are up for consideration.

My fingers are crossed, my hopes are high, but for now I will return to the work — yes, the work — and keep on trucking.

Thanks again to Dan Halloway for inspiring me to write “Oasis”; to eight-cuts for featuring the piece in their “Desert” exhibition; to Leif Enger for selecting the piece for the William Van Dyke fiction award; to Ruminate magazine and staff for their support and publication of the piece; to Kirsten Clodfelter, Maria Ivkovic, Norah Vawter, Ashley Ford, Jennifer Goldsmith, and Gary Armistead for reading and editing early versions of the story; to a season 4 episode of “LOST” for giving me the kernel of the piece; and, most of all, to my wonderful husband, Chris, for his unrelenting faith in me, my process, and in “Oasis” itself.

Here’s the latest:

A River and Sound Review

My short story, “Jolt,” is now available in issue #4 of A River and Sound Review. This was my first officially commissioned piece, so many thanks to Elea Carey for reaching out to me and believing in my work!

Ruminate Magazine

“Oasis,” the winner of the William Van Dyke prize in short fiction, is now available for purchase in issue #19 of Ruminate magazine. The Ruminate staff have been wonderful to work with, and to contest judge Leif Enger, author of the bestselling novel “Peace Like a River,” I owe many thanks. His review of my story was wonderful, for which I am forever grateful. Poets & Writers also featured the news in their March/April edition–in the teeniest tiniest blurb you’ll ever see!–but hey, I’m ecstatic. The story also generated interest among two literary agencies, who have expressed interest in reading my novel once the second draft is complete. So it’s time to get cracking, and get that bad boy done already.

Coal City Review

Finally, my short-short, “Hindsight,” published in Issue #27 of the “Coal City Review,” is now officially available for purchase for $10 on their website. Thank you, again, to Mary Wharff, fiction editor, for your brilliant edits.

Issues are only available in print, and can be ordered online for $10.

To entice you further, (as if an adorable bookstore and independent publisher in the heart of Kansas doesn’t do the trick), my featured story, “Hindsight,” explores a group of Washington, DC passengers whose morning commute is interrupted by an act of unforgettable violence.

Now, if that doesn’t lure you, then I’m flat out of tricks.

Thanks for reading, and for your support of the literary scene.

If you’re in the middle of writing a novel, at whatever stage, the tendency to feel alone in this quest is overwhelming: how hard or easy should this be? are all writers’ first drafts crap? how many revisions are necessary? how do I determine the structure of this amorphous beast I’m creating?

Recently, I had the reassuring experience of reading Daniel Alarcon’s “The Secret Miracle: A Novelist’s Guide,” and felt, for the first time in my novel writing aspirations, not alone. While my MFA experience was helpful in providing a community of willing readers and fellow writers to help refine my technique and stories along the way, it did not, unfortunately, provide a sense of connection or understanding for me in the process of writing a novel itself–not, that is, in the same way Alarcon’s book has.

Part of this, I think, is the exposure to a plethora of writers’ insights (which Alarcon’s book provides) versus insights from only a handful of MFA faculty. In my case–though this may not be the case for others–I found that my process did not have a “home” among the particular MFA faculty members I worked with, or if had some similarities with their process, there were enough differences to make me feel isolated. This was never more true then when, as a novice novel writer, I attempted to articulate my own unique process which was often met with “well, I’m not sure about that, but this is what I do,” which was all well and good, but left me feeling like I was missing the boat. Part of this, I think, too, stems from the fact that the process itself is a mystery to many writers–they just WRITE, duh–so when I came across Alarcon’s book, I was blown away by the openness, the thoughtful analysis of what novelists encounter in their own unique journeys.

Below are the insights that moved me the most–that spoke to my own unique process, that made me sit up and go “dude, I’m NOT crazy”–and so I’ve pasted them here for your philosophical pleasure. I welcome any feedback or insights–what is YOUR process like? Be sure to pick up a copy of Alarcon’s book if you’re looking for solace in this insanely complicated experience!

* My Mirror Images*

Rhythm of sentences and narrative

“I think that structurally I learn a great deal from music, even though my musical education is rather, uh, patchy. But certainly my experience of narrative form is akin to my experience of music, and I often feel that certain narrative decisions are dictated almost by the musical chord they create.”—Claire Messud

Reading & Writing Inspiration

“When I am really writing, I pick books randomly to read and try to figure out what I am supposed to learn from them.”—Tayari Jones

‘I read randomly everything from physics to ethics to cultural studies, I watch a lot of bad, trashy TV and lots of good TV and above all else, I consume books of poetry voraciously. And no, there is no logic to it; it makes sense but in a more organic way.”—Chris Albani

Research & Integration

“I always do research. And then, I always do too much research, and this is the process: I get swamped by the research. And I reject the research. And then somehow in that process what’s necessary filters into the work.”—Cristina Garcia

First Drafts

“I usually write pretty quickly, so I can churn out a draft in a few months. Then I spend years trying to make it be an interesting and wonderful book.”—Jennifer Egan

“It’s been different every time. With my first book I had a situation and scattered vignettes, and I had to string them all together. With the second, I knew exactly where the characters were going to wind up at the end—the very room in which they would be arrested, the very emotional condition they’d be in, the thing they’d be doing—but I didn’t have any idea how they would get there. With the third book, I knew all those things I just listed—the room, the emotional state, the character’s actions—about the very first scene, and after that I had nothing. Novels in progress seem to me sometimes like landscapes seen through fog. You’re always going to make out something different, have a different handhold at the start, and then you grope your way along.” –Susan Choi

“I don’t really outline. I have a strong emotional sense of the emotional shape of a book, and I hold onto that. The process isn’t easy, but I have found over the years that a lot of my work involves abandoning plans and structures, not making them. I don’t construct books; I sometimes think, so much as grow them, like mushrooms in the dark.”—Anne Enright

“I’ve actually even outlined after I’ve written a draft, or halfway through a draft.”—T Cooper

“Liberty is an essential part of composition. I have no story that I am supposed to tell. And I cannot write the novel in my head. So I will allow this one at hand to meander where it will, and then I will figure out what it is that my subconscious wishes to say in the rewriting phrase.”—Rick Moody

Establishing Voice

A riveting tale has never been T.C.’s issue–his stories are spun with the utmost care and the mastery of a truly gifted world-builder. But what really grabbed my attention in reading this novel–other than the creative backwards structure in which Wright and his four love affairs unfold in reverse chronology until we reach the heart of the man himself–is T.C.’s amazing language. And I’m not talking about just run-of-the-mill language that turns a pretty phrase. I’m talking the kind of language that desensitizes the world, makes us truly “see” the way any good photograph stops us in our tracks, helps us gaze upon an object as if for the very first time. The language invents, whirls, draws metaphors and similes I’ve never seen before–and the ultimate result? It makes me want to write, write, write, until my own language grows more precise, vivid, haunting.

Here are just a few of T.C’s language knock-outs that I’ve been savoring the last week:

“She was dressed all in white, in a clinging gown of silk, and her hair was loose on her shoulders. The lorgnette dangled from one hand, swaying gently back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch. In her other hand, balanced delicately, a teacup held in abeyance.”

“He was whistling, fiddling with the gearshift, the choke, feeling as light as the puffs of cloud running high overhead across the pale blue roof of the world.”

“Leora hesitated. Blinked her eyes. Blinked till Miriam thought she must have developed some sort of tic like the dropsical old man who used to sit all day at La Rotonde, contorting hs face and spitting in a hankerchief, and who was very likely dead by now, dead of blinking and quivering and spitting.”

“A series of images ran through her head–Thomas in diapers, the girls nattering over their dolls, their hair in ringlets and their dresses spread out round them like parachutes fallen to the earth, the glittering black eyes of a random infant in a perambulator, tiny immaculate fingers and toes, pink skin in a bubble bath–but none of them seemed to have anything to do with Frank.”

“It was early November now, the fields frost-burned, the windows aching with cold…”

“It was the cold, she told herself, the dreary unrelenting winter that gave everyone chilblains and ague, the same as in Paris, but at least there she could find refuge in a gallery, or a concert hall or one of the cafes or salons artisques.”

“….and a number of beaming young students who looked as if they were able to faint dead away with the anxiety of staring into a white face for what might have been the first time in their lives.”

“…as he bent to the last of the greeters, a white-haired ancient in samurai costume, he caught a single scintillating whiff of Japan on the breeze riding up off Yokohama Bay–an ineffable amalgam of broiled eel, incense and human effluent, and knew he was home at last.”

“The next thing she knew the place was deserted, the lanterns burned low, and the maid was there with her robe, murmuring something in her own language that sounded as lovely as the whisper of cherry blossoms in the breeze, and then she was in her room, on the futon, beneath the blankets, and the rain ran a thousand fingers across the roof.”

“We Japanese have a saying, Ame futte ji katamaru: the ground that is ruined upon hardens.”

“They made their way down the drive, crabwise, ice underfoot, the pale disk of the sun settling into the trees at their backs and the river opening out before them, and then they crossed the road and went down the narrow path on the other side, everything pristine and perfect under the sculpted banks of snow. She breathed in the scent of the pines, saw the way they stood ranged along the river like sentinels, rugged and alive and riving up their color to a monochromatic world…”

For those who have their ducks in a row following this most insane of holiday seasons, the Crazyhorse fiction prize contest deadline is January 15th.

Mail in or upload online up to twenty-five pages of fiction. Reading fee of $16 per manuscript includes a one-year/two-issue print-and-e-book subscription to Crazyhorse starting with the next issue. Upload manuscript and pay reading fee by secure online credit-card payment via Authorize.net, or by check or money order.

I dare you to send something in. I just may.

Wiley Briony, from Ian McEwan's ATONEMENT

INVENTING people. Walking, talking, breathing people. Sounds simple?

Lately, I’ve come to a crossroads about creating characters, particularly as I make the transition from short story to novel. True, both are narratives. Both have plot. Both need real, believable people driving this thing we call story. But somehow, in a novel, it gets a whole lot more interesting.

With a short story, the conflict opens in the first paragraph, tension building from the get-go. The character’s inward motivation bumps uglies with the external force of the plot, and by george we’ve got ourselves a story. But with novels, there are more tangents and nuances, more complexity and twists and turns–not to mention hundreds of pages to fill, which calls for a meatier character that we can really sink our teeth into.

Having always been a short story writer, taking on a novel of 300 pages + has been a whole new experience. Having just completed my first draft, I find myself now going back through the explosion I’ve created and analyzing my lead character (in particular) like a mad-raving psychoanalyst, picking up the shards of her past, present, and future and clarifying them, bringing them into razor sharp focus. Everything must count.

In my current attempts to do this, I’ve found the need to create bio sketches of all my characters–a kind of test for myself to see how well I really know them, how complex I really need to make them, and what really needs to be reconsidered as I embark upon the scary task of the dreaded novel revision, part 1.0.

There are several models out there for biosketching your characters. However, Ginny Wiehardt’s is my favorite among all others (probably because she’s a fiction writer and instructor herself), and the one I find most useful for my purposes. Her approach involves answering ten questions about your characters:

1. Where does your character live?
2. Where is your character from?
3. How old is your character?
4. What is your character called?
5. What does your character look like?
6. What kind of childhood did he or she have?
7. What does your character do for a living?
8. How does your character deal with conflict and change?
9. Who else is in your character’s life?
10. What is your character’s goal or motivation in this story or scene?

Taking this on as an exercise, I’ll be posting soon what I’ve come up with for Esther Thomas, the heroine of my novel-in-revision. My plan is to do this for all characters in my novel over the next few weeks. Stay tuned. Or tune out, if it becomes overwhelming.

For this reason, I’ve begun this blog–partly for my own sanity, partly to invent a virtual imaginary friend, and partly to share with other writers, whoever you may be, who are losing their minds and thinking–somehow–that their psychology (when it comes to writing, anyway) is alien.  I am here to assure you, it’s not. I welcome your comments, feedback, insight, but most of all the community. Just please bear with me, the messy act of thinking aloud.