Day 5 of the Workshop: All Good Things Must End

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Nora Kipnis

Yesterday tied together everything we have learned so far at the One Story Workshop. In the morning, writers had their final group workshops with Marie-Helene Bertino and Will Allison. Then, in the afternoon, we met for a craft lecture by Editor-In-Chief Hannah Tinti.

Hannah’s talk was on the business side of publishing. She discussed launching our writing careers by finding agents and submitting to literary magazines. The way to tell a piece is ready for the world, according to her? You have gone through a few drafts to get pitch-perfect prose, workshopped it, showed it to all your friends, teachers, and your pet turtle, taken their suggestions (if you feel they are right). When you get to a point where nobody you show it to agrees on what’s actually wrong with the piece, that means it’s pretty good. Obviously, no matter what, somebody somewhere is always going to find something they don’t like about it. It’s when all of the glaring, objective errors that everyone notices are gone that you have gotten it to a point where it is publishable. You can’t please everyone.

At that point, Hannah told us to send our piece to the top 10 literary magazines we’d like to see our piece published in, accepting probable rejection as inevitable as death and taxes. Good resources for literary magazines are duotrope.com or Poets & Writers magazine. When those rejections come in (or maybe you will get accepted at one! Yay!), send it to the next 10. And the next 10. And the next 10. Keep trying, and don’t take rejection personally. Hannah told us she sent in a story to 50 magazines until it got accepted, and the story ended up being one of the best in her collection Animal Crackers. In the case of acceptance, celebrate! Don’t just shrug it off – congratulate yourself for the accomplishment.

Hannah told us industry standards for submissions: 12-point, double-spaced format on one side each of plain white copy paper with a normal font, your name and contact information on the first page, and page numbers included. The cover letter (the purpose of which is to demonstrate that you are not crazy and show some writing experience, whether MFA programs, previous publications, or otherwise) should be on a separate page or the “Notes” section often included in online submission websites. She also told us of ways to continue our writing education with conferences, fellowships, literary volunteer gigs, and writing buddies.

After the lecture, we took a break and the workshoppers got dressed up to read their work. The writing presented ranged from shocking to hilarious to heartbreaking, and the styles were as varied as the personalities there. It was exciting to see it all coming to a close: after a week of hard work, the writers and staff were able to kick back and listen to some great stories.

We said a sad goodbye to the beautiful Center for Fiction and then headed over to Tricolore Trattoria, passing the diamond district on our way and giving the out-of-towners a chance to check out Times Square. At dinner we watched a slideshow that showcased the friends made, professional connections established, and lectures given over the course of the week. Then we all raised a glass and cheered. The One Story Summer Workshop is over, but hopefully, all the attendants will keep in touch with us and extend their new knowledge and relationships far into the future. We will miss you all!

One Story Workshop, day 4: Characters, Cats, Community

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Kerry Cullen

A colossal event of epic proportions hit New York today. It wasn’t zombies. It wasn’t The Derecho. It was the penultimate day of the One Story Workshop, and it was marvelous.

We began the day with delicious bagels, then proceeded to workshop. As seems to be the theme throughout the week, the authors in workshop were verbosely happy with the readings and advice they received.

Overheard at lunch: “I just want to go to my hotel now and write.” It was agreed by all surrounding that this sort of optimistic drive is the best possible feeling that a workshop can give.

After consuming heaps of falafel, we trekked onwards and upwards for Myla Goldberg’s craft lecture: “How To Fake It: Creating Characters That Don’t Seem Made Up.” Myla had asked us to read Aimee Bender’s odd, beautiful story, “What You Left In The Ditch” so we could discuss the elements at work. Myla, with wit, and wild vocal inflections, stressed the difference between creating a likeable character and an empathetic character, noting that the latter is more interesting. “It is your job as a writer,” she told us, with the tone of a manifesto, “to inhabit every single character you invent.”

Other gems of advice culled from the Q/A session included:

-Subtlety is a muscle that you develop over time.

-The more scenes you write, the more you get a sense of what a scene is.

-It’s okay to know that you need to fix something and not fix it right away.

-Write until you get stuck. Then go back and make corrections.

-Read your work out loud.

-Trust yourself. Follow your character around and be open to things.

After the lecture, we took a writing break, a wine-cheese break, and met again for the evening event: a reading by Joshua Henkin, director of the Brooklyn College MFA and author of Swimming Across The Hudson, Matrimony, and, most recently, The World Without You. Josh was introduced by Marie-Helene Bertino (his former student and one of our workshop leaders) before he read two excerpts from his most recent book. The novel tells the story of the first time a family has been together since a son was killed in Iraq. Heartbreak, comedy, and delicate hybrids of the two ensue as the family members’ habits and beliefs slam into each other.

Josh’s manner was open and honest—his presence allowed a sense of openness rare in post-reading Q/A. “We both create our stories,” he told us, somberly, “and are created by them.” While we basked in the sageness of his widsom, he cracked a joke. The discussion ranged from too-beautiful sentences to bad soap operas (hint: any plotline can become one, but no plotline has to be one) to showing other people our work. “When I first started,” he confided to us, “I couldn’t write a paragraph without showing my cat. I didn’t even have a cat.”

As the workshop hurtles toward its close, there’s a palpable sense of satisfaction in the Center For Fiction. We’ve heard great advice from marvelous people—people who live in the literary world that so many of us are climbing toward. It’s been inspiring, while also being a uniquely accessible experience. We’ve formed a literary community. It deepens in every workshop and during every meal, and strengthens with every craft lecture, panel and reading. In applying to this workshop, we have followed our passion, and with each day of attendance, we are learning together how to make a life out of it.

One Story Summer Workshop Day 3: Out Here in the Middle

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Brandon Kaplan

Wednesday marked the middle of One Story’s third annual writers workshop, and as in any great story, the elements are coming together. Writers have spent great time and care with each other’s fiction in workshop, and the group continues to grow close. We were lucky to have another enriching day of programming with a craft lecture by Victor LaValle and an evening with a panel of editors from an array of exciting literary magazines.

Appropriately to the midpoint of our workshop week, celebrated author, Victor LaValle gave a lecture on structure entitled “What the Hell is Happening? Structuring Your Story.” I’m often bewildered by how rarely the subject of writers’ advice is handled methodically, with an eye toward maker’s skill rather than abstract theory, but the simple elegance of LaValle’s approach was indeed rare and enlightening. Using Samuel Fuller’s “The Deadly Circle” and Amy Hempel’s “San Francisco,” he demonstrated how to map the structure of any story, pulpy or literary, with an orderly arrangement of boxes and basic summary of present-action. In applying this technique to the draft of a story in-progress, LaValle emphasized the importance of balancing structure with discovery.

“If you plan everything all at once in the beginning, there’s nothing for you to discover, so there’s nothing for the reader to discover,” he reasoned. According to LaValle and the consensus of the classroom, a writer must find the surprises from experience. “As much as possible,” he told us, “if you’re writing about something, go do it.”

A lovely evening awaited in the company of three talented editors. Writers listened in on a panel comprising Patrick Ryan, One Story author and Associate Editor at Granta; Ronna Weinberg, Senior Fiction Editor at The Bellevue Literary Review; and James Yeh, Founding Co-Editor of Gigantic. All editors are also accomplished writers and offered valuable perspectives in their discussion. Moderated by our own Adina Talve-Goodman, panelists acquainted writers with their magazines and answered questions about the submission process, writing cover letters, how to get picked up from the slush pile and the editorial process among other useful wisdom.

As rich as the sequence of events has been this week, some of the magic happens in quiet moments between scheduled sessions. Writers have traveled from across the country and across the ocean to dedicate a place in their lives to the art we all love. In the hours between lecture and our evening panel, workshop writers and One Story staff set up in the beautiful meeting rooms on the sixth floor of The Center for Fiction to work. In the middle of one of the world’s busiest cities, I’m sure everyone present found something they were looking for in the magnificent silence of writers, editors and interns communing over the solitary yet entirely shared love of the work we do.

Day 2 of the One Story Workshop: To MFA or Not to MFA? That is the question.

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Nora Kipnis

Yesterday was the second day of the week all of us at One Story have been waiting for. My internship thus far has been two months of craziness, love, and a lot of hard work, and whispers of the workshop at the end of the summer have been filling me with anticipation since I found out about it back in October. The week is finally here and it feels surreal – writers, agents, educators, and editors have been swarming the Center for Fiction like book-lovers at a library.

After a catered breakfast, students broke down into their individual workshops, taught by One Story contributing editor Will Allison and former contributing editor Marie Helene-Bertino. Then, after lunch, we all gathered on the 6^th floor to listen to Simon Van Booy talk about character, point of view, and more character. A fine British gentleman and the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love and Everything Beautiful Began After, Simon charmed us all with his quips and his accent. He told us creating a character in the first person point of view is so involved that it becomes like method acting. In every real life situation you encounter, you must ask: what would Polly or Victor or Leo the Leopard do? As Simon says, get your feet wet!

Simon also told us about the importance of flat characters to offset round characters and provide humor. “Flat characters are the unsung heroes of characterization,” he said, and discussed how Shakespeare was a master of flat characters. The drunken gatekeeper in Macbeth provided comic relief when Duncan was dying upstairs. In Camus’s The Stranger, Mersault’s overly violent neighbor Raymond allows him to give his own life philosophy without just plopping it in the book.

Later, at the evening cocktail hour and panel, we had the opportunity to hear about MFA programs. Representatives from Sarah Lawrence, Warren Wilson, Vermont College, and Manhattanville College told us what we get out of an MFA, how to choose one, how to get into one, and how to pay for it. Some MFA advice from the pros:

There’s no rush to do an MFA at a certain time of your life – right after college, for example. Go when you have time for it and are burning to write, as they say.
When choosing writing samples, send those that reflect the style of writing you wish to develop, not necessarily what you think they want to see. That way you will end up in a program that will encourage your personal voice.
Writing sample advice #2: Pick two or three different pieces. If one is absolutely terrible, maybe the second will redeem you.
Tenacity and persistence is impressive, as long as every reapplication demonstrates some growth.
When in the MFA program, get the most out of it by putting your writing before your part-time job, volunteer work, or internships.
But still involve yourself in those things. They will help you make connections you might need to find a job in the publishing world or get your own work out there.
When faced with a should-I-or-should-I-not situation, remember that whether or not you choose to do an MFA, the agony and joy of the writing life is available to you whenever you decide to pick up the pen and paper.

And so it begins: One Story Summer Workshop, Day One

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Holly Hilliard

Twenty writers, eight staff members, five panelists, two instructors, one craft lecturer, and an infinite supply of cheese descended upon Manhattan’s Center for Fiction today. This can only mean one thing: the One Story Summer Writers’ Workshop is back in full swing.

This is the third year that One Story has hosted our own workshop, and it is already off to a great start, thanks in part to our friends at the Center for Fiction who have welcomed us into their fabulous space. The week will feature small group workshops, craft lectures by award-winning authors, and panelists from literary agencies, publishing companies, and MFA programs. After this morning’s workshops, led by Marie-Helene Bertino (past Associate Editor of OS) and Will Allison (current OS contributing editor), we were thrilled to hear Ann Napolitano, author of A Good Hard Look and Within Arm’s Reach, give a craft lecture on the art of description. She highlighted nine key points about description, including the importance of specificity, the usefulness of nouns and verbs in place of adjectives, and the significance of word choice, quoting Mark Twain: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Next, we were each given the opportunity to do our own describing when Ann passed out a variety of odd fruits and told us to write about them using the five senses. After getting up close and personal with what looked like a fuzzy green oyster, I eventually compiled a nice list of sentences from the exercise (though I still have no idea what fruit I was actually describing. A rare cousin of the peach? Perhaps.).

After breaking for dinner, the writers reassembled for a panel of five literary agents: PJ Mark, Julie Barer, Jim Rutman, Julie Ferrari-Adler, and Renee Zuckerbrot. The panel helped to answer questions about getting an agent and offered their own stories from the publishing industry. While the world of agents has always seemed quite mysterious to me (I half-expected them to come in wearing tuxedos and sunglasses reminiscent of Will Smith’s attire in Men in Black), the panel helped to clear up most of my confusion. So, what is it that agents look for? The conclusion, it seemed, was unanimous: everybody’s looking for love. Each agent really wants to fall in love with a manuscript, and once they do, they’ll be the writer’s biggest advocate, establishing that necessary link between writer and publisher. Love, though, is hard to find, and it’s up to the writer to make a good first impression. When we all seemed a little down-trodden after hearing how difficult it is to catch an agent’s attention, PJ Mark reassured us: “All agents are optimists. You have to remember that we are all eager to see your work.” After the panel, we had the opportunity to converse over wine and cheese, connecting with the agents one-on-one (and maybe even mustering up the courage to pitch them our novels).

It was a lovely first day at the Center for Fiction, and we cannot wait to hear craft lecturer Simon Van Booy and the panelists from various MFA programs. Stay tuned for more updates!

Harper Perennial Summer Short Story Sale

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Brandon Kaplan

Few things surpass the joy of discovering great new fiction with the July sunlight warming your face. One thing that may make it better, though, is getting that enthralling new book for under two bucks. Our sponsor and partner, Harper Perennial is offering thirteen of their favorite short story collections in digital edition for $1.99 each through the month of July.

Collections of two One Story authors, Ben Greenman and Lydia Peelle, are included in the sale, as are works by Simon Van Booy, Deborah Willis, Holly Goddard Jones, Barb Johnson, Kevin Moffet, Rahul Mehta, David Vann, Justin Taylor and Valerie Larken.

There’s still a week to go on the sale. To take advantage of these low prices and maybe find a new favorite story, visit the summer short story sale HERE!

Issue #166: World’s End

Posted on July 17, 2012 by James Scott

Our new issue, “World’s End” by Clare Beams, was pulled from our slush pile by reader James Scott. He saw this wonderfully rich and vivid tale through our editorial process, from beginning to end, and so I am turning the reins over to him on this introduction. I hope you all enjoy this beautiful story about space, time, ambition, and the magic of landscape. -HT

On a good day, I am not a morning person, and when I first read Clare Beams’s story, I was at a writers’ retreat, my work had not gone well the night before, ghosts had kept me up at night with their incessant tromping through the hallways, and I sat at a computer in the library at seven in the morning, irritable and exhausted. But “World’s End” cut through all of that in an instant—as the best stories do—from the first line: “By the time the World’s End job came to him, the architect was twenty-six but no longer considered himself young, if he ever had.” The world kept unfurling from there, the landscapes—both external and internal—being pushed and shaped with each passing sentence.

The architect grows up as a professional and as a man over the course of his work for Cale, eventually confronting the past that led him to the job in the first place. This is a tidy circle made messy by the architect’s feelings for Becca, the boss’s daughter. Beams plays these scenes with a startling vividness, highlighted by images that made them singular to this world, “At the finish of his imagined wanderings with Becca, he felt a guilt and doubt that were new to him, sponging his own gray fingerprints, like feathery bruises, off his body.” Throughout, we weigh our own choices: how we would respond to professional betrayal, how we shape our own environment, whether the comforting hug of a city suits us or whether we need the expansive air of the country to find home. We at One Story are thrilled to present the creation and subsequent end of a new world. To find out more about “World’s End”—including thoughts on the real World’s End and why the architect goes unnamed—please check out our Q & A with the author.