“…they are simply finger exercises, writing without knowing
that it is writing.” – Brian Kiteley from his contributors’ notes – The Best
American Short Stories 1988.
I believe that I may have mentioned that little nudges from
the universe appear when I need them the most.
Of course, they may be happening all the time without me picking up on
them…but then they wouldn’t be nudges…you know the whole tree in the forest
thing.
What I’m getting at, is that this story – rather, this
author came along at a time when I needed to read him – as have other stories
and authors during this project.
Kiteley is presently a Professor of English and Creative
Writing at the University of Denver. It
appears that he has 3 longer works of Fiction and two of Non-Fiction and is
included in Lit. mags and anthologies.
His non-fiction focuses on writing exercises and he has been
gracious enough to include some of those on his website.
I have written all of the above through clenched teeth
knowing that there is a decent chance that Kiteley has a google alert on his name
that will direct him here – and that’s fine I suppose.
I dig what this guy has to say on his website- Kiteley reproduces
the introduction to his book “The 3 A.M. Epiphany” – and in it, he mentions
Gass and his method for writing fiction also offering Madison Smartt Bell’s
feeling on the writing workshop.
I’ve been reading and listening to selections on Gass
recently and am slowly moving through The Art of Fiction by Gardner, (Kiteley
gives a nod to this book too) and now to
find this resource by Kiteley…it all seems to be lining up.
Lining up towards what?
Well, we’ll just have to see won’t we?
I plan on experimenting with some of Kiteley’s exercises. He said everything that I wanted to hear –and with
his appearance at this time in my life, I think I need to take the hint.
And now for some reflection.
In the contributors notes in the back of BASS 1988 Kiteley said
this about the development of his story:
“I was moving from Seattle to New York in 1982 with a rest
stop at my grandparents’ in Montreal. My
grandfather had a lifelong hobby of collecting beetles, and his locality
notebook lay on the workbench by the bed I tried to sleep on my first night
back on the East Coast. I stole four
entries from this locality notebook, writing them down in my own journal. They described where he caught batches of
beetles and when with the barest of relevant background information. Nine months later, in a girlfriend’s
depressing Murray Hill kitchen (bathtub at my elbow), I saw these entries and
decided to do an exercise with them.”
And this takes me back to what I consider my first exercise
in creative writing. My memory isn’t
allowing me to hold a firm date on the incident but for some reason I believe
that it occurred in the 2nd grade.
The 2nd grade seems almost impossible to me
because I can’t image that I would even be able to write after only learning to
read in the 1st grade.
Perhaps it was the 4th grade.
Our teacher gave us a magazine and told us to cut a picture
from that magazine, glue it to an index card and write a few short sentences,
developing those sentences into a story.
I picked out a picture of a small UFO toy and glued it to the bottom
left corner of the index card and wrote my few sentences.
Evidently, I did something right because I earned some praises
from my teacher and mother( mom’s approval is always important).
And I think of this exercise often.
So, I need to do more of this - more often.
Now.
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