Jim Tomlinson's Online Writing Journal

Jim Tomlinson

a writer's journal

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Galley proof pages for my short story collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, came a few days early. I've spent the last three days with them. Except for adding a rare missing comma or space between words or correcting a grammar bobble, the pages are pristine. The people at University of Iowa Press and the freelance copy editor did a great job. This is the first time I've read the collection straight through, read every word of every story in sequence. Is it immodest to say that I'm pleased with it? I truly am.

What surprised me most was that the two or three stories that I worried about most seem to hold up very well. The collection, as a whole, seems a bit darker than I'd thought, though, showing less humor and fewer glimmers of hope than I'd thought were there. At the same time, there seems to be a cumulative effect, a depth to the collection, a resonance of darker tones that makes several stories in the book work even better than they do as stand-alones.

The Iowa Press people also sent the cover design. There's an art term for paintings, etc. that seem to extend outside the frame. At the moment that term escapes me. But the cover of TK,TLB has a bit of that, a worn, stained look to some cover elements. The casual book browser will look twice to see what's there. I like it. And now the new website layout can go forward. Look for a format change here in coming weeks.

Back to the top

Sunday, April 9, 2006

Last Thursday I drove over to Bowling Green, KY, for the 2006 Kentucky Writers Conference. Novelist Kirby Gann gave a session on "The Role of the Editor." Gann is the fiction editor for Sarabande Books. He's actively involved in both the acquisition and the editing of short fiction collections for the imprint. He went through the process from manuscript arriving to it becoming a book. At one point, Gann mentioned the relative sales success of his two novels. The second sold considerably, and he ascribed much of the difference to the internet. I'm unclear whether he means his website, which is well done, or if there are other aspects of his internet presence that may have made the difference. I've e-mailed the question to him, hoping he'll shed more light on that.

I'd hoped to attend a session by Keith Runyon of the Louisville Courier-Journal, the topic "Getting Your Book Reviewed." Unfortunately, Runyon cancelled, and there was no replacement speaker. I sat in on sessions by poet Kathleen Driskell and biographer Allana Nash, primarily to see how they ran things, to steal some approaches. Next April I'm scheduled to do a mini-workshop on writing competitions and awards, how to improve your chances...something along those lines. So I went to school on Gann, Driskell and Nash.

On Friday and Saturday I attended the Harriette Simpson Arnow Conference in Somerset. Several people I know from the Hindman Appalachian Writers Workshop were there, along with Bob Sloan and Frank X. Walker. The keynote address was delivered by Sena Jeter Naslund. I got to meet her afterward. Her new book about Marie Antoinette will be published in October, and she graciously remarked that maybe we'd be reading together sometime later this year. Just the suggestion was wonderfully validating.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Publication of "First Husband, First Wife" by Five Points has slipped to their September issue. While I'm eager to see it in print, the change should work well, since TK,TLB's publication date is October 1. The same story will appear in a 'best of' anthology, Tartts 2, in October, all of which will help get notice for the short story collection.

"The Accomplished Son" has found a home at The Potomac Review. It's slated to see print in the fall, too, great timing for the book. I like the idea of this particular story landing close to Washington, D.C. Like it a lot.

Work on the novel is slow but steady. Everything about it feels quite fragile still. So I can't/won't say much about it, not until it's got better bones and is sturdy enough to stand alone.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Several things are almost happening...but not quite yet. An anthology taking a story, a gig as judge for a short fiction award, another story from TK,TLB placed in a literary journal, all things seemingly imminent. One event is almost certain: galleys are coming in three weeks, and they'll merit some serious attention.

I'll be reading on April 22, Kentucky Writer's Day, at Penn's Store in Gravel Switch, KY., along with House Writers Steve Lyon and Barbara Fischer, plus another dozen writers, give or take. Should be a fun day, a chance to try reading something new in public. Here's hoping the weather cooperates. I hear it was brutal last year.

The novel continues to accumulate pages at a frustratingly slow pace, this not for lack of effort. But it is giving way grudgingly. Pages do accumulate.

Back to the top

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Author Jill McCorkle sent along a great cover quote this week for TK,TLB. Not only is she a wonderful writer. She is also an enormously generous human being. Did I mention that I'm a huge fan?

In the current issue of Poets and Writers Magazine, Merrill Feitell writes about "Writing Lessons at 826NYC," what she learned from conducting that second-graders' Storytelling and Bookmaking Workshop, lessons about fearlessness when faced with a blank page, about the exuberant rush or creativity and the instinctive storytelling sense that is already evident in a group of excited seven-year-olds. They write and illustrate a story in two hours. They don't evaluate every idea, instead working from instinct. There is no writers block, no "choking" from thinking too much. In the end, Feitell says she wishes she could tap into more of what she witnessed in that classroom in her own writing--"how to create an environment where there's no time for second-guessing, where the archetypes of storytelling are given room to surface, where I can recognize the stories I'd like to tell and tell them with joy and without hesitation." I'd like some of that, too.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Good news arrived today in one of my S.A.S.E! R.T. Smith editor at Shenandoah, The Washington and Lee University Review, is taking my latest story, "Nothing Like an Ocean." No indication yet of which issue it will appear in. It's a wonderful literary magazine, though, and I'll be quite proud to see my work in its pages, whenever it may be.

Work on the novel has been the halting kind so far. Not sure why, but I'm having trouble submerging myself in the writing and the story. I'm sticking with it, keeping the laptop powered up, the file open, keeping faith that it (and I?) will catch fire again. Maybe this afternoon, I'm thinking. Or maybe tomorrow.

Back to the top

Friday, February 17, 2006

Back at work on the novel again, determined to make it work. Now that the copy-edited manuscript for Things Kept, Things Left Behind is out of my hands and cover blurbs seem to be set, it's time to get back to a focus on writing.

Why is a novel so different from a short story? William Trevor is quoted as saying that short fiction is "the art of the glimpse; it deals in echoes and reverberations; craftily it withholds information. Novels tell all. Short stories tell as little as they dare." The authors of Making Literature Matter, An Anthology for Readers and Writers, compare short fiction to poetry, in that both rely on compression. The novel, on the other hand, is characterized by its expansiveness. I take that to refer not only to description but also to plot, to range of characters, and to time. A short story may reflect a character's life, but the story's essence is delivered in an instant. (Jill McCorkle's marvelous "Intervention," for example.) The novel spreads itself over many hours and days of reading, often many years of story time. It ebbs and flows in gradual ways. Its effect on the reader is cumulative.

Which is to say that some of the skills one develops writing short stories don't necessarily translate to writing novels. I have a bit of relearning to do.

Saturday, February 4, 2006

An idea arrived about a way to tie short stories together in a collection that would give the story grouping a sense of wholeness and completeness, make it seem less of a hodgepodge, much as story-linking does. But it's not that. Started the first such story, the first of what will likely be ten. The plan is to work on them during lulls in writing the novel.

I'm hearing more radio with spoken word programming and podcasts of written work. How I wish I read well and had a good voice for spoken word stuff. It seems that it's becoming a bigger part of writing and presenting your work, and those who do it well have a decided advantage. At Sewanee last summer and at the Hindman Workshop, so many writers read so well. It's something I need to work on. I'll never be good at it, but with work, maybe not too inept.

Back to the top

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

So I did get back to writing on the novel...for maybe two hours. It is so very hard to split time between writing and the business stuff. I'm hoping to get the business stuff off my plate for a while.

The title for the collection will be: Things Kept, Things Left Behind. After some discussion, we came to that. It's a mouth full (and maybe a cover full). Still, it seems to fit thematically. The copyeditor has the manuscript and has started making her blue marks. She says I'll have it here by Valentines Day. The editor and I have decided who we'll ask for cover quotes and that process is underway. And I'm lining up possible reviewers, listing places for review copies to be sent, etc. Lots of nitty detail work going on here and in Iowa. And all of it eats up time. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'm not complaining one bit.

At some point in the spring, this journal and website will get a new look, a real improvement artistically and functionally. I did this one myself, a reasonably good amateur's effort. The new one, which will integrate information about TK,TLB, will be a Gin Petty design. We're waiting until I've got a book cover design to finalize the website and pick matching colors. So if you show up sometime this spring and think you've made a wrong cyber-turn, know that it's likely you didn't.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

It's been a hectic week with e-mails back and forth with the publisher about title of the book, who they want for cover quotes, cover art ideas, acknowledgments, biographical bits and a brief answer to "What's this book about?" for the marketing people. I didn't get any new writing done, and I'm really itching to get back to the novel now. Today. Definitely.

Back to the top

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Last Friday the director of the University of Iowa Press phoned to tell me that I'd won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award, that they would be publishing my short story collection in fall of this year. Final round was judged by George Saunders. I can't imagine a better situation, a better place for my book to land. They've been publishing winners of the competition since the late 1960's, and the press keeps books in print for decades. Today I finally received written confirmation. I'm completely thrilled and enormously grateful to the many people who've been helpful and supportive of my writing.

Back to the top

Journal Archives

What's new on this site?

- Blogs

Laila Lalami (Moorishgirl)

Kirsten Menger-Anderson

- Writers Websites

West Coast Literary Doings

- Of Interest

Backstory

Emerging Writers Network

Five Star Literary Stories

Freight Stories

Ginosko Literary Journal

University of Iowa Press

Writers Digest

Journal Archives

home | the books | site search | email

Last updated 04/22/2010

Jim Tomlinson has been awarded an Al Smith Fellowship in recognition of artistic excellence for professional artists in Kentucky through the Kentucky Arts council, a state agency in the Commerce Cabinet, supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

For website problems email: webmaster@jim-tomlinson.com