..."you can use whatever metaphors you want, people are gonna get it."

FRIDAY July 15th & our Leader is leaving us early...sadly...though i was truly looking forward to the highlight of seeing Chris Offutt interview Denis Johnson but there's only so much time you can suck from a writing man's life [in my journal i make reference to those nasty wide-mouthed parasites that live on more vital creatures - as in students/me included = parasites and vital creatures = "real" writers but i think by then i was feeling ready to get the f**k home or at least take a break from college life or maybe i should've spent more time the day before hiking in the woods...)...notes from workshop are mostly indecipherable but reference is made to chickens Louis Norden, James Salter, a badly done attempt to copy Offutt's manuscript diagram & the quote "Agents own things. Editors & writers are the renters of the world"...there's also a "pie chart of creating a character" 1/3 character 1/3 person 1/3 me and Fitzgerald, "start with a person end with a type, start with a type, end with nothing...". And then he returned our manuscripts & was out the door. LUNCH (PB&J) was followed by Aimee Bender: Plot This: Playing with Structure & Expectations" 4 pages of notes (eek!) "Plot is the footsteps in the snow left by the character"...a lengthy discussion of plot in fairy tale, a reading of Barthelme's "The School" & then a writing exercise (which normally would make me groan...but this was fun) we each were given a blank index on which we wrote one noun and one verb, tore it in half and passed them to different people. I ended up writing a story about "a tightrope walker who couldn't whistle". 3PM HEAVING BREASTS & TUMESCENT MANHOODS: Sex Writing: Kevin Canty, Ron Carlson, D.A. Powell & Elissa Schappell..."you can use whatever metaphors you want, people are gonna get it." D.A. Powell; "it's difficult to type with one hand" (same again); there was a lengthy discussion of the lack of erotic lit focusing on prenancy or maternal women (or something equally not of interest to me at this point in my life...) Dorothy Allison also mentioned the woman in Miller's "Sexus" who smokes a cigarette with her pussy. Personally, I'm a non-smoker though I do my Kiegels regularly as every woman should. ahem... The day rounded off with Denis Johnson reading from a longer work - a character named Cass in the Starlight Recovery Center on Idaho Ave. writing letters to family, the Pope, Satan - all poignant (there's gotta be a better word?) and purely classic Denis Johnson. quote: "what could be worse than a messenger of God"...the Q&A after the reading was done by Kevin Canty & was miked badly & my notes here descend into scrawl & lists of writers...KC mentioned that DJ once threatened to kill Chris Offutt on the phone, "I'm one of the few people trained to kill over the phone"...apparently the story refers to a conversation many years ago when DJ said, "If I see you I'll shoot you" & Offut's response was, "Where I come from people really do shoot each other"...which Johnson then refered to as, "Just another day in Offutt's life"...nothing else I wrote is legible beyond "damn dog!" which I assume is referring to the dog that was at every reading...then it was time for "the band", beer and lots ot silliness involving hula hoops and dancing to the oldies. I have photos & will post them as soon as I figure out how to bypass the limitations of this crappy web editor...