the astoria house

riverhouse

cannon beach, oregon

fall creek, oregon

tin house people dancing w/hula-hoops...

in which hellkitten goes to writing camp

welcome to hellkitten's temporary resucitation caused mainly by a need to get away from all that serious writing i'm supposed to be doing & the endless frustration arising from using substandard web editing programs that's leaving the website in a pathetic state of disrepair [www.hellkitten.com]...prefacing disclaimer - while you can email me your comments all you want, it's doubtful i'll pay them any mind unless you know me well enough to know my middle name or you've actually written something i didn't throw against the wall in complete disgust or at least in a sad 21st century attempt to emulate that icon of intelligent womanhood, miss dorothy parker...so here goes

july: this month i go to my almost alma mater, Reed College for Tin House 2005, spend a little too much time in the woods of Oregon, discover a new beer and rediscover the genius of denis johnson (and his stylin' hawaiian shirts), not to mention dorothy allison (as good a breakfast companion as she is a writer), chris offutt (great teacher, nice shirts!), francine prose, nick flynn (dancing fool and hula hooper extraordinaire), d.a. powell (the nicest Real Poet I've met yet), aimee bender & more...wherein I also learn more about writing in one week of offutt workshops than possibly all of the fiction workshops i've suffered through over the course of the last two decades...this followed by a visit the Family Home where i see that "the new people are keeping it up pretty good", meet cousins i didn't know i had, resist attempts at conversion by a rock climbing born again xian teen from northern B.C. (damn those canadians anyway), and return to a big fat stack of rejection letters, the biggest roaches you've ever seen ("even bigger than texas!"), and the day job...rounding out july deep in the summer hell of another nyc heatwave/terror scare, endless CSI reruns, no money to do all that laundry, no Big Plan for the Future and too many damn good books to read...some of the recent and not so recent reads will as usual be reviewed here eventually along with whatever else crosses my immediate horizon - lately it's backpacker magazine (like porn for the desk slave), all those pesky documentaries you know you're supposed to watch but really would rather watch CSI like the rest of the country, and of course don't forget everything you never wanted to know about all the places to drink, eat and listen to music in nyc & probably some leftover stuff from the old hellkitten.com back around the turn of the 21st century before what's-her-name met some guy on the internet with a car and a job and moved to long island to sell underwear for a living...

quotes of the moment:
"the longer I listen to people, the less I know." - dorothy allison
"if everything lives happily ever after, make it worse." - chris offutt
"you can't just barf on a page & call it a poem - it's important to have some sort of container there." - d.a. powell

..."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...

"If everything lives happily ever after, make it worse..."

THURSDAY July 14th...those TREES those beautiful TREES followed by Mr. Offutt discussing "first person retrospective vs. first person non-retrospective (Huck Finn)", Johnathan Lethem & "Fig Leaf Man" [lived in a nudist colony, super power: could take people's clothes off]; "engage through disengage"; "first paragraph - narrator, gender, time, tone, style, place, situation"...lunch was followed by "Performing Surgery w/out Anesthesia: Revising Fiction" with Offutt a/k/a "the great reviser". Notes: "polishing vs. revision"; #1 First Draft #2 Revision #3 Polishing #4 Editing..."cruel & ruthless objectivity" "revision: to see again"; then he drew the line on the blackboard again illustrating the "start near the end" premise "cut the beginning 1-4 pages" "cut the last page/ending" "see what the story is that developed on its own - rather than what you're forcing it into..." "make yourself vulnerable on the first page" "there is no such thing as the reader during the writing process" "FIRST DRAFT: structure, POV, plot, flashback, exposition, put in how Chris would feel NOT character - make sure everything serves the STORY not the WRITER..." 2ND LEVEL of revision: "consistency of tone, style, language...morse code - vary sentence structure..." POLISHING: "verbs, repetitive words, 2 similes MAX per short paragraph...ADVERBS - look a them carefully...switch scenes around & combine characters..." "Two's company, three's a short story..." "linear or circular - which? why? does it serve the piece?" limit exposition; "start near the end" "your first character should be your protagonist""dialogue: listen to other people - get out of the way & let them talk.." "avoid stage direction, avoid telling how the characters feel"..."DO NOT REVISE UNTIL YOU HAVE A DRAFT"...at this point, Offutt deferred to Denis Johnson (who was in the audience) who gave the somewhat contradictory advice, "start in the middle" & mentioned that he often revises a piece "300 times"..finally Offutt's quote of the day, "If everything lives happily ever after, make it worse..." 3pm Crafting Character: Who are these people Inhabiting Our Fiction?" with Dorothy Allison, Denis Johnson, and Ron Carlson notes: "the longer I listen to people, the less I know" (D.A.); "characters grow from a small piece of curiousity" (D.A.); "there's so little work in fiction, everyone's always sitting around drinking" (R.C. or D.J.?); in re: 'character sketches': "Go slowly, go in every door" (R.C.); "Write as large as you can reading through until you find what the story really is & get rid of the rest" (D.A.)...fangeek moment - handing D.J. a newly purchased copy (i think this makes about 8 or 9 times i've bought this book now) of "The Name of the World" and blathering on about how I keep buying this book and forcing it on people & asking him to sign it with a pen that was sadly, runnning out of ink...4:30 cocktail hour; 5:30 Tin House Editors reading with CJ Evans (more of that tear the heart out and stomp on it poetry) and Lee Montgomery who read from a longer piece that will likely be stuck in my brain for a very long time (this is a good thing BTW)...time for PB&J (having by now given up on the limp salad bar) & more beer...8pm Matthea Harvey read some of her wonderfully crafted poetry ('Roboboy') and Charles D'Ambrosio read from a longer piece (novel?) I took no notes (outside, dark, swatting at bugs) but it also was well crafted and managed to illicit some degree of emotional resonance despite my now near-numb brain (no...not from the beer...from all the mental exercise...)..on to student readings, another beer and "home" to my cell & another night falling asleep to dean martin, billy holliday, and gillian welch (will i EVER get sick of "I'll fly away"?)...

"stories happen when civil discourse breaks down"

day ? weds. july 13 (at least i know what day it is...) same routine in the early am and at breakfast i'm joined by dorothy allison & d.a. powell simply because we eat at the same time, like quiet in the morning & not through any particular charisma on my part, believe me...still, makes for great morning conversation. today's offutt workshop notes: "cultural references lock things in to a time & place"; in the beginning of your story, "make it clear who the protagonist is"...here we also received our first instance of the offutt blackboard illustration of novel vs. short story & the idea that it's important in the short story form to "start near the end"...other notes, "the strength of the novel is the strength of the antagonist", and perhaps the quote of the day, "many people start with poetry & the blessed among us stay there"...perhaps mr. offutt has never been required to write a sestina (as painful an exercise as banging one's head against the literal brick wall)...onwards...2pm "the great figure: figurative language in poetry" with my new favorite, d.a. powell. "in this seminar, we'll look at some of the myriad devices beyond metaphor and simile that complicate and sustain the relationship between poem & reader"...if you can make sense of my notes on this seminar, i'll buy you a beer...however, it was uplifting, much needed brain exercise and some of the decipherable quotes include: "from simile to the inarticulate"; "what happens to meaning when it's interupted"; "sentences justify wars, they strangle our forests"; wallace stevens: "to kneel under the weight of the real, dwelling in the doubt/to go out with the sun like a laugh/it's tough trying to breath for the world"...the only problem with a seminar taught by d.a. powell is that i got so caught up in his VOICE, his ability to read poetry, recite eliot et al, that i took lousy notes...NEXT...Charles D'Ambrosio and "Writing Dialogue: Fundamentals of Speech in Fiction" wherein he refers to Berwitz's book (title?) and varied other sources some notes: "let 'no' be implied - no is a passive response..."; "stories happen when civil discourse breaks down"...every character exists inside a rhythm [ref. cormac m & cities of the plain]...Eudora Welty, "reveal what he said, what he thought he said, what he left unsaid...". 4:30 cocktail hour and 5:30 Elissa Schappell reading - not only does she dress fabulously but she writes fabulously. Brenda Shaughnessy was next (poetry editor at Tin House) and read, "A Poet's Poem", "I'm Over the Moon", "3 summers mark only 2 years", "the color of snow" [my favorite out of these] and "a brown age"...more limp lettuce & tofu, a PB&J, and 8pm reading with Whitney Otto, who read selections from her column in the Oregonian & a piece called "If you knew jesus like i knew jesus" and Ron Carlson who read: a recommendation letter (hilarious!), a 'style guide', and a new piece of fiction - all illustrating his comic genius. on to beer, student readings and a good chunk of time sitting outside in a dark corner FINALLY catching up on some writing - most of which oddly enough came out in rhyme and is therefore completely unusable but at least i felt better...

outlaws occupy an essential role in our culture & we ignore them at our peril...

TUESDAY another early morning work/writing/breakfast/walk in the woods & then...suffering through an hour or so of having my by now ready for the shredder manuscript pages. after which, i went to the bookstore, bought some books, earrings, diet coke and chocolate & decided again that i should stick to "the basics" (even though most trad. writing makes me yawn) and avoid the experimental & that i probably actually have no talent & writing is something i'm probably not cut out for...then i hung out in the woods for a while & felt better...that & a good dose of Howlin' Wolf back in my room...2pm seminar Nick Flynn "Outlaws in Art from Plato to Dorothy Allison"...Flynn started this one off with some great f**king music and then moved into a sweeping overview of outcasts in literature and culture (?)...4 stages of society's treatment of outcasts being #1 banishment (mythical/biblical) #2 prison (away w/in the community) #3 prison of self control (Foucault's argument) and #4 the prison of the invisible in which we make people invisible (i.e. homeless, migrant workers, etc.). ref. Thomas Pynchon quote: "Outcasts occupy an essential role in our culture - they embody the ills of society & we ignore them at our peril". READINGS: Kevin Canty "Tokyo My Love" featuring Mothra (one of my all time favorite Jap. monsters) and "Red Dress" which was stunning. Dorothy Allison followed with a reading from her new novel & as per usual, ripped out my heart and tore it into little tiny pieces. She's nothing short of brilliant and her delivery does full justice to her work. After that, had some beer, attempted to socialize & went off to my room to lull myself to sleep with some Howlin' Wolf & John Lee Hooker...

if there's no wind, row...

Day 3 (is it monday?) another 5am writing session, quick shower while I can still get one & then a reread of workshop material. breakfast was fruit and oatmeal again then another long walk in the woods before the 10am start to the workshop. In today's workshop we learned many things other than the fact that mr. offutt has great taste in shirts...some highlights: "run one experiment at a time" [this was the first sign that i should probably just put that manuscript in the shredder for real this time], "the writer is in service to the story" (and not the other way around), "tension results when the writer & reader know more than the character...when the writer and character no more than the reader" (it's not a good thing)..."dialogue can't just tell the story - it needs to also illustrate character..." it's important not to "squander action" by putting it in dialogue/flashback/etc. watch out for words like "looked, glanced, watched"...and then it was time for lunch followed by Matthea Harvey's seminar "the mercurial world of the mind: inventing new realities" during which I remembered it was indeed monday & i had "real" work to do...this was then followed by 3pm "planting the seed: growing good ideas in fiction" with francine prose, whitney otto & kevin canty, moderated by rob spillman. francine prose was brilliant & entertaining...some quotes from my notes:Prose: [every time I begin a novel I think] "you know, this is 'War & Peace'...then you get to a point when you have to read what you've written and that's when the trouble begins..." Whitney Otto: "I'm sorry, I have no advice for you. You're on your own - in the fog..." and Kevin Canty: "shut the editor up for a while - shut up that voice that says it sucks..." and Canty on process: "building a bridge & hoping there's land on the other side..."; and most importantly, Prose: "half the battle is showing up every day - 'if there's no wind, row'..." & finally, the Faulkner quote: "a good book is worth any dead grandmother...". 4:30 cocktail hour during which I started my weeklong habit of having a beer (or 2) in the sun while doing some work and having a conversation or four & watching aimee bender, nick flynn et al play tag on the lawn (scaring the baroque music society)...dinner and it's requisite plate of limp greens, tofu and whatever else I could scrounge was followed by one of those readings that left me equally devastated and inspired [oh shutup...] featuring two of my all time favorites - Chris Offutt and Nick Flynn. Offut read a compelling short story, "I Am Legion", from a collection he's working on (? sorry - can't read my notes...) and Flynn read from "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City" - a memoir which I think should be required reading - at least for anyone who's ever had too many late nights, bottle in hand or lived with someone prone to such nights/days/years...this reading was done outside at the much fabled ampitheatre, which while beautiful, features bugs, poor acoustics, REALLY uncomfortable seats, and was generally too dark to take notes & I spent half the reading trying to keep my eyes off the TREES and on the writers...

tin house - day 2 trees, hula-hoops & more

Day 2 - Sunday July 10th. woke at 5am, didn't know where the hell I was for a minute & noted the resemblance of the dorm room to those "places" where they put difficult women (a good description of one of these features prominently in my memory of the "Bell Jar")...gave up on sleeping, did some work for an hour or so and then got ready to go to the gym only to be told by a neighbor that the gym would not be open today. This is right up there with the "no Diet Coke" (those there's some in the bookstore I've been told - which of course, isn't open). Gym visit impossible, I showered (BTW - we have ONE shower and TWO toilet stalls for the ENTIRE floor)...and did some more work.Then headed out to try to find some more WATER (there's no water anywhere to be had other than the tap water...which tastes like the green, green pond...)...Breakfast had been moved from 7:30 until "maybe 8 or 8:30?"...We were told later by an editor that the "kitchen staff was confused". Back to do more work & then took a long walk on some trails through Reed Canyon - enjoying the light rain, the 64 degree temps and the REALLY REALLY BIG trees everywhere. One thing that can do in Oregon is make REALLY REALLY BIG trees. Breakfast...on offer were lots were - bacon, eggs, or french toast. I had 3 kinds of fruit and some instant oatmeal...Apparently, all this talk of catering to vegans was a big lie. Ahem. I refilled my water bottles (realizing that there may not be any more water anywhere the rest of the day) and went off for another walk...10am our workshop started and it lasted until nearly 1pm. More on that later, but let's just say, Chris Offutt is a phenomenal teacher. Then it was on to lunch with the workshop peeps & other new friends from the day before. (12:30-1:30 lunch)...2-3 Panel with the Tin House editors "Getting Into Print" followed by 3-4pm panel "The Agent Game" 4:30 "cocktail hour" (no more open bar) and 6-7 dinner...there's apparently some attempt to get us all to play with hula-hoops. Which is why I'm not in here (Computer Lab) writing this, since of course, dial up won't work from my cell...I mean "dorm room". in a combination military barracks and jail. And now... off to a reading with DA Powell & Aimee Bender. And a Reception and Student Readings and more work. [note: DA Powell broke my heart & Aimee Bender made me laugh - more in detail later...]

writing camp Pt. 1 herding cats, death by veggie burger & some Francine Prose

Saturday July 9th 4:30am alarm goes off car service LEANS on buzzer and I'm already wondering what the f**k I was thinking going to some god d**n "writer's workshop" in portland, oregon. I grab backpack, laptop, and two pieces luggage and drag everything down the five narrow flights of stairs from my hellish little apartment to the street. relatively painless flight on Continental (which is looking more & more like TWA)...Arrived at PDX wayyy to early to check in to REED so I found my luggage, found a chair and checked my email, etc. for a while. Apparently, it's considered "okay" in the PNW to ask to borrow someone's laptop to check one's email...at least I had not one but TWO people come up and ask me this. Um. sorry...NO. Question: why is the walk to the Taxi Stand at PDX so damn far??? Got a nice cab (same price as the shuttle and after getting up at 4:30, no way was I doing public transportation)...Apparently, REED is much further from the airport than the fine folks here told me. Still, got here in one piece but to no signs anywhere telling me where I could check in. Eventually, after dragging my bags over half the campus, I found someone to help me (CJ & Lee from Tinhouse). CJ gave me a key to my "dorm" and lots of other helpful stuff. The buildings are beautiful here, and it's a beautiful GREEN campus. The rooms however, leave much to be desired. Though they're not quite as rundown as the "suite" my Dad & I stayed in at Yale, my single is the size of my bedroom in NYC. I swapped bedding with another empty room - since mine had holes (eek) and proceeded to take a nap. Much later, on to the formal registration where I signed away my first born child to pay the rest of the registration fees, got a free tote bag (who uses tote bags??), and a t-shirt with a great Denis Johnson quote but no copy of Tin House Magazine (? how about skip the tote bag and give us the magazine?)...The workshop started officially at 4pm with a "Welcome" given by Rob Spillman [Ed. of said magazine)...being somewhat beyond jetlagged, all I remembered was that we should not swim in the pond (see photo above) and "what happens at Tin House, stays at Tin House"...Then on to the first meeting of our workshops. This was when we were all told that we needed to know the room numbers given in our info packets and a great deal of concerned shuffling took place...hosting a writer's workshop is somewhat akin to herding cats apparently. Finally, someone had the very genius idea of actually calling out numbers and names of workshop leaders & we all finally knew where we were going. Then we discovered that all the classrooms were locked. And all of us in Offutt's workshop were told that he wasn't here yet...So CJ (again being Mr. Helpful) had us all go outside and he read off a 2 page email with all the "rules" for the workshop. eek. This had many of us in a grand panic as it involved copious amounts of work to be done when we were all just itching to run over to the soon to be starting OPEN BAR...CJ, being just as eager to get there, dismissed the meeting and we all headed to the small by pseudo-Ivy League standards, Union building where most of us proceeded to drink at least one more drink than jetlag advised. After the schmoozefest, at which I made some new friends & discovered that one of my fellow workshop students isn't the Alex Smith I know, but does live a mere 6 blocks away from me, it was time for...Dinner and we were all excited at the thought that we'd be sitting outside at these really COOL tables having whatever was grilling on the massive BBQ grills at the end of the lawn. Well...I wasn't all that excited about the BBQ part but the tables were pretty...Instead, we were all shuttled into the REED Cafeteria. Whoo. The food on offer was either the hot & greasy Burger Bar (where you can get 3 kinds of veggie burgers - somewhat a moot point since they were throwing them on the grill next to the beef & bacon), and a sad looking salad bar. I went for a garden burger (which I'd come to regret later) and variations of greens & some sad looking Tofu. Big signs everywhere told us we were only allowed ONE ENTREE, ONE SALAD, ONE BEVERAGE and FRUIT or ONE DESERT. There was no fruit. There was no Diet Coke. There is in fact, no Diet Coke anywhere on this campus. Next we all headed to part of the reason we came here in the first place - the nightly reading. Saturday's guest was none other than "Household Saints" author Francine Prose. As usual with her work, the piece she read was equal parts insightful, emotionally wrenching and very brutally funny. After Prose's reading, Elissa Schappell (Tin House editor) interviewed her & much hilarity ensued. Prose also made some very insightful comments about fiction writing, the difficulties of translation and why she likes 19th Century Russian Lit so much. I did my best to follow along since by now it was well past my bedtime. The reading/Q&A was followed by a signing and "reception" (more drinks) but I headed back to my cell and did my best to get some sleep.