Cocktail Hour
Bad Advice Wednesday: A Rose by Any Other Name Would be Distracting
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 8 comments
Years ago, I inherited a long distance student from Bill. It must have been before the Internet’s full societal takeover because I received a copy of the student’s novel-in-progress in the mail, complete with Bill’s wise commentary scrawled in the margins. It was quite a good novel, actually – a funny and engaging mystery – but the student had given his narrator a woman’s name. It figured heavily into the story, all the various problems and misunderstandings caused by this name, along with a lengthy explanation of why his mother had given it to him. Next to this Bill wrote something like, “But we already know why –it’s because the author wanted to give him a funny name.”
I used to name my characters the same way you would name children. I chose names I thought were beautiful, names I thought were cool, names I thought were unique. “Why do your characters always have such weird names?” David (Dave) asked me, early in our relationship. I can’t remember what I said, though I’m sure it was defensive. And then I probably went through whatever story he’d just read and changed all the names – much to its benefit.
Certainly in life people have differing opinions on the benefits of odd or unisex names. Personally I love a girl with a name that could belong to a man. Growing up, one of my coolest, wittiest, and most beautiful friends was a girl named Steuart, a detail which in my eyes only made her cooler. But what works in life can create obstacles in writing, and I work hard to break my students of their love for androgynous names. “Mary” might not be nearly as current as “Cameron,” but it elegantly, seamlessly, and invisibly bestows upon the reader a piece of vital information. And while I’m also a fan of unusual names, the truth is they’re authorial intrusions, particularly when accompanied by an involved explanation as to how this whacky name came to be. Continue reading →
Great Pick-Up Lines
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
comments: 8 comments
Of course I’m interested in opening lines. Mine come first as I write maybe about half the time. Many come from later paragraphs in an early draft–I’m a big cutter of early pages. The rest get written in the revision, occasionally, as with Life Among Giants, are among the very last words added. Sometimes when starting new work I go through my bookshelves randomly and read first lines, first paragraphs. Some writers–some books I should say–start with a place. Many (especially contemporary) with character. More and more, in an impatient age, writers start with plot. The old-timers started with voice and language, often philosophy, knowing we had nothing better to do than listen. The project this morning is to close my eyes and randomly pick seven titles from the fiction section of my over-packed shelves, with the rule that I have to use whatever books come into my hands. Anything I violently don’t want to use for this post must go to the thrift shop (I now have a thrift-shop box on the porch–and like Samuel Pepys, vow that one book must go out for every book that comes in!). As it happens, no thrift-shop books emerged (I’ve been assiduously culling), far from it. As it happens, some of the books are collections of stories, so the line you’ll hear is from a story rather than a novel, very different game. Continue reading →
Coming Downton Deaths
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 5 comments
WHY STOP WITH MATTHEW? A MORBID PREVIEW….
A RABID ISIS TURNS ON LORD G.
Where the Frack is Vernal, Utah?
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 1 comment
This article of mine just came out in OnEarth magazine:
The drivers of the trucks are here for the same reason I am: the boom in drilling for oil and natural gas. The vast, dry lands south of Vernal hold about half of the state’s active rigs and present a veritable smorgasbord of opportunities for energy extraction: shale aplenty, fracking for both oil and natural gas, and even the state’s very own poised-to-open tar sands. Uintah County has been Utah’s main oil producer for more than 70 years. As far back as 1918, National Geographic extolled the area’s potential: “Campers and hunters in building fires against pieces of the rock had been surprised to find that they ignited, that they contain oil.” In other words, what is happening here is no nouveau drilling dalliance, no young sweetheart in first flush, freshly wooed, like the Bakken Field in North Dakota, but an on-again, off-again affair that has been going on for decades.
Bad Advice Wednesday: The Art of Schmoozing (Just in Time for AWP)
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
comments: 12 comments
Boston or Bust (AWP starts March 7, Grub Street follows)
A few years ago, some fellow writers in a workshop admitted to sheer terror at the thought of attending a big writing conference. They were terrible schmoozers. They worried about saying the wrong thing to a big-name author or agent. They fretted about wasting their money because they would leave the conference with no contacts in hand. Once again, theirs would be a dream deferred. Continue reading →
News Release: Return to New York
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 4 comments
Regular readers of Bill and Dave’s know most of what is contained in the News Release below. The new twist is that Orrin Pilkey and I are now heading back to New York City, by way of the Outer Banks and Jersey Shore, following the trail of Sandy. Outside Magazine has asked me to write a feature for the anniversary of the storm, and we will be stopping at affected areas and talking to coastal experts along the way. We leave Raleigh-Durham Monday February 25th and plan to reach NYC by the next Friday, the 1st of March.
Here’s the press release for our trip. Please spread it around this here World Wide Web….
News Release:
In 2009 writer David Gessner and coastal geologist and Duke Emeritus Professor Orrin Pilkey travelled to New York City to pose a simple question: what would happen if a hurricane hit New York? They toured the city, with Pilkey pointing out how Battery Park would serve as a kind of sluiceway, inviting the waters of the Hudson toward Ground Zero, and how the city’s grided streets would serve the same function of tidal inlets on barrier islands, ushering the storm surge through the city, turning roads into rivers and subway stairs into waterfalls. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: A Walk on the Winter Beach
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 2 comments
Raucous Voices: Dave Talks to the Washington Post
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 2 comments
“For nature-writing enthusiasts, Gessner needs no introduction,” The Washington Post said recently. “His books and essays have in many ways redefined what it means to write about the natural world, coaxing the genre from a staid, sometimes wonky practice to one that is lively and often raucous.”
“Thanks, Washington Post,” I said back, overhearing. “That’s really nice of you.”
“No biggee. And you can just call me Post. Or Posty.”
“Okay, I’ll go with Post. ‘Posty’ is a little too cute for me.”
“I get it. But back to you. Where can people hear this raucous voice of yours?
“Funny you should ask. I have a couple of readings coming up and I promise they’ll be raucous. Or at least semi-raucous. The first one will be at the Half King in Chelsea in New York City on March 4 at 7pm. I’m heading up to New York with coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey. Orrin and visited the city three years ago and he predicted what would happen during a big storm, calling the flooding right down to the right subway stations. We’re going to travel up the coast to examine the Sandy damage.”
“So it’s kind of a ‘Return of the Prophet’ thing.”
“Exactly, Posty.”
“I thought you were going to go with just ‘Post.’”
“I don’t know. Posty suddenly felt right so I went with it.”
“Cool.” Continue reading →
Bad Advice Wednesday: Tommy Takes Over!
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 15 comments
I first knew Tommy Conlon as an Ultimate Frisbee player (see the guy holding the suitcase in the pic in my Ultimate Glory essay), and you may know him as Bill and Dave’s most frequent commenter (not to say stalker.) Today he doles out some bad advice….
I’m not a writer, but I write. Mostly emails and postcards, a lost art.* An occasional poem. My work, what I do for a modest living, involves problem-solving. Sometimes I get tired of solving other people’s problems and think I should just go home and solve some of my own. For free.
I work in the home repair industry, and if you knew how unindustriously I work, you’d find that statement either ironic, or laugh out loud funny, depending on your level of intimacy. All my work comes by word of mouth, which means I don’t look for problems, they come to me. Sometimes prospective clients will ask if I’m licensed, the same as someone might ask you if you’re published, and I’m fond of saying, “I’m not a real electrician, but I play one on T.V.” Some people find this oddly comforting and I know we’ll get along fine. On the phone, this line never works.
One day this week, I had a particularly unproductive, I mean un-industrious day. Around 5:30, a client I was waiting to meet at a home repair warehouse, cancelled. Because I have an intimate relationship with this client, I allowed my frustration to show. It wasn’t directed at her, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I was still making bad [work] choices, it was 5:30 and I still hadn’t shown up anywhere for work, aside from a one hour icemaker line repair – but the relationship suffered.
“Another useless day’s energy spent.”**
Getting Outside Saturday: The Tuesday Edition (Snowmageddon)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 2 comments
Run for your lives! Snow predicted!
