Writerly events

Some literary events that I will have the pleasure of going to in the next month:

• First time novelists Brunonia Barry (The Lace Reader), Amy MacKinnon (Tethered) and Matthew Quick (The Silver Linings Playbook) discuss their paths to publication. On Sept. 2
• Four stories on Sept. 8, where 4 writers read on a given theme.This events' theme is friends and strangers.
  
• Billy Collins reading on Sept. 25 at the Brookline Booksmith.

Let me know if you'd like to join me! I have "dates" for each event, but the more the merrier. :)

Though I lament the end of summer as much as the next New Englander, September sure does mean the beginning of the lit scene here in Boston.

My Beef with Jhumpa

I went to see Jhumpa Lahiri read last night at the Coolidge Corner moving theater. She read from her new collection of stories, and then took questions. She seemed very reserved and nervous--clearly being in the spotlight isn't something she enjoys. But she answered the questions honestly and sincerely, and was even occassionally funny.

So what's my beef? I asked a question about what drew her back to short stories (her first book was stories, then she wrote a novel, and her new book is stories). She said a lot that I agreed with: that she hates how the literary world and readers look down upon stories as something less than novels, and how wonderful short stories can be both to write and to read.

But then she went on to say that she didn't think that reading or writing a short story was very different from reading or writing a novel. Huh? I would argue that they are totally different genres. Yes, you need many of the same elements in both, but there's only so much you can fit in a story. That's part of what I love about the best of them--they are jam packed just to the limits of how much emotion and change a reader can absorb a character going through in the space of 20 pages.

A novel, on the other hand, has layers and layers of things going on, and usually more characters jumping in and out of the spotlight. As a writer, I think the challenge of working on a novel would be to keep all those balls in the air and, when you set some down, to remember where you put them so you can go back to them when needed. And the challenge of writing a story is getting across, in a short amount of space, a change in your character that is both meaningful and realistic. That challenge exists for the novel writing, too, but she has much more room to move in and breath in.

As a reader, I find reading a short story to be a more powerful experience. I usually get a whole story in one sitting, and then have to absorb the entirety of it. Novel reading is more leisurely in that the whole emotional punch of the story is unwound throughout hundreds of pages (and tens of reading sessions). I love both experiences--the intensity of the short story and being mid-novel and being compelled to get back to the book so I can see what happens.

This is coming from someone who has only written stories. So what do I know? If you've written in both genres, let me know your thoughts! And if you read both genres, please comment to.

2 Readings, 2 days

Before I left for vacation, I basically just sorted everything into two mental piles: things that needed to be done before I left, and things for later. Then I got back and realized that "later" was here.

So, in that spirit of completely ignoring things coming in the future, I managed to sign myself up for my first and second public reading back to back. On Tuesday, I read a chunk of a short story to a thesis forum at Harvard, and then last night I read another chunk of that same story at a New and Emerging Writers series (see pics here).

I've always hated the idea of reading aloud. I talk fast in general, and even faster when I'm nervous, so I've done very poorly on presentations in the past. I took a speaking class in college, which helped a bit, but not enough to stick with me in the years since graduating.

But these times I managed to do well! People said I didn't speed read, and had decent inflection. The best part was that I didn't hate being up there. I was nervous, but not sweating-through-my-shirt nervous, like I've been in the past. I do need to work on staying up there for more than 7 minutes though. Both times I cut my reading way short because it seemed I had been up there forever when in reality it was less than 10 minutes...

A shout out to Fat Charlatan, who lovingly accompanied me to the first reading as my moral supporter (and read beautifully at the 2nd). And to Poetmom and BostonErin who organized the NEWS reading as a way to get new writers' voices out in the community.