Nonnie Augustine was a professional dancer with a B.F.A from The Juilliard School. She was a co-founder of The Albuquerque Dance Theatre and taught at the University of New Mexico. After an injury she became a special education teacher and taught in Florida and Maryland. In this, the third version of her adult life, Nonnie writes and is the poetry editor of The Linnet’s Wings.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer.

My first writing project as an adult was a novel! Yep. Out of the gate I ran with enthusiastic, but wildly unschooled prose. However, I was living in Maryland then and a journalist I knew told me about The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, just outside of D.C.  Ann McLaughlin taught my novel workshop with such a supportive voice and with such clarity that I was able to both throw away everything I’d written and start again without pause. I took several workshops at the Center, and my first poetry workshop there was taught by Anne Sheldon, who was also an outstanding teacher.

I’ve gone to the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Delray Beach these past two Januarys and I will attend again this year. The festivals have been intensive learning experiences for me and they are wonderful vacations to boot. Six days and nights of poetry–workshopping, craft talks, and readings given by top shelf poets. I’ve been in workshop groups led by Vijay Seshadri and David Kirby and this year I will be in the group led by Thomas Lux. Last year at the festival I had an invaluable manuscript conference with Ginger Murchison.

My brothers, Peter and Robert Knisel are my up close and personal mentors. Peter is my housemate and he reads everything first. Robert, who lives in Philadelphia, usually reads my blog or something I’ve emailed him after I’ve fiddled with whatever Peter has thought needed fiddling and we have frequent writing talks over the phone. I trust them completely.

One more thought in this long answer: all the people who have taught me or read my work in a peer group, or in a friend or family setting, have encouraged me in what I try to do–which is to communicate. For many years I did this through dance, with the help of fine teachers and colleagues, and here I am with a different form of expression. I’m grateful.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

Sometimes, if I’m in the middle of a poem or a story, I go back to the beginning of what I’ve written, and that will show me why I’ve gotten stuck in the mud. I’ve lost track of what I was trying to do. Or, I’ll let the whole thing go until I hear the click in my head that tells me I’m ready to get back to work. I don’t mean to give the impression that I don’t spend entire mornings taking a comma out, and putting it back in, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, because I do that, too. Then there are days when I have to accept that I’m an idiot and that’s all there is to it.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share?

I’ve been a member of Zoetrope Virtual Studio since 2004. Many of my older poems, flashes, and short stories came out of prompts various members dreamt up; they’d post word prompts, pictures, situations–all kinds of exercises would give me starting points and chances to flex my writing muscles. You, Meg, are a great instigator of thought for me these days. Sometimes a status post of yours on Facebook will have a whole crowd of writers riffing. That is a remarkable talent. Um. Did I answer your question?

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

The first craft book I read was Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes’ book, How to Write. I think it’s a brilliant book and now that your question has reminded me of it, I’ve promised myself a re-read.

How have social networks such as Fictionaut (if this applies) and Facebook, helped you in finding a community and support as a writer, if you feel that they have. Anything related to this…

I’ve already mentioned Zoetrope. I’ve had an office there for years and value the friendships I’ve made through being a member. I’ve even had the pleasure of meeting a few members in the real world. I joined Fictionaut years ago but it wasn’t until I got reacquainted with you, Meg, via Facebook, that I began to post and read stories and poems there. In the last year I’ve grown to love my time on Facebook. I think I have brilliant, funny friends and I don’t feel nearly as much like a hermit as I used to.

Ask yourself a question here (what question would you most like to be asked?)

Q. What do you want to see happen in America?

A.  Sane gun control laws and the enforcement of those laws.

Please tell us about your new book of poetry (which I cannot wait to read!) Where can we all get it? How did it come to be?

Ah. Well. My poems. My book is called One Day Tells its Tale to Another, and except for one section that is what I think of as my phantasmagorical interlude, the poems roughly trace my path through life. Childhood, my time as a dancer, my time of creative drinking, after I had to stop dancing, my marriage and travels, my divorce and travels, helping my parents when they needed help, and poems about the world and I since things have gotten rather quiet and peaceful. Not that it’s all about me. There are hawks, witches, doves, cats and dogs, there are a couple of murderers, a storyteller, a poem about Chinese noodle soup, and there’s one poem about Marilyn Monroe. So, there’s a range. A few of the poems are written in the old forms and I follow the rules. I would have to say that my poetry is mostly influenced by dance. Huh.

It is available online at Amazon. The Linnet’s Wings published it using Create Space as a press. Marie Fitzpatrick captained the ship, and my brother, Robert Knisel, contributed the photographs and designed the book.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Happy New Year Fictionauters!

Andrew Stancek’s story “Almost There” has won the Grand Prize in the Gemini Magazine’s Flash Fiction contest; “Perfect Execution” is published in Thrice Fiction; and “Distant Thunder” is published in Every Day Fiction.

Gloria Garfunkel’s “Ash” is published by Thrice Fiction; “Taking a Bath with my iNuke” is a finalist for the Glass Woman Award; “Fairy Tale in Dachau” is published by Rose and Thorn Journal; “Make that a Double” is at Every Day Fiction; “Snowflakes Like the Stars of David,” “The Chicken Killer from Brooklyn and his Satchel of Death,” and “The Snow Queen,” are at Connotation Press; and “Absence” appears in The Linnet’s Wings.

Marcus Speh’s “Mr Tom Thumb”/”Herr Häwelmann” in English and German is published in Metazen’s Christmas Ebook III, along with Fictionaut members James Claffey, John Minichillo, Sara Lippmann, Mel Bosworth, Robert Vaughan and xTx; “Blue Rider” also appears at Metazen; “Seagull,” “Amour Fou,” and “Bogey,” is published at Connotation Press.

Robert Vaughan’s “The Thief” is up at Red Fez; “Hexagon of Life” has been nominated for a Micro Award by Metazen; “Black & White/Color” appears in Metazen’s Christmas Ebook; and JMWW’s Winter Issue is live. Robert read at KGB Bar for the 52/250: A Year of Flash party in NYC on December 16th. It was well attended with Fictionaut members Susan Tepper, Eryk Wezniak, Kyle Hemmings, and many more. And thanks, editors Michelle Elvy, Walter Bjorkman, and John Wentworth Chapman.

Gary V. Powell’s “The Fire Next Time” and “Snow Day” are forthcoming in Blue Lake Review and Carve Magazine respectively.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

John Riley lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he works in educational publishing. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Fiction Daily, Smokelong Quarterly, Connotation Press, Blue Five Notebook, Willows Wept Review and other places online and in print. He is an assistant fiction editor at Ablemuse.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer. 

I’ve never had a mentor so it’s difficult to say much about its importance, although I’m sure it’s of incalculable importance to writer’s who have one. I know from literary history how important it was to many of the writers I admire. But I’ve always been too shy about my writing habit to take enough writing classes or to venture out to develop that type of relationship. As an undergraduate I did take the typical creative writing courses and the teachers there were positive and looking back I think that if I’d known how to respond those relationships may have developed. But that wasn’t my style. So my mentoring has come from my reading. I tend to develop an obsession with a writer and read everything I can, then move on. I do the same with topics I’m fascinated with, whether it’s history of the Christian Church or medieval science or what have you. So my mentoring has consisted of my rabbiting from writer to writer, subject to subject. I wouldn’t advise that method to anyone else though.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I’m stuck or uninspired too often to claim to have a cure but the best thing I can do, when I’m able, is to forget about writing and begin reading. Try to clear my mind of the anxiety of not getting started or of what I’m bogged down in and read whatever I  want, fiction or nonfiction. I love to write but I’m working hard at not letting it drive me crazy. If I do I’ll stop, which is what I’ve done before. So what if I’m not as prolific as other writers? Comparing myself to other people is a trap. I do what I can do in the context of my busy life. Another method that helps, which I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the site, is to turn to the writing and editing I do for a living. (Actually, I need to do this more often.) I work in nonfiction in my day job and find it liberating sometimes to do my research, plan out where the book needs to go in my head, kick it into high gear and just write write write. I love to write. To think in language and type words to the best of my ability. The sheer act of writing is the only job I’ve ever enjoyed. So there is always that alternative if the fiction or poetry is stuck. And the great thing is that the fiction/poetry side of my brain is usually working in background while I write the nonfiction. Finally, there is a lot to be said for taking a walk.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share?

I’ve already mentioned my primary exercise–turning to the nonfiction. I have had some success writing to prompts given to me by others. I’ve tried using them to prompt myself but so far with limited success, although I have done some picture prompt pieces I haven’t thrown out. My favorite prompts are word prompts. If my energy level is high and the words are right it can turn me loose. Even if the result isn’t worth much the exercise is good for someone who tends to choke himself down. Confidence can be a problem for me, as I suppose it is for many writers, and if nothing else a good prompt can give me a few minutes when I forget what a fool I am for ever thinking I could write anything worthwhile.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

I did hear a writer I don’t care for personally, nor do I care for his books, say two things that have helped me more than anything else I’ve heard. The first was that you don’t have a language problem when you’re stuck. That when you’re stuck it is not because the words won’t come. It’s because you don’t know where you are going. Sounds blindingly simple but I needed to hear it. I tend to be a sentence writer and he is a book writer so I’m confident he knows what he’s talking about. The other thing he said is that the writing itself is like the performance of a play. There have been nights of rehearsals and set building and all the other work necessary to get a show up before it opens, just as the actual writing is the culmination of a long process, whether that process is conscious or not. Sometimes when you’re stuck it’s because you’re trying to open the show before it’s ready. As I said, his work doesn’t mean much to me but I found his advice to be invaluable.

How have social networks such as Fictionaut and Facebook helped you in finding a community and support as a writer, if you feel that they have?

My entire support group is and has been online. Starting my company and getting it up and running and raising my kids diverted me from fiction and poetry for too long. Although there is a fairly active writing community in my area I haven’t yet ventured out. When I did begin writing something besides the nonfiction I started with poetry and stumbled onto a board that has been both helpful and inhibiting at the same time. Early on it certainly knocked some of the preposterous stuffing out of me. It was pretty tough going though so I can’t recommend it to everyone. But increasingly I’ve been turning to fiction and it took a while to find a community. The first place I felt some degree of comfort was at the 52/250 project and I’m certainly grateful that Michelle and Walter and John took that on. Then I started doing some of the prompt exercises over at Zoetrope and now I’ve sneaked past the guards at the Fictionaut gates and have burrowed in like an August tic. I find Fictionaut to be encouraging, generous and a little intimidating. There is so much talent here. I’m trying to find the sweet spot between participating and keeping my mouth shut and soaking up all the stuff there is to learn. Facebook has been a good place to be made aware of writers I may not have known about otherwise and to get to know some better. I do have to be careful on Facebook and not waste time there or get dragged into conflicts. I have strong opinions about some things so I’ve slipped up on that last one a few times but I’m getting more savvy.

Ask yourself a question here (what question would you most like to be asked?)

I have two. First: What makes me think anyone at Fictionaut cares what I have to say? Hopefully, anyone else here who is down on my end of the evolutionary scale, with one hand on a ladder rung and the other carrying a big stack of books, will say “Oh hey, yeah. That’s right,” or else shake his or her head and think, “Now I feel so much better about myself.”

Second: Kepler or Newton?

Meg: You are damn interesting to me, John Riley.  Such a strong writer, a supportive community member, funny and honest as hell, refreshingly so.

Hm: Kepler or Newton?

You didn’t answer it, do you want me to?  Yikes.

What are you working on now? What are your current goals?

I want to make progress on the novel I’ve been circling with my spear held in throwing position. I’d also like to write a few longer stories. But I’ll never stop writing flash and poetry. There is a satisfaction that comes from them both that is impossible to get elsewhere.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Gary V. Powell’s “Maalox” is forthcoming at Newport Review, “Chosen” at Pitchapel Review, “Dancers, 1969” at Prime Number, and his first novel Lucky Bastard is forthcoming at Main Street Rag Press.

Gessy Alvarez’s “Platanos” is published by Black Heart Magazine.

Matt Denison has work forthcoming in Pembroke Magazine, Roanoke Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Alarmist (UK), Spillway, Curbside Splendor, Midwestern Gothic, Liebamour (UK), Gargoyle, and Other Poetry (UK).

Sheldon Lee Compton’s The Same Terrible Storm was recently nominated for the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, and his short story “Lost Ball in High Weeds,” was a judge’s selection winner this year for the Still Fiction Award. The story is a chapter from his upcoming novel, Brown Bottle.

Marcus Speh’s “Friends” and “Rokovoko” are in In Those Days We, edited by Jennifer Tomaloff and including J. Bradley, Molly Gaudry, Len Kuntz, Parker Tettelton, Meg Tuite, Robert Vaughan, and other Fictionaut members.

Along with a collection of eleven newly released songs, Michael Dickes’ “Song Dust” will be included in Blue Fifth Review: Blue Five Notebook Series; Thumbnail Magazine will feature “Like Dancing Alone”; “She Saw” will be in Thrice Fiction; the music blog Riff Raff included “Ghost Notes” early this month, and Michael was interviewed in the upcoming issue of Rocks Magazine in Germany. More info at www.michaeldickes.weebly.com.

“Dust Clouds,” a short story by Jane Hammons was published in All Due Respect, and her essay “Which Way to the Vomitorium” was published in the Real anthology at Pure Slush and is also forthcoming in April from Outpost 19′s anthology California Prose Directory: New Writing from the Golden State.

James Claffey’s “scrap-iron man” and “kidney trouble” is at Fwriction : Review; “we sunk my mother’s mother” at Necessary Fiction (guest edited by Ben Tanzer); “fragments of the bird,” is at The View from Here; “the ribboned corpse cold” at Right Hand Pointing; and “turned to tiny vessels” at Flash Frontier.

Andrew Stancek’s “Libor’s Looking” appears in the new issue of LA Review.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

First a confession: my vision hasn’t been so hot for the last few years, which means reading hasn’t been a pleasure for quite a long time. Last night, I read Julie Innis’s Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture from cover to cover in one sitting, never losing a second thought about my vision. Brava, Julie Innis! I’m healed.

Or I should say the voices Innis creates have healed me. And maybe I should add the curative powers of dark humor. You know fiction can heal when you tell someone, “I read this hilarious story about this aging play-cop loser forced to part with his surrogate son—a chimp rescued from a lab—because of his mother’s promiscuity,” and this someone says, “Wow, that’s kind of sad actually.” “No!” you say. “It’s like Fargo. You know. The scene with the shredder?” And you both fall about laughing. Here’s the last paragraph of “Monkey”:

I didn’t explain to her that Monkey wasn’t suited for the world, that he lacked  street smarts and I worried that at night he’d be afraid, the sounds of tigers below, their ears pitched toward the little whistling noise his nose made when he breathed. I think of Monkey still and hope he’s making out okay. Sometimes late at night when I’m on rounds, I pull the scanner’s microphone all the way out to its end and then I just let it go.  

I feel for this tragic figure, and I think you do as well. We have to laugh, though. That’s how we deal with our tragic world.

The great short story writer has the ability to create not just one tragicomic world but lots of them. Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture includes nineteen of Innis’s worlds, each with memorable, mostly tragic characters, all trying to make sense of life and some stretching the boundaries of magical realism. If magical realism is an art of surprises, Innis makes it an art of satisfying ones. I especially like the arrival of Annie in “Gilly the Goat-Girl,” a surprise I’ve decided not to ruin for you. Instead, here’s the opening paragraph of this brilliant tale of maternal love and misguided fashion choices:

I’ve never had much success with men. I’m sure it all goes back to my parents’ divorce. At least, I assume that’s what a therapist would tell me. Temping provides me with very basic health insurance, so mental health services aren’t covered. Grease burns, broken limbs, venereal diseases—check, check, and check. Ennui, angst, and depression—better just keep a mattress out under your window because no one’s going to be there to talk you in from the ledge.

I think this paragraph sums up the collective consciousness of Innis’s characters. They populate worlds where all the safety nets have holes, where you can bet the firemen will move the net away if you jump, where relationships don’t work. To say the characters’ relationships are dysfunctional would be so 1985. Innis’s characters are done with dysfunctional; they’re post-dysfunctional. They yawn at dysfunction. These worlds are void of sentimentality and answers,

At university a “few” years ago, I read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesberg, Ohio: a Group of Tales of Ohio Small-town Life. Just as Anderson assembles the quirky inhabitants of a single  and fictitious community in Ohio, Innis gathers her cast on a continuum from Ohio to Brooklyn. There are no recurrent central characters and each story stands alone, but there are central themes: weariness with a world that doesn’t quite work, preoccupation with health problems, social problems, job problems . . . problems. But we still laugh. Anderson dealt with similar themes but through the decidely less humorous lens of 1919 realism. The glue that holds Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture together is Innis’s community of broken-yet-strong characters, but it’s also her daring wit, her timing, and her enviable—humorous—dialogue.

Humor is like a tight-rope made of razor blades. Some writers who try it come away with more cuts than it’s worth. Innis dances on razors. And she does this by being generous to her characters, indulging their whims, allowing them to be bizarre in their humanity, human in their absurdity. And this is the key to believably, an element of good fiction that eludes so many writers.

I’m particularly fond of the dialogue between Heller and Goldfarb in “Heller.” Innis pits Heller’s jealously against Goldfarb’s adolescent confusion so well. The dialogue in “Do” is pleasingly ballsy and Palahniukesque, and I hope both Innis and Palahniuk are mutually complimented by ballsy. It’s astounding how much Innis can do with such dialogic brevity in “Blubber Boy.”

I can’t end this review without talking about Innis’s female characters, who are chopped in half, turned into cars, corrected and of course tortured. It’s not so much that they are in many ways abused, ignored and misunderstood by men; these stories are more about a woman’s reaction to their worlds and their men. I think this point of view is best summed up in “The Next Man”:

The next man will be better, she hoped. He’ll belch and fart and slouch in his seat. She’ll twine her fingers through his rough pelt, put braids in his thick hair. They will eat their meat rare; they’ll tear it lustily from the bone.

Disappointment with men is a theme that ties many of these stories together: from “My First Serial Killer” about an inept killer and his bored victim, to “Habitat for Humility” about a couple subjected to prejudice because of the husband’s conspicuous consumption, and ending with  “Fly,” a love story between an unsatisfied wife and a fly.

Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture is a contemporary community of characters—some grotesques, some from the heights of magical realism, some realistic portraits of men and women doing their best to cope with contemporary issues, searching for the way of Do but finding only an oversexed Sensei Vinnie telling them that “For every ass-kicker, there’s an ass. Yin and Yang.” In essence, don’t be such a pussy.

Julie Innis’s fascinating book Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture is available from Amazon and Powells.

Christopher Allen, a native of Tennessee, lives in Germany. His fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous places both online and in print. In 2011, Allen was a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist at Glimmer Train. He blogs at www.imustbeoff.com.

Michael Fitzgerald is the co-founder of Submittable and the author of Radiant Days. He lives in Missoula, Montana.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer.

It’s so hard and takes so long for most of us. A few gentle pats on the back along the way can make all the difference. I had one amazing professor as an undergrad (Randi Davenport) but am suspect of the teacher/student relationship in general. I feel most of the things I’ve learned came from reading, writing, and the occasional stick in the eye. Maybe there’s a better way?

(Also, now as a middle/mentor-aged person myself, I realize we’re mostly talking out our ass. :))

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired to get yourself? Do you have a daily routine?

I write in the mornings before my day-job. I’m usually uninspired or exhausted. The trick seems to be just being habitual or addicted to it.

Also, I relish the times when it’s super miserable, when I haven’t slept or am hungover. If you can sit down and write when you’re completely uninspired, completely miserable, hating everything you’ve ever written or thought, and just stay in the chair until something happens, then you know you’re going to be OK.

What kind of prompts do you use, if you do?

I subscribe to and read our local newspaper, The Missoulian. I know papers are going away. But they’re ripe with material.

Also make sure you love the act of writing. No one is ever going to ask you to write a novel. And, to be completely honest, no one really cares once you do. So you need to love the act of writing. It should be (and for me is) an act that enriches your life.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

Get over yourself.

What are you working on now?

I’m presently multi-tasking: my marriage, a book called StartDown, and our company Submittable (formerly Submishmash).

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Chris Galvin’s “Groundnut Soup” is published in issue 13 of the Maple Tree Literary Supplement. “Sympathy for the Devil,” first published in The 24 Project, appears in Tuck Magazine. “Life with Mệ” is forthcoming in the 2012 Writers Abroad anthology, Foreign Encounters. Chris also has work forthcoming in PRISM International.

Andrew Stancek’s story “Libor’s Looking” appears in the new issue of LA Review.

James Claffey’s “Turned to Tiny Vessels” is at Flash Frontier, “Birdcage” at Necessary Fiction; “Jakes’ Games” and “Harvest Moon” is forthcoming in Trachodon’s anthology, Bite; and “Spreading from the False Fly,” appears in Pure Slush’s Real.

Linda Simoni-Wastila’s “The Abridged Biography of an American Sniper“ is at Smokelong.

Strannikov’s “All the Pretty White Fonts!” is one of two prose “Best of the Net 2012” nominees from metazen.

Marcus Speh’s “Family“ is at Hobo Camp Review, and “The Butterfly Collector“ at Flash Frontier.

Scott Tienken’s Handbook to Town Crying is available at Amazon.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

Brian Warfield lives in Philadelphia and publishes chapbooks thorugh Turtleneck Press.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

I don’t really have a mentor but have always wanted one. I guess there are certain writers that I look up to and emulate. I have reached out to my top ten living authors and some of them have responded. I think it is important to have some kind of personal relationship with someone who knows more than you who is willing to be of assistance. I think just having a group of supporters is as important as a mentor. I also tend to be very self-reliant and foster self-mentorship.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I feel that way right now. And no, it is apparently not working. I think I underestimate myself a lot. People consider me to be more prolific than I am, more hard-working. I think periods of rest are crucial. When writers tell me that they are quitting writing, I say “Good.” It is usually after you’ve given up that you let your mind rest and it presents you with better material than if you had continuously prodded it. Nevertheless, I mostly hate not writing. This segues nicely into the next question.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share?

Lately I’ve been looking at this website which dedicates one story or poem per year from 1400-2012. Also I find working with these moves  interesting. I tend to write more fiction than poetry and I don’t find prompts helpful for my fiction writing because I tap into my own stuff there. They are probably helpful to others though.

Suggestions for making characters live? Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing?

I’m actually not very good at character development. Or, I don’t consider it my strong suit. I live in my own head a lot, and I would imagine most of my characters are just shades of me or embodiments I wish I could become. If I had to pick whether I know them or not before writing, I suppose I would have to say that I always write to discover new things. So I don’t know much ahead of time except certain elements that always find their way into writing and letting new routes make themselves known.

Ask yourself a question here (what question would you most like to be asked?)

What was the last movie you watched and how did it make you feel? I just watched the movie The Future by Miranda July, and I guess I’m mentioning it because I’m curious what other people thought but I don’t feel like reading anonymous reviews of it. So, feel free to comment. I didn’t know what to expcet, having really liked Me You and Everyone We Know, and kind of getting the Miranda July backlash. She’s kind of twee and anti-twee at the same time. Very heart-on-sleeve but also dark. I thought it was strange that on the cover of the dvd it says The Future is laugh-out-loud funny, because about the only thing I did out loud was sob. I felt it pushed at the viewer in a very sensitive way to make you uncomfortable but also, like, alive. I liked it.

Please talk about your press, your work, what you are working on now.. anything related to something new or forthcoming… or just out!

I publish chapbooks through Turtleneck Press. Our latest release is THEN by David Greenspan, which is a collection of linked prose poems. We have a number of other titles available which all tend to push the boundaries of genre and category. At the end of the year we will be publishing a poetry chapbook by Gabby Gabby.

On a personal publishing note, my ebook, Shotgun Torso, is slated to come out from Up Literature sometime in the near future. This is interesting, as I have never done anything specifically for ebook. I also have a novella that is being read by editors for hopeful eventual publication.

I think it would be cool if someone wanted to write a comparative essay on all of my stories which are linked here.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Formerly of Montreal, Quebec, Gita M. Smith is now housed in Montgomery, AL, where she helps students at a university become better writers. At least, that’s the plan. She is a journalist and magazine editor who is new to fiction. Her work appears on MiCrow, MudJob, LitFire, MudSpots, The Sphere, Scissors and Spackle, 6S and T-10. She blogs at Ohfinejustfine.blogspot.com.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Gita, you have been with us for a long while at Fictionaut. It’s been great getting to know you and your work here. What originally brought you to Fictionaut?

A highly sociable writer named Michael Solender invited me to join.  Michael is good at bringing people together. Of course, later on he exacts his price, which means contributing stories to MiCrow and sending him latkes at Hanukkah.  But I must say that answering these questions feels a little like we’re on ‘Inside The Actor’s Studio’ except you’re  much, much better looking than James Lipton, and I’m nowhere as wealthy as Meryl Streep.

What do you find to be of value (if you do)  in the online  writers world you have encountered here at F-naut and elsewhere?

The really helpful and honest criticism — like the kind that gives you the courage to take a story apart at the seams and re-stitch it –-  comes from a few people who will comment back and forth with you at first on site and later maybe via email or even telephone.

My favorite example of the good that has come out of the online writers’ world is this: A group of people over at 6 Sentences  started meeting annually (the first gathering was in New Orleans in 2010), and the events – open to anyone who wishes to attend – go on for about 4 or 5 days.  We’ve had writers from Britain, Mexico and all over the USA come to these meet-ups, none of whom had met before except as pixels on the screen. The amount of trust involved in such an undertaking is huge, really.

But we have brought our short stories, poems, novels-in-progress, and flash, and we workshopped with real generosity. It doesn’t hurt that we tended to bring beer and wine and take turns cooking meals for each other. And when these gatherings ended, every year so far we have made a book out of the writing and photographs and art that resulted from the gathering.

What do you value most in writing, yours and others’?

In no particular order, neither alphabetical nor importance, nor astrological nor caloric, I value clarity; breathtaking use of the English language such that I am immediately delighted and also envious; novelty in the sense that my Inner Critic (a bitch in a green eye-shade) says “Oooh. This is fresh!” and shuts up. An example of a book that gave me a real rush was The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx.  An example of voicing that opened my eyes to possibilities was Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible. She told that story using five different narrators and yet – YET – it was seamless.  Recently, I experienced Red Grass River by James Carlos Blake as one of those exciting, bracing novels you could compare to mango chutney – a hot and sweet-sour combination that engages all your senses.
Back to clarity for a second: I come out of the nonfiction discipline –  newspaper writing — and one gets to really value clarity in that setting. I was in the middle of piecing together a difficult, multi-layered and long article for Atlanta Magazine. I didn’t know how to make so many facts and players clear to the readers. The editor on that piece, Rebecca Burns, looked at my first draft and said, “Rewrite it as a narrative.” Sure enough, it unfolded its contorted self and read like a mystery novel. In the process the story went from murky to clear.

Please tell us about your experience transitioning from reporting to fiction-writing? What have you had to re-learn and what skills from your previous life have been the most useful?’

This is really a trick three-part question masquerading as one. Very clever of you, Meg Pokrass, if that is your real name.  Okay, last part first:  A helpful skill from my previous life would be careful research. The Fictionaut story, “Falling Man,” a bit of flash about the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, contains facts such as 600,000 rivets per tower and the name of the actual foreman, Smiling Joe Strauss.  Or, if I am writing about the landscape in eastern Kansas, I’ll research the names of specific grasses because someone in KS might read the piece and think, “Wait a minute, we don’t have little blue stem around here,” and I’m busted. I have a huge fear of being busted.

Part two of your question – I had to re-learn letting loose, letting go. Nonfiction requires restraint – unless you want to end up in the headlines like Jayson Blair.

As to making the transition to fiction:  I’m still making it, every day on every page.  I have monster Imposter Syndrome. Like, who the fuck am I to be here answering Fictionaut Five questions?

Of the pieces I’ve put on Fictionaut, Gossip is possibly most illustrative of fiction that reads like truth. To me, that means the transition is working.

What books and music do you love the most, and return to over time?

When I need to re-wrinkle my brain, I read poetry.  I go to my bookshelves and read whatever poetry book my hand falls on. I never tire of Yeats. I love and return, time and again, to Pierre DeLattre’s exquisite Tales of the Dalai Lama.   As to music, I’m old school R&B all the way, but you can’t beat Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto number 3 or Afro-Cuban jazz. Oh, and please make sure they play “A Whiter Shade of Pale” at my funeral. It contains references to Chaucer and sex.

What is next for you?  

In terms of my life, I recently quit smoking, so my future is uncertain because I may yet commit homicide and end up in Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Prison for women.

If not, I’ll probably win the POWERBALL lottery within the next year, and I will set up a huge writer’s commune/retreat/retirement home.  It will have everything we need to be able to continue writing as we grow old, including massage therapists on the property. When you or Steve Gowin or James Claffey or Gessy Alvarez go out on book tours, I’ll take in your mail and water your plants.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Happy Fall Fictionauters! Jane Hammons’ story “Lettie in the Ozarks,” first published at Fictionaut, is included in the anthology Protectors: Stories to benefit PROTECT, ed. Thomas Pluck. Jane also reviewed Austrian writer Wolf Haas’s novel Brenner and God for Grift Magazine and has work forthcoming in Metazen. James Claffey’s two shorts, “The Scrap Iron Man,” and “Pretzel Logic” are upcoming at fwriction : review; “Losing my Voice” at the Blue Fifth Review’s Blue Collection 2: Music; “Ashtray Gravestones” at A Baker’s Dozen; “The Green Hairstreak’s Death” at Elimae; “Blood a Cold Blue” at Word Riot; “Valvic” at Bong is Bard; “Extreme Unction,” “Small Bites,” “Mangled Fingers & Country Music” at Connotation Press. James has new stories at Word Riot, Connotation Press, Elimae, and The Molotov Cocktail. Pure Slush Vol 3 comes out on October 15. Marcus Speh’s “The Serious Writer Occupies Wall Street” is published by Santa Fe Literary Review; “Demons,” at Bluestem Magazine (with audio); his flash “Symphony” is at Blue Fifth Review’s Blue Collection 2: Music. Christopher Allen also has a story in Blue Collection 2: Music, and his story “When Chase Prays Chocolate” is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly’s 10^th anniversary anthology, The Best of SmokeLong Quarterly. Jim Davis’s “Knitting the Unraveled Sleeves” has been selected for an Editor’s Choice Award in the Eric Hoffer Prose Award competition and will be included in the annual anthology of short prose, Best New Writing 2013. The book will be available in early October. Linda Simoni-Wastila’s poem “Greetings From Motel 6” is published in Poet’s Market. Bill Yarrow’s Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012) is now available from Amazon in a Kindle edition, and his poems have recently appeared in Otoliths, Moria, and Short Fast and Deadly. Andrew Stancek’s story “The Legacy” appears in the new issue of The Windsor Review, Fall 2012. Gessy Alvarez’s “Sassy Wench” is in Apocrypha and Abstractions, and she has four pieces forthcoming in Connotation Press on October 15.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.