Yesterday was an awful day, a punch to the gut sort of day. And today has also been kind of sucky. I had a lunch meeting with an artist I want to work with on a graphic novel. I tried to start my car and the battery was dead. I managed to jump it in time, and began to back out of my garage, when I noticed that one of my relatively new tires is flat. I had to text the artist and ask him to pick me up. (And it turns out that he’s got a new full-time job and is not sure he’ll have the time to take on my project.)

So now I’m lying on my couch, wondering if it’s too early for me to have a glass of wine (it is). I have the movie Mystery Men on in the background. I love this movie, but it’s not managing to cheer me up. Oh screw it, I’m getting the wine. Be right back.

I’ve actively sought out quirky, funny sorts of posts from Fictionaut because that’s what I need right now. And I hope they’ll provide a bit of an escape for both of us.

Sapiosexual by Diana Kerik

I love how Kerik has picked an enticing word and run with it, giving us a story. I could read a bunch of these at once, someone ought to write a collection of flash pieces based on provocative words. And since I’m a big time sapiosexual, and potentially also a sapiosexual by proxy at the same time, oh whatever.  It’s fun, read it.

RAINMAKER! by Adam Sifre

Sifre’s piece is similar to Sapiosexual in that he pondered a word, “rainmaker” and a story sprang forth. It can also go in the collection of one-word-spawned flash stories. And it’s quirky, and sad. I like that.

Truth by Steven Gowin

When I was choosing these, I didn’t notice how most of them could fit in to WORD: A collection of flash pieces, each inspired by a single word. (You like that name for the collection, WORD? I’m not sure.) Gowin’s clever piece might be a poem, I’m not sure. It’s not exactly a story, or is it? Anyway, I hope it’s a lie.

Question by David James

Sad, and yet strangely funny, at least to me. And I want to know more about the woman, and the man, and what’s behind her being able to ask such a question at such a time. I mean wow. (This wine is really nice, too. I’m feeling better.)

Be Careful What You Wish For by Jerry Ratch

I like this piece because I am a techie geeky sort of person. And  if I had a 3-D printer, you better believe I’d print a dog, because I love dogs. (I’m not a big fan of the title, but maybe if he renamed it Bitch it could go in WORD.)

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Lynn Beighley is the author of dozens of tech books and even more articles. She’s gotten lots of her short stories publishes in lots of places. She’s currently working on a YA novel that she hopes will encourage teens to try a bit of computer programming. She got an MFA a few years back. She’s on twitter as @lynnbeighley and her Amazon author page is here.

I haven’t been hanging out at Fictionaut lately as I’m mired in the fall semester at UTSA (they’re making me read Beowulf and maps…I’m in agony) but I told Michelle months ago that I’d do this Editor’s Eye thing so here we are. I’ve never exactly prided myself on my editorial style. My comments on pieces I appreciate range from “love this so much!” to “this really fucking resonates with me.” The strange thing is, after leaving the ex-boyfriend for good (we were on and off for a year and a half) last Mother’s Day I discovered that I can editorialize for days. Joining various dating sites and posting ads at Craig’s List will have that effect on a woman. My mad flurry of weird dates and weirder flings with strange San Antonio men taught me at least one thing and I think it’s valuable: I know exactly what I do and do not like and I can tell you why in excruciating detail.

Plantar Fasciitis by Carl Santoro
I love the clever pop culture savvy banter. I especially love this bit: “I’m on a pot fast also. Just want to see if the every day vanilla version of me has what it takes. Sadly, I do miss the psychedelic crutch though.” I could hang out in Applebee’s with these characters. I avoid Applebee’s but if these characters were hanging out in Applebee’s I’d go in there and buy them at least one round. What the hell does that tell you? Best of all, the couple dances at the end. Couples don’t dance anymore. I hate that.

Out of Stardust by J. Lin
I was drawn in immediately by the promise of heartache and poignancy. The first sentence clued me in on impending disappointment. Things were going to go badly for the characters but the protagonist seemed to possess enough style and savvy to rise above the shitty circumstances. I would suggest a few minor tweaks but when the prose is this rich and the characters are this real I much prefer a piece like this to a finely polished piece that reads hollow and false.

Living Alone by Dallas Woodburn
This is so weird. I love it. It reminds me of my ex-boyfriend. I was living with him. He was not living alone. But he was so used to living alone that he would scratch his back against the wall. He told me about one time when he lived alone and was so sick with the flu he had to crawl into the kitchen and make himself a bowl of soup. That always stuck with me. I adore the details in this story, the Skittles and Cheese-Whiz (Google tells me it’s Cheez Whiz) and…Applebee’s. Holy fuck. Is the universe trying to tell me something?! I cannot explain why but this story reminds me of Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter, a favorite of mine.

Gregory Dates a Witch by Steven Miller
This is ridiculous. I like ridiculous. Reminds me of a guy I dated/fucked last month. He told me about a time in Mexico when he fucked this woman on a beach and for some inexplicable reason there was a caged alligator near the woman’s head. The alligator opened its mouth and the woman died of a heart attack. I thought, “Gee. I want this man. He has lived such a colorful life.” I told my ex-husband about the story and he said, “Come on, Misti. You’re too old to date jokers like that.” I have a tendency to fall in love with jokes, jokers and stories that are absolutely balls to the wall absurd.

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Misti Rainwater-Lites is the author of Bullshit Rodeo and other works of fiction. Misti maintains a blog called Chupacabra Disco. She is forty-one years old and still wears glitter and striped tights on occasion.

We are pleased to welcome David Ebenbach to Fictionaut’s Writers on Craft.  David’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been published in a wide variety of magazines, and in collections of fiction (Between Camelots, and Into the Wilderness), poetry (Autogeography), and essays (The Artist’s Torah). David has received fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council.

What do you read when you despair at the state of either your work or a particularly difficult manuscript in progress—any “go to” texts?

When I’m really struggling in my writing, I get a little cautious about my reading. There’s inspiration to be found in the great work of others, but maybe not when I’m despairing, when I’m clawing and gasping my way up toward the mountaintop. At a moment like that, I don’t necessarily want to look up and see someone else way above me. I don’t want to see someone who’s already at the very summit, apparently not even breathing hard, not a drop of sweat on her or his brow. I’ll tell you this, though—there was one time that I was having terrible writer’s block and I solved it by going to a bookstore and picking up a really terrible-looking, remaindered book. (I won’t name the book.) And it was terrible, and it really helped. I thought, I can do better than that. I got back to climbing. 

If you could give just one piece of advice to emerging authors about editing that has served you well, what would it be?

You have to care more about the well-being of the piece than about your own comfort level, your own mood, your pride, your original goals for the work. If you care more about your own mental state than about the piece, you’ll let things stay bad just so you don’t upset yourself. You’ll let things fail because revision puts you in a lousy mood. If, on the other hand, you care more about the well-being of the piece than about anything else, you’ll do whatever it takes—add enormously, cut savagely, change wildly—to make the piece great. 

How has your perception of what you “do” with your work changed as you have continued to write?

I guess the big thing is that it’s gone from being only a passion to being a passion and a profession. Partly that’s about making professional things—sending work out to magazines, doing readings, etc.—a regular part of my life, and partly it’s about a mental shift: When I was starting out I was hoping to be a writer (even though I already was, because I was writing, just as everyone is, if they’re writing)—but now I just am a writer, and I give it the space, respect, and time it deserves. 

What do you feel is the purpose of literature?

Fostering empathy. Without a doubt: the purpose of literature is to foster empathy.

As a human being, what is the best advice you have to offer?

Well, it probably sounds trite, and George Saunders already said it better than I will, but it may be worth saying again: Be kind. Be kind. Give people the benefit of the doubt, try to understand where they’re coming from—writing can help with that—and be kind. Also enjoy the occasional piece of cheesecake, which is kindness in dairy form. 

I really like how you approach various sensitive issues with your work, from the mental illness story “Nobody Else Gets to Be Crazy When You’re Being Crazy” recently in Agni, to several stories found in your recent collection Into the Wilderness.  You take risks I applaud on many subjects, even engaging with presenting a female breastfeeding narrator in that collection’s title story “Judith I: Into the Wilderness.”

Your approaches to the female psyche feel particularly sensitive and apt.   What do you think about when you are writing women?  Is doing so ever challenging to you and how?  I say this as a female author who really likes when male writers approach the opposite sex with sensitivity and nuance.

Thanks for saying all this. I believe it’s important to take on sensitive things. I usually like my writing best when I’m writing about things that people experience but are afraid to talk about. When I do that, I feel like I’m helping those experiences find their place in the light. That’s where human experience belongs, I think: in the light.

And then there are all the female narrators. The funny thing about that is I didn’t even realize how often I was focusing on female protagonists in Into the Wilderness until interviewers and reviewers started pointing it out to me, which was after the book came out. But I suppose, in a short story collection all about parenthood, it makes sense for me; my parents got divorced when I was young and I spent most of my growing-up years in a mother-run household, and my only sibling was my older sister. So I grew up with women. And of course now I’m married to a woman, which means I had another close-up view of motherhood when we had our first child. Fatherhood, too, obviously, looking at myself—but there’s something even more primal about motherhood, I think. Something culturally powerful. It’s not “Dad and apple pie,” after all. So I basically gravitated toward it without trying.

My hope is that if I pay close enough attention to the people around me, I’ll find my way into characters who aren’t entirely like me. Like I said, it’s about empathy—and not just for the reader but certainly for the writer, too.

What’s recently released or in the pipeline for your readers? Give us a sneak peek.

In terms of individual pieces of work, the Hayden’s Ferry Review recently posted my poem “What My Father-in-Law Says” online, and, as you said, AGNI posted my story “Nobody Else Gets to Be Crazy When You’re Being Crazy.” As far as books, my poetry collection We Were the People Who Moved is coming out in Spring 2015 (with Tebot Bach as the publisher), and I’m looking for a home for my new story collection, Missionaries, while revising a novel called Miss Portland. The novel is about a woman who tries to restart her life by moving to Portland, Maine, but things go screwy pretty fast. She’s a resourceful one, though, and I have hopes she’ll come through okay.

Thanks for these great questions!

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Writers on Craft is hosted by Heather Fowler, who cares about writing. She does a lot of it. Visit her profile on Fictionaut or see here for more: www.heatherfowlerwrites.com.

When I first joined Fictionaut, I was beginning to find out who I am as a writer and what I want to accomplish with my work. From my initial posts—poems on classical music and, oddly enough, eating disorders, to some of my later fiction—I notice a kind of confidence that I don’t think I would’ve achieved without the feedback and support of the people who comment here regularly.

As the editor of Fictionaut, I found it difficult to pick my favorites, for the sheer reason that every piece inevitably does something to capture my attention, whether it’s the perspective of the narrator or the clever language play. To narrow my list of choices, I thought back to the rules I learned in my first creative writing class, since those are the ones that resonate with me most:

1. Write in a way that feels raw and honest.
2.  Use language that everyone can understand.

(Or , as my teacher used to say it, “Don’t mix words.”)

By the end of the two weeks, I found six pieces that deserve multiple reads.

“Corners” by Fm Le

Fm Le’s gritty, visceral style can be easily confused with any number of female, confessional  poets from the 20^th century. Where Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton created a foundation for anyone who writes from a place that feels intimate and personal, Fm Le’s work elevates the emotional intensity, leaving the reader with a feeling along the lines of a gut-punch.

“Slipstream” by Aline Carriere

A story about the terror that relationships can leave behind, Carriere’s narrator grabs the reader  by the collar from the first sentence and does not let go.

“Cuccoon”– Kait Mauro

The title of this poem, which works both as a plea for security on the part of the narrator, as well as an acknowledgment of the kind of solitary confinement of being in prison, is something of a constant theme in Kait Mauro’s work. What makes this narrator’s plight expand beyond that fear of ‘alone-ness’ is her vulnerability, and, in the narrator’s “hoping not to be strip-searched”, a commentary on the politics of the body.

“Hands” by Phillip F. Clark

It is hard not to read (and enjoy) Philip F. Clark’s poetry for its eroticism ; however, this particular scene, between a father and son, does not sexualize the body as much as it celebrates touch  as a source for human connection. As I read this, I pictured the author’s burning hands reaching mine, everything between us catching fire.

“Sleeping on Route 110” by Carl Santoro

Carl Santoro’s narrator wastes no time or words as he describes his account of a car accident, and the result is haunting. This is how poetry should be done.

“Same Grape, Different Name” by Peter Erich

I could make countless arguments as to why this piece deserves to be read, but I think the writer sums it up best: “If you asked me, am I caged and on display? I would say, yes, at some point, yes, we all are.”

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Amanda Harris is a writer, college student and gym rat living in New York. You can find her poetry and fiction in Camroc Press Review, Black-Listed Magazine, madswirl, Postcard Shorts and other fine places. When she isn’t working on her own stuff, she’s either lifting weights or editing her own magazine, The Miscreant.

When it comes to giving other people compliments I’m kind of a dick. It’s not that I don’t want to say nice things, because I do, I really do. If I had my druthers I would walk around all day pointing out what’s best about each person I see, because I am a people person. My problem, however, is that the voice that comes out of me when I decide to say something nice is not a voice I recognize, and it’s not a voice I’m very comfortable with. The voice, to me at least, sounds exactly like the voice of a ring announcer. Michael Buffer. That’s who it is. My brain tells me it’s time to say something nice and gives my mouth the command and my mouth opens and out comes a voice that makes it sound as if the fight is about to start. I don’t know why this is, or what to do about it. All I know is that there is nothing I can do about it, so I usually just keep my mouth shut when it comes to niceties, which, I’m sure, makes people think I’m a dick. So when Michelle Elvy got in touch with me and asked me if I wanted to host the Editor’s Eye I said, Yes, of course, because I want to be a good citizen of Fictionaut and give praise to some of the great work I see on a daily basis. But then I thought about it, and I said – I said this to myself – I said, What am I going to do about that voice? I was worried that I was going to sound like a fake, or worse, that my compliments would seem canned. Not only is my compliment voice obnoxious, but I lack the critical vocabulary that’s necessary to really tease out what’s good or great about a piece of fiction. I either like something or I don’t, and sometimes I really have no idea why. That being said, I think I should finally get around to giving my picks. Let me just say upfront that I loved each and every one of these stories. I am always happy to see work by Eamon Byrne, because of his intelligence and slightly inscrutable air; I get giddy when I read Crabby McGrouchpants because he reminds me of a Richard Brautigan, if Richard Brautigan was a former gutter-punk.  Tabatha Stirling gives me a curdled, creamy sensation in my nethers and makes me feel like I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs to a most beautiful and sublime death. G.E. Simons wields words like a wizard. Shiela Luecht seems to understand something about all of us we would rather not admit. Good work, everyone. Now, let’s get ready to rumble.

Chris Okum lives in Los Angeles, California. 

We are pleased to welcome Jen Michalski to this month’s Writers on Craft. Jen Michalski is author of the novel The Tide King, winner of the 2012 Big Moose Prize. She is the author of two collections of fiction, From Here and Close Encounters, and a collection of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now. In 2013 she was named one of “50 Women to Watch” by The Baltimore Sun and won a “Best of Baltimore” for Best Writer from Baltimore Magazine. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww and host of The Starts Here! Reading Series. She lives in Baltimore, MD.

What do you read when you despair at the state of either your work or a particularly difficult manuscript in progress—any “go to” texts? I know you have been a fan of Virginia Woolf and Shirley Jackson.  Are there books you haven’t spoken of in interviews that are still private magic for you?

That’s a great question! I’m constantly reading, so I feel as if subconsciously there’s always a trickle of dialogue occurring between other writers and myself. But I do consciously re-read some books for guidance on an approach, or language, or pacing. I’ve been reading some Louise Erdrich lately because I’m in the middle of a novel that’s much more cyclical for me, and I’ve always loved the way Erdrich layers narratives on touch of each other, slowly filling in different pieces of the mosaic until it makes sense to the reader. Many times, though, I try to find something new—a new author or a new story from a known writer. I want to be blown away by novel or ingenuity or tenderness and feel the urgency to respond. Pamela Eren’s The Understory had that effect on me this year. Sometimes it’s not necessarily a writer, either—I’ve been meditating a lot on Shane Carruth’s last movie, Upstream Color. It’s such a confusing and layered viewing, about a parasite that it is harvested in plants and people and produces fugue states but also psychic connections, but it’s so intense you can’t get it out of your head and you feel compelled to deconstruct it.

If you could give just one piece of advice to emerging authors about editing that has served you well, what would it be?

For many years I read submissions for the journal I manage, jmww (although I don’t get to read as many as I used to). As a result, I’ve tried to put my own work aside for a week and then pretend it’s someone else’s submitted story when I read it again. Because we get so many submissions, sometimes I don’t even read stories beyond the first sentence or paragraph. And the questions I ask of submissions (Is this something we’ve seen before? Am I going to remember reading this story tomorrow? Do I care about the characters in this story? Does the writing stand out to me?) help me to figure out whether my piece has any chance of making it out of another journal’s slush pile. I think all writers should do some sort of stint at a literary journal—to see what other people are writing, to see the recurring problems in stories submitted (weak first sentence, no conflict, poor word choices, uninteresting characters).

How has your perception of what you “do” with your work changed as you have continued to write?

I’ve been talking a lot about this lately, it seems! As a writer, I’ve kind of evolved over the years from short stories (with a small detour into flash for a year or two) into novels. I always like to think of it as when I was a little younger, I was more interested in distilling the essence of things into the short form, making a statement, because I didn’t have much experience in the world and I was still learning myself. Now that I’m older, I still haven’t learned much, but I find I like to linger in places instead–the process interests me more than an overarching statement. I no longer feel writing has to be about something. For me, I’ve always written as a way to understand things, but I don’t even necessarily care what the outcome is anymore. Even if I set out to write about a complicated relationship with a relative but wind up writing about a blue hippopotamus instead, I no longer feel as if I’ve failed as a writer. I might try to reverse-engineer how I got from point A to point B, but even that doesn’t matter anymore. Writing is just something that is, like breathing. It doesn’t have to wind up in the Barnes & Noble or in the trash it. It’s just output, thoughts. It’s my process.

What do you feel is the purpose of literature?

I think it’s history, psychology, entertainment, and religion. The preservation and analysis and celebration not of actual events but of human consciousness.

As a human being, what is the best advice you have to offer?

As a human being writer — Write what you want to write about, and make it as authentic as you can—don’t skimp. Also, to be a writer, you should be a reader, too, and supportive of the writing community in general and the one around you in particular. But, at the end of the day, it’s you and your words in front of you, a solitary activity, and even if no one else will read the words you’ve added to the page, you shouldn’t be able to keep yourself from writing. Writers will write even if there are no readers left on earth.

As a human — Live authentically. Live well. We’re never promised tomorrow, or happiness, or companionship, or security. You are the sum of your life at any time and are wholly responsible for it. Be grateful for luck, and work hard when you aren’t lucky.

You’ve spoken before about the role that your dreams can play in generating ideas for work.  I envy you that vivid dreaming.  You’ve also spoken about novel writing as a form that compels you more and more, aligning combinatory spokes of stories to create a larger narrative.   Have you ever gone without dreams for years, dreams you could recall?  How closely laced to your emotional experience are your dreams? 

I don’t go more than a day or two without dreaming! I’m not sure I could be a writer without them. But I’m lucky: I’ve always felt different growing up, as a result of my sexuality and being a little chubby and shy and being a little eccentric, and my inner life, consciously and subconsciously, is very rich as a result. So I don’t differentiate that much between daydreaming and dreaming. Either way, I’m able to sink deep into myself and live in the world that I’ve created there. For years, it was a world that helped me survive—a place in which I could fall in love with another woman, or where my family life was stable and supportive, a place where I was well-liked for me. Now, awake or dreaming, it’s often just a world in which stories happen.

I think Joyce Carol Oates is right on about dreaming: “[O]ne can experience in sleep tortures that, in ordinary consciousness, would be profoundly traumatic. And yet one isn’t expected to take them seriously….” I do a lot of emotional work in my dreams, and I pay careful attention to the emotional responses I have in them. Of course it’s most important for my own well-being, but I try to create the same emotional impact I experience in dreams in my writing. What other great place (aside from your dreams) can you be a 100-year-old Chinese woman weeping uncontrollably about a person she lost thirty years ago?

What’s recently released or in the pipeline for your readers? Give us a sneak peek.

Aqueous Books is releasing a collection of my short stories, called From Here, on September 30^th, so I’m pretty excited about that. I just finished a second novel that’s going through submission, and I’m about 100 pages seriously into a third (and not so seriously into two others). I’m always happiest, most fertile, when I’m overwhelmed. The scariest thing in the world to me is when my head is quiet. 

Writers on Craft is hosted by Heather Fowler, who cares about writing. She does a lot of it. Visit her profile on Fictionaut or see here for more: www.heatherfowlerwrites.com.

I was frankly surprised, pleasantly so, when Ms. Elvy asked me to take a turn at Editor’s’ Eye. I basically just hang out on the outskirts of your fine Writers’ Community here and I don’t write often but when I do I value Fictionaut as a place to take off the training wheels and see how the piece looks on the elegant page upon which our work gets posted. Maybe as I do, most of us enter the Fictionaut site with a flash fiction and/or a short poem expectation and that doubtless means that longer pieces do not get the number of “reads” the shorter pieces do — which is too bad. I look to Fictionaut for exceptional writing and each time I open the site some is here, waiting for me.

Linear-Critic by Ann Bogle

What I enjoy about Ann Bogle’s work is that she continually surprises me with both the form and unique content of her stories.

At the Syria Mosque by Chris Okum

Each time I open Fictionaut I immediately look for Chris Okum’s work which interstices humor and real names placed into situations that are usually so intense that, as I read, I forget to breathe.

Forever-Four-Eyed by Roz Warren

I had not read Roz Warren’s work before and I’m really happy to find this well-told story in which she cites the diminution of eyesight and the increasing fuzziness of words. This line makes me smile with each reading: “I even wear them when I swim.”

The Princess of Fillmore Street by Randall Stickrod

The twists and turns of this strange, convoluted relationship kept me off balance – in a good way. I left the story hoping he would be done with Sarah, thinking, but he probably won’t be.

On-Being-Offered-a-Seat-on-the Bart-Train by Joanne Jagoda

I’m sure some of us, as we age,  appreciate a compliment and in our mind imagine it to mean a bit more than its intent. This poem lets us imagine more than is meant and returns us back to reality.

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David James resides in Atlanta , Georgia, and upon entering the third trimester of his life he’s found himself reading a lot and often staring at walls. He sometimes maintains his magazine-type blog. He has had just three stories published. Two pieces were picked up by Barry Basden and ran in Camroc Press Review in 2012 and 2013, respectively, and one piece was picked up from Fictionaut by editor Cheryl Anne Gardner and published in Apocrypha Abstractions in 2011.

Editor’s Eye is curated by Michelle Elvy (Fictionaut profile here). She writes and edits every day at michelleelvy.com, and readers can also find her editing Blue Five Notebook (with Sam Rasnake) and Flash Frontier.

To misquote Gary V. Powell from a month ago, I have plenty of academic credentials, but none of them is an MFA. Still, I don’t feel bereft without one! Below are efforts that struck me quickly, hence there being only 4. And they are all short.

If you’ve read Editor’s Eye before, then you know the drill.

The Meat Lady by Jery Ratch

Such a winning title! Funny / sad, or quirky / sad are big with me, so while it’s a little repetitive (perhaps using it as a song lyric would work best) you can’t go past the image of this sad woman handing out morsels of meat. Is she paid for it? I think she is, but an old homeless woman handing out (what?) in a public space keeps coming to mind instead, rather than in a supermarket, which is probably what she’s really doing.

Longshot Down Undah by Dennis Mahagin

Sad hopeless cases pretending to be people they’re not is a favourite theme with me too (in fiction, not in real life) so this has immense appeal. The killer line is so simple: Be yourself, it can’t hurt forever.

And just in case you wanted to know, if he wanted to be really authentic, he’d say “Gidday” or “G’day” (either spelling is fine) and “Oi!”

I’m a Bohemian American by Jery Ratch

The punctuation in this needs to be fixed up, but I adore pigs and the idea of packs of pigs and packs of poets running around Prague and its environs made me laugh. For me, writing is about using words to create images in people’s minds, so the picture at the end of poets and pigs trying to each take over Prague’s Staroměstské náměstí (the main square in the Old Town) as the famous clock bongs and the tourists scatter as the poets scream and the pigs squeal, well, it had me then.

1 by Tabatha Stirling

The shock of the word cunt makes this piece. Place it earlier, and it alienates too much. But here it made me laugh out loud, the precious words and almost dainty pictures smeared away by the force of the final image.

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Matt Potter is an Australian-born writer who keeps a part of his psyche in Berlin. Matt has been published in various places online, and he is, rather amazingly, also the founding editor of Pure Slush. You can find Pure Slush here http://pureslush.webs.com, and more of his work at his website here: http://mattcpotter.webs.com/.

Editor’s Eye is curated by Michelle Elvy (Fictionaut profile here). She writes and edits every day at michelleelvy.com, and readers can also find her editing Blue Five Notebook (with Sam Rasnake) and Flash Frontier.

We are pleased to welcome Russell Rowland to this month’s Writers on Craft. Russell was born in Bozeman, Montana, in 1957. His first novel, In Open Spaces, made the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list and was named among the “Best of the West 2002” by the Salt Lake City Tribune. It received a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. Rowland’s second novel, The Watershed Years, also garnered rave reviews and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award for fiction. His third novel is High and Inside, the story of a former Red Sox pitcher who moves to Bozeman, Montana to try to rebuild a shattered life. High and Inside was also recently named a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

Rowland lives in his home town of Billings, where he teaches at MSU-Billings and offers private editing consultation. He has taught at Boston University and was a writer in residence at St. Mary’s College. Russell holds a BA from Pacific Lutheran University and an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University.

What do you read when you despair at the state of either your work or a particularly difficult manuscript in progress—any “go to” texts?

I’m a Faulkner guy. So if I get to that level of discouragement, he’s my ‘go to’ guy to get inspired. He’s the one writer that consistently shows me that you can break every rule in the book and still make it work, which is exactly what I admire about him. It’s kind of odd, because my style has never been anything like his…it’s more about the spirit of his work, I think. Plus I love the way he manages to jump around to different points of view without ever losing the reader. One of my favorite passages ever, in all of literature, comes from the Snopes trilogy, where Faulkner takes us into Benji Snopes’ love for the family milk cow, and it just breaks your heart. He wrote as if he could do anything he wanted and make it work, and that inspires me.

If you could give just one piece of advice to emerging authors about editing that has served you well, what would it be?

Well, when I was first starting to get some things published, I went through a phase where I was open to advice from anyone and everyone, especially other writers. And I got caught up in trying to solve every issue that anyone pointed out. There was one novel in particular that I sent to a bunch of people, and I was getting a ton of conflicting feedback. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that if you take everything anyone says as valid criticism, you’re never going to be able to satisfy everyone. But more importantly, you’re probably not going to end up with the same book you started with, or the book you had in mind. You’re going to lose your own vision. So I have learned to trust just a few people, people who have my best interests at heart, and people who are able to read others’ work without trying to turn it into what they think it should be. People who will help you come up with the strongest version of what you’re trying to accomplish.

How has your perception of what you “do” with your work changed as you have continued to write?

Ooh, that’s a great question. I suppose the main thing that’s changed is that I’m trying to be less cautious, and considering bigger possibilities. Early on, most of what I was exploring with my writing pertained to me and my relationship with my family and with Montana. And of course those are still huge issues, and themes that come up over and over again. But I think I’ve become way more aware of how important it is to think about the bigger picture. For the book I’m working on now, my first non-fiction book, I’m traveling to every county in Montana and doing research about its history, but also talking to people about what’s going on now. And it became very clear early in the process that this book has nothing to do with me. I’m just serving as a recorder…I’m telling a much bigger story here, about other people, from years before I was around, and from places far from anything I’ve ever experienced. So it’s forcing me to get out of the way and let their stories take the limelight. It’s been an incredibly enlightening experience so far. And also freeing, because I don’t have to think about myself all the time, which is too much work. I have no idea how it will affect my fiction, but I’m kind of eager to see.

What do you feel is the purpose of literature?

Oh, besides saving the world, you mean? Heh. Well, I’m not sure I can say anything very original about that. I suppose it’s the basic idea of holding up a mirror to people who are interested in learning more about themselves. I know when I read something that blows me away, a lot of what gets to me about it is that someone has expressed something that I feel deeply about in a way that I never thought about before, or in a way that I can’t imagine expressing myself. It gives meaning to things because it takes away the isolation of feeling them yourself and thinking that you’re alone with the human experience. We are never alone if we have books that give us that connection to humanity, especially segments of humanity that we may never come in contact with in person.

As a human being, what is the best advice you have to offer?

Wow, okay. I’ve never been asked THAT one. I suppose the thing that’s been hardest for me to get through my thick skull is that approval from others is highly overrated. If you have a handful of close friends, you have enough to accomplish anything and survive anything. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have that kind of core group of devoted friends that I’ve had for decades. So the periods where I’m not able to get my next novel published, or the one that just came out is doing shit, or what the fuck ever is going on don’t have nearly the impact they would if that kind of success was what I was relying on to keep me GOING as a person. I will never be in a place where success is that meaningful to me because I have amazing friends.

Setting is an important aspect in your books.  In your “Tips for Writing a Novel Interview,” you mention about the genesis of some earlier work, “Place was a huge factor in my first two novels, because they were based on my own family history. My mother’s ancestors were homesteaders in Eastern Montana, among the first wave of cattle ranchers in the area.” You also mention using places that were formative to you as a person.  In your latter or more recent work, can you speak to whether or not place or personal history still hold as significant a role in  your process and selection of plots—do you think place will continue to impact what enters your work as a motif?  Why or why not? 

Another great question. And the simple answer is yes. It will always be important. Because Montana has had such a powerful impact on me as a person. I lived in twelve different states after I graduated from high school, and I always knew I’d come back to Montana someday because it is so much a part of who I am. And I think living all over the country gave me an even greater appreciation both for what Montana has to offer and for what it means to me. My last novel is more about how an outsider experiences Montana, so I’ve tried to explore what this place means from different angles. The novel I just recently finished is one about what it’s like to be different in the West, so that’s another angle. In fact, it’s called The Difference Between Us. As far as why, I guess it goes back to what I said earlier about trying to understand myself and my family’s past. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about Montana…I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many great writers are from this state.

What’s recently released or in the pipeline for your readers? Give us a sneak peek.

The Difference Between Us is about a murder that takes place in a small ranching community. Tom Butcher, the guy who gets killed, is a very popular and successful rancher who has never married and has always had a reputation as a ladies’ man. So there were many people who had reason to kill him. But there’s a new family that just moved into the area, and the father of that family had a little bit of a disagreement with Tom the day before the murder. So the community’s suspicions quickly fall on the new guy. I’m still looking for a publisher for this book, and in fact I’m looking for an agent because my last one and I went our separate ways.

But I do have a publisher for the book about the counties of Montana. That book, Fifty-Six Counties: An American Journey, is scheduled to come out in the fall of 2015 with Bangtail Press, who published my last novel. Allen Jones is the publisher there and he’s doing some amazing work for a publisher that’s pretty new to the game. So I’m excited to be working with him again. Thank you for interviewing me, Heather.

Writers on Craft is hosted by Heather Fowler, who cares about writing. She does a lot of it. Visit her profile on Fictionaut or see here for more: www.heatherfowlerwrites.com.

When I was asked to serve as the Editor’s Eye for June, I was both intimidated and flattered. There are so many talented writers on this site and I lack an MFA or other academic credentials that might better qualify one for the task. At the same time, I felt an obligation to “give back” to an institution that has been a source of delight, challenge, and encouragement in the two years since I joined. I hope my small contribution helps Fictionaut continue to flourish. What made the Editor’s Eye job especially tough is that even among those stories and poems that didn’t rise to the Recommended list, there were many deserving of more attention than they received, making it difficult to limit my selections. I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s picks, if you haven’t already.

Kohala 1962-2014, by David Ackley—I read this quiet poem early on in my process and found that I liked it more with each returning read. The vivid imagery, the sense of longing, and the mystery surrounding the author’s attraction to this place (if there is one other than  Kohala’s natural beauty) combined to make this piece a standout.

Adjunct Survival Syllabus, by Miranda Merklein—First, I enjoyed the innovative structure and biting humor of this “story.” Second, I liked that the author brought much-needed attention to a subject that deserves even more—the sad plight of adjunct professors and the students they teach. Surely, our educational institutions owe more to both.

Real, by Alison Wells—Flash fiction meets science fiction in this well-executed and sensitive story of a father and daughter discovering common ground in the most uncommon circumstances. The success of a story like this depends largely on the balance and careful weaving of the fantastic with the, well, with the real. Alison Wells gets it just right in a voice that invites us in and keeps us reading until the end.

Why No One Writes Epics Anymore, by John Olson—Overall, John Olson’s work strikes me as well-crafted, thoughtful, and delightfully subversive. This particular piece illustrates all of those aspects. I don’t know why no one writes epics anymore, but John’s explanation makes more sense to me than anything else I’ve read.

About that Leg, by Randall Stickford—Longish stories (those over 1,000 words) by new or infrequent contributors often receive short shrift on Fictionaut, not because we’re bad people here but because we’re busy and otherwise engaged and bottom-line this is a social networking site with a literary twist—very humanly, we tend to give based on what we get. Anyway, this is a smart, realistic story about men being men in the worst of our doglike ways. The tone, pacing, and characterization are spot on.

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Gary V. Powell is a former lawyer and stay-at-home dad to a thirteen year-old son. His stories and flash have appeared most recently at Bartleby Snopes, Literary Orphans, Thrice Fiction, Connotation Press: An Online Artifiact, and Camroc Press Review. In addition to winning the 2015 Gover Prize for short-short fiction, several of his short stories have placed in other national contests including The Press 53 Prize (2012), Glimmer Train Short-Short Contest  (2013), and The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize (2014). His first novel, Lucky Bastard, is available through Main Street Rag Press. A self-published novella in three stories, Speedos, Tattoos, and Felons, is a prequel to Lucky Bastard.

Editor’s Eye is curated by Michelle Elvy (Fictionaut profile here). She writes and edits every day at michelleelvy.com, and readers can also find her editing Blue Five Notebook (with Sam Rasnake) and Flash Frontier.