New essay on the web
January 27, 2012
My essay, “Firefighting,” is up on Knee-Jerk Magazine’s website. Those folks found fit to give it a spot as a one of two runners-up in their inaugural essay contest, and for that, I thank them.
If you want to lend a hand to the magazine, they’re currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise some funds to help offset the cost of printing Knee-Jerk Offline Vol. 2. You should pitch in; literary journals hold a mirror up to our society. They’re crucially important. So help one out. As of this posting, they’re over halfway to their goal of $500.
“Firefighting”
December 19, 2011
I feel awful that I’ve let this blog fall by the wayside.
Yesterday, though, I got news that my essay “Firefighting” placed as a runner up in the inaugural Knee-Jerk Magazine Essay contest. If you click the link (and you should), you’ll see that not only is it a placement in a writing contest, a publication, but money. Money! For writing! Gasp!
So I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the judges. Because it wasn’t an easy essay to write.
It started off as a series of vignettes about covering house fires when I was a journalist. I wrote it during the summer, and eventually, it dawned on me what I wasn’t writing about: my dad sold firefighting equipment for years—as long as I can remember, in fact—so that got folded into the essay. And it’s impossible for me to write about my dad without getting into his decline into alcoholism and eventual suicide.
So like I said, not easy to write. But what story worth writing is easy to write?
When I was a senior creative writing and journalism major at Miami University, I had the fortune of taking a week-long writing class with Richard Bausch, which was a beautiful week that made me much more cognizant of my own writing. I have a journal full of things he said during that week, and he’s since started posting pearls of wisdom on Facebook. This is one of my favorites:
You don’t have to be so terribly smart, or fast. You only have to be willing. You get smart going through it and through it after being open to what it is tending toward. Don’t worry about what you will finally say; it will tell you.
This happens every time somebody sits down to write. It certainly did for me in my essay. The key is to let the story tell you what it’s about, not the other way around. Try to manhandle the story, and it won’t ring true. So when you sit down today to write—a fictional story, a blog entry, a piece of breaking news—remember this. Let the story tell you what it has to say.
Birch Hills at World’s End
September 3, 2011
My good friend Geoff Hyatt has a new book coming out on Vagabondage Press, Birch Hills at World’s End. And you all should read it. I had the pleasure of reading it while it was still a manuscript, and, if I do say so myself, in my first fiction class at Columbia College Chicago, I offered up the words “flask” and “poinsettia,” which got Geoff going on what turned into a great scene—years of work later; it’s not like I’m taking credit for anything here.
Birch Hills at World’s End has a release party at Reading Under the Influence, and if you’re in Chicago next week, you should go. The theme is “apocalypse,” and the lovely writer Ilana Shabanov will also be reading, among others. Seriously. Go.
“Gratitude. Gratitude.”
September 3, 2011
My good friend Cheryl Heckler has a saying that she often puts on her Facebook page: “Gratitude. Graditude.” Usually, it involves the small things in life, and she’s one of the kindest, most wonderful people I’ve ever had the chance to meet.
Her mantra comes to mind every morning when I’m waiting for the bus to work.
You see, every morning, I walk a few blocks to the corner of Campbell and Lawrence Avenues to catch the 81 bus to the Red Line on my way to work at Fisheye Graphic Services. The last bus I can catch and make it to work on time comes around 8:25. Across Lawrence Avenue, every morning, there’s a line of people standing outside a nondescript building, the only hint of its contents is a small sign that says “Illinois Department of Employment Security.”
This office opens at 8:30 a.m., and today, I saw a line of at least thirty people, some holding umbrellas to shelter themselves from the late summer heat. They have it hard, as do millions of other Americans.
But seeing this, I can’t help but feel incredibly thankful for my job—my new job; I’ve only been there since the beginning of July, and I can honestly say I love going to work every morning. I get to use my design experience, my ability to put out fires as they come up, and I get to smell printing ink again, like I did when I was a reporter at the Chillicothe Gazette. I’m incredibly fortunate, and each morning, I’m reminded of that.
So to quote Cheryl, “Gratitude. Gratitude.”
Another publication
August 19, 2011
Back in the spring, I wrote a piece for a nascent web journal, Hypertext Magazine, arguing for the ethics of hunting; for me, it’s like going to the farmer’s market. It just went live, and you can read it here.
Coming to an AWP Conference near you
August 5, 2011
So this year’s AWP Conference is in my adopted hometown of Chicago, and for all those who fancy books and writing, it’s a hell of a good time. This year it’ll be even better, since I’ll be sitting on a panel with some of my favorite writers and best friends.
Our panel—no date or time yet—is dedicated to helping writers keep the momentum once they’ve left their writing programs. Its title: A Writing Life, After the Workshop.
From our proposal:
This intensive presentation covers what your MFA program might have missed: how-to organize and sustain a writing life in today’s economy. Our event showcases planning ideas, technology solutions, and tools for writers to be more in control of their career and maintain a writing lifestyle long-term. The approach is engaging to the audience, displaying the websites and tools to promote one’s work. The audience will come away knowing their own resources and an action plan for their writing life. A Q/A session follows.
On the panel with me will be Ilana Shabanov, equally amazing on the page and as she is with food; April Newman, who wrote an amazing book of creative nonfiction called Broke Love and teaches online writing and pedagogy courses; James Lower, with his velvety radio voice and powerful Southern-tinged writing; and Sheree Greer, one badass writer, who has a collection out for Kindle called Once and Future Lovers, which is only $5. $5!!!
Great publishers and creative writing programs are everywhere, but this is the place to be if you’re interested in either. I went the last time it was in Chicago, and ended up with a half dozen literary magazine subscriptions (discounts!) and had a hell of a time going from one stimulating panel discussion to the bar (more discussions) to another discussion. If you’re in Chicago and like any of this stuff, by all means, get yourself to the conference.
Sorry for the disappearing act.
August 1, 2011
I started on July 5 at Fisheye Graphic Services, a full-service printing, graphic design, and direct mail company based here in Chicago. And I’m loving it. I just haven’t had much time to crank out the blog entries. But never fear! More are coming!
American Buffalo
April 30, 2011
Not the David Mamet play, which I was privileged to see on stage at Steppenwolf, I’m talking about Steven Rinella’s book American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon. It’s not just the story of a hunt for the America’s largest land animal, Bison bison, but the history of the Buffalo in American culture. From the nickel, and its model, to the introduction to the horse and the decimation of the population by prehistoric Natives Americans and the ruthless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals by skin hunters who left the carcasses to rot, this book covers it all.
That said, it’s told through the framework of Steven Rinella — who also hosts “The Wild Within” on the Travel Channel, a hunt-to-table show that’s fascinating — getting one of very few tags to hunt a buffalo in Alaska, a 1-in-50 chance. From rafting down the Chetaslina River and camping along its banks, to brushes with hypothermia, Rinella is a true outdoorsman who, as shown on “The Wild Within,” feeds his family only on meat that he hunts and honors by treating with respect and cooking well. It’s very much worth following him on Twitter, if only for the recipes.
It seems that I’ve been reading about the outdoors lately, probably because of the rainy weather in Chicago, not to mention all the pavement; also in my stack to read next is Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and, in honor of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, the photojournalists killed in Misrata, Libya, recently, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva’s The Bang Bang Club. It seems like I’m slamming through some nonfiction while working on submitting fiction to various literary journals.
That said, though hunting season seems awfully far away — I just cooked my last pheasant from last season — it’s getting to be fishing weather. I hope to get out tonight and catch some catfish, some of the best-eating fish, especially when seared in butter with some Cajun seasoning. For anyone in Chicagoland wanting to try it out, head to Fishtech in Morton Grove. They got me set up with some (horrible smelling) catfish bait that makes for an exciting evening afield.
It could’ve been me
April 20, 2011
Back when I was an undergrad journalism major, I worked with an amazing professor, journalist, and friend to this day, Cheryl Heckler. My senior year, we tried like hell to work out an independent study where we’d both go to Kosovo to get a taste of journalism during wartime. A friend who worked at Buzz Coffee, and who served in the Army in Kosovo, gave me this advice: “Don’t step off the pavement. There could be land mines, especially in the Russian sector.” I went to a shooting range and rented a Glock, wanting to be prepared for the worst.
Unfortunately — or fortunately — it didn’t work out. We weren’t able to get visas, and the airfare would have been prohibitively expensive. When I met my wife Ann, I couldn’t fathom taking the kind of risks that conflict reporters and photographers routinely take. I’ve always morbidly joked that if she ever left me or — God forbid — something tragic happens to her, I’d join the French Foreign Legion. I think, now, that I’d rather be a conflict reporter.
If you haven’t seen Restrepo, you owe it to yourself (and I’d argue your country) to see it. It streams on Netflix and is widely available. The trailer is below, but be warned that it contains some not-safe-for-work, soldierly language.
The co-director of Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, died today in Misrata, Libya, and three other photographers were injured, one gravely.
When I talked to Cheryl today, I asked her why Hetherington’s death was affecting me as much as it is. She said, in her typical cut-to-the-point way, “Because their stories are so real, and because you know, if not for Ann, it could be you in that casket.”
There are a lot of heroes in this world. I’m honored to know a few — firefighters, police officers (one killed in the line of duty), people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, people who did and do amazing things without thinking about it. I know the former company commander of the unit shown in Restrepo.
But what conflict reporters do on a daily basis is a wholly good thing. They put their lives on the line so that we, far, far away from the fighting, have an impartial picture of war. And maybe that’s why I feel the same way about Tim Hetherington that I feel about that police officer killed in the line of duty, the firefighters who don’t make it out of burning buildings, the soldiers who come home with injuries visible and injuries to their psyche. Tim Hetherington represented the best of all journalists, and that’s why anyone who’s ever written under a byline is mourning him today.
The Research High School
April 15, 2011
Lately, I’ve been editing a ton, focusing mostly on an amazing book by the principal of Crown Point High School, Dr. Eric Ban, that is forthcoming from Elephant Rock Books. It’s amazingly complex, the network that Dr. Ban has begun to create. He’s been a college professor, worked in private industry, and put all that knowledge into creating a network of schools and potential employers based on the concept that feeds data into the network just like research hospitals feed information into networks of healthcare providers.
How do you hire people? How do you help folks identify problems? How do you know which problems to work on and how to apply your resources? I asked so many questions when I spoke with the research hospital administrators. But I came to realize that my work is not much different. We have a ton of similarities on personnel, budgeting, and how to get our arms around all the data we collect. The talented research hospital administrators helped me to understand that we are working in a new type of leadership space. My dad used to say that if you are not consistently changing and improving, you are getting passed up. Leading in a culture of continuous improvement is actually what my best teachers do with their kids. They inspire, invent, and produce.
It’s heartening to have had the opportunity to read this, especially when states (including my home state of Ohio—and my mom works in a high school) seem to be turning against the teacher politically. To be clear, Dr. Ban doesn’t just talk a good game. He plays it hard. The sheer amount of data he’s collected in just a few years is driving innovation at CPHS. With the research hospital as a model, it’s almost impossible not to.
And it’s even better to see it in action. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting CPHS twice now—once for an Elephant Rock DVD shoot, and students seem engaged and tuned into their own goals. When you see the results firsthand, you know he’s on the right track.
