A new blog future

I started Creating Van Gogh with the idea of thinking through and expounding on various issues I was confronting in my attempt to write a compelling, credible historical novel: What were the "rules"?  How   do I handle this research thing?  What exactly is the proper function of the imagination in historical fiction, and is its function any different than for any other kind of fiction?  What do I do with contrasting historical "facts"?  What am I allowed to do when borrowing work that my character, in real life, created?  These are only a few of the many questions I've considered in my four years of doing this blog, and I've gotten some useful answers from my readers.  Of course, there are plenty of questions I probably should have considered but didn't.  And along the way, as various professional and personal events have unfolded in my life, I've written about other issues not strictly related to historical fiction: some crazy administrative developments at my university, for instance, and how the public conception of a writing professor rarely corresponds with the real nature of the job.  I've written about a Novel Writing Workshop I teach; what I've learned; how I might do it better.  I've written about four different AWP conferences and the UK's Great Writing conference; I've written about Toad Suck Review, the journal I help edit; I've written about the connections between running and writing.  I've recommended books; I've reported on some of my publications.  In short, Creating Van Gogh today is less about historical fiction, or about my Van Gogh novel, than it is about the state of imaginative writing generally and the art of teaching imaginative writing.  Yes, that's right, I'm guilty of making another writing and teaching blog.

That being the case, I've decided to create a new blog this fall that in its very conception is broader than the my original conception for Creating Van Gogh and thus fairly allows me to discuss any relevant issue or development or fantastic idea I've heard about in regards to the literary life and the unique nuturing of literary lives that takes place in university settings.  As I said, I've been kind of doing this already, and so it's probably time for the blog itself to match the identity of the content.  I haven't finalized a name yet.  I'm toying with a few possibilities, Letteratti being the one I like the most right now.  When a name is finalized, you'll be the first to know.  Meanwhile, after a few more entries, Creating Van Gogh will go into suspended animation.  It won't quite end; that is, I certainly can see myself putting up the occasional post, especially for any updates regarding my book.  But for the most part it will be in a state of rest.   I began the blog while I was in the throes of finalizing a draft of my novel.  Now that the novel has been published, it seems like a good time to let it nap.

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Other publishing updates: It's been an unusually active summer for me in terms of placing my work, both long and short.  Traditionally, literary journals go into suspension during the summmer months, but as more and more journals go online, it's not unusual anymore to find journals that read and publish all year round; and sometimes this means a dizzyingly fast turnaround between acceptance and publication.  One online journal thankfully caught me by phone the day before I was to leave on an extended trip to Europe.  A trip in which I had NO phone service and limited internet access.  Whew!  They informed me of the acceptance and said they needed a recent photo of me, which I proceeded to pose for and my wife proceeded to take.  I emailed it to them that afternoon and within a week my story, and the picture, was up on their web site.  

In any case, here's a countdown of my publications/acceptances this summer, with links to the works provided where possible.  In May, an excerpt from Days on Fire appeared in Versal, the great English-language journal published in Amsterdam.  In July, I was the featured contributor on the journal's blog.  You can check out my answers to their rather creative questions here.  Also this summer, I published (in a somewhat trimmed down state) my quirky story "Homeroom" (written as a series of high school homeroom announcements) in theNewerYork Press's Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature (EEEL); I published the longish story "Home Visit" in Gemini; and I published the memoir essay "A Minute Inside the Ocean Cafe, July 1980" in Squalorly.   Meanwhile, my half-personal/half-journalistic essay on marathon running, "Thirteen More Miles," is soon to appear in the journal 1966, a magazine conceived with the fantastic idea of focusing on research-driven narrative nonfiction.  (The link takes you to the journal but not to my essay--I promise it will be there soon.)  Finally, as I reported in my post of last week, I placed my historical short (long) story "On Cherry Street" in Pembroke.  The story should appear this fall.

And, the best news of all is that Days on Fire is out and available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com, capping a summer that has been quite the whirlwind for me--in more ways than one.

Creating Van Gogh does the Next Big Thing

I was recently included in an email chain letter to writers who also have blogs.  The idea for the chain, launched by Cathy Day and her blog The Next Big Thing, is to answer ten questions about a project you are currently working on, or one you have already completed, while at the same time linking to other writers' blogs where they answer these same questions.  In this post you'll find my answers to the questions.  Unfortunately, most of the writers I sent the letter on to were either already involved or declined to participate.  But I encourage you to follow the link below to my wife's blog Wordamour (this is her personal one, not the one she maintains for the Huffington Post) where you can find her answers to the questions.  She has recently finished a World War Two novel called The Lost Son.  It features brothers who are separated early in life and wind up fighitng on different sides during the war.  It was inspired by a real life story in her own family--although her novel leaves behind family history to go its own way in some important aspects.  Read all about the novel and the story that inspired it by clicking here.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am once again teaching Novel Writing Workshop at UCA.  This means I'm making my students compose a short novel over the course of one semester.  And for the sake of esprit de corps--this class follows the idea of the "writeshop," a term Cathy Day coined--I am taking up my own challenge; that is, I'm composing a short novel right along with them.   I'll give a full update next week on how the class is going.  I mention it now only to say that the novel I'm writing for the class is so much in the process of formation that I can't possibly apply the ten questions to that book.  Not yet.  So instead I'll apply the questions to my Van Gogh novel, which I anticipate will soon finally see the light of day.  (Pieces of it have already been published or are forthcoming.)

Okay, on to the questions.

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

What is your working title of your book (or story)?  After an agent strongly pressed me to come up with a more compelling title for the project, I changed the name from Yellow to Days on Fire.  The color yellow is still suggested by the latter title but in a more active fashion.  The agent seemed to like the new title, and I've decided to keep it.

Where did the idea come from for the book?  I was teaching in Holland one summer and during a short trip to Amsterdam I visited the Van Gogh Museum (along with other prominent museums). Prior to that visit, I might have seen one or two Van Gogh paintings in the flesh at the National Gallery in Art in Washington, near where I grew up, but I wasn't prepared for the sheer stunning light that came off the paintings I saw in the Van Gogh museum.  Now I knew what all the hubbub was about.  My fascination with the paintings made me more curious about the man, and that set me thinking.


What genre does your book fall under?  That one is easy: historical fiction.  Although, as I've mentioned on this blog, I don't play absolute, strict adherence to what some would view as the "rules" of historical fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?  As sexy and fun as it is, this is one question I'm going to have to decline to answer.  (Sorry.)  After all, if the book were ever to be made into a movie I would be the last person allowed to choose actors for it--there are people called casting directors--and, besides, I just don't know if I follow the movies and television as intensely as I  need to to effectively give an answer here.  I suppose what I really would like is a surprise choice, someone no one would expect to do the role, and then have that person do a smash up job.  Actors surprise you all the time, after all.  Think of the truly powerful performance by Bradley Cooper in Silvers Linings Playbook, for instance.  (For what it's worth, while Jennifer Lawerence has been garnering awards for her performance in that film, I think Cooper's was far more impressive, demonstrated a wider and more supple emotional range, the whole of which he carried off convincingly.)

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?  Van Gogh fails and fails and fails, costing his health, his happiness, his family, and a portion of his sanity, but in the end he succeeds where it matters to him the most.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?  At this writing, while I'm still waiting to hear from a publisher in France that was recommended to me from someone over there, I anticipate self-publishing the novel.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  The whole process of writing, revising, cutting, shaping, adding, reshaping, and editing the book took so long, was spread out across so many years, that I'm not sure I can accurately answer this question.  But certainly it took me at least a year to finish a handwritten first draft.  (Believe it or not, that's how I like to compose first drafts, although this semester, for the novel I'm composing in class, I'm drafting straight to the computer.)  Probably it was more like a year and a half.


What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?  Painters have not infrequently been the subjects of novels; both novels generally and historical novels in particular.  There's just something about the exquisite physical torture of trying to turn messy colored fluid into a seemingly concrete reality.  A well known painter novel is The Agony and The Ecstasy by Irving Stone, his "biographical novel" about Michelangelo.  (I think I like that term, because it certainly applies to my book.)   More recently, there was John Updike's Seek My Face and Harriet Scott Chessman's Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper.  The latter novel depicts the sad tension in the Cassatt household due to Lydia's illness.  It can be compared to mine in the sense that it is set in a similar time period and country (France) and tries to make real the world of those post-Impressionist painters who are only glittery names to most of us now.  But maybe most like mine in its humanizing of a famous but not quite understood figure (i.e. Vermeer) is Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring.  My novel is broader in scope than either Chessman's or Chevalier's but I think, like Girl, brings a new and sympathetic sensibilty to a subject who has been codified by history and popular opinion.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?  As I stated in my answer to question 2, it all started with that visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?  Well, Van Gogh wasn't nearly the nut case he is commonly understood to have been, but he did have the courage or stubborness or lack of temperance, if you will, to pursue his passions with almost blind servitude.  This is to say there were extreme elements to his personality.  I show those elements in the novel, along with his softer side; I think the combination makes for a compelling read.  It should also interest readers to see Van Gogh interact with well known artists like Signac, Bernard, and Gauguin.  The latter plays quite a large and important role in the last third of the novel.