| |
I’m writing from my “Intro to Creative Writing” class.
We’re all gathered under an oak tree on the Arkansas Tech campus. The weather is beautiful. Fall is in the air. I have six of my favorite novels and short story collections in my backpack. Sticky notes rise from the pages, marking passages I plan to share with the class.
The students don’t know it yet, but I’m about to ask them to write a 199-word story. “Story” isn’t exactly the right term. What they pen will serve as the opening to a longer prose piece they’ll write over the course of the semester. I want them to start small. I want them to focus on every word.
I also want them to have an idea of what I’m looking for, which is why I brought examples along. The first book I pull from my backpack is “The Name of the Nearest River,” by a dear friend and downright dazzling author, Alex Taylor.
The cover features a shirtless man with a scraggly beard holding up a lunker catfish. There’s no pole in sight. No stink bait. It appears as if the guy has pulled the beast straight from the river with his bare hands, which, if you’re familiar with Alex’s characters, isn’t all that surprising.
I explain to my class everything I just explained to you, and then I open the book to the story, “The Evening Part of Daylight.” The first line reads:
“It was Lustus Sheetmire’s wedding day and he’d just punched his new bride Loreesa in the jaw.”
I was planning to read more, but that’s as far as I make it before one of my students says, “Wait. This guy’s your friend?”
A hush falls over the outdoor class. A lawnmower starts up in the distance. It takes me a second, but then I understand the implication. This student thinks Alex Taylor, the author of the story, has once punched his soon-to-be bride in the jaw. Which, as I can faithfully attest, is not the case.
Maybe it’s the redneck dude and the giant catfish on the cover. Maybe that’s what made my student jump to such a conclusion. Or maybe it goes deeper than that.
As an author who’s had to answer my fair share of audience questions, I tend to go with the latter. Most people think you are your fiction, but that isn’t always true.
You see, us writers — and most other humans too — we all have this thing called a brain, an imagination, which allows us to pull whole worlds and vibrant, sometimes violent characters out of thin air.
As the class wears on, I do my best to express these thoughts to my students. They need to understand how to separate the creator from the creation more than they need the examples I’ve lugged along.
A lively conversation ensues, a class-wide chat about how people — young people, especially — consume their art. It’s different from how I do it; that’s for sure. They’re more mindful of the author as a person than they are of her as a craftsman who creates a world that never was out of a world that was and is.
And that’s okay. Knowledge is power. Heck, in this day and time, it takes some doing to remain blissfully ignorant.
But before I turn back to Alex’s opening paragraph, I let the cat out of the bag. I tell my students that they’ll soon be asked to write a story of their own, pages that we’ll all be reading and discussing in class.
Their smiling faces grow suddenly somber. That lawnmower from before is louder now, closer.
I let the tension build for a few more whirring seconds, then assure them I know just how they feel, along with everyone else who’s ever created something and set it loose in the world.
Don't Know Tough
Buy the Book
In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
Buy the Book
In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
| Previous columns: |
• Writing from Mom's Knee Surgery
• Writing from Buffet-less World
• Writing from an airplane
• Writing from Mississippi Book Festival
• Writing from Bed
• Writing from Witherspoon Hall
• Writing From: Coco
• Writing from the Beach
• Writing From: Crooked Creek
• Writing from a Nursing Home
• Writing from a Firework Tent
• Writing from a Boat
• Writing from the Stars
• Writing from the Pool
• Writing from the Kitchen
• Writing from Summer
• Writing from Kindergarten
• Writing from Mom
• Writing from a Plane
• Writing from Home
• My second novel’s publication
• A New Marriage Milestone
• An Invitation to the Party
• Writing from a Thunderstorm
• Writing from a Soundbooth
• Writing from “Jazz Beach"
• Writing from the Sabbath
• Writing from somewhere between Little Rock and Russellville
|
• Writing from my back deck
• Writing from the morning of my thirty-fifth year
• Writing on the day of the college football National Championship
• Writing from the space between breaths
• Writing from 2022
• Writing from the glow of a plastic Christmas tree
• Writing on a rollercoaster of triumph and disaster
• Writing from the drop-off line at my daughter’s elementary school
• Writing with Thanksgiving on my mind
• Writing from the crowd before the start of a Shovels & Rope show
• Writing from the depths of a post-book-festival hangover
• Writing from the Ron Robinson Theatre
• Writing to you on Halloween Eve
• Writing from my bed on a Saturday morning
• Writing from my office with two darts clenched in my left hand
• Writing from the shade of my favorite tree
• Writing from my desk on a Tuesday morning
• Writing from a pirate ship
• Writing from the airport
• Writing from the hospital
• I'm writing from the water
• Writing from my wife's Honda Pilot
• Writing from my office |
|
