Saturday, April 24, 2010

Fixation

I have been fixated lately by writing in three POV, being first person, second person, and third person omniscient. Well, to be perfectly honest this is not a new fixation as I've previously attempted this in a WIP novel that explores POV in first person (On Memory), second person (On Forgetting), and third person omniscient (On Truth). I am currently working sporadically on a short story following this same pattern again but now floating between three different characters to tell the same story for different perspectives. I'm probably being influenced to some degree by Tash Aw's "The Harmony Silk Factory," in which Aw uses three different characters to tell the story of one person through different eyes. I found that fascinating because no one perspective catches the essence of the main character, but rather interprets him through their own bias. It is this essence of "being" that I find fascinating as a subject of study. It folds nicely into this attempt to use POV shifts to examine the same event from different characters.

It's funny but I find second person POV to be nearly the most perfect perspective. There's something about the claustrophobic narrowness of the perspective that gives a work a hemmed-in feel. It makes one realize that a perspective is just that -- one point of view on a person or event. The best work I've seen so far in this light is Carlos Fuentes' "Aura." I thoroughly enjoyed what Fuentes managed to do with second person. Aura is highly readable. For an example of my experiments in second person POV, see "What if You Had Flown?" at Boston Literary in 2008 here: http://www.bostonliterarymagazine.com/fall08quick.html#fall08flown.html. A piece of flash fiction originally written as a postcard fiction piece.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Welcome to the World of Blogging

While I am an old blogger from the days of MySpace, an account I still hold but do little with, I have not had much to blog about in quite some time. Most of those MySpace blogs have long vanished and now reside as random electrons scattered in cyberspace. Indeed, I have had nothing much to say that I would feel inclined to bore you good people with; so, instead of following along with all the millions of other bloggers, I have chosen instead to lurk and observe, enjoy the beautiful countryside I live in, and occasionally write a few words of prose or poetry. I'm sure the world sighs a breath or two of relief knowing one less blogger is foisted upon them. I'm sure glad. I love my mountains. Yet, even as I slowly developed my writing bio I knew this day would come. This is the day I would begin keeping a blog to keep the world informed about what I'm up to with my writing. I apologize profusely ahead of time. I also thank you for now following the journey I take with these first, unsteady words into the abyss.

Let me tell you to begin with something about myself. I hadn't written a word of prose or poetry for many years, but suddenly in 2006 found myself encouraged to take up the pen. The world of writing had changed substantially since that time. The world of SASE and no simultaneous submissions had crumbled, much as the Berlin Wall, and in that period it seemed possible, once again, to look toward getting a few words published in a small press somewhere in the backwoods. Something to indicate that I had something worthwhile to say and an audience willing to listen. So, in 2006 I began writing again and in 2007 I published my first piece. Over the course of 2007 and 2008 I submitted and published a number of poems and short stories in various publications. In 2009 I took a bit of a break, returning in earnest to it again only in the past few months. I was nominated for a Pushcart for 2009 for a poem I wrote in 2008.

In the meantime, I struggle with my longer works of fiction. I have a half dozen manuscripts in various stages of disarray and hope to get back to them soon to complete them. It has, however, been my view that I need to develop up a certain level of competence and readership before exploring the uncertain seas of novel publication. Yet, I do get the occasional inquiry about those novels from prior readers. I promise you I will get back to them and finalize them.

So, here I am charting this course into the unknown. Exciting, exasperating. It's all good.