E. Christopher Clark - Author and All-Around Geek
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Writers and Strippers
Here I am, thinking that my interest, as a writer, in the lives of exotic dancers and porn stars is an anomaly, and then along comes novelist Ben Greenman, writing a piece for MaudNewton.com on “the affinity of writers & strippers.”
As we were walking back to my hotel, it occurred to me that strippers and writers aren’t very different. Both of us demonstrate our skill for the benefit of others, never knowing exactly how we will be repai… No, no. It didn’t occur to me. That’s ridiculous. Strippers and writers are nothing alike, except for their common humanity, and their outsized expectations, and their sadness when those expectations aren’t met, and their essential fragility.
The article is definitely worth a read. Check it out here.
Monday, April 27, 2009
A Novel in Stories Wins the Pulitzer
I am most encouraged by the news that Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I haven’t yet read the book, but knowing that a “novel in stories” can earn such a high honor gives me great hope for the form that I have (however accidentally) chosen for my own.
I didn’t really know it until my wife pointed it out to me recently, but the novel I’ve been working on for five years or so is a work that very much straddles the line between short story collection and novel. I set out to craft a pretty traditional work, but the short story writer in me seems to have taken over, and each chapter really does stand on its own at this point.
Have you read (m)any collections of linked short fiction? Have you read other novels that felt like the ones I’ve described above? Drop a note in the comments section, and let me know.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
My Command Center
PHOTO: Home Office 1 on Flickr by E. Christopher Clark CC BY-NC-SA
Late last week, my friend Leslie Poston posted a photograph of her workspace to her Flickr account and linked that photo up on Twitter under the hashtag #commandcenter. I’d been in Leslie’s house before, but never seen her workspace, and it was really intriguing to me to see where she gets all of her writing done (and all of her other work, too).
Last night, I decided to join in on the fun by snapping a photo of my own workspace, a photo which I’ve embedded above. And one of the things that came out of the process of taking the photo, uploading it to Flickr, and then tagging it with notes was that I realized how many of the items in my office are all about memory.
There is the bumper sticker that my grandparents brought back from Hershey, Pennsylvania in October 1977, the month I was born. And there is the framed photo of a Hershey sunrise, taken seventeen years later, on my seventeenth birthday, just a month after my grandfather passed away. There’s a replica animation cell from The Lion King that my family got in 1994 when the movie came out on VHS for the first time, a bookshelf filled with hardcover editions of books by the authors who mentored me during my stint in the Lesley MFA program, a chair from my dearly departed alma mater, Bradford College, that my dearly departed father-in-law, Steve Woodsum, purchased from the college before it closed, and, off in the corner, there is a little toy piano that belongs to my daughter, a piano that is sometimes the first toy she goes to on a Saturday morning, when she realizes that daddy is already up and already working.
For me, the perfect workspace is a place warm in color, surrounded by books, and dotted here, there, and everywhere by knick-knacks that conjure powerful memories. My work demands a certain attention to memory, a feeling of nostalgia that permeates every moment. And so, this is the perfect place for me.
Other people like things much simpler. Still others, like the musician Matt Searles, seem to work best in rooms where stuff spills out onto every corner of floor, like so much inspiration bubbling up over the sides of a boiling soul. And my message to you is this: make your space work for you, not against you. We live busy lives, and when it comes time for us to get our work done, whether that’s the work that pays the bills or the Work that nourishes the spirit, we need a place that reminds us why we do what we do, and that compels us to do it more.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Process
I am a big fan of articles about the process of creation. My friend Bryan Ballinger posts a ton of these over on his Breadwig blog. And another place that I’ve been seeing them lately is Gelatometti, the blog kept by the artists in Jim Lee’s Wildstorm stable. The image above is a detail of the three steps Oliver Nome (at least I think it’s Oliver Nome; no last name is given) took to create a relatively stunning image of the Wildstorm Comics character Nemesis. See the full article here. It includes a full look at the finished piece.
And friends, heed this bit of advice: if you’re an artist of any stripe, seek out the writings and teachings of the people who inspire you. See how they did it, and if you don’t already do it that way, give their methods a try. Whatever you do, seek inspiration from the masters. Don’t always make it up as you go along. Study the process.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Returning to Old Work - Jim Lee Redraws Rogue
Jim Lee is applying his “since evolved style” to something he drew for the first time nearly twenty years ago. In this piece published on his Gelatometti blog, he writes about recapturing the scene of Rogue trapped in the Savage Land in Uncanny X-Men #269.
I bring this up here, on this writing blog, not only because Jim Lee is a huge inspiration for me, but also, more generally, because I think that he provides a valuable lesson for us. Sometimes the stories we tell deserve to be retold, once we’ve gained new perspective, once we’ve gotten better at telling stories in general. Lee is redrawing something he drew in 1990. Every once in a while, why don’t we all make a pledge to look back at something we finished (or abandoned) long ago, and see if we can’t dust it off and make something new out of it? I think it would be good for us.