Tag Archives: writing

Flash Fiction Contest – Last Call For Entries

Photo by Jorge Hernandez Valinani

Photo by Jorge Hernandez Valinani

I don’t want to set off widespread panic across the blogosphere, but the Flash Fiction contest for June ends at the close of business on Sunday June 30. Yep–take a deep breath–that’s less than a week away, and yep–now exhale–here at bryanhilson.com we’re open on Sundays until midnight. Don’t worry about us, however, we get to wear sweatpants and eat Skittles out of a giant fishbowl.

And at the moment, with only two entries, our competition workload is not so taxing. It’s true, the Flash Fiction contest hasn’t quite caught fire just yet, but hey, Alfred Nobel didn’t invent dynamite in a day; i.e., your chances of winning are still pretty darn good. But only if you enter this week.

To reiterate the rules: Write a short short story in three sentences based on a theme, and the winner of all eligible entries receives a dedicated blog post from yours truly with a glowing three sentence celebration of his or her all-around awesomeness.

June’s theme is “Happy Returns” and this is the example I gave:

“The father returned home a year after going out to buy some liquid plumber for the kitchen drain. He started in about a bright light, a ditch, amnesia, but his story was beat out by all the hugs and kisses and laughter. That night while his family slept soundly, the father was in the bathroom having been awakened by a terrible itch along his hairline, and scratching it he peeled off the latex mask disguising a different face.”

You can interpret “Happy Returns” in any way you’d like. Have a good time, go nutty, go sad, go funny, whatever sparks your imagination. As always, thanks for reading, thanks for playing.

Flash Fiction Contest – Second Call For Entries

Photo by BrokenSphere

Photo by BrokenSphere

Last week I announced a new monthly feature on the blog, a friendly contest called Flash Fiction Monday. The idea is to write a short short story in three sentences based on a theme, and the winner of all eligible entries receives a dedicated blog post from yours truly with a glowing three sentence celebration of his or her all-around awesomeness. Beats a stick in eye, am I right?

June’s theme is “Happy Returns” and this is the example I gave:

“The father returned home a year after going out to buy some liquid plumber for the kitchen drain. He started in about a bright light, a ditch, amnesia, but his story was beat out by all the hugs and kisses and laughter. That night while his family slept soundly, the father was in the bathroom having been awakened by a terrible itch along his hairline, and scratching it he peeled off the latex mask disguising a different face.”

I’ve received one entry so far but to make this a contest I need more. Do you have three sentences to spare that tell a story involving whatever you feel constitutes a happy return? I’m sure you do and all I ask is that you leave it with me in the comments box and we’ll make this thing competitive. In a friendly way, of course. We’re all friends here at bryanhilson.com.

So have it, and as always thanks for reading and thanks for playing!

My Inner Critic’s Inner Critic

Photo by Matthew Brady

Photo by Matthew Brady

The inner critic, that nagging voice inside the head that consistently ignores the old maxim if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all. Judgmental, cynical, reductive, irrational it can take a yeoman’s effort to keep it at bay, let alone ignore it completely.

The inner critic can be especially debilitating for a writer working on a new project, which is where I’m at the moment. I need to be able to spill my story on the page as messy as it might be and worry later about precision and refinement; those duties await me in the revision process. Ideally, the first draft is a safe place where mistakes are not only allowed they’re highly recommended; a place that should be anathema to the inner critic.

Should be, but oh how many times have I allowed my inner critic too much room at the table and yet it’s still elbowing me in my pride? More than I’d like to admit. However, and mercifully this does happen often enough I don’t have to write home about it, I am able to mute the son of a bitch and move freely through a writing session with nary a negative thought.

And so that provoked me to wondering this: What does my inner critic do when I ignore it? Well, luckily, my inner critic loves an audience, and was more than happy to write a guest blog addressing this very subject.  Please welcome, dear readers, my inner critic.

Yeah hi, I’m Bryan’s inner critic, who the hell do you think you are? Anyway, semi-interesting question he poses, though I definitely would have phrased it better and wouldn’t have spent 300 freaking words on an introduction, and my god, “nary a negative thought” Bryan? Kill me now.

Anyway, what do I do when I’m ignored? Well, think of it like you do your toys when you’re not at home. Yeah, they come to life, right, and have jolly adventures. Okay, except in my case when they come alive I am home and defenseless in bed against a relentless attack of miniature shivs and fire pokers.

That’s right, roughly translated this inner critic’s got its own inner critic to deal with. What’re you doing you lazy piece of subconscious? You just gonna let him ignore you like that? Get back out there, schmuck! Come on, get more aggressive on the sentence structure, he’s practically rubbing your face in it. Aw cripes he just ended another sentence with a preposition! And he’s laughing about it! I knew right away you weren’t gonna cut it. I told your parents, looks more like a salami than a sledgehammer. The kid who never took off his kid gloves! Oh sure have another danish, yep, eat your problems away. Num, num, num, good luck with the diabetes, moron!  

Okay. Yeah. Need to towel off after that one. Don’t feel sorry for me, though, most of the time I am able to mute the son of a bitch and toodle around in my cave with nary a–uh, never mind.

And what happens when I’m able to ignore that voice? What does an inner critic’s inner critic’s inner critic sound like? Man you don’t want to know.

 

Whaat?! You’re just gonna let it end the blog post like that? Disgrace! Last time I send a neuron to do a synapse’s job!

Festival of Books 2013 – What Struck Me Part 2

 

Photo by Carolyn Kraft

Photo by Carolyn Kraft

That’s right, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is simply too magnanimous to contain itself to one day. Did you go? What struck you about the event? Here’s the writerly wisdom and wit I collected on Day 2, with a few snippets of conversation I couldn’t help but overhear:

“When I get drunk I get more affectionate.”

“Writing is very intuitive. Sometimes we know something’s wrong in a story but not how to fix it.”

“An influential pastor in Princeton, New Jersey circa 1905 once said ‘We do not entertain any new ideas here.'”

“Theodore Roosevelt was often considered a traitor to his class–meaning he wasn’t a bigot.”

“She went to his wedding even while she has having an affair with him.”

“Genre writing is pleasing for a literary writer.”

“Historical fiction is always about the present as well as the past.”

“Literature is a way of evoking sympathy.”

“Writing is crystallized improvisation.”

“When I say books you say books! Books! Books!  Books! Books!”

“It’s important that the reader doesn’t know everything about the character but suspects that the author does.”

“When I say past you say tense. Past! Tense! Past! Tense!

“I’m into being interesting.”

“When I say Voyage of the Dawn Treader you say C.S. Lewis. Voyage of the Dawn Treader!…”

“Kurt Vonnegut is the original YA author.”

“I started writing at 7 or 8 years old and I was awesome. All of my sexy vampire stories were published under the pseudonym ‘Anne Rice.'”

“That sounds like diarrhea.”

“Books on writing make the invisible visible.”

“There’s always more to say about verbs.”

“Bad writing reveals what we don’t know.”

“The way writing is taught in the U.S. is completely wrong-headed.”

“The drama comes from the verb choice.”

“Recognizing your own habits and upending them is very refreshing.”

“As soon as I get comfortable with a draft, I must get suspicious of it.”

Progenitors of the quotes above include: two women sitting behind me in the Bovard Auditorium; woman in the shade near the YA Stage; Joyce Carol Oates; D.C. Pierson; Sean Beaudoin; Elizabeth Eulberg; Amy Spalding; Thomas Curwen; Constance Hale; Ben Yagoda

Festival of Books 2013 – What Struck Me Part 1

 

Photo by Carolyn Kraft

Photo by Carolyn Kraft

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is always a great time, and this past weekend’s event did not disappoint. And how could it, really, with two full days on the beautiful USC campus where books and authors reigned supreme?

If you were there I’d love to hear about your experience. In the meantime, here’s a sampling of what struck me from Day 1’s author panels and, in a few instances, my own casual eavesdropping on some unsuspecting festival-goers:

“The music of the writing has to marry the story being told.”

“It’s a fun challenge to describe something from another art form.”

“Hell yes it’s an antiwar novel!”

“There’s a reason why 19-year olds are crazy. Whipsawed between raging hormones and the most profound existential questions in life.”

“My process is creative floundering. With this kind of work we have to create our own problems. That’s why writers are crazy.”

“I went nuclear on my publisher not to have a headless woman on the cover.”

“You shouldn’t be taken less seriously as writer because of your gender.”

“Endings are hard. There’s a significant amount of psychological pressure when you don’t know how the novel is going to end. But it’s also thrilling.”

“Flannery O’Connor said that she liked a story that was like a sandwich she eats on a Thursday and makes her sick on a Saturday. It’s got to stay with you.”

“There is no time in the psychological.”

“When you’re looking for feedback on something you need a reader who will accept the story on its own terms, who won’t try to impose on it their idea of what a story should be.”

“Stuff: In the end it doesn’t mean anything.”

“The only you fail to make something better is by not trying.”

“We can’t help but remake ourselves constantly. Have to really work at being stuck.”

“Fortune-telling: Sometimes we want to invest someone with the authority to tell us what we already know.”

“You never know what in your life you’re going to use in a book.”

“Characters who are omnipotent ruin the hell out of your plot.”

“I like to be the writer, the reader, and the character simultaneously.”

“Isabel Allende said writing is lonely; it’s the response that reconnects you to the world.”

“You can visit a country by reading its folktales.”

“Why did they give the new Star Wars movie to J.J. Abrams? I know exactly what that movie is going to be, I don’t need to see it. They should have given it to someone like Eli Roth to direct.”

“The idea that terrifies you the most, that’s the story to write.”

“Writing is not a choice. It’s like I have no choice but to write.”

“Michael Bay is actually our greatest independent director.”

“A writer has to be willing to torture his characters.”

“A story is like a piano: a finite number of keys but an infinite number of melodies.”

“Writer’s block is really just the critical voice overwhelming the creative voice.”

Those quoted above include: a group of gently snarky USC students; Janet Fitch; Ben Fountain; Lauren Groff; Elizabeth Berg; Amity Gaige; Nalo Hopkinson; Gennifer Albin; Mark Frost; Cornelia Funke; Lauren Oliver; Lissa Price; Veronica Roth; Victoria Schwab

 

False Starts, Fresh Starts

Cathar Fortress, by Duncan Harris

Cathar Fortress, by Duncan Harris

Today I’m starting over.

Again.

For the third time, actually. To try and scale the fortress walls and rescue the prisoner that is my YA supernatural novel The Shaded.

Yes, the first two attempts stalled, and the thousands of words left behind on those 100+ pages often felt like they were being squeezed from a brain that had turned into stone.

And yet after several months of distance and maybe a little amnesia, newfound enthusiasm for the project has inspired me to pull it all apart and put it back together in an exceptional way to make it finally come alive.  

I’m scared, sure, but still tenacious, and today I gird myself for battle by looking to Liam Neeson’s character in the movie “The Grey,” (a surprisingly poignant film that I highly recommend) for inspiration:

“Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day.”

Okay, it might be a bit overwrought to compare the plight of the last survivor of a plane crash about to fight an Alpha male wolf with a writer in insulated booties tackling the blank page, but hey, when we writers aren’t busy being neurotic we’re playing dress-up in our melodrama. Or something like that.

But hey, self-doubt and fear can be just a vicious to a writer as a pack of hungry wolves, and where old Liam had a knife and his Irish grit, I’ve got my imagination and bullheadedness. Will it carry me through?

I’m an optimist, so yes, I believe it will.

But I could still use some help, fellow creators out there. Tell me about the projects that kicked you to the curb a few times before you ultimately struck back and conquered. Share your hard fought success stories.

Writing Under The Influence

Photo by Douglas Jordan, M.A.

This post is being brought to you today by…the flu.

Hit hard on Tuesday, tried to rally on Wednesday, and now it’s Thursday and I’ve withdrawn from everything, the DayQuil and the cough drops and the Elderberry soothing syrup, and am just riding this out like a chariot in flames through the Coliseum.

In short, I can’t be responsible for anything I write.

Visions are coming…

My fingers turn into pipe cleaners and I go door-to-door to clean people’s pipes ten at a time but everyone’s just had their pipes cleaned a few days ago sorry no thank you but the taxidermist’s son still invites me in saying please help him to reattach the eyes on the walnut then twists my hands into barbed wire and I chase him into the parlor and fall through a trap

door

and land inside a room filled with my childhood toys and they all come to life and perform my favorite play “The Simpleton’s Hamstring” and to their faces after the performance I offer nothing but effusive praise but in my review for Entertainment Weekly I give them a C-minus and thus am stricken with terrible guilt which manifests as me pushing an ox in a wheelbarrow too small for an ox but yet I truck the whole enterprise  through a rent-a-car parking lot looking for the ox’s wallet when the asphalt

gives way

and I fall through the earth until I’m home again and my wife is here hello there what? forcing my mouth open and shoving DayQuil and cough drops and Elderberry soothing syrup down my throat and shutting down the computer and whisking me off to bed

but

one pipe cleaner finger is still stuck to the mouse and still listens to my command and moves the arrow to hover over the blue Publish tab…

(Wet Your) Whistle While You Work

Steamwhistle-University of Kansas

Hey, guess what?

I’m a morning writer and keep to a routine on my writing days: shower, normal dress (i.e. no bathrobe or Zumbaz), cereal, newspaper, and then a mug of something warm while I tickle my brain along with the computer keys. For years my beverage of choice was regular, black coffee and my m.o. was to overdo it; I probably drank half a pot during the course of every writing day. Eventually my body became so accustomed to the stuff it might as well have been black water. I could have enjoyed a few cups before bed and slept soundly through the night.

Finally, it was my stomach that let me know it was time to quit, so I downgraded to something gentler, green tea. I had a good run there as well, but my body was ultimately displeased with any caffeine, so I had a decision to make. Herbal decaf teas, especially chamomile, make me drowsy, and while a good writing day is often like a waking dream, it’s none too productive to be constantly fighting droopy eyes and a nodding head.

What to do, right? Well I wasn’t about to give up such an essential element of my morning habit. So I decided to switch to hot water. And no, it’s not to soak my dentures in. Easy there, I’m not even 40 yet. Although I suppose at this rate of reduction, in a year or so I may only need a photograph of steam to get me through the day.

Right now, however, what is it about needing something warm in a mug in the morning? It’s no longer about the jolt that caffeine once gave me. And I live in Southern California and (usually) don’t need to worry about the cold weather creeping in. This is something different. Is it my security blanket? My talisman? A weapon in case any of those feisty squirrels manage to break in?

This is why I have a blog, ladies and gentlemen. A platform from which to cast out my life’s most perplexing questions and hope that they land at the feet of someone wiser than I. Can anyone out there diagnose my behavior?

But hey, I’m not alone, am I? Doesn’t everyone, writer or otherwise, crave a mug of something warm in the morning regardless of what it is?

Are You An 8-Armed Creator?

Photo by Terrance McNally

Was trapping my wife recently in a conversation about time management and multitasking and what I should do about advancing the various writing projects I’m working on that are in various states of development.

Do I stick with my tried and true approach of  focusing (obsessing) on one thing at a time and seeing it through to its next stage of completion? Or do I challenge myself and split my writing days in half, one project in the morning, another in the afternoon? Or, do I split the week up, odds are for Project A, evens for Project B? Or, do I keep all my computer files open and set an alarm for 15 minutes, and every time it goes off I work on something different all the while putting on the special hat I’ve picked out for each project?

Interestingly, my wife and I do not have similar conversations when it comes to my ability to vacuum the apartment or clean the bathroom.

Anyway.

Obviously there’s prioritizing involved. Is any project on a deadline? And a passion test. Is this short story about the opening of a Ziploc bag lighting my fire today? But mostly this is a general process issue. Very subjective and every writer’s going to have a different approach.

So what about it, fellow writers or other creative types out there? Are you more like me or do you multitask? How many projects do you have going simultaneously? Do you split time in each day/week to work on more than one project?

And of course, most importantly…do you wear special hats?

Flash Fiction – “Spoiler Alert”

Spoiler Alert

I.

When you turn the faucet on, water will come out and you won’t hear them coming and when they kill you they’ll have actually done you a favor because of the terminal cancer blooming in your gonads, and when you get to Heaven you’ll meet a woman who you always just missed at the bus stop who will take you under her wing until you’re returned to Earth because the date on your death certificate was misread and you become a slightly grumpier version of yourself, except when you use your favorite razor.

II.

When you shave your face, your beard will go away and you’ll find the secret fingerprints that will help you track down your brother who is actually a woman who says she’s your sister when she’s actually your mother and needs you to be her alibi to be freed from a CIA black site in Prague that was once a renowned brewery that you will revive and bring back to prominence in less than three years time and after which you will return to the United States intent on throwing out all the horse meat in your refrigerator.

III.

When you pull the empty carton from the fridge you won’t be having juice with any leftover horse meat and you’ll see the cash in the crisper is bundled in five stacks of $5000 like you didn’t even ask for, and the moisture that’s accumulated on the plastic bag the money’s in contains a tiny cell-mutating microbe that will absorb into the prominent vein that extends from the knuckle of your middle finger to halfway down your arm and thus you’ll stop returning your books to the library no matter how many librarians sacrifice their lives trying to retrieve them from your garage.

IV.

That hummus is almost a year old.

V.

When you turn the key in the ignition your car will start in the garage and the odometer reading will be one number away from the code for the meaning of life and your bare arms will adhere to the leather interior and when you peel your elbows off the armrests the writing imprinted in the skin will be the highlights of a transgender’s interrogation inside a secret Czech prison that smells vaguely of stale pilsner poorly translated by an angel with unreliable eyesight, and even though the prominent vein in your hand is making figure eights under your skin and you should be treated immediately for missing fingerprints and testicular cancer that you mistake for a horse meat addiction you’ll be determined to fight off as many bloodthirsty librarians as it takes with your favorite razor and $25,000 in cash to get back inside your house to wash off your elbows.