Things Raymond Carver Said About Short Form Writing

~ Libby Sommer ~ 6 Comments

‘My attention span had gone out on me; I no longer had the patience to try to write novels. … I know it has much to do now with why I write poems and short stories. Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.’

‘Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.’

‘It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent.’

‘Isak Dinesan said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair.’

‘”Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing,” Ezra Pound.’

‘It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader’s spine – the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That’s the kind of writing that most interests me.’

‘That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say.’

‘I like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories.’

‘I made the story just as I’d make a poem; one line and then the next, and the next.’

‘V.S. Pritchett’s definition of a short story is “something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.” Notice the “glimpse” part of this. First the glimpse.’

‘The short story writer’s task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He’ll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things – like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry, if used right, they can hit all the notes.’

Raymond Carver, Fires, Vintage 1989

So who is Raymond Carver?

Raymond Carver, in full Raymond Clevie Carver, (born May 25, 1938, Clatskanie, Oregon, U.S.—died August 2, 1988, Port Angeles, Washington), American short-story writer and poet whose realistic writings about the working poor mirrored his own life. – Encyclopedia Britannica

My Poem ‘My Friend Is Swiping & Scrolling’

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My poem ‘My Friend Is Swiping & Scrolling’ is published in this month’s Quadrant Magazine, July-August 2022. I wrote the poem during the first year of the pandemic. Have a read. Hope you like it.

My Friend Is Swiping & Scrolling:

My friend in the dark hour before dawn. My friend with the ragged stomach who had a bad night. In a different hemisphere he is turning on the bedside light, rolling out of bed, pouring a cap of antacid at the kitchen bench. My friend who hasn’t left his neighbourhood all year. My friend in London pining for how things used to be, for the Eurostar crossings to speak German and Spanish.  

My friend scrolling through Facebook to see the faces of his family. My friend living alone who aches with aloneness. My friend the glass-half-full-kind-of-guy listening out for the early morning train thinking, we’ll get through this, in time. My friend who sits through forty Zoom meetings every five days. A rush of nostalgic reflections but is everything nostalgia? We’re all in this together.

The extroverted friend and the introverted one scrolling & swiping at home, the teenage friend whose father is hospitalised for a third time, my friend in China who sends me a red envelope, my friend in France dunking a croissant as she swipes left in greyish gloom, my friend in kurta pajamas beating a tabla drum, my friend in activewear driven to over-exercise, my friend who is addicted to social media like I am.

My friend in Israel  my stressed-out Barista friend behind a coffee machine  my friend with only one kidney  my friend in palliative care under a sign I do not want visitors  my young friend who was warned at school about swiping & scrolling  my friend next door, who wonders if we are complaisant already  my friend who is feeling lethargic  my friend who hopes everyone will go back to work soon  my friend who tells me she has a problem wearing a mask  my friend who pretends not to see me on the street, even she must be on Zoom with others by now, so I let her go.

Scrolling will distract me from uncomfortable emotions as the cafes near me say takeaway only and the stores where I used to window-shop have empty frontages with To Lease signs and the famous writer I wish I’d had the courage to speak to when I had the chance, is diagnosed with dementia in another country, I snatch at memories of post cards sent back and forth. So who else should I pick up the phone and dial and say, Are you okay? Who else might I never see again?

All of us scrolling & swiping in the mornings and the afternoons and in the evenings near the hotel with the old TOOTH’S SHEAF STOUT Keeps you fit! poster telling us a tantalising beer with a dry finish and a medium body.

Copyright 2022 Libby Sommer

The Writing Process

~ Libby Sommer ~ 4 Comments

At a literary event I heard someone say, “The thing to do is put the idea in your subconscious.  Your brain will do the work.”

It takes time for our experience to make its way through our consciousness.  For example, it is hard to write about a journey while you are still in the midst of the adventure.  We have no distance from what is happening to us.  The only things we seem to be able to say are “having a great time”, “the weather is good”, “wish you were here”.  It is also hard to write about a place we just moved to, we haven’t absorbed it yet.  We don’t really know where we are, even if we can walk to the train station without losing our way.  We haven’t experienced three scorching summers in this country or seen the dolphins migrating south along the  coast in the winter.

“Maybe away from Paris I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan.  I did not know it was too early for that because I did not know Paris well enough.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast  (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964).

So we take in experience, but we need to let things make their way through our consciousness for a while and be absorbed by our whole selves.  We are bower birds, collecting experience, and from the thrown away apple skins, outer lettuce layers, tea leaves, and chicken bones of our minds come our ideas for stories and poems and songs.  But this does not come any time soon.  It takes a very long time (three to ten years in the case of literary fiction).  We need to keep picking through those scraps until some of the thoughts together form a pattern or can be organised around a central theme, something  we can shape into a narrative.  We mine our hidden thoughts for ideas.  But the ideas need time to percolate:  to slowly filter through.

Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet, summed up what could be the creative process when he wrote “The Guest House”:

This being human is a guest house.

Each morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing and invite

them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Jalaluddin Rumi, in The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, 1999

Our work is to keep rummaging through the rubbish bins of our minds, exercising the writing muscle, in readiness to answer that knock at the door when it comes.

As the author Vivian Gornick said, “The writers life is the pits.  You live alone and you work alone, every day I have to recreate myself.”  She paused and laughed.  “But when the work is going well there is nothing that compares.”

What about you? Are you ready to answer the knock at the door?  

For Ukraine: by Women of the World

~ Libby Sommer ~ 7 Comments

Dr Diann Rogers Healey, founder of the Australian Centre for Leadership for Women called for and brought together a collection of poetry and prose ‘For Ukraine: by Women of the World’.

35 writers from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, United States, and the United Kingdom have written in solidarity with those impacted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I’m honoured that my poem ‘Twisted Tea’ has been included in this important collection. Professor Shirley Randell AO, wrote the Foreword. She mentions a few pieces that stood out for her including ‘Twisted Tea’.

All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to United Nations Women Australia for assistance in Ukraine. The book is available on Amazon and other online outlets. Please read and review.

My Poem ‘Hostilities’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 6 Comments

My poem ‘Hostilities’ is published in this month’s Quadrant magazine, available in newsagents, good book stores and in libraries. Big thank you to Literary Editor, Barry Spurr.

Hostilities:

I worry about the ones

who disbelieve in science,

the ones on social media

with no qualifications

but a good command

of gobbledygook,

and the one who said

she’d had enough of wimps like me.

Scientists observe and calculate,

study the risks,

wave us across

as we wait by the side of the road,

even though the science of pandemics

is incomplete.

It takes a lot of guts sometimes

with those who are close to us.

Relatives, old school friends, intimates …

Anti-vaxxers still find arguments

to fire at us. I think of Aristotle’s warning:

there is only one way

to avoid criticism –

do nothing, say nothing,

and be nothing.

Copyright 2022 Libby Sommer

Release of ‘The Cellist, a Bellydancer & Other Distractions’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 4 Comments

45 poems written over a 20 year period, here at last. THE CELLIST, A BELLYDANCER & OTHER DISTRACTIONS is officially released. My first poetry collection is available to order in bookstores and online.

Barry Spurr, Literary Editor, Quadrant writes on the back cover:

“Libby Sommer has the true poet’s eye for the deeper meaning that can abide beneath the ordinariness and small details of our daily lives and experiences. And she expresses her insights with the genuine poet’s careful and precise attention to placing the right word in the right place.”

Barry Spurr, Literary Editor, Quadrant

Big thank you again to Stephen Matthews OAM, Ginninderra Press. And much gratitude to everyone who has offered me support, encouragement and kindness over the years.

My Poem ‘Holding On’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 4 Comments

Submissions to the fifth issue of Australian literary journal Burrow are open until July 20.

I’m very happy to say my poem ‘Holding On’ was accepted for the upcoming September edition.

The editors, Rhiannon Jillian Hall and Phillip Hall wrote:

“We are delighted to be able to publish ‘Holding On’. This is such a richly evocative and appreciative poem of place, & emotional/spatial fragility. We love it.”

I encourage my fellow poets to check out this fabulous journal. The provocation for the September issue of Burrow, Old Water Rat Publishing is : What does mental health (good or otherwise) look like through the prism of place?

Use Your Inner Critic

~ Libby Sommer ~ 3 Comments

It is essential to separate the creator and the editor, or inner critic when you practice writing, so that the creator has plenty of room to breathe, experiment, and tell it like it really is. 

If the inner critic is being too much of a problem and you can’t distinguish it from your authentic writing voice, sit down whenever you find it necessary to have some distance from it and put down on paper what the critic is saying, put a spotlight on the words—“You have nothing original to say, what made you think you could write anything anyone would want to read, your writing is crap, you’re a loser, I’m humiliated, you write a load of rubbish, your work is pathetic, and your grammar stinks …”  On and on it goes!

Say to yourself, It’s OK to feel this.  It’s OK to be open to this.

You can learn to cultivate compassion for yourself  during this internal process by practicing Mindfulness Meditation.  Sit up straight, close your eyes, bring your awareness to your inner experience.  Now,  redirect your attention to the physical sensations of the breath in the abdomen … expanding as the breath comes in … and falling back as the breath goes out.  Use each breath to anchor yourself in the present.   Continue, concentrating on the breath for several minutes.  Now, expand your field of awareness to include the words of the inner critic.  Turn your attention to where in your body you feel the unpleasant thoughts, so you can attend, moment by moment, to the physical reactions to your thoughts.

 “Stay with the bodily sensations, accepting them, letting them be, exploring them without judgment as best you can.”—Mindfulness, Mark Williams and Danny Penman.

Every time you realise that you’re judging yourself, that realisation in itself is an indicator that you’re becoming more aware.

The thing is, the more clearly you know yourself, the more you can accept the critic in you and use it.  If the voice says, “You have nothing interesting to say,” hear the words as white noise, like the churning of a washing machine.  It will change to another cycle and eventually end, just like your thoughts that come and go like trains at the station.  But, in the meantime, you return to your notebook and practice your writing.  You put the fear and the resistance down on the page.

Do you struggle with an inner critic?  Any words of wisdom you’d like to share?

Finalist Award, ‘Not keeping mum’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 6 Comments

The anthology ‘Not keeping mum‘ – Australian writers tell the truth about perinatal anxiety and depression in poetry, fiction & essay – edited by Maya Linden, has been named a Finalist in the Indie Book Awards (2020-2021). My short story ‘The New Baby’, first published in Quadrant magazine, is part of the anthology. All Winners and Finalists are invited to the award ceremony in Washington DC on 24 June. Very exciting news.

“Heartfelt, at times confronting and occasionally funny, this collection gives insight into how women navigate the profound changes that occur in their bodies, relationships and lives when they become a parent, and how they find the light at the end of the tunnel.”

– Anne Buist, perinatal psychiatrist, professor women’s mental health and author of the Natalie King trilogy and The Long Shadow

You can purchase a copy here:

https://au.blurb.com/b/10013951-not-keeping-mum-australian-writers-tell-the-truth?fbclid=IwAR0CdVG78_riP7F932ngSM-wDSXQpY0IKhvs288HwlP7blh

My Prose Poem ‘Someone I Don’t Know Sideswiped My Car’

~ Libby Sommer ~ 2 Comments

Have a read of my prose poem ‘Someone I Don’t Know Side-Swiped My Car’, first published in Quadrant magazine April 2021, Hope you enjoy it.

Someone I Don’t Know Side-Swiped My Car:

Bad luck recently, you could say, after surviving some extremely unfortunate luck. For hours I sat across from you in the Emergency Bay:  your face dripping with blood. They gave you a compress to stop the flow of red from your cheekbones and your nose. Every time you touched your face, it opened up the wound. Punched in both eyes and the nose. A robbery as you walked home, I hear you tell your girlfriend on the mobile. And then you’re telling the emergency nurse you can’t wait any longer to see a doctor. ‘You may have concussion,’ she cautioned.

Did you find your way home?

For days I wonder how you are. I sniff the first spring jasmine hanging over the fence and your girlfriend whom I’ve never met crowds my thoughts, till one day, peering out my bedroom window, I notice someone has side-swiped my car. Not exactly what I’d expected to see but, man, the wisteria are showing their purple blooms. A nervous possum balances on the telephone line above the road and there’s a newspaper article about an elderly cyclist who died after a freak bike accident caused by a swooping magpie. Bad luck that a second vehicle crashed into my car while it waited at the smash repair place. Look up, take care, someone or something you don’t know may sideswipe you or punch you in the nose.

Copyright 2021 Libby Sommer

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