July 20, 2010 — Hello Friends! When it comes to creative writing, creative nonfiction is hot. Dream of Things will publish two anthologies of creative nonfiction this fall: stories about saying goodbye to the people, places and things in our lives, and a collection of holiday-related stories tentatively titled It’s an Ambiguous Life. As I’ve said before, the goal for Dream of Things anthologies is to be easier to swallow than Chicken Soup and easier to digest that Best American Essays. I’m looking forward to sharing our first two anthologies with you this fall.

In the meantime, I’d like to share some other books with you. I recently created The Art of the Essay, a new section of Dream of Things that features 15 of the best collections of essays ever written.

Here you will find works by V.S. Naipaul, C.S. Lewis, Anne Fadiman, Phillip Lopate, Margaret Atwood, Larry McMurtry, and others. Most of the books are hardback editions, and none of them is more than $10. Visit The Art of the Essay today.

June 28, 2010 — Hello friends! Here’s a treat for you: an inside look at the creative process from one of the most creative people I know. Stephen Parrish is author of The Tavernier Stones, a masterfully crafted story of a treasure hunt with memorable characters and fascinating details about cartography and gemology. Stephen also has one of the most entertaining blogs on the Internet at stephenparrish.blogspot.com, and he is sponsoring an online treasure hunt to win a 1 carat diamond!

I grew up among artists who encouraged me to draw and paint; my room always smelled of turpentine and linseed oil and my pants were often streaked with charcoal dust.  Since I write visually—I first see the scenes in my head and attempt to record them faithfully—it was only natural that I come up with an approach to writing that paid tribute to all those canvases I sacrificed.

First I “scribble” the scene by brainstorming, by slapping words and expressions down and trying to empty the vision from my head:

start with where she lived
then the train station at the end of her street
it was where you last saw her alive
something about the dirtiness of the place, for contrast
cigarette butts, old newspapers
the train emerging from the fog
after a pregnant pause, you’re in each other’s arms
(this can go on for pages)

An advantage of scribbling is that I ensure my purposes are comprehensively addressed; I vent everything that comes to mind.  Another is that I get to fill up blank paper at little creative cost.  After scribbling I “sketch” the scene, placing elements in the right order, fleshing out, filling gaps:

you start with the street she lived on, how it wound around obstacles long since removed, how the remaining buildings seemed tired, seemed to lean over the sidewalk.  at the end of the street was the train station where you last saw her alive.  the floor of the platform was covered with cigarette butts, old newspapers, and grime.

as the train approached the station you saw only its distant headlamp through the fog.  when she stepped onto the platform the two of you paused as though waiting for enough joy to fill your eyes.  finally the joy overflowed and you were in each other’s arms.  one last time, you felt her skin beneath your hands.

only time is inaccessible, never place.  you can always go back to the place.  you write to preserve moments in time.

I write only in lower case, and I use no indentations or quotation marks.  Consequently the piece feels like a draft and I don’t have to worry about how it sounds.  If you’re a perfectionist like me, this will spare you obsessive tooling.  Finally I “draw” the scene; I go final.

I keep a journal.  I think everyone should: a journal is to language what a sketchbook is to art.  The scribble-sketch-draw analogy has helped me fill quite a lot of empty paper.

But that’s not what this post is really about.

A painting is a window to a world the artist has created.  Likewise when we write a scene we attempt to describe a world in a way readers can grasp.  The writer needs to provide just enough detail for readers to draw the lines and paint the colors in their imagination.  Some details the writer will insist on: the scar was on the left side of the bad guy’s face.  It was rain rather than crickets the lovers heard, or rather didn’t hear.

Most of the details, however, the readers must decide for themselves.  I have little patience with writers who want to show me exactly what a character looks like, by inventorying traits and dimensions, by scanning figures from head to toe.  If you tell me the bad guy has a scar, I’ll fill in the rest.  Likewise, if you tell me the lovers don’t even know it’s raining, don’t even notice they’re getting wet, I can pretty much guess what’s on their minds.  A visual artist who skimps on detail risks failing to achieve his goal.  A writer who is heavy on detail stands little chance of achieving it; the reader doesn’t even make an attempt to engage.

When I paint, I fill my canvas with color.  I leave no spot untouched.  When I write, I provide as little information as I can get away with; less is more.

Still, that’s not what this post is really about, either.

Anyone who has been moved by a great poem knows the art of language has as much to do with sound and rhythm as visual detail.  With rhyme and alliteration.  With contrast, the foundation of all beauty.  When it comes time to draw, after you’ve scribbled and sketched, there should be only one thought in mind: to push your work beyond what you’ve visualized; to take chances; to wrestle with the fear that no one will understand you, no one will be moved by your words or will share your vision of light and shadow:

You start with the street she lived on, how it wound narrowly around obstacles long since leveled by bankruptcy and wood saw; how it shouldered stayed and acquitted buildings that retained most of their dignity, except now they seemed to cant forward slightly, like opposing rows of aging chess players.

You describe the train station where you last saw her alive.  The paint was yellow with age and smoke and the sour smell of unclean men.  It peeled in the damp air and fell to join the cigarette butts, the empty bottles, and the foot-trodden newspapers; litter that clothed the cement floor no better than the rags on the men who drank and dreamed there.

The first you saw of the train was its headlamp, floating ghost-like over the fog, then the engine broke from the mist and rumbled into the station where, here, the sun had burned the valley clean and the trunks of the Bruchweide were amber columns of light.  When she stepped onto the platform the two of you stood apart at first and let the smile fill your eyes.  Like spring-fed wells.  Until the wells overflowed and you were in each other’s arms.

The first time was outdoors, as all first times should be.  You felt her flesh beneath your hands, soft, pliable, giving, welcoming.  The pine needles against your back.  Her voice, the rhythm of her chatter, a tonic, the day washed of its drabness.  The smell of cut grass, of burning leaves, of moss and humus and primeval soil.  A visceral sense of early and distant rain.  It’s only the time that’s inaccessible, not the place, not even the person.  You write to preserve moments in time.  That’s what art is for.  You write to capture the love you felt before it broke something inside of you.  The volume set too high, yet never high enough.  A timeline, a Cartesian grid, curved space, a forest of stars, darkness at night, and an abacus in the hands of a man gone mad.

That’s what this post is about.

June 22, 2010 — June is all about “commencement” and new beginnings. Here are some great commencement addresses:
Stephen Colbert at Knox College, 2006
Steve Jobs at Stanford University, 2005
Jon Stewart at the College of William and Mary, 2004

In addition, Kurt Vonnegut’s address to Lehigh University graduates in 2004 (which I can no longer find on the Internet) was amazing and served as the basis for many lectures during the last few years of his life, and while Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Seuss Geisel) gave a commencement address at Lake Forest College in 1977, more people are familiar with Oh, the Places You’ll Go, which still sells 300,000 copies every year at graduation time.

Add to those illustrious commencement addresses one given this year by John Rember, long-time creative writing professor and author of MFA in a Box, to be published later this year by Dream of Things. Read this address to the end, and you’ll see why many graduates and their parents were wiping away tears.

Graduates, Headmaster Jones-Wilkins, trustees, faculty and staff of the Community School, and friends and family of graduates: It is an honor to be here, and an honor to be asked to get a last few licks in on behalf of the faculty.

Thirty-five years ago, when I agreed to teach eighth, ninth, and tenth grade English and eighth grade science at the newborn Ketchum-Sun Valley Community School, I did not know I would spend my life as a teacher, nor did I realize I would see my life-work as a source of joy. So I wish to thank The Community School for setting me on a path that I continue to love.

Today we are here to graduate some wonderful people. I’m going speak to them, but the rest of you can listen in.

I can say with confidence that you’re wonderful people, because I’ve met you and I’ve seen the way you treat each other and I’ve talked to a few of your teachers. Without much prompting, your teachers have described you as a hard-working group, deeply interested in learning new things, considerate of others, and humble in the face of your accomplishments.

That is extraordinary praise, and it reminded me of what an admissions director at Harvard told me when I was the college counselor for The Community School. He was dishing some gossip about another school in the neighborhood.

“Down at M.I.T.,” he said, “They could fill every class with applicants who have perfect SAT scores. They tried that, and got brilliant students who quit math and physics and engineering and were unemployed dropouts by the time they were twenty-four. Now they’re looking for applicants who will peak out at fifty-five.”

M.I.T. learned to stop depending on standardized test scores to pick their applicants. They began to look for people who were deeply interested in learning new things, who were considerate of others, and who were humble in the face of their accomplishments.

M.I.T. started searching for people who were going to become smarter and better educated and more involved throughout their lives. They learned to look for people like you.

The only thing that worries me is that you’ll peak out at fifty-five, and not sixty-five or seventy-five. Fifty-five seems a little young to me these days.

Here’s how the great science fiction author Alice Sheldon described her ambition to write better and with more intensity until the day she died: “I want to burn right down to the waterline.”

That’s an unfortunate metaphor in a world that contains both oil platforms and the Gulf of Mexico, but it’s the privilege of writers to use unfortunate metaphors.

It’s not the privilege of anyone, writer or not, to peak out or burn out or drop out before he or she has given what they can to this world. So I’ll say right now that you will not fulfill your life until you find out what it is you have to give to the people around you, and have given it, and they’ve accepted it in some way.

It may take years to find out what you have to give, and more years to turn it into something acceptable, but if you’re making the lives of the people around you better and happier, you’re going in the right direction. If you’re making their lives worse and more miserable, stop and turn around.

For the past year I’ve been writing a book for people who want to become writers. At the end of every chapter I’ve listed rules for making good stories into great ones. I began to like writing down rules so much that I’ve come up with some for you.

A list of rules is probably not what you want to hear right now, but these are rules designed to improve the life stories of the people you will be when you’re fifty-five or sixty-five or seventy-five. You owe those old people a good life, and you can imagine them sitting on the edge of their rocking chairs, thinking about how uncertain life has been, and hoping you’ll get some good, solid rules to follow today. They like the idea that you might be able to change unhappy endings to happy ones, boring dialogue to exciting conversation, and scenes where nothing happens into action-packed triumphs of excellence over mediocrity.

So here we go:

1. I borrowed this rule from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. The people who have followed it have improved their own lives and the lives of the people around them for centuries. When people complain about how hard it can be to know the right thing to do, they’re usually planning on doing the wrong thing and don’t want to deal with the guilt.

2. If it’s not the truth, don’t say it. Marcus Aurelius again. In college, you’ll hear from your fellow students and even from some professors that truth is relative, but that’s generally when they’re about to lie to you.

3. Buy yourself a pocket calculator. Use it to add up what it’s cost your family to get you to this point in your life. Your family will be happy to supply you with the raw data. You can also use the calculator to figure out the true cost of loans before you sign on the dotted line.

4. If possible, don’t go into debt for college. Families, credit card companies, and financial aid officers will be offering you what looks like free money for a while. The key words here are for a while.

5. Get a job. The best way to keep your debt at its lowest is to get a job during college and during your summer and winter vacations. The biggest gap in quality between college students is not between rich and poor, smart or not so smart, private-schooled or from inner-city high schools. It’s between those students who have a job during college and the ones who don’t. If you fight fire all summer and turn all the money you’ve earned over to the college business office at the start of fall semester, you’ll get more from your economics class than if you’d sat around all summer playing Grand Theft Auto. If you tell your roommate you can’t go to the party because you’ve got the graveyard shift at the local 7-11, you’ll be a step ahead of everyone else when you study feudalism in your Medieval History class.

6. Don’t Make Unconscious Life Decisions. What your major will be, the type of person you fall in love with, and your after-college plans are the first draft of a story. Like most first drafts, it’s got some missing scenes and tedious sentences. You’ve got some rewriting to do, and the more consciously you can do a rewrite, the better the final draft is going to be.

7. Don’t start anything you can’t finish. Today, you’re finishing a story. You know what a mixture of joy and sadness that is, and how a mixture of joy and sadness makes a story better than if it were completely happy or completely sad. When you say, “Of course I’ll pay you back,” or “I’ll love you forever,” or, “let’s raise a kid,” you’re starting a story you need to finish. If you don’t finish it, you’ll deprive yourself of the joy part of the mixture.

8. Pay attention. Woody Allen famously said that half of life is just showing up. That’s the easy half. The harder half is being a careful witness to what’s going on. A few details are often the difference between what you think is going on and what’s really going on. Scientific revolutions have come from a single small detail that didn’t fit the story people were telling about the world.

9. Don’t limit your plans to what you’re sure you can do. Plan things too carefully, and you’ll exile Mr. Dumb Luck from your life. Not a good idea. Mr. Dumb Luck is your friend even though he’s a big old goofy guy who dresses funny and tells people that you have no imagination.

10. The toughest rule of all. Embrace grief when it comes. If you can’t embrace grief when it comes, you won’t be able to embrace happiness when it comes.

I’m going to end with a short parable.

An ordinary grown-up is working at an ordinary job, living in an ordinary small town, a town full of quiet streets lined by summer trees and flower gardens and small houses reflecting modest incomes. But in the town a child has been abandoned, a tiny child only a few months old, and this quite ordinary grown-up takes on the responsibility of raising that child.

Here the ordinary ceases to be ordinary. The grown-up makes extraordinary sacrifices for the child, and assembles extraordinary resources to protect and nourish it. Yet the grown-up doesn’t see the effort or the sacrifice—it’s simply what has to be done. There’s no wonder in this great task, except in the eyes of the other people in the town, who see that a once-ordinary person’s love for a child is so powerful and so freely given that there is a soft and golden glow around them both.

The child’s contribution to that glow is a mixture of happiness and openness toward the bright beauty of the world and the joyful awareness of being protected and well cared for. Whatever caused the abandonment in the first place doesn’t matter any more.

That grown-up is you. That child is you.

Take care of yourself.

Thank you for letting me share this day with you.

—John Rember

June 20, 2010 — I posted this earlier this week on freelance-zone.com in the hope that it would help others who were searching for the right Father’s Day gift. I’m posting it again here for my Dad. Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I’m glad you’re my dad. Love, Mike

For most of my 50+ years, I’ve tried to answer a seemingly unsolvable riddle that has plagued mankind for ages: What should I get my dad for Father’s Day?

I’ve figured out that we go through four stages of Father’s Day gift giving. There is the early stage, when your mother buys the gift and just puts your name on it. This stage usually ends around age eight, although it has been known to last 20 or 30 years.

Then there are the project days when your school teacher or den mother oversees your work as you construct a “project” that tests the limits of what can be done with Popsicle sticks and a cigar box.

After that come the “traditional” years when Dad is likely to get a nice tie or some accessory related to his favorite pastime. These are the gravy years since most golf and bowling accessories are manufactured with Father’s Day specifically in mind.

Next comes a more sentimental stage, when you try desperately to come up with a significant memento that will let your father know how special he is (without requiring you to actually say the words). This is the most frustrating stage because it turns out there is no such gift.

Finally though, I saw the light when, while maintaining my status as a son, I gained new status as a father. Now when it’s time to ask myself, “What should I get Dad for Father’s Day?”, I can also ask, “What would I like for Father’s Day?” The answer turned out to be remarkably simple: Nothing makes me feel better than to hear, “I’m glad you’re my dad.” So after all those years of guessing, I finally know what to give my father this Sunday. And the best part is, I won’t even have to go to the mall.

June 4, 2010 — Hello Friends! I’ve said several times that had I known what I didn’t know about publishing, I never would have started a publishing company. But then I sit down and read the stories that people have submitted to Dream of Things, and I remember why I did it. I recently finished reading the 250+ stories submitted to Dream of Things in January and February. I loved your stories. I’m sorry we can’t accept all of them. Many of the stories were deeply personal and heartfelt, and I sincerely appreciate you sharing them with us. Not every story was right for Dream of Things, but I have tremendous respect for every writer who found the time, courage and creativity to put his or her words to paper. Congratulations and again, thank you.

Over the next few days, we’ll be contacting authors via e-mail to let them know the status of each submission from January and February. If your story was not selected this time, I hope you will consider trying again. If you were selected as a finalist, congratulations! Being a finalist means your story is now in a small pool of stories being considered for anthologies on each topic. I anticipate that 50-75% of the finalists will ultimately be selected for publication. We’ll make final decisions and send out final notices and contracts a couple of months before the publication date of each anthology.

July 31 Deadline for Holiday Story Submissions

Speaking of publication dates…let the countdown begin! Only 57 more writing days until submissions close for the holiday story anthology. The deadline is July 31. That still gives you plenty of time to write that story, submit it, and see it published in time for the holidays later this year. Don’t wait until Deadline Eve. Use our online submission form and send in your holiday story asap. July 31 will be here before you know it.

May 24, 2010 — Hello Friends! There are a lot of new developments at Dream of Things. Here’s a sneak preview of coming attractions:

Everything I Never Wanted to Be by Dina Kucera: We’re about to print review copies of Everything I Never Wanted to Be, which I would describe as a cross between Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. I believe it will be one of the best memoirs published this year. Watch for more details and an excerpt, coming soon.

MFA in a Box by John Rember: We’re also ready to print advance copies of MFA in a Box by John Rember — a “why-to-write” book. John is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Traplines, and two other books, and he teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. I met John 25 years ago in the University of Montana MFA program. He is a great writer and a great thinker, and his book on creative writing is unlike any other book ever written on the topic.

The Art of the Essay: I have been shopping for you. What I’ve been buying is some of the best collections of essays ever written…by authors like V.S. Naipaul, C.S. Lewis, Anne Fadiman, Phillip Lopate, Margaret Atwood, Larry McMurtry, and others. I’m buying them at significant discounts, which means I’ll be able to pass those discounts along to you. None of the books will be more than $10, and most of them are hardback books. Watch for the new “Art of the Essay” section of Dream of Things, coming soon.

The Note Project: It’s been a while since I’ve provided an update on the Note Project, but things are really coming together and I’m excited. As you’ve probably heard me say before, the Note Project will be an effort to make the world a million times better by getting people to write 1 million notes of appreciation. Sounds simple, but there were a lot of details to figure out and it’s taken me longer than I anticipated to get everything lined up. But I’m almost there, and I’m looking forward to making this project a reality in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned.

Finally, a reminder: the deadline for submitting stories for the “Saying Goodbye” anthology is June 30. If you have a story to share, use our online submission form and send your story in today!

May 5, 2010 — Hello Friends! No, the headline is not a quote from Moe, Larry or Curly. I’m saying that after only a few months of accepting submissions, we are almost ready to publish the first Dream of Things anthology. Submissions will close for the “Saying Goodbye” anthology on June 30, 2010, and we will move into production mode shortly after that. So this is a last call for submissions for “Saying Goodbye.”

That said, there’s still plenty of time to submit your story. We would be particularly interested in stories about saying goodbye that have a humorous or unique twist to them. I keep thinking I should write about saying goodbye to my comfortable but worn out tennis shoes, or to my vinyl record albums, or to the old love letters I threw away to placate a former girlfriend.

I had a feeling this would be the first anthology from Dream of Things. As you may recall, the “Saying Goodbye” anthology was inspired by a story from Stephen Parrish, author of The Tavernier Stones. The quality of the submissions has been great, but there is always room for more quality writing (or should that be qualitier writing?). If you have a story about saying goodbye, use our online submission form and send it to us asap — and no later than June 30!

April 24, 2010 — Hello Friends! I post regularly on Freelance-Zone’s blog (more regularly than I do on my own site…deadlines are a good thing). Despite adding me as a guest blogger, Freelance-Zone has again been named to the Writer’s Digest “101 Best Websites for Writers.” Congratulations to editors Catherine Tully and Joe Wallace, and to my fellow writers/guest bloggers, Erin Dalpini and Amanda Connor.

April 21, 2010 — Hello Friends! I have good news and bad news today. Let’s start with the good news… The good news is that we have received hundreds of submissions from writers around the world for the Dream of Things anthologies. So a big THANK YOU for all of the submissions. The bad news is that I have failed miserably on my commitment to respond in 4-6 weeks. I apologize.

But wait…there’s more good news! The Dream of Things editors and I have a plan to get caught up. We will respond to all submissions from last November and December by April 30, to all submissions from January and February by May 31, and to all submissions from March and April by June 30. After that, the goal will be to respond to submissions within 6-8 weeks of receipt. Again, I apologize for the backlog. Thank you very much for your patience while we dig out.

In a related development, we have added a story submission form to the website. The form will ensure that your contact information stays with your submission, and it will make it a bit easier to manage submissions on this end. If you have any problems using the form, you can still send submissions to editor@dreamofthings.com.

Finally, I want to give you a bit of an update on the various anthology topics. All submissions are still open, but some anthologies are filling up faster than others. The anthologies on “Saying Goodbye” and “Holiday Stories” in particular are getting full. So if you have a story that’s right for one of those anthologies, send it to us soon!

Hello Friends! I recently received a note from Maria Duffy of Dublin, Ireland, inquiring about a submission. I answered Maria’s question, then I thought to myself, “Wow, people in Ireland have heard about Dream of Things!” (By the way, thank you to Vanessa O’Loughlin of the INKwell Writers’ Workshops in Ireland for mentioning Dream of Things in Inkwell News.)

Maria’s note got me curious, so I looked at Google Analytics. Turns out a lot of people around the world have heard about Dream of Things. In fact, since the Dream of Things website launched on Thanksgiving Day 2009, 5,418 visitors from 77 countries speaking 31 different languages have visited the site. I think that’s very cool! And the 665 fans of the Dream of Things Page on Facebook include folks from every continent except Antarctica. Again, pretty cool.

A few interesting tidbits…about 80% of visitors are from the United States, followed by Canada and the United Kingdom. Rounding out the top ten: Philippines, Australia, Ireland, India, Japan, Germany and Bangladesh.

Who spends the most time on the site? People from South Korea average nearly 16 minutes per visit. (I suppose it could just be a slow Internet connection.)

Who visits the most pages per visit? A visitor from Hong Kong visited 11 pages. (I didn’t even know there were that many pages on the site.)

Most surprising visitors: I had a visitor from Myanmar/Burma, which is a little surprising—until I recall that my friends, John and Julie Rember, were recently in Thailand and had to cross the border into Myanmar on a Visa technicality. There were also visitors from Nepal and Mongolia.

For a complete list of countries and visitors, see Dream of Things Visitors.

Now I’m even more curious…where are you from and how did you hear about Dream of Things?