Endless Knots

The wisdom of bloggers

Earlier this week, I taught "Blogging for Creative Writers" in the Pine Manor MFA program just outside Boston.

The session took place in the President's Dining Room of the student center, the very nice big room where I made the decision to start blogging.**

The class was an hour long. People introduced themselves, said why they'd come. Some blog now, some were being asked to blog, some were just curious. I didn’t jot down the job titles but I remember a webmaster for a nonprofit, a teacher, a healthcare publication editor, a social worker I’ve met before, a woman who wants to blog in Senegal, and one who’s waiting for a liver transplant. Two-thirds of the students in the MFA program came to the elective class, along with some faculty (I saw poet Dzvinia Orlowsky and biographer/historian/Guggenheim-awardee Randall Kenan) -- some measure of interest in blogging at the MFA level.

Here's the 20-slide presentation <Download Blogging.pdf>, "Blogging for Creative Writers". Included are detailed results of the "Advice from other bloggers" survey that I ran here. Many thanks to the 35 who posted comments. Your names and websites are on a page of your own in the presentation.

And here’s a summary of your responses:

1. Has blogging improved your writing?
Most said yes, some said no on grounds that writing for blogs is different from their real writing. Two asked readers to judge for themselves.

2. How long, on average, does a good post take?
From five minutes to several days, with most saying between 30 minutes and an hour. At the very quick end are the little bits of info people drop on their blogs, usually with links to something else. A couple of responders are professional bloggers; one is a genealogist who has dozens of posts in preparation, pending extensive research. One said: “From beginning to end.”

3. One unusual thing that’s come from blogging
Many have reconnected with old friends; several have gotten work; one has had work that began as posts published...and a number have become addicted (not me, of course).

4. Advice to new bloggers
Many said keep it short; many said link to others; and a few said be warned: It will take over your life.

**In 2005, I was a student in the first Solstice Summer Writers Workshop. Dennis Lehane, Roland Merullo, Manette Ansay, Terrance Hays, and a few others were discussing the boundary between fiction and non-fiction.

The only one in the room with a laptop, I felt pretty conspicuous and took notes anyway. Within a day or so, I posted my very first blog entries. For the record, that week at Solstice shot adrenaline into my writing; I had a usable draft of a novel by the following Spring.

Roland on "the overlooked issues of 2007"

The Boston Globe asked a handful of its columnists to write a few words about the ignored stories of the past year. Here's Roland Merullo's, whose work we've featured a time or two here.

To my mind, poverty in the richest country on earth was the most underreported story of 2007, as it has been for many years now.

It should have been on the front page of every newspaper once a week. Every day, we should hear radio and TV news announcers reminding us that some 35 million people live below the poverty line; that 10 million Americans - 3 million of them children - experience hunger.

We should flip through the cable channels and find preachers exhorting the people in their stadium-sized churches, "Help them! Share with them!" Political figures should be making pickup-truck tours of the dirt roads of New England, where families live behind plastic-covered windows in temperatures that drop to minus-20 degrees.

But we've come to accept it somehow, as if there is nothing we can do or say, as if it's too much of a disgrace even to read about.

Roland Merullo's latest novel is "Breakfast with Buddha."

Updates: A nice review of Breakfast with Buddha in the Dec 21, 2007, Seattle Times, and for the third week running, that same funny tome is "New & Recommended" in the Sunday Boston Globe Book Review section.

A double for Endless Knots writers

Two of our favorites here, Ron Currie Jr. and Roland Merullo, have mentions in today's Boston Globe book section. In "Shelf Life," a column of shorts on good books, Ron's book is featured:

Belief systems

Nonfiction titles questioning the existence of God are among this year's notable books. Now fiction writer Ron Currie Jr. of Waterville, Maine, enters that territory with "God Is Dead" (Viking), a dark and comic collection of interrelated stories, in which God inhabiting the body of a Dinka woman in the Sudan is killed, and parents turn to worshiping their children while dogs walk on water.

And in the "New & Recommended" section that runs at the top of one of the Globe book pages, Roland's picture appears (one of the really great ones taken by his talented photographer wife, Amanda S. Merullo):

Breakfast With Buddha
By Roland Merullo

Enlightenment meets "On the Road" in this witty, insightful novel (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $23.95).

Hint: On the off-chance you still have a gift or two to procure, well, hint.

January '08 book club: Water for Elephants

The Fiction Book Club has chosen Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants for our first reading in 2008. I know very little other than this: it's #3 on NY Times paperback trade list this week *and* it's published by Algonquin, those clever folks who've got the distinction of publishing three in a row by Roland Merullo.

Reader's delight

First comes the news this week, via Publishers Marketplace, the daily roundup of new book deals, that Roland Merullo, the great Endless Knots favorite, has sold three, yes, that's t-h-r-e-e, new books.

Next up, Jesus and the Journalist to Algonquin, which has published his previous two books in this series (Golfing with God and Breakfast with Buddha--you can read my brief write-up here and about which more below**--wherein The Son returns to Planet Earth and Contemporary America. Hold onto your stomach--and your hearts. The previous books, allowing us to cozy up to God and Buddha, are hilarious and touching and the cause of great self-reflection. Read any of them and you'll see what I mean.

Besides the Jesus book, he's sold "two untitled novels to Shaye Arehart at Shaye Areheart Books."

Wait. I forgot: he's got yet another book coming sooner from Touchstone Fireside, Golfing and Eating in Italy, based on the trip he and his family took to Lake Como last summer, and about which he wrote a few op-eds while there for The Boston Globe.

Prolific, yes, profound, indeed, and persevering beyond measure. Any writer who's thinking of giving up must first learn Roland's story. He's been at it for years and knows "the demons of writing" well. Never, ever give up (mantra to self)...

**Because just when you're afraid to go back in the water, you receive a review like he did this morning in The Boston Globe, "Be here now. But first take a left." John Dufresne likes Breakfast with Buddha--and both my hubby and I do too:

Merullo writes with grace and intelligence and knows that even in a novel of ideas it's not the religion that matters, it's the relationship; it's not the concepts, but the people, and here are two intriguing men, one with his eye on the destination and his foot on the pedal, the other who knows that we travel farthest when we are still. You'll enjoy sitting in the back seat of the car as Otto drives on deep into the luminous heart of his childhood. It's a quiet, meditative, and ultimately joyous trip we're on. And it's quite a treat, indeed, to eavesdrop on these two inquisitive and witty gentlemen and hear what they talk about when they talk about life.

Photo of author by Amanda S. Merullo

Blogging for creative writers

In January, I will teach an elective on blogging as "special guest faculty" at the Pine Manor College MFA Program in Creative Writing, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Poet Meg Kearney directs the program as well as serving as the driving force behind Solstice Summer Writers' Conference, which takes place each June.

Faculty in both programs over the past few years has been stellar, including some of Boston's finest--Dennis Lehane (of Gone, Baby, Gone, and Mystic River, among others, fame), National Book Award winner Julia Glass (Three Junes and The Whole World Over), and Roland Merullo, whose name you, my dear blog readers, have seen on these pages before, and whose most recent book is enlightening, endearing, and downright funny: Breakfast with Buddha. I'm honored to be on the same list as these folks.

Buddha, tonight, in Cambridge

It's no secret to my readers that I admire the writing of Roland Merullo (a dozen posts here, scan for his name) and so tonight I will be among those listening to his reading from Breakfast with Buddha, which I first blogged here: Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge, Mass, 7 PM.

Finished it last night.

Few writers have the range with language that Roland does. Or with emotion. Or with the contemplative life. This book is funny, one of the acceptable ways, so far as this reader is concerned, to grapple with matters of deep spiritual consequence. If you're one of the hundreds of millions (possibly billions as we're up to, what, 6.7 billion hum beans at this point) who has meditated, done yoga, thought about the meaning of life, hungered for something deeper, read a book about how to be happy, or gone to a lecture about Buddhism/Christianity/Judaism/Jainism or whateverism, you want to read this book. Cheerfully, laugh-out-loud funnily, and poignantly, Roland takes his main character, Otto Ringling, from loving family-man and NY publisher to the edge of enlightenment with a cross-country journey that stops for sausage, bowling, and slot machines.

Otto's love for his wife and family are enough to make this book worth the read--few fathers in literature are so bold in their pronouncements--but when you include his very light but profound understanding of human nature and the meaning of existence, you have a treasure. And, oh, his uninvited passenger is a spiritual master, a Rinpoche in robes.

Write on, Roland. I can't wait for the next one.

Roland reads in Rockport, MA tonight, Andover tomorrow

If you live in the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts, get in your car and drive to Toad Hall, the bookstore in Rockport tonight, and/or Andover Bookshop in Andover tomorrow night at 7 PM to hear Roland Merullo (see here and several other posts below under Writing) read from his new book, Breakfast with Buddha. Let me put it this way: my hubby started it last night and it was one chuckle after another.

Reading with Roland

In the mysterious world of book reviewing, the highest honor is not like that of a restaurant, where three stars bring home the gold. With books, authors covet "a starred review." Not two, not three, simply "a" star. Roland Merullo (various posts here, search on Writing) has one for his new book, Breakfast with Buddha. No surprise to this reader.

From Library Journal: 

...Especially well written, Merullo's second visionary novel (after Golfing with God) captures the spiritual struggle for true belief and inner peace with wit, clarity, and subtle reality. Warmly recommended for popular fiction collections.

Photo by Amanda S. Merullo

So...those of us in Eastern Massachusetts are in luck. Roland will read from and sign Breakfast with Buddha at 7 PM at these bookstores along the coast. Join me in Cambridge:

October 3: Toad Hall, Rockport
October 4, Andover Bookshop, Andover
October 23: Porter Square Books, Cambridge
October 24: Baker's Books, South Dartmouth
November 7: Duxbury Library, Duxbury.

And, writers, you'll enjoy the interview by Matthew Quick in Quay Journal, which includes Roland's writing resume. He doesn't believe in rules for writing, including the supposedly unbreakable one: write every day. Roland's writing bio is on the jump page (from Quay).

Disclosure as per below: Roland is my fiction writing teacher.

 

It's Monday: It's Roland

Ever traveled to Europe by ship? Roland Merullo nails a certain ennui and the cloud of memories such conveyances can bring in today's Boston Globe op-ed, "Voyage of Emptiness." He and his family took the Queen Mary II back from their Italian adventure, where he was working on a new book. He couples his ancestors' (and not that long ago) coming to America under much less luxurious accommodations with that haunting look on the faces of people who've paid much to enjoy themselves but appear as if they never will.