The Mentioned Greatness

The light is low and warm. Books full of greatness look down on the three of us. Tea has just been brought into the room. Catherine is 27 years old and has been writing since January 1st, 1991, when she wanted Mike to die, when she helped her brother clean his room, when she watched Doc Hollywood. “The girl was totally naked,” reads the diary she has retrieved from a shelf upstairs.

Ryan is 31 years old. He started writing on March 1st, 1994.

R: The reason I started writing was because I had just had sex for the first time and I wanted to remember it. I don’t think I fictionalized anything. I don’t think I started writing fiction until later. It was basically to start recording.

P: Did you record things often?

R: All the time. Constantly.

P: When did you start turning it into fiction?

R: I started wanting other girls. If I couldn’t get them, I started composing means of getting them, stories. I had a lot of one page stories when I was sixteen. Really quickly, it morphed into fiction. They make you write, you know? Girls. You can’t not.

C: I was very boy crazy. We were two very sex crazed children. Ryan’s early journals look as though he thought someone would read them. There’s a difference between those people—him now and him then.

R: I’ve never had an unaffected voice in writing.

C: But you’d always complete a thought. You’d never leave anything incomplete.

R: Your stuff was like that, too.

C: My later stuff. Early stuff was very diary like.

R: I had a lot of ideas.

C: Had?

[there is a laugh between them, a look]

The Library

C: I wanted two years to do nothing but write. I thought it would help me get a day job which would help me get published. I didn’t actually think it would help me be a better writer. I thought by reading and writing I would be a better writer. I didn’t think I’d be taught. I wanted to experiment with my work and receive some simple answers.

R: I got there by a process of elimination. I tried a lot of other things and none of them worked. I thought I’m going to take some time to write and actually do something with that time. I was looking for a peer group. Which strangely didn’t happen.

P: What did you think you would get out of it?

C: I thought I would get a peer group. Because I write experimentally I thought I would find like minded people on the edge of the literary world. I thought there would be some other experimental people. I was wrong.

R: They don’t tell you they’re a has been. I don’t know how badly I want to badmouth the New School, but the expectations weren’t met.

P: What was the reality of it?

R: It was very mundane and dull.

C: Very early on we found each other and recognized talent in each other. Out of all the students I think only a handful were truly talented, which of course includes us. I mean, a lot of people didn’t try.

R: I think we’re being a little unfair—

C: Bullshit. I’m being very fair.

R: Yeah. I go back and forth.

P: If you suddenly found yourself back at the end of your undergraduate career facing the option of an MFA program, with hindsight, what would your decision be?

C: I didn’t apply to Brown but I should have. I would have definitely gone to grad school. But in reality I wouldn’t change a thing. I met Ryan. But, I would have preferred to go to Brown. But that’s only because I’m into experimental writing and it’s hard to find places where that’s really cultivated. Sure we’d all like to get into Iowa Writer’s Workshop but that wouldn’t have been the place for me. It’s too traditional.

R: I always have a hard time with questions like this. I don’t think I would do anything differently. Maybe that’s a default answer. If I were to answer I don’t think it’d be me answering. I also had no options. I only applied to one place.

P: How much value did you find in the program?

R: I think that MFA programs are only as good as you make them, and it’s really like a democracy—a peer group. If everyone’s not doing it, it’s not going to work.

C: You have to put an asterisk in that.

R: There’re a lot of asterisks.

C: It’s not about what you make it. It’s what everyone makes it.

R: Yes that’s what I mean. I think when people come to the MFA program without confidence—it’s amazing how little confidence people can have.

C: People are constantly insulting themselves.

R: People would always apologize for what they were saying. One of the teachers at the New School would say to the students, “We know it sucks. We know ahead of time your work isn’t worth anything.” It was a way of teaching people they don’t have to say that. None of us were real writers.

C: The value is that I found a real partner in working. When you find a real colleague, nothing exceeds it. There’s no teacher-student relationship, no guiding light guru. There’s nothing like equal peers tearing at each other to create the best writing possible. There’s no one else who knows your work in that way. We found each other.

R: We got something people normally don’t get.

C: We felt like a powerhouse. We edited the work of others together.

R: Catherine was much better than I was. I had a tendency to be dismissive.

C: I really enjoy editing and I’m really good at it. Which, by the way, I offer my services. $100 for 200 pages. $150 for 300.

R: Once you do that once you’re going to up the price.

C: It will be a sliding scale. I know that if I were in that position I couldn’t afford more than 200 pages. We’ll just say price is negotiable.

P: I intend to pay full price. When I can.

R: I don’t think that’s a friend price. Friends are for free.

C: That’s true. Otherwise Lily owes me a million dollars. [looks at Ryan.] And so do you!

Catherine's Office

C: It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

R: For whom the bells rang.

C: I wanted to learn structure. That was always my weakness. I have a lot of ideas and I sort of—I was experimenting so I was practicing different styles and modes. This is my fifth version. I picked the topic I did because it was easy. It started off as a translation of Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse into a narrative. I love the idea of philosophical narratives becoming something else. I’m still working with that. I really wanted something that taught me how to do the simple structure of the first conflict out of which sprouts the second major conflict. For some reason it’s hard for my brain to work in syllogisms and pin down an outline, and dealing with the topic of a love affair or mistress seems very easy, very natural to me. I could talk about my philosophical musings while still keeping the form of a novel.

P: What is the title?

C: A Suburb of Monogamy. It should deliver what it promises.

P: How about you?

R: By process do you mean how do I write, or how has it been going?

P: More so has anything surprised you?

R: How hard it is. It’s incredibly hard. It’s so hard that when I think about it I can only think about it in compartments. It’s hard to think about an aggregate. Getting things right and achieving clarity—I was surprised by how hard that was. It doesn’t roll off the tongue with me, and I want to be airtight when I write. I don’t want any mistakes or anything I haven’t thought of. It’s a lot slower than when I was writing journals.

C: They say there’re two kinds of writers: horizontal writers and vertical writers. Horizontal are concerned with the spaces in between words, the way the sentence sounds. There’s usually a flow. They work very quickly. Vertical writers are very concerned with the precise words. You really try to find the right word. Ryan is a vertical writer. I go into his office and see him spinning in his chair thinking about the perfect word to use.

R: If the word isn’t right and you’re trying to cram in words and you’ve exhausted the thesaurus, then the thought isn’t right. The ratio of writing to thinking is… 1:3. There’s so little actual composition. There’s so much wringing of hands. I thought I’d be famous a long time ago.

C: We have very high expectations.

R: We have great expectations.

P: Faulkner expectations?

R: Faulknarian.

Ryan's Office

C: No. He does.

R: My book is nonlinear so it’s a lot of snapshots—

C: Vignettes.

R: Vignettes. They have to link in a way that makes sense so I need an outline. The outline is crucial. I have to have it.

C: I couldn’t have an outline. Everything has to come about organically. I know the emotion that has to come about in a scene, or the theoretical concept, but I find an outline too limiting, too rigid. It’s too much order. There’s a lot of chaos in my work.

R: I like the order. I like the limiting of possibilities.

P: [to Ryan] Would you consider yourself a masculine writer?

Both: Absolutely.

C: It was how I became attracted to him. I’m very attracted to masculinity. When he moves into a room he bends the space around him and so does his writing.

R: That’s up to other people to decide. I’m not sure if I could convince anyone if they held a different opinion. But sure.

C: I think we both think of our gender as we write.

P: Speaking of gender, you started Omnia Vanitas Review about a year and a half ago. What were your expectations going into the production of a literary magazine?

C: Because I believe publishing is dominated by commercialism, as everyone knows, I really wanted a space for all sorts of writing, and most of my peers were trying to write—I often call it the underside of literature, to show how fluid language really is, that language is really meaningless. There are many ways to convey meaning in a story and many definitions of what a story really is. Words are very slippery, but most people think of them as pure, that the signifier and the signified are the same thing. We chose an erotica magazine not to write pornography for women but because of the idea of words penetrating the void—silence and space—feminine and female terrain. I think there’s nothing more arousing than the desire to write. I wanted a bunch of people taking those ideas and playing with them, exploring what language can do, what the written word can do. Writing isn’t as championed as it ought to be, or distinct as it ought to be. My expectation was never to be rich. That’s why the journal is online. One of the girls in it wrote a computer programming poem and an artist found it who started programming it and wants to show it in a gallery. We’re helping people out.

P: Is there anything you’d like to tell Xenith’s reader before you become famous novelists?

C: Told you so.

R: I’m not sure I have anything to say.

P: How mysterious. Are you a Salinger fan?

R: Who isn’t?

C: We should say something profound. There are two great pieces of advice I could give. One is the obvious: write write write. The other is, if there’s something really weird and it’s not working, either do it more or do it less. Only you know what’s wrong with it.

R: The most profound thing that I know is that knowing when not to write is just as important as knowing what to write. Knowing when to stop is a skill.

C: Not writing is really important.

R: When you want to drink, drink.

C: And drugs.

R: Yes.

There is a pause between all of us spent sipping now tepid tea. The glances shot back and forth ask if there is anything left to say, knowing there are always things left to say. We talk about books for a while, our own that the three of us are writing, then those of admired novelists. In time it grows late and the heart’s capacity for that yet unquenched desire grows thin. Catherine will be going to bed to wake up in the morning, to resume work on her novel in her office at the top of the dome. Ryan will be heading to his own office, the one with black walls and blacked out windows, to start writing until the sun he doesn’t notice floods westward over the horizon and brings his day to a close.

I received this in my inbox not too long ago:

YARN, a new online literary magazine for young adult readers, is seeking fiction, poetry, and essays for its debut issue. Writing should be of special interest for 14 – 18 year old readers but can be written by writers of any age or background. Submissions by teens are especially encouraged. YARN’s mission is to publish the highest quality creative writing for everyone who enjoys young adult lit. Published quarterly, YARN will feature short fiction and creative essays, poetry, and an author interview. Our interactive sections will allow for comments on stories as well as reviews of recent young adult books. We distinguish ourselves from other teen lit magazines by seeking to discover new teen writers and publish them alongside established writers of the young adult genre. Issue 1 will go live in Winter 2010, but a little taste of our site is currently available at www.yareview.net (where you can also find our submission guidelines).

If anyone is interested in breaking into the young adult genre, this would be a good place to start. If you’ve never considered writing young adult literature before, maybe you should give yourself the challenge. I double dog dare you. Don’t make me bump it up to triple.

We swear we’re not doing it simply for the sake of being trendy.

Each time a new piece is published, there is a new tweet. What’s better than Xenith beamed directly into your cell phone? If you don’t know what a tweet is, well, that rock must be pretty heavy.

http://twitter.com/xenithnet

Yes, I’ve been promising this since February, so it seems a little sketchy, but it’s true: Xenith has published its first round of pieces in its new format. The idea of putting a cohesive issue together was torturing me, so I just figured I would publish as I accept. Send me your submissions, ladies and gentlemen, and I will read them. If I like them, they will be published right away (well, after I contact you, of course). That’s how simple it is.

patrick.nathan@gmail.com

Take a look at our XENITH category to see all the pieces we have so far. I plan to add to this as often as I have to, so the more quality pieces I get, the more will appear on the site.

I recommend that everyone subscribe to our RSS feed as well. If you don’t know what that means, I’m sorry; you’ll just have to check the site every few days.

Soon we’ll have a nice little spot reserved on the main page for the most recent piece. I’m excited to finally bring this to everyone who has been waiting for it for so long.

I should add that for those of you who have sent submissions in, if you want to resend them to get immediate attention, you’re welcome to. I do plan on going back through the mess of e-mails in the two or three accounts we’ve had since May of last year, but it will take me a good long while, especially when the most recent address (submissions@xenith.net) doesn’t seem to want to let me in.