T. J. Forrester has been a fisherman, construction worker, and miner. He comes from a family of four and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. He prefers to sleep on the ground and is no longer scared of bears. His stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, The Literary Review, The MacGuffin, The Mississippi Review, Potomac Review, and Storyglossia.

He wrote Miracles, Inc. while living in Virginia. The attic room was small, chilly in the winter, but his landlord was very kind and fed him when he was without food. His second work, a novel-in-stories titled Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster in the spring of 2012.

He blogs at his personal website, http://tjforrester.com/

Q (Meg Pokrass): Have you had mentors? Do you mentor?

I had a mentor for a couple of months when I was first learning, a professor at a small college who had never published and was bitter about his lack of a writing career. Quickly, I learned our relationship was mostly about him and had little to do with my development. He had a mean professor fantasy and recalled with relish seeing a professor in his MFA program throw a story at a student, saying, “It wasn’t worth the time it took to read.” Yep, you guessed it. One of my stories came flying back at me, along with the same utterance. I never showed him another draft . . . of anything. We remained in contact, and I recall telling him about sending a manuscript to an agent and receiving a rejection. His wife, who stood alongside him, saw the pain in my eyes and reacted with empathy. My ex-mentor smiled. That’s the moment I realized how twisted up he was inside. Not only was he hoping I would fail, he delighted in my pain. Obviously, my failure made him feel better about his.

Do I mentor? I haven’t, but I’d like to give it a shot. I’d enjoy that type of relationship,would get a kick out of watching a writer mature.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired… suggestions for unblocking creativity?

Ah, yes, that nasty ole self-critic. He’s quite the bastard, isn’t he? Mine pops up when I haven’t been writing for awhile, and he manifests himself at the word and sentence level when I draft. Trying to silence him with logic doesn’t work (give yourself permission to fail, you jerk!) and neither does screaming and threatening to throw the laptop across the room. I wish I had a magic solution for this frame of mind, but that would be too easy. When I’m stuck, I read and read and read. I also write and write and write. Eventually the prick goes away and the words flow onto the page. Really, though, the best thing for me is to write every day. That’s the only thing that shuts him up.

On another note (a different kind of stuck), occasionally I’ll write to a stopping point in a novel with no future in sight. This is frustrating and I used to spend days trying to think of a way forward. Now, I look back into the manuscript and invariably discover I nudged a character in a way he didn’t want to go. The further along the manuscript, the firmer the characters, so the less this happens.

How well do you know your characters before you start writing them? How firm are your ideas on that?

Before I began Miracles, Inc., I knew my main character, Vernon Oliver, was a fake faith healer on death row. I didn’t know he had experienced the death of a sibling at a young age, nor did I immediately understand how that loss changed him. I didn’t even know why he was incarcerated. His girlfriend, the mysterious Rickie Terrell, didn’t exist when I began chapter 1, nor did Miriam MacKenzie, the powerful businesswoman who hatches the scheme to fraudulently separate millions from their paychecks.

This process works for me because I’m a maniacal reviser. The characters grow a little each draft until they are full-blown.

Re plot… how firm are your ideas (if they are) at the start?

When I began writing, I figured out my stories ahead of time but my process changed over the years. Now I develop the plot while drafting, so there is no tug of war between writing in the now and preconceived ideas. Approaching a manuscript from this angle creates lots of work — I probably throw away 300,000 words for every 50,000 words I keep — but I feel a fluidity that didn’t exist seven or eight years ago.

How has it been for you meeting people who have read your work and/ or hearing from them?

I prefer mountain trails to cities, so I’m not exactly a people person, and one of the most scary things about this publication was knowing the hypothetical reader was about to become real. What would I say when she asked a question? Could I answer her coherently? I needn’t have worried. Turns out honesty and vulnerability go a long when connecting with a reader face-to-face. After a number of interactions, I’ve discovered that I LOVE talking to readers. They bring fascinating viewpoints to the discussion and continually reinforce the idea that the symbiotic relationship between a novel and a reader is unique to that one reader.

What’s the best advice you ever got? What helped as a young writer?

On the craft end of the profession, I went through a series of epiphanies that improved my work. The first was to shut up and listen during a critique, and the last was not to settle for the easy description. In-between I learned things like writing is more than polishing words, that sometimes it’s best to throw away the first eighty pages of a novel and start again. (I did this twice with Miracles, Inc.) One of the most important things I learned is there is a huge difference between “how to” craft advice and what is published. That is, if you write literary fiction. Realizing this was one thing, breaking the ‘rules’ hold was another. Took me years, actually.

The main thing is having the passion and the desire to improve. That’s what writing is all about.

On the business end of the profession, I think it’s important for young writers to set long term goals. Where are you going to be five years from now? Ten? How will you get there? Some writers choose to go into MFA programs and some join online writing workshops like Zoetrope.com. (I joined in 2001 and workshopped all of my published stories on the site.) Some writers prefer face-to-face workshopping in local writer groups and others prefer to go it alone. Some prefer a one on one relationship with a mentor. The important thing is to remain focused on your goal.

Obsession. It goes a long way in the writing world.

What is next for you?

I’m waiting for an edit for Black Heart on the Appalachian Trail, a collection Simon & Schuster is publishing a year from now. Then I’m going on a hike on the Appalachian Trail. After that, it’s back to work on my novel-in-progress.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Mona Simpson has written five novels, My Hollywood, Off Keck Road, A Regular Guy, The Lost Father and Anywhere But Here. She’s working on her sixth.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

Most of the important things I’ve learned from older writers haven’t come through mentor-ship relationships, but maybe that’s because I’m shy. I’ve known writers I greatly admire — at Berkeley, I studied with Seamus Heaney, Thom Gunn, Josephine Miles, and Leonard Michaels – but I never really asked them what I’d most want to know, which was: how did you live your life to write what you’ve written. I’m not sure it’s wisdom that can be told.

The deepest mentorship relationships I’ve had have been completely unknown to the mentor. I’ve studied books, learned what I could about the writer from inside their work and then from biographies too. One or two times, I’ve met those writers later on (after having read them, intimately and repeatedly for years) and it’s an odd feeling, somehow akin to the way I became with a boy in elementary school after I’d once dreamed of seeing him naked.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

The only trick I know is sometimes impossible to perform and that’s to stay in the work enough so that it’s with you all the time, even when you’re ostensibly living your life — and in that state, an idea will come to you unbidden, while driving or selecting pears at Whole Foods. The effort and pain all comes in trying to reenter a work you’ve found yourself outside. As anyone who writes novels can tell you, novels aren’t written with the same kind of inspiration you have when you’re twenty and stay up all night “finishing” a story. Which is not to say that they’re not written under the sway of inspiration. But the inspiration itself may feel less external and more reciprocal. There’s something playful about coaxing inspiration.

Are there favorite writing exercises you give students that you can share?

I’m always trying out new ones. Last week, I asked students to write a profile for an online dating website in the voice of an invented character. We then shuffled the assignments and each wrote an answer to the character they’d received.

The combinations were hilarious and surprisingly romantic.

Suggestions for making characters live?  Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing? Do you already know these people?

Whether or not you know the characters or use details from life, gestures, ticks, bits of obsession or speech inflections, there’s an enormous translation that has to occur from life to reality in a book. If you transcribed a very funny or intense conversation word for word it would not have the effect on the reader that it had upon you, because in so-called real life words are a only a small part of how we understand and enthrall and hurt each other. We read each other’s movements and expressions as much as what we say. We need to give a reader all that, all that internal life through this one medium of language.

It’s hard to imagine that the best characters, even the best villains, aren’t loved by their creators.

What does a novelist hope to achieve before setting out… where does this urgency come from?

First, the writer must badly want or need to write the story – otherwise, it’s unlikely to feel urgent enough in the reader’s hands. Then, as the writer is working, she should feel on a journey that, though sometimes difficult and even frightening, may yield everything in time: adventure, surprise, delight, afternoons of happiness and even restoration of losses. The writer should believe he’ll learn by his experience and that he will be a different person at the end of it, calmer, wiser, old.

What are some good habits for a writer?

Make good friends and take their work as seriously as your own.

Using your time, even the small increments. Develop the practice of reading in the cracks, always live in the hold of a great book. Have a copy of it you carry, download onto your phone. Read or listen everywhere.

Keep returning to your work. Try to live in it as much as possible.

Be patient with yourself and your progress. Don’t compare it to other peoples’ work or rewards. The only chance you have to make a difference is to cultivate your own way. There’s no use in looking over your shoulder or wishing you were a different kind of writer, another kind of thinker.

Don’t feel you have to be of any particular sensibility. Find what’s truest in you and follow that.

Don’t worry too much.

Whenever possible, turn towards love.

What’s the best advice you ever got?

Most of the best advice I ever got was from Allan Gurganus, who taught me, when I was young not to worry about what other young writers were doing or getting, who convinced me that the literary world had its fashions like everything else and following them made less sense than following the fashions in frocks. He believed that it was important always to look to the greats, living or dead, whose work never cowers one, but somehow enlarges the confidence and happiness of the reader.

How did My Hollywood find you, or you it?

My Hollywood felt like a book I had to write …and write and write. I suppose it found me and then I couldn’t let it go.

What is next for you?

I’m already at work on a novel that’s a story of adult love and trouble told through the very small aperture of a teenage boy’s voice. My young hero and his best friend snoop and one day stumble onto something more dire than anything they’d known. They then become amateur detectives and try to find the truth about a person very close to one of their mothers. The novel concerns surfing, amateur detective work, and life inside animal shelters.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Susan Tepper:  “199_, What I Wanted” is one of your lushest, most luscious stories that I’ve read.   Immediately it brought to mind scenes from that film made of Proust’s “Swann in Love.”  You write place and details that seem to drip sensuality.  Bill, what was cooking in your mind when you started this story?

Bill Lantry:   The story only exists because of a prompt, which I saw as a chance to be absolutely honest about both desire and writing. Every word is true, I try to never make stuff up, we only call it “fiction” because the language fails us. And every piece of writing should give the reader a place to dwell, a chance to live within the writer’s space a few moments. And what should be there? Desire. Passion. Jouissance. A chance to commune with the other, and through that communion experience something much larger. And readers can tell if there’s anything false within that space, if something’s invented. It’s not that they’re trying to catch a misstep, it’s just that they won’t be able to enter into the shared experience. There would just be sex, instead of actual love making. “How do you want me?” “I want you just as you are!”

Susan: Ah, desire.  Totally. “… the leaves were covered in red dust…”  Then you go on to write: “the way vines try to reach up and curl around the outstretched branch.”  This enfolding of the natural world into the cloistered space of the bedroom and bed.  Tell us more about the bed.

Bill: She asked me to make that, exactly the way she asked me to write the poem.  To craft a place where we could be together. And it was built almost as an altar, elevated, a kind of sacred space. But above it, a strong frame  made of copper. Just like in Horace. But once I’d made it, she transformed it, hanging the jeweled curtains around the upper rails, so they cascaded down around us, enclosing us. Just like jouissance, it was a shared project. She made the space, I’d created hers.

Susan: And you say she hung translucent drapes made of lace and pearls around this bed-altar.  You say she always wanted to draw these drapes closed around them, though they hid nothing.  Why, if they hid nothing?  What did this act mean to her?

Bill: The creation of the symbolic, enclosed space is important, but at the same time peripheral. A way of foregrounding the frame, while backgrounding the essential. Yes, she draws the drapes closed, but they’re transparent. It’s very much like a sleeping circle, both there and not there. A defined enclosure which hides nothing. A place where the vortex can swirl into focus.

Susan: That’s fine.  But what did it mean to your character, in the most personal sense, in that scene, in her heart and body?

Bill: The closing of the drapes prepares for a kind of opening. Or rather, it provides a defined space in which she can open herself completely.  Ovid does the same thing, with nearly the same scene: “…For modest girls a reassuring shade, / Just the right sort of light, with curtains drawn…”

Susan: OK, now we’re getting somewhere.  After all, it was you who created this sexy-altar-bedroom place, dripping with lace and pearls and copper.  You placed these two characters in this dream-like Proustian, Swann so-in-love/lust setting.  No point in going all intellectual on us now.  Now that you got us into that bed with them.  We, your loyal readers.   We follow where you lead.  So this is how she gets ready for the sexual act.  OK.  Very nice.

But then, a while later, she is out of the bed, gone, in another space, and doesn’t want to return to their love making.  Until he writes her a poem.  I mean, isn’t that just a tad manipulative?   I wonder if Byron had to put up with that sort of thing?  What is her motive now?

Bill: OK, so, Swann. He takes the orchid out of her hair, and places it between her breasts. Then he gets intoxicated by the fragrance as he caresses her. That’s gorgeous, but not quite the same. And Byron was a little over-focused on Byron, if I can say that.

Yes, what she does is manipulative, but it is what *she* wants. She’s a bit of a changeling, she believes she can become what his words invoke. There’s an odd duality: the poem is about her, but also calls her into existence.

Susan: Yeah, Byron was definitely focused on Byron!  I’m laughing as I type this!

But to get back to your beautiful story.  There is a surreal quality to the characters, setting, motivations, all of it, for sure.  Yet you made it real enough so that we become engrossed, enrolled, enamored of them.  Frankly, I want to go there and lie on that lace draped bed and have him spoon honey into my mouth.  I want to see the light change in that room.

Last question:  Would he still want her if she was more pliant?

Bill: That’s perfect, your reaction, your desire to be there, on that bed, with honey spooned into your mouth, is exactly what I wanted. We need to make love to our readers.  I hope the reason it works is that the scene may seem surreal, but it’s the complete truth. Remember what Berryman said: “This did actually happen. This was so.” And Fowles:  “Whole sight, or all the rest is desolation.” Or even Vonnegut:  “All this happened, more or less.” The light does change, and she’s beautiful in that new light.

More pliant? It’s hard to imagine that. After all, she can become whatever I whisper, she can transform herself into anything, like Proteus. Like all of us, really.

Read “199_, What I Wanted” by Bill Lantry

Monday Chat is a bi-weekly series in which Susan Tepper has a conversation with a Fictionaut writer about one of his or her stories. Susan is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review, fiction editor of Wilderness House Literary Review, co-author of new novel What May Have Been, and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Hi Karen! Just popping in to see how the new TrainWrite group here at Fictionaut is going. How is it going, any good workshopping, discussions, story sharing?

A (Karen Eileen Sikola): Hi, Nicolle! Thanks for checking in. It’s been great seeing TrainWrite’s readership and submissions grow ever since adding the group to Fictionaut. I’ve enjoyed seeing people post their stories to the group, and have been able to use it as a resource for soliciting writers whose work I may not have come across otherwise. Since starting the group, I’ve been fortunate enough to feature writing from several Fictionaut writers, including Katie  McCoach, Mark Reep, LenKuntz, Catherine Davis, Susan Tepper, and Linda Simoni-Wastila.

What is TrainWrite, its history? Its plans for the future? Did you know that though James Watt invented the steam engine in 1784, we have no exact date as to when the Moleskin notebook was first invented, though know for certain Matisse was using one around the turn of the 19th century?

TrainWrite started about a year ago, after I completed my M.F.A. and found myself a drifter. A friend of mine, Danny Goodman, had already seen a good bit of success with his lit-blog fwriction, so I felt inspired to give the blogosphere a try. At the time, I was subletting a room in an artist’s loft in Bushwick, Brooklyn, so most of my inspiration came from riding the L into the city for a fruitless job hunt.

TrainWrite began as a log of my own my own flash nonfiction pieces, but evolved into an online literary journal once people began submitting their own observations from the tracks. I’m constantly surprised by the prevalence of trains in storytelling. Just when I begin to worry that the scope of TrainWrite is too narrow, that I’ll
run out of material, I come across a reference to trains in something I’m reading, or someone will send me a link, or a stranger on my commute will do something worth writing about. I suppose I have both the invention of the steam engine and the Moleskin notebook to thank for that.

Please tell us more about you, your projects and anything you would like us to know here.

I tend to write best when my world appears darkest, so am currently attempting to find the muse in this thing called happiness I’ve only recently found in Boston. I still have some pieces out for consideration, but am realizing that they will eventually be rejected or accepted, and when that happens, it would be best to have some new material to send out.

I’ve also been working on a chapbook manuscript for TrainWrite, compiling my original shorts into something I’d ideally like to see people reading between stops. If you know of a potential home for her, she’s in the market and willing to travel.

Keep TrainWrite on track. Submit.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

After over two decades in molecular genetics research, Beverly Akerman realized she’d been learning more and more about less and less. Skittish at the prospect of knowing everything about nothing, she turned, for solace, to writing. Of The Meaning of Children, 2010 David Adams Richards Prize winner, The Globe & Mail said, “This isn’t the invented childhood of imagination and wonderment…[here] children both corrupt and redeem: each other, family relationships and the female body.” Other recent honors: nominations for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and nonfiction, and for a National Magazine Award. Credits include Maclean’s Magazine, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Montreal Gazette, CBC Radio One’s Sunday Edition, myriad literary and scientific journals and other publications. Strangely pleased to believe she’s the only Canadian writer ever to have sequenced her own DNA. She is seeking US and UK agents or publishers for The Meaning of Children.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Have you had mentors?  Do you mentor? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance for a writer…

I consider all of my teachers/workshop leaders to have been mentors–though  mentorship is really more about the one-on-one longer-term relationship. Most of the training I’ve been lucky enough to access was through a local group, the Quebec Writers Federation; I’ve taken many of their workshops, led by accomplished local writers: Colleen Curran, Tess Fragoulis, Mikhail Iossel, David McGimpsey, Neale McDevitt, Monique Polak, Lori Weber, Joel Yanofsky. I also was a­ccepted to the QWF’s formal four-month mentorship program with Robyn Sarah. At the Kenyon Writers Workshop, I worked with Brad Kessler and Nancy Zafris, and briefly with David Goodwillie; at Oregon’s Fishtrap, had a stellar experience with Luis Alberto Urrea; and at The Banff Centre for the Arts, I spent a residency working with Greg Hollingshead, Edna Alford, and Isabel Huggan. Some of these were 8-week-long interactions, others shorter or longer. It isn’t always about quantity–it’s more about intensity and emotion, whether they inspire. I’m grateful to them for their generosity, for reading and commenting seriously on my work, and those of the others in the group. Teaching is an incredible gift of oneself–knowledge, experience, sensibility, and confidence. I was invited to lead a QWF workshop for the first time last fall; it’s quite a responsibility. But my most consistent mentors/supporters/co-conspirators are my writing group: Pauline Clift, Julie Gedeon, Kathy Horibe, Maranda Moses, and Heather Pengelley. We’ve been working together since 2006. It’s incredible to have trusted people to give you feedback.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired… suggestions for unblocking creativity?

I’m a big believer in getting out of your comfort zone–I’ve traveled to workshops/fellowships/residencies in Alberta, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Ohio, and Oregon. When I’m unsettled, my emotions are closer to the surface, and I highly recommend it. I’ve even written naked in the Super 8 Airport Motel in Portland–one of my favorite stories poured out there when, after a bad dream, I got up and started writing instead of turning over and trying to get a little more shuteye. I wrote for a couple of hours, made my plane and kept on writing in the stopover at San Francisco (don’t worry: I was clothed by then). Other suggestions: go to art galleries, watch movies, get in touch with nature, take long walks, ride a bike, visit your old neighborhood, join a choir, look at old photos–your own or even strangers’. Whatever it takes to stir yourself up. And work at finding things that make you happy, that make you laugh.

What inspires you?

Kindness and compassion. How much some do for others. The feeling of being in this together, the ol’ John Donne thing. Seeing kids enjoy things. My mother used to take my kids to see plays put on by a local theatre–the rapt look on the faces in the audience used to make me cry. Probably still would. Luckily, my kids are grown and I don’t have to humiliate myself in public that way quite as much anymore. But I’m still trying to move people.

Where do stories come from? What makes them happen… for you?  Talk about recurring theme or themes in your own work here…

No doubt, many of my stories come from my subconscious, from unresolved issues in my own life. Preoccupations. Grains of sand that irritate and ingratiate. Recurring themes in my work include children, of course, and religion–I’m Jewish so many of my characters are, too–but one of my characters has an epiphany at St. Joseph’s Oratory, a Montreal landmark, Canada’s largest church. Again, I look for emotional triggers. Survivor guilt turns out to be a big one–that has to come from the Holocaust, where I lost half my family. Foster children are a recurring subject–I grew up with several over a 10-15 year period, and I realized after rereading the collection several times during a very compressed production schedule that I must have been pretty grief-stricken when they left to resume life with their families (or to other placements). This was all when I was quite young–to my recollection, my parents were very concerned about whether or not the foster kids were ready to move on; about the reaction of me and my sibs, not so much. Of course, memory is not objective.

How do stories grow for you?

My stories often grow themselves during the writing, like crystals coming out of solution. Sometimes I’ll start with just one idea, sometimes I’ll know the whole thing beforehand–Athena bursting from Zeus’ forehead, fully armed. I’m pretty flexible; I’ll take advice if I think the result is better (as an experiment–my old research scientist persona poking through) but I won’t alter a story for politically correct considerations. In “The Woman with Deadly Hands,” some early readers felt the ending was anti-feminist, that a woman shouldn’t be redeemed through pregnancy. To me, that wasn’t the point of the story at all: the story is about whether it’s possible to do too much reading. There isn’t a writer in the story, but it’s about writing. At least, it is to me. But I didn’t set out to write that. I horked it up like a hairball and then tried to figure out what it meant.

Can you talk about what led to the conception and creation of your collection “The Meaning of Children”?

I’d been in molecular genetics research for over 20 years, but I’d always thought I’d be a writer “some day.” In fact, one of my early delusions on enrolling in graduate school was that after the 3^rd semester, I’d no longer pay per credit and so be able to take all the English courses I’d always wanted to–guess how much time I had for English or writing courses while pursuing a research MSc in genetics?

I did a lot of things in the interim–had 3 kids, worked mostly in McGill affiliated labs. And then, in 2003, my father-in-law, Gerry Copeman, died of lung cancer. Gerry and I didn’t even get along that well, though we’d made our peace. But when he died, it affected me: I understood–emotionally, as opposed to rationally or intellectually–that my time on this earth was finite, and that I’d better use it doing something I’d always dreamed of doing–writing fiction.

And so I switched gears, started taking writing and taking workshops. My first stories were published–online and in print–in 2006.

I’ve been writing and submitting like mad since then. By 2010, I had some 20+ published stories. I began submitting a collection in 2009 or so, but it wasn’t until I’d had several rejections that I realized I needed some over-riding structure. I renamed and reorganized it: there are 3 sections: ‘Beginning’ features 1^st person POV children’s stories; ‘Middle’ is about those in the child-bearing years, and; ‘End’ has stories about older people, or that take the long view of life. I won the David Adams Richards Prize for a version of the unpublished collection and I think that and several other prizes–and persistence–paid off.

Are there favorite writing practices/exercises that you can share?

From Nancy Zafris, current editor of the Flannery O’Connor awards series: read Stephen Holden’s NYT review of Hirokazu Koreeda’s 1998 film, After Life and then imagine memories that you (or your protag) could take with them into eternity. The second was suggested by Luis Urrea: write about what the hands know. The two of them together led me to “Pie,” a prize-winning and much-appreciated story you can read right here on Fictionaut.

Best advice you ever got? Words of wisdom…  What helped you as a young writer?

1. Don’t be afraid of rejection, it’s a fundamental to the process. That’s a really hard one at the beginning, because many of us are trained to avoid rejection at all costs, me included. But, as the cliché goes, to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.
2. Closely related: that persistence is as important to success as talent. I somewhere developed this notion that either you were a genius at something or you shouldn’t do it. Anyone who ever pursued a sport or played a musical instrument had one up on me: they already knew how much better one becomes through practice, that Malcolm Gladwell notion of the 10,000 hours. I somehow missed that lesson as a youngster.
3. Learn to squelch the inner critic. Very hard, but start by giving yourself short holidays from it. Tell yourself you’re going to impersonate a very confident person for a while (I tend to ask myself “what would an American do?” when writing queries or asking for help, Canadians being known for being self-effacing…)
4. Finish what you start, even if you don’t think it’s any good. See number 3 above–because it’s mostly about rewriting, carving and honing.
5. Then there’s the standard stuff, the most important being find a writing group, and reading your work out loud while editing.

I was never really a young writer (except in my head). Advice I wish I’d gotten: don’t worry about employability (I never really made much money, anyway). Be fearless enough to do what you love (“like an American would,” lol!)

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Jason Stuart seems cool. I have some kind of weird thing for Southern Men.  We here at the weekly check-in bring you an interview with Burnt Bridge.

If you want to look in the archive you can see over 60 interviews, most of which are with literary journals both online and in-print. The idea as far as I’m concerned is multi-pronged: A. We get to check-in with group members and say, ‘hey dude(ette) how’s it going?’ B. You get to hear about literary journals which you can read, subscribe to, submit to, love or decide to loathe, but the point is information. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have a tanning booth to get to. (No I don’t.)

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Yo Jason. What is Burnt Bridge? I always say that if I could ever be anything other than a writer my dream would be to be a firefighter. I am 100% serious about this. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do other than be a writer. Did you always want to publish a likely not for profit literary journal?

A (Jason Stuart): Funny you say firefighter. I was once offered that job a few years ago, but turned it down in favor a much better salary as a teacher. I still feel to this day I made the wrong choice.

Burnt Bridge is actually the name of a small community close to where I grew up in South Mississippi, owing its name to an old Civil War legend regarding, you guessed it, a burnt bridge. I got ready to start my own lit journal, and liked the sound of it as a name.

Beyond that, however, Burnt Bridge is a platform with which we can showcase the type of work that interests and fascinates us, the core group of editors, and we hope that this work can find a larger audience beyond us. We are constantly expanding our publishing model, seeking to delve into as many markets and formats as possible. We post a short version of the mag monthly online, and we build a quarterly full issue that is released in perfect bound paperback, Amazon Kindle, as well as other ebook formats. Our ebooks sell for only $0.99.

What is BB’s vibe, man. Flavor. Who do you all consider THE voices? Why?

I wouldn’t even begin to know who THE voices are. We just like what we like. We’ve been accused of publishing “that Southern sh**” but I feel that characterization is too small-minded. We publish authors from around the world, and all across the U.S. I suppose I will admit that we have a tendency to lean toward the darker, seedier aspects of this wide world of ours. Ultimately, at least in regards to our prose, we look for work that captures a strong sense of risk within the narrative. Something of heft and girth must be at stake for the story to hold us. Well, that and the writing needs to be razor sharp.

Our biggest focus right now is bringing back the long story. We think that with our print issue, and the growing ebook market, that the market for the novella, the novelette, the long-form story is going to make a comeback. We’ve grown tired of the pretty, peppy little web-flash things, whatever you want to call them. We like stuff that reads like a meal.

Otherwise, we print what we like.

If Burnt Bridge were to suddenly gain a lot of funding thanks to this interview, what would Burnt Bridge continue to do exactly the same?

Ha. The first thing I’d do is pay my editors. Then, maybe, the writers. How much money are we talking here? I think we’d keep everything the same, the whole shebang. Maybe update and streamline the the site and probably our ebook distribution. Maybe buy some ad space somewhere. But, definitely pay my editors. We all labor out of our love for lit. But, money is good, too.

Please tell us more about you, your projects and anything else you’d like to confess here. Go ahead, I’ve heard it all.

Me? What’s to say? I hate writing bios. I hate reading bios. They just drone on and on about all the little writing things they’ve done, journals I’ve never heard of, awards I’m unfamiliar with, etc. Sometimes if a journal title is catchy enough, I look it up. The bios that interest me all make mention of the person’s occupational history. One I remember strongly involved someone writing stories after hours working at a factory. I don’t know why, but I suppose I got snowed by the half-romance of it.

As for me personally: I ride a motorcycle. I live on a beach. I root (strongly) for the Gators. And, that’s about it.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

James Lloyd Davis, a Vietnam veteran and former electrician, shipfitter, pipefitter, boilermaker, ironworker and engineer, currently lives in Ohio. He has returned to writing after a long absence, is working on two novels, and experiments with short fiction in various forms. James has recently published flash fiction at Camroc Press Review, A-Minor Magazine and Istanbul Literary Review.

Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance for a writer…

My own experience has been that of a true outsider, in that I had no influential academic or even communal experience with other writers.  My college training was in engineering and the only true mentoring relationships I’ve enjoyed were in apprenticeships for the ship building trades.  Certain books about writing have had a profound effect on me.  I can name two,  Norman Mailer’s The Spooky Art and Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext.  Reading the work of superior writers is a kind of mentor relationship so my mentors have been many and varied.  The greatest influence for me as a writer, the book that most challenged my view of the art was Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, which is, or was, a revolution in perspective.  It taught me that there are no limits, no rules, no boundaries, that you can write about anything, absolutely anything.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired… suggestions for unblocking creativity?

I’ve never had writer’s block.  Is that suspicious … or what?  Also, I’ve never lacked for inspiration, only time.  I wrote incessantly beginning the year I got back from the war until the late seventies, but did not write anything over the next twenty years.  Even during that period I composed novels in my head, so I had a lot of catching up to do.

When I started writing flash fiction, I would wake up every morning from a dream with a story to write.  Have no idea how that works or why, but I’m pleased it does.  Suggestions?  If you want unfettered creativity, all you have to do is live, really live.  Writing’s easy then.

Best advice you ever got? Words of wisdom…regarding writing or the writing life, or just…. living life!

That’s a hard one, because I seldom ever listened to advice of any kind.  In the service, when I took some leave in Hong Kong, they gave me a list of places that were designated as ‘off-limits,’ places you were not allowed to visit.  I used that list as an itinerary.  Had a wonderful time.

Wisdom?  Someone told me, “Life is a well camouflaged mine field that stretches as far and as long as your life.  You can walk timid or you can walk bold.  Choice is yours.  Result’s the same either way.”

What do you love to read these days? (as specific as you can be here) What excites you as a reader? What makes you care about a character?

I read everything, but I have a particular weakness lately for Irish noir fiction, like the Jack Taylor series by Ken Bruen which is a lot like what you’d get if you put James Joyce and Raymond Chandler in a blender.  Great stuff.

I’m always excited by writing that tells me a story and gives me something to think about.  Characters?  I like a mensch who can take a punch, literally or metaphorically, and not really whine about it, but give you odd, insightful details about the pain and the method of delivery.

Regarding plot: Do you start with a plot?  Do they develop during the process of writing?

I begin almost everything with an ending, both novels and short stories.  Once the ending is written, I go back to the beginning, which is, I think, the most crucial part of any fiction.  Then I make the journey from the beginning to the end.

Flash fiction, for me at least, is almost like automatic writing.  I write a few words and it just takes off on its own.  Can’t explain it.  Won’t try.  It seems to be working.

What are you working on now, on a daily basis… in your writing life?

There are two novels.  The first is titled I didn’t know Nostradamus played in McNamara’s band.  The best way I can explain it is that … it’s about a Vietnam veteran who tries to write a novel about his war, a task that takes him over forty years.  Mostly it’s about his life, what happens to him in lieu of completing his unfinished novel.  The last chapter of my book is the first chapter of his.  It’s … unusual.

The other book, James the Least, is about two homeless men who get in trouble in Houston and travel down to Corpus Christi to get away from a gangbanger who has sworn to kill them both.  One of the two men is a … well, I can’t give that one away.  It’s also different and I’m really quite confident about the novel as a whole.  I write for a while on one novel, then for a while on the other.  Switching off keeps me from getting stale and bored.  And, of course, I write a little flash fiction now and then, for fun.

What can you tell us about yourself as someone who is a regular and wonderful part of the Fictionaut community. What may surprise us?

Surprise you?  My last professional gig was at the Biosphere in Arizona, working for Columbia University as the director of engineering for the physical plant and in technical support for ecological scientific research.  And you thought I was just another pretty face.

How had Fictionaut helped you… as a writer? When did you come on the site? How did you find Fictionaut?

I never knew about Fictionaut until I was invited by Jerry Ratch last year in April.  Since then, I’ve truly enjoyed the exposure and came to appreciate and practice flash fiction for the first time.  Fn is the best laboratory a writer could wish for, a place to fly your flags and see how they stir the readers.  Also, some of the best, most innovative fiction abounds there.

Are there favorite writing practices/exercises that you can share?

Writing is best practiced in utter and absolute solitude and isolation.  It’s a lonely discipline and really hard work.  I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would want to be a writer, but if you must, you should be willing to write every single day without fail.  Hemingway, every day, stood at his desk in the early morning and plucked from his clean, bewhiskered head one thousand words.  It’s a start.  Most of us can do better if we drink less than he did.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Susan Tepper: Stories written from the POV of the opposite gender fascinate me, and “French Kiss” is a beaut.  You wrote the male POV really well here in first person.  Did you have an inkling of your guy narrator before you began the story?  And what does he look like?

Michelle Elvy: I did not know what kind of person he would be at first. The woman was much more clearly outlined in my head. But when I started writing, it all became obvious: he had to be somewhat reserved but definitely game. And more than a little taken aback. I knew I wanted to play with stereotypes- what he expected of her, being French, and what she does to surprise him and confound him. The fun part of writing this piece was that I can relate to both characters in some ways. We are all at times reserved, at times flamboyant. I like to push those things in my writing and in my own life. And I like testing my own limits in terms of the testosterone/estrogen balance, on paper and in life.

As for what he looks like? Dunno. Never thought of that. Except that he’s gangly. Bony knees.

Susan: Ah ha!  So that’s why his knees were jammed into the dashboard!  I like your idea of testing the levels of testosterone/estrogen via characters and real life.  To be able to pull that off lends great strength for story telling.  So your guy is a middle aged Biology prof having his big mid-life crisis?  Or some such thing?  A married man?

Michelle: Naw — I did not judge him so directly, not at all. I thought of him neither as middle aged nor suffering from a mid-life crisis. More that he’s a routine kind of guy, regardless of his age (I reckon he’s mid-to late-30s; that ain’t middle age yet, now is it?) and this breaks his routine in a big way. And most important of all: he likes breaking the routine, even if he did not expect it of himself.

Susan: No question that he likes this break in his routine.  You start off by saying he wants sushi and she likes hamburgers so he gives in and they have burgers.  Routine-wise, what is he breaking exactly?

Michelle: He’s a nerdy academic kind of guy (don’t get me wrong, they can be hot).  But he’s a routine kind of guy in his work, in his expectations. He’s got some kind of idea of what a French woman would want, so he goes out of his way to make the date just right: thinks wine and sushi will do the trick and impress her. He wants it to go well, so he’s planned it, you see.  She drips that mayo and it’s gross to him; she is not quite as refined as he expected. She’s not what he expected at all, in fact.

Susan: Do you think your character does this type of sexual adventure in the car frequently, or is this a one-shot (no pun intended) deal?

Michelle: Hmmm. Hard question. This story, while about these two particular people, is more about experimentation than anything else. It’s less about them as individuals than about this moment in which they find themselves together, and how they respond to each other. So I don’t know what he or she does outside the boundaries of this particular story- nor do I think it’s important. For me, finding a way for these two people to meet (however hapless he might be) was the essence of the story. I do not know the color of his socks or which side of the bed he sleeps on. I do not know if he’s a Pisces or a Virgo. I do not know if he calls his mother regularly. I do not know if he likes green eggs and ham.

But back to your question: I do not think he’s a serial car-sex-nerd, no. But perhaps I’ll have to consider that sort of character for another story.

Susan: Is he the type of guy who might eventually fall in love?  Or is he a “serial dater?”  I’ve known some serial daters who died as single men, after thousands of conquests, and that’s sort of scary to me- in the sense of a life led unable to truly connect with loving another person.   A lot of those types love their dogs unconditionally.

Michelle: You find him much scarier than I do, Susan. I think he’s charming, actually (he’s a Waits fan!). He does not enter the date with an agenda other than wanting it to go well, whatever that means. And no: he is not a serial dater.

As for love? Of course he might fall in love- I’m a romantic at heart.  He might even fall in love with her, so long as he can stomach a lifetime of mayo and Jaegermeister.  Grinning and grinding happily ever after. Every story should end so well.

Susan: Right!  And, yes, I do find him scary.  But it’s a sign of strong story-telling that you bonded with your narrator.  Reading this, what made the story such a wild romp was that I saw him getting exactly what he wanted.  A girl who eats mayo sloppily then screws his brains out.  Your guy, in my opinion, is the unreliable narrator to the hilt.  And that is such a kick because those characters keep everything delightfully off balance.

He says: “She scared the hell out of me, from her rock-hard nipples to her abundant thighs to her curious tongue.”

I didn’t believe he was scared of her.  And that he does this sort of thing a lot, maybe.   Sexual jaunts in a parked car.  I was thinking: well he’s a biology professor, can’t he afford a cheap motel room?  This tall nerdy guy with this young French hottie squeezed into the front seat of a car.  Not exactly your traditional dating milieu.

Michelle: Yes, but remember: this story is about the meeting, the coming together. It’s not about him or her, really, but about this particular moment. A cheap hotel room would not be his style, nor hers. This is all about spontaneity, not one agenda winning over another. In the end, the very idea of spontaneity wins. But I do think it’s interesting that each reader can take away such different things from a 250-word story.

Susan: Yep, that’s the beauty in it all.

Read  “French Kiss” by Michelle Elvy

Monday Chat is a bi-weekly series in which Susan Tepper has a conversation with a Fictionaut writer about one of his or her stories. Susan is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Marcus. Mistah Speh. The Spehster, okay that’s annoying. Please tell us about the new group here at the Fictionaut camp grounds. Marshmallow?

A (Marcus Speh): it’s hard for me to feel really annoyed: after all, how do i know that you exist at all? i’ve never seen you, touched you, tasted you. no offense. marshmallows are a completely different thing: they’re marvelous (i wonder if there’s an etymological connection mar-velous mar-shmallows?) but more to the point, skewered (yes!) marshmallows are a staple diet at the all-new-all-singing-and-dancing academy-award-ready “kaffe in katmandu“. the kaffe is a very special place and when novelist jurgen fauth himself put his weight behind the creation of a fictionaut group for the kaffe, i had to act and turn up the heat. which i did, marshmallows and all.

I see this is in the group’s write-up as what the group is all about: «Camus smoking, squint-eyed sartre, bukowski burping, forgotten dadaists and remembered revolutionaries. colette has a table here where she drinks with merit oppenheim. nietzsche hides out here: he secretly reads jane austen. the photos on the wall are bisexual.» Which I for one happen to think is brilliant. Why’d you start this group? The «contact the m’aitre d’» bit was amazing I love it. Marshmallow?

thanks you for the offer (marshmallow) – i must decline. i spend all my time sitting and writing and i’m trying to lose weight. seriously. by writing about thin things. lean management. skeletons in the cupboard. bulimic teenagers. starving sparrows…

sorry! back to your question: why did i start this group, or rather, the kaffe? – well, to get more time for writing i shut down my facebook friends’ page a month ago. i wanted to escape the endless chat but i found that i did still accumulate links and ideas and snippets of this or that digital ditty while i was traversing the web or the papers. put the need to SHARE together with my in-built desire for DESIGN and my recent fascination with TUMBLR, and out came “kaffe in katmandu”, the ugly duckling among the webzines, not a webzine at all, actually, but a fluid collective of artists, many of them writers, some faces well known from fictionaut – bill yarrow, marcelle heath, sam rasnake, ann bogle and many others are members.

“fluid”, or fluxional like “fluxus” (!), is important to me, too: i resent cliques and closed spaces and once i realised how much energy and creativity resides on tumblr, where people are continuously blogging and reblogging, attaching and sharing, i figured that it would be great to bring some of that talent together on an attractive site. this gamble is beginning to pay off – the ‘scene’ is shaken and stirred a little.

the kaffe may not be much but it has grown quite rapidly in a little over one month – we’ve had more than 5500 visitors who spend a whopping 8,5 minutes on the site on average, we count more than 50 members (who can post whatever they like, including their original art, stories, poems etc.), we’ve featured films, books and philosophers and we don’t seem to get tired of it. recently, fellow fictionaut catherine davis joined me as our maitre d’ during us-american day time…we’re open and we’re happening…

Do you have other existential, metaphorical, non-tangible locations which you often travel to?

i like your assembly of attributes! i get around a fair amount…my favorite literate hangouts include places that you’ve already featured here, like frank hinton‘s metazen and the new housefire, danny goodman‘s fwriction:review (both also tumblr-based), mad hatters review edited by the excellent carol novack and ann bogle, david cotrone‘s used furniture review, shel compton‘s a-minor etc. etc. way too many to list – this is exactly why i find a place like the kaffe so useful: there’s so much out there and it’s hard to keep track of the best.

Who is one of your favorite magical realism flash writers?

i’d like to mention a dead flash giant, who’s perhaps not on everybody’s top list nowadays, but i’m terribly fond of literary archeology: jorge luis borges. this is the his flash “toenails” (transl. from the Spanish by A. Hurley):

Gentle socks pamper them by day, and shoes cobbled of leather  fortify them, but my toes hardly notice. All they’re interested in is turning out toenails – semitransparent, flexible sheets of a hornlike material, as defense against-whom? Brutish, distrustful as only they can be, my toes labor ceaselessly at manufacturing that frail armament. They turn their backs on the universe and its ecstasies in order to spin out, endlessly, those ten pointless projectile heads, which are cut away time and again by the sudden snips of a Solingen. By the ninetieth twilit day of their prenatal confinement, my toes had cranked up that extraordinary factory. And when I am tucked away in Recoleta, in an ash-colored house bedecked with dry flowers and amulets, they will still be at their stubborn work, until corruption at last slows them-them and the beard upon my cheeks.

– marshmallow, yes?

Please tell us about you, your projects and anything else you’d like us to savor here.

i tend to keep my blog up to date on all public and private matters, especially in so far as they pertain to penguins. right now, i’d like you to do two things: (1) sign up with kaffe in katmandu by leaving your email here – or just hang out there with us; (2) keep your fingers crossed for my new novella … that’ll do, that’ll do. thank you for asking, nicolle, and for the candy.

Nicolle Elizabeth is back and we’re awfully happy about that. She checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Susan Henderson is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s Creative Writing program and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her debut novel, Up from the Blue (HarperCollins, 2010), has been selected as a Great Group Reads pick (by the Women’s National Book Association), an outstanding softcover release (by NPR), a Best Bets Pick (by BookReporter), Editor’s Pick (by BookMovement), Editor’s Choice (by BookBrowse), a Prime Reads pick (by HarperCollins New Zealand), and a Top 10 of 2010 (by Robert Gray of Shelf Awareness). It’s currently being translated into Dutch and Norwegian. Susan is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award, and her work has – twice – been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She blogs at LitPark.com and The Nervous Breakdown. Her husband is a costume designer, filmmaker, and tenured drama professor. They live in NY with their two boys.

Have you had mentors? Talk about the mentor relationship, if you will, its importance for a writer…

My first true mentor was the janitor at my high school. We both wrote poetry, terrible stuff, but that’s actually what was so lovely about the experience. It was pure acceptance — the permission to try to express something personal and vulnerable that I hadn’t dared to express before.

We used to hang out after my crew practice and after he’d finished mopping the cafeteria. We’d sit at the back table with a little tape recorder between us that played poorly-recorded music — his favorite was the opera singer, Jessye Norman — and you’d hear this great big emotion coming out of the tiniest speaker. In a way, that’s the perfect metaphor for that time in my writing life because I was just beginning to pay attention to this well of emotion, but I didn’t know how to get it out or represent it with words, and so there was a tinny quality to those early poems that only hinted at what was behind them.

My other mentor was the poet Jim Daniels, who was my favorite professor in college. When I first met Jim, I was kind of guarded and tom-boyish, but when I wrote I would reach for this very formal, faux-John-Donne way of writing. It didn’t occur me to use my own voice. But that’s Jim’s gift. His voice shows his Detroit car factory roots, and so does his writing. The only difference is, when he writes, he sharpens that voice so there are no wasted words. By the end of college, I’d taken about ten classes with Jim, and I can’t begin to describe the stamp he’s put on my writing style or the gratitude I feel for his helping me find and hone my natural voice.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired… suggestions for unblocking creativity?

The best way I know for getting unstuck is to read. If I’m having trouble building suspense, I might read Stephen King’s Misery, where one character spends most of the book lying in bed, and yet, your heart is racing. If I’ve lost my way in a story, I’ll read something with a gloriously tight frame — William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows or Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face — something that reminds me to keep the focus simple. If I’m missing a sense of poetry in my work, I’ll pull out books by Deborah Digges, Cornelius Eady, or Paul Lisicky. If I want to create a memorable opening to my story, I’ll re-read Stephen Elliott, Harper Lee, or Charles Dickens. If I want to tune my ear to a rhythmic and instantly identifiable voice, I’ll read James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, or Zora Neale Hurston. The best thing in the world when you’re stuck is just to walk away from your own work and let yourself fall back in love with the power of story and the power of words.

Best advice you ever got? Words of wisdom… What helped you as a young writer?

The most important thing is to be a reader first. You’re training your ear for rhythm and pacing. You’re learning how to hold someone’s attention. You’re learning how to pull multiple threads through a story. You’re learning how much you can say in a small space, and all the ways you can explore a topic or a relationship on the page.

The second most important thing for a young writer (and obviously this changes when you mature and need to hone your craft) is to keep your most private work away from anyone who might crush your confidence. It’s hard enough to find the courage to explore your fears or vulnerabilities. It takes a lot of experimenting to find your voice and to find your most potent material. This is not the time to have someone looking over your shoulder who might be offended or hurt or overly critical.

How well do you know your characters before you start writing them?

I knew my Up from the Blue characters inside and out because they’d been turning up in short stories for years. I could put them in any situation and know exactly how they’d react.

I’m actually really enjoying the fact that I don’t know the characters in my new book very well. They are just beginning to make themselves known, and much of what they do is a surprise to me.

Regarding plot: How firm do your original plot intentions remain in the writing? Do they develop during the process of writing? Is it a tug of war?

With Up from the Blue, I didn’t even realize I was writing a novel until I was deep into it. And while there’s a nice organic quality to this method, it’s actually quite a hellish feeling when, 200 pages in, I stumbled across my opening scene. The process for plotting this book was one of cutting, pasting, re-thinking, killing off five characters, and ultimately throwing away one and then two entire manuscripts.

I can tell you that I’m carefully outlining my new book. That doesn’t mean I’m tied to this plot if I get a better idea. But I liken it to taking a road trip. You usually know where you want to start your trip and where you’re going to end up. You also know the main roads you’ll take to get there. What you don’t know, and what tends to make the trip memorable, are the surprises you’ll see along the way. But I’m now a big believer in knowing where you’re going before you begin.

Your novel, Up from the Blue, is about 1970’s bi-polar housewife who goes missing and her daughter who won’t give up the search for her. Can you talk a bit the nuts and bolts of birthing this novel?

I documented the rollercoaster ride of this book over at The Nervous Breakdown —  I wrote as I was living through it, not sure at the time what the outcome would be — celebrating things that turned out to be nightmares and mourning things that turned out to save me. Honestly, now that I’ve lived through the process, I’m not at all ready to revisit it. But it’s there in case it gives any other writers a sense of companionship through what can be a terribly long and discouraging process.

Are there favorite writing practices/exercises that you can share?

Yes, but I should tell you first that I cribbed almost all of them from Alexandra Sokoloff. She has a site that talks about creating a three-act story, and since building plot is where I struggle the most, I’ve focused a lot of my energy on learning how to do this better. She also recommends watching movies of the genre you want to write in, and I found movies like Mystic River to be invaluable training tools. I’ve also been studying Joseph Campbell (my husband’s uncle) for his thoughts about the hero’s journey. Again, it’s helping me give a clear shape to my ideas and reminding me that the characters’ actions and decisions (rather than their feelings and insights) need to move the story forward.

As far as story-starters, I love Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. And the Rumpus advice column, Dear Sugar, is marvelous for stirring up emotion and memory.

Finally, I learned something when I was on a writer’s retreat with my friends Tish Cohen, Jessica Keener, and Robin Slick. The method is called “unplug yourself and set an egg timer”. Very simple but a huge payoff. Before that trip, I used to have 12-hour writing days but produce very little. I didn’t even realize how much I’d meshed my writing life with checking email and clicking the like-button on FaceBook. So during this retreat, we laughed and cried and gossiped and brainstormed, and then we ate well, but afterward, we went to separate rooms and set the timer for an hour and a half. And without any electronic gadgets beside me, I just wrote longhand-twice a day-and learned how much good material I could produce if I cut out the distractions.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.