Elephants in Our Bedroom and Popular Mechanics

Next week, on March 8th at 7 p.m. in the Library at St. Leo, we'll host writer, editor, and all-around solid dude, Mike Czyzniejewski.  Mike's latest book is called Elephants in Our Bedroom.  The reading is free and open to the public.    


Also, for Thursday, we're writing a story similar to Raymond Carver's short short story called "Popular Mechanics" or "Little Things."  Here's a link.


http://www.carversite.com/story.html



Enjoy!

Bonjour a Paris

For this week, put your beret on, mes amis, and compose a postcard from Paris that could indeed fit on the back of a postcard.  A plus tard Jeudi!  


Here's a video to get you in zee mood.

Sucrets..? No, Secrets

For tomorrow, fair poets and writers, write a short short proem on Sucrets, "the non-habit forming lozenge that works on your control center."  No?  I'm being told that's wrong (told by whom you'll never know).  The assignment is actually to write a piece about secrets, the act of hiding information from another person or, if you're daring, even yourself.  Mmm...self-secrets.  Enjoy.  See you tomorrow at 7.




Here's another little secretive film (not about Sucrets).

Bad Endings

And then he woke up...

And she knew he was the man of her dreams and they lived happily ever after...

And the rope snapped taut and broke his neck...

Gazing up into the darkness he saw himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and his eyes burned with anguish and anger.  

Bad endings.  We all know them (I'm looking at you Joyce), but let's embrace one for next time.  Write the worst possible ending to a novel for next week--one final paragraph that really puts the nail in the coffin, sealing away the rotting corpse of a work we will only know through its death rattle.  Have fun and see you on the 23rd.

I leave you with these clips from the worst film ever made. Enjoy.

Wall Scrawl Contest -- Solo Novo

For Thursday, we're doing a wall scrawl, courtesy of Solo Novo Press.  It's basically a chance to scrawl your musings, narratives, bromides, clever sayings for all the world to read if the world were, say, a men's bathroom stall or a huge internet message board.  Either way, Solo Novo is having a contest.  THe link is here with full (and clearer) directions.  Remember, we all pledged to submit at least one poem this week.  So get going.  See you Thursday!

http://www.solopress.org/Solo_Press/Submissions.html

Also, here's some nerd graffiti courtesy of the University of Chicago.  

http://www.crescatgraffiti.com/graffiti/b-level-mens-bathroom/

Letters

For this week, follow Joe Wenderoth's lead and write a letter to a specific character or real person.  Have something at stake for both the writer and the receiver.  Hopefully someone will write a letter to one of the mad dogs in this video and ask him what he's holding and if he'll give me some because it looks good (BTW is that Mama Cass singing back up?).  See you all on Thursday.  


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RnjWLVyMps

Shert Stery

I have a new short story coming out in McSweeney's Quarterly and also on Salon.com right now for free.  Here is the link.  Enjoy!  


http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/07/14/patrick_crerand_short_story/index.html