http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com en thales@wordsandstuffcreates.com Copyright 2007 2007-08-16T19:39:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/poetry/42 #When:19:22:00Z In our Creative Writing I course a class favorite (not!!) is our section on “Le Mot Juste.” We talk about images and language and the big themes that writers ponder. So what happens when these fiction and creative non-fiction writers have to spend some time working on a poem to sharpen their language and image skills? Well first they groan, loudly. Then they squirm in their seats. And after a few tries of trying to talk their way out of it, they settle in and chew on pen ends, scuffle paper, write and scratch out, write and scratch out. But when all is said and done, their work is amazing! Below are a few examples of our 15-minute poems: Half light drips from the sky and Falls on jagged, electric beams. Bathed in blue heat, My hands clasp wrought iron, Calling, calling, but you are not There. Stacy T. **** Hands. Hard hands as thick as steel that can carry handfuls of the shattered window and not break or bleed. My hands are like warm wax, molded into shape, three connected parts to each five fingers, cupped to catch the glass you pass. They don’t break or bleed but the glass falls deep in my folds like quicksand, the wax molding over the wounds. Joanna K. *** Short and pure white The outside Dark.  Burning red hot The inside Smokey. Hazy. Filtered Love. And like gray ashes Discarded Carol D. ** Betrayed by his body Time and time again He wants nothing more than to be free I want the same This struggle This push This time so close Pulled from the edge Held prisoner in his skin by tubes and wires Guardians of the sanctity of life float by White as ghosts Betrayed by his body Which begins to heal Despite his spirit it grows stronger As does the pain behind his heavy lidded eyes A fight he will win eventually A betrayal he will revenge And I will not be there next time Kelly C. *** A bend and then a break. My heart rushed to the back of my throat. A promise made with certainty, ‘It’s perfectly safe,” someone wrote. But now I’m falling in peril because I placed it all on you. A board on a bridge, you laid beneath me. A board that I fell through.  Mike H. ** The weight of what’s gone is the same shape Of my wife--in her sleeping gown--in our bed Four quivering legs fell to the floor Head bent down, machine no more I carry him--to the yard--in my arms My two plodding trees knotted in ground Our last, what we had, snapped like bones Mollie F. ** Certainties fig. 1 God is a button in the brain A psychoactive rapture touched off An accelerant that can’t burn out There is nothing there is blood boiling fig. 2 Time is a clock melting in the mind Haven’t we always been here How to know our number hasn’t been called There is no one no knowing but knowing fig. 3 Brain is a time melting in the God A cartoon zygote zygoting A picture tube’s disappearing dot There is nowhow this erasure creating fig. 4 Mind is a button melting You can push but you can push This certainty is there A grail you can’t hold but drink Kevin R. classes, poetry 2007-08-16T19:22:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/reviews/41 #When:19:17:00Z Cormac McCarthy’s newest novel, “The Road,” is getting a lot of media attention lately.  Oprah picked it for her book club. The Pulitzer Prize committee selected it for the fiction award.  But beyond the media hype, I was moved by the poetic simplicity of McCarthy’s prose.  It is certainly not a novel for everyone – some people may be turned off by the explicit violence in certain scenes – but I encourage people to take a look.  In the novel, a father and son struggle to survive a post-apocalyptic world full of death and decay.  Ash covers the landscape and clings thick to the atmosphere, blocking the sun like “the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.” To survive, many inhabitants turn to cannibalism, and McCarthy gives us disturbingly vivid scenes of the depravity humanity has sunk into.  But the father and son resist this, turning the novel into an exploration of survival, faith, and dignity.  Neither the father nor the son have names, and indeed, what is the purpose of a name except to serve as a reminder of a past world.  And yet, despite the brutality of the landscape and degradation of humanity, the young boys maintains a deep sense of faith and morality.  He becomes tearful when the father contemplates killing a dog for food and shares a meager supply of canned goods with another traveler on the road.  To the boy, any life is precious, and in a world where a pair of shoes or can of peaches means the difference between life and death, he recognizes that even stealing is equivalent to murder.  But what is the point of survival in a world so degraded and depraved?  The boy’s mother takes her own life early on in the novel, and the father even contemplates killing his son to save him from the nothingness of the future.  But he can’t.  They survive because they have something to survive for: each other.  Throughout the novel, boy divides his world in terms of those that “carry the fire” and those that do not.  In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and bestowed it upon mankind, thereby bringing light into the darkness.  By holding faith, maintaining dignity, and respecting life, the child carries inside him the promise of humanity.  The gangs of cannibals may have enough food to eat and the ability to reproduce, but at what cost?  They have lost their humanity by tying survival to the death of others.  McCarthy juxtaposes his jarring and sometimes shocking imagery with scenes of genuine tenderness between father and son.  The discovery of a flare gun provides a make-shift fireworks show on a beach, while the boy enjoys his first and possibly last taste of Coca-Cola in an abandoned town.  These small moments stand out among the violence and hardship of the landscape, showing that the tenderness between parent and child is powerful force that can survive even the harshest conditions.  “The Road” gives readers a sense of hope that perhaps all goodness in the world is not lost, that perhaps generations to come will live to carry the fire.  authors, bookshare, fiction, reviews 2007-08-16T19:17:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/reviews/40 #When:18:58:00Z At our Annual Writers Retreat in March 2007, we asked, what are the books that had such a strong impact on you, that you couldn’t live without them. Here’s what the group said: Todd The Lord of the Rings Dresden Files Dragonlace Series Eon/Legacy Dune Tech Heaven History of the World The Traveler The Uplift Series Hammer of God/Anvil of Stars Asimov’s Robot Series Stacy The Lake Isle of Innisfree Women Who Run with Wolves Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe The Hobbit Cold Mountain One Hundred Years of Solitude The Teachings of Don Juan The Great Gatsby Bridge to Terabithia Ann Cathedral Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry Catch-22 Invisible Man Complete Shakespeare Me Talk Pretty One Day What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Mark Twain Anthology Great Gatsby No Name Atlas Shrugged Atonement Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court A Prayer For Owen Meany The Great Gatsby The Hours Huckleberry Finn Power vs. Force Nancy Drew Susan Poisonwood Bible Lovely Bones To Kill a Mockingbird Grapes of Wrath S King – Geralds Game, It, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Great Gatsby Widow For a Year About a Boy/High Fidelity Bridget Jones Bill Trout Fishing in America – Broughton Revolutionary Road Something Happened – Heller Saturday – McKewan Reading Like a Writer – Prose Writer’s Block Yukio Mishima – any Raymond Carver – any Ellen Gilchrist – any Candy Stacy D Secret History – Tart Trinity – Uris Godfather – Puzo Valley of the Dolls – Suzanne Fortress of Solitude – Letham We the Living – Rand Round Ireland with a Fridge – Hawks Love Story – Segal The White Boy Shuffle The Alchemist – Cohello Mary Westing Game – Raskin Down a Dark Hall – Duncan Sula To Room 19 – Lessing Heartburn – Ephron The Hardness Scale – Joyce P Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe Streetcar Named Desire Hold Me – Phieffer Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Amy Hopeful Monsters – Mosley The Following Story – Nooteboom Midnight’s Children – Rushdie Conspiracy of Fools – Eichenwald Lolita The Book and the Brotherhood – Murdoch War & Peace The Westing Game From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler Fatal Vision – McGuiness Tim Geek Love – Dunne Dry – Burroughts Prayer for Owen Meany – Irving Middlesex – Euginedes Barrel Fever – Sedaris Shipping News – Proulx Cathedral Breakfast of Champions Nights at the Circus – Carter Love in the Time of Cholera Darren The Great Gatsby The Grapes of Wrath Naked – Sedaris Where the Wild Things Are The Known World – Jones A Prayer for Owen Meany Middlesex On Writing – King The Things They Carried – O’Brien The Great Santini – Conroy No Name Shelter for the Spirit Eat Pray Love On Writing Artist’s Way East of Eden Gone With the Wind Andrew Henry’s Meadow Nancy Drew Jill (Just what comes to mind right now!) Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee Jane Eyre, Bronte Wuthering Heights, Bronte Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig Collected Stories of Flannery O’Connor What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver Reading As A Writer, Prose Anything by EM Forster Madame Bovary, Flaubert authors, bookshare, fiction, non-fiction, reviews 2007-08-16T18:58:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/getlit/39 #When:18:51:00Z For all you Net surfers… Here’s a couple of interesting sites for your daily dose of literary gossip! Beatrice posts daily blogs on all sorts of literary news, books, and even has some interviews with authors. Or if you’re feeling scandalous, there’s Bookslut – but don’t worry, it’s quite PG.  The site’s full of book reviews and author interviews, most recently with Virkram Chandra, author of the critically-acclaimed 900-page epic “Sacred Games.” Despite it’s length, the novel is a reasonably swift read, and intertwines the stories of numerous characters – a police inspector, gang lord, survivor of Partition – in Mumbai, India.  Identity Theory includes book, film, and music reviews, but specializes in the 150+ interviews with writers and illustrators in its archives, including Julia Alvarez, Jane Smiley, and James Ellroy, just to name a few.  For the poet in you, there’s Poetry Daily, which posts a poem by a contemporary poet every day.  Perhaps you’re looking for an agent?  Everyone Who’s Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing lists every major agent and publisher that Gerard Jones, creator of the site, contacted in his attempt to get his manuscripts to the presses.  So grab a cup of coffee or tea, pull a chair up to your computer, and get to know contemporary literature a little better!  authors, bookshare, publishing, writing life 2007-08-16T18:51:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/listen_up/38 #When:18:39:00Z There’s a whole slew of publishing opportunities coming up, perfect for fiction and non-fiction writers, as well as writers of mystery and horror:  The Literary Writers Network is accepting submissions for the first issue of its literary magazine, 10,000 Tons of Black Ink. The deadline if ongoing.  --Manuscripts must not exceed 5,000 words and should be works of literary or experimental fiction, or creative non-fiction.  --No genre fiction will be accepted. Poetry is not published at this time.  --For more info click here (http://www.literarywritersnetwork.org) ******** Have a stellar non-fiction essay? The Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction awards $1,000 o the winning essay. Reading period if October 1 through January 31; each essay has a $12 reading fee. --Essays of up to 5,000 words, double-spaced, will be considered. --Include a cover sheet with your name, address, and phone number. --No theoretical, scholarly, or critical essays will be considered, but all other approaches and topics are welcome. --Essays must be sent to: Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction The Chattahoochee Review Georgia Perimeter College 2101 Womack Road Dunwoody, GA 30338-4487 ******** City Works Press is launching its Hunger and Thirst Anthology, calling for submissions that push the boundaries of food, considering it as a metaphor, memory, cultural ritual, and sustainer. Deadline is December 17, 2007. --Manuscripts can be fiction or creative non-fiction, 3,000 words max. --Up to three poems may be submitted. --Up to three piece of art or photography may be submitted. --For more info, click here (http://www.cityworkspress.org/submit.html) ******** Notorious Press is calling for submissions for its Hardboiled Horror anthology, edited by James Van Pelt. All stories must included elements of both the horror and mystery/crime genres. Deadline is September 30, 2007. For more info, email info@notoriouspress.com. ******** Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine is calling for mystery stories, including private eye tales, suspense stories, courtroom dramas, spy tales, and so forth. Deadline is ongoing. --Manuscripts must be no longer than 14,000 words. --No simultaneous submissions --Entries should be double-spaced, with your name and address at the top of the first page. No separate cover pages. --Enclose a SASE for a response. --Send entries to: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine 475 Park Ave. South, 11th Floor New York, NY 10016 contests, publishing 2007-08-16T18:39:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/reviews/37 #When:18:34:59Z Oprah and I must be on the same wavelength recently when it comes to literature.  First, it was “East of Eden.” I hadn’t read it, so I bought a used copy and sunk in.  I’ve always loved Steinbeck, and if you haven’t read “East of Eden,” you should.  Oprah must have had the same idea, because she picked it for her Book Club a few days after I started reading it.  Okay, whatever.  I could proudly say to all my friends that I started reading it first.  But then it happened again with “The Road” and “Middlesex; luckily, my copies pre-dated the Oprah Decree and didn’t have a bright orange O slapped on the cover.  For the record, I don’t mind Oprah Winfrey.  You’ve got to respect a person with her charisma, someone who built her media empire from nothing.  And I can’t deny she picks great books: Oprah’s taken on an almost Sisyphean task to get people to read real literature in a country full of video games and reality TV.  I don’t really know why that bright orange O bothers me.  I guess it’s because I don’t want to appear to be following the herd.  But when I stop and think about it, that’s what many readers do anyway.  The literary canon is a powerful force.  I chose to read “East of Eden,” “The Road,” and “Middlesex” because these are considered great books – Pulitzer Prize-winning books, and maybe deep down inside that’s part of the reason I started reading them.  Don’t you want to see what all the fuss is about? StoryStudio has recently launched a course on Reading as a Writer, which I think is a valuable addition to our offerings.  Writers are also readers.  The two go hand-in-hand.  This fall, the class is reading E.M. Forster’s “Howard’s End.” I’ve never read the novel, but I may just have to get myself a copy.  And Oprah, if you’re reading this, I just finished Don DeLillo’s “Falling Man.” You should check it out.  bookshare, classes, reviews 2007-08-16T18:34:59-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/toolbox/36 #When:18:32:00Z This is the section for tips, not excuses. But I just can’t help myself....I’m going to admit it…sometimes I can be a slacker.  It’s true.  Since graduating from college, I haven’t written nearly as much as I could have.  I used work as an excuse: “Oh, it was a long day today.  I’m so tired…I’ll just write tomorrow.” Yeah right.  Tomorrow comes and I’m tired again.  Or else something comes up.  I decide to go to dinner with friends, or get some work done around the apartment.  Life is full of distractions.  Careers get in the way.  Family commands attention.  And it is awful nice to find time to catch up with friends.  But I’ve decided to stop using those things as excuses.  I’m going to be harsh on myself.  I’m a slacker.  I need to write more. Here’s how I’m gonna do it: StoryStudio’s Sunday Writing Cafés are perfect for people like me who need to get some work done.  There’s no room for excuses.  Your family’s not here.  Work isn’t until Monday.  There’s quiet space and coffee if you’re a caffeine junkie.  And it feels so rewarding to put your Sundays to good use! I’ve also found that taking a workshop helps defeat the slacker in me, and not only because I’m under a deadline.  Half of what makes me slack off if not knowing where to take my work.  When I’m inspired, I get much more done; when I’m at a dead end, I’ll be neglectful.  Just being able to bounce ideas off other writers has always helped me and my manuscripts grow.  So my fellow slacker writers, we need to make some changes this fall.  Forget New Year’s resolutions – those never work anyway.  Take a class, come to a Café: we’re here for you!  2007-08-16T18:32:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/listen_up/33 #When:16:03:00Z Autumn is fast approaching and we can’t wait! Come by the studio on Friday, September 7 from 6pm to 9pm for our Fall Kick Off Party. We’ll have drinks and snacks and an open door as all are welcome. We throw these parties at StoryStudio every couple months because, well because writers like to party. You can mix with students, instructors and StoryStudio staff to ask the hard questions...or just chat. Plus, this will be almost the last chance to sign up for classes that start the following week. But if you can’t make the party, then come to the Writing Cafe on Sunday, September 9. In August we had 30 people come in to soak up the energy! 2007-08-16T16:03:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/listen_up/32 #When:15:53:02Z first off, I’m having a great time! Can we: 1. have all embedded links programmed to open in a new browser tab or window? I don’t want to have folks leave Cooler when they click. 2. is there a way in EE to see all the html coding. Sometimes I like to play fancy but I couldn’t figure out how to do things like change font color within a post. I don’t mind hardcoding but wanted to know if I could do in the EE window. 3. is there a way to manually re-order entries? for instance, on the News sidebar, I want to be able to control which order things are shown. Do I have to just re “publish” the piece? 4. at the bottom of pages, can we put in links to “next”. Even though I want to limit the number of entries per page, I wanted readers to be able to go to the next page of entries? 5. can we make the titles of the entries Larger. An issue I’m noticing is that the entries all sort of run together and I want to “divide” them more. Can we stick a hard rule in between them or something? 6.can we create a couple different categories of folks: MEMBER- has permissions to post Comments, post to Blog, post to Author bio and post to Reviews. (no access to stories, poetry, submit, etc.) REGISTERED-may only post to comments and manage their own profile CREW-has permissions to post to everything but not superpowers to change site. I want my staff to be able to go in and banish someone but I don’t want them messing up any templates. But they’re all pretty computer savvy. okay, back to postings. thanks. j 2007-08-16T15:53:02-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/getlit/31 #When:15:43:00Z What good is sitting alone in your room (cue Liza Minelli), GET OUT AND GET LIT! Check back here as we try to keep you apprised of readings, literary events, book sales and more. If you hear of something, by all means let us know so we can add it to the list. You may do this by Registering on this site, or send us an email at and put “get lit” in the subject line. In the meantime, definitely check The Reader and Time Out Chicago and Women and Children First for news of author events and readings. 2007-08-16T15:43:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/listen_up/30 #When:15:41:02Z Okay, they don’t really suck. It’s the coming back after having a great vacation that stinks. Seven days in the beautiful Upper Pennisula doesn’t quite make me a “yooper,” (look it up!), but it sure does make me wistful for the kind of peace and quiet that guided our days. Up on the Keweenah Peninsula (it’s really an island but who’s complaining) cell phone coverage is spotty at best. Where we were, all the way up in Copper Harbor, there were no cell phone towers at all. That meant no loud conversations from the yahoo sitting at the next table over and no drivers going a measly ten miles an hour while they were wrapped around a phone. It was bliss. No phone calls. No missed calls. No contact with the outside world. If you call yourself a writer, you’ll understand the contented smile on my face, the lack of creased brow and the urge for even more silence except for the rustling of the trees, the scurrying of chipmunks and the imagined black bear searching for food. We did hear some tankers toot their horns as they travelled west to Duluth for more iron ore. And sitting in the backyard around a fire we let the crackling of wood mingle with the tinkle of the ice in our cocktails. The loudest sound was the overactivity of my own imagination. All that silence was a wonderful, cushiony pillow for my brain to relax into the pile of books we brought. I read up on my Qigong practice, devoured Claire Messud’s first novel, When the World was Steady, reread Howard’s End (for our Reading as a Writer class), and consumed Rebecca Barry’s Later, at the Bar between breakfast and lunch. Oh, did I mention we got to read at breakfast each morning. Heaven! Now I am back and it’s only taken one day for the demands of work to help my body forget how relaxed it was. But luckily, my mind is still on fire and the words and images and characters I spent the week with are still rattling around in my brain. I can hear snippets of their thoughts and conversations. I add to it my own characters, play with the possibilities. There is no silence in my head; only the delicious sounds of stories being born. 2007-08-16T15:41:02-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/poetry/29 #When:14:46:01Z If you’re a StoryStudio writer and have been hoarding those sonnets and haikus, locked away in a drawer waiting to be found after your death (....well you get the picture), come on out of the poetry closet and send us your words. In this section of COOLER we’ll be publishing poetic work by any and all StoryStudio students and instructors. (You don’t have to be currently enrolled in a class.) To get the details, visit the Submit page. And while you’re here, read this sonnet by a guy named Will. He’s pretty good for never having hung out at StoryStudio… Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare That time of year thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed, whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. 2007-08-16T14:46:01-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/listen_up/19 #When:16:23:01Z This is positively hot, baby! fiction, writing life 2007-07-26T16:23:01-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/poetry/16 #When:22:41:00Z Robots Rock. poetry, robots 2007-07-24T22:41:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/poetry/11 #When:19:18:00Z Entry 2007-07-24T19:18:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/stories/13 #When:19:18:00Z Entry 2007-07-24T19:18:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/toolbox/14 #When:19:18:00Z Entry 2007-07-24T19:18:00-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/getlit/10 #When:19:17:01Z Jill’s first attempt at trying out the system. woohoo 2007-07-24T19:17:01-06:00 http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/listen_up/1 #When:22:43:39Z Thank you for choosing ExpressionEngine! This entry contains helpful resources to help you get the most from ExpressionEngine and the EllisLab Community. Technical Support: All tech support is handled through our Community forums. Our staff and the community respond to issues in a timely manner. Please review the Getting Help section of the User Guide before posting in the forums. Learning resources: Getting Started Guide Quick Start Tutorial Video Tutorials Additional Support Resources: ExpressionEngine User Guide Knowledge Base ExpressionEngine Wiki If you need to hire a web developer consider our Professionals Network. You can also place an ad on our Job Board if you prefer that professionals find you. Love ExpressionEngine?  Help spread the word and make some spare change with our Affiliates program. See you on the boards, The EllisLab Team 2007-07-23T22:43:39-06:00