For any free subscribers reading here I want to assure you as a fellow lover of literature that the value of that paid subscription to Story Club is worth so much more than that itty bitty monthly payment! It's MFA-level wisdom in real time under the guidance of a master of the craft of writing, and your classmates there are some of the kindest well-read folks in the internet.
Story Club is a soothing, reassuring oasis in these times for those of us who want to write and understand stories better.
*This comment is my own and George might even be cringing at it but I don't want you to miss out if you're just here lurking because you think you need to be, do, or have anything more than a love for stories to join in. Come on over! I sure am glad that I checked it out that first month. Now I look forward to the posts, discussions, and camaraderie!
I’m a professor of literature and enjoy this “oasis” (well said) of wisdom and real time analysis so much. It’s like being back in the classroom as a student with my fellow literature lovers. One of the best place to be on substack.
So well said Traci! Thank you. I totally agree about the value of what is happening here, on the literary level and even on the psychological level. I think people should redirect some of their therapy money to Story Club! There is some powerful stuff shared here about vulnerability, humility, boldness, risk, failure and success....all the murky, terrifying and rewarding aspects of expressing ourselves creatively. George is a great guide and the Clubbers are a great team to explore with. So glad we all are finding this place that George carved out of the internet.
Here here! It's an amazing place for any writer, would-be writer, accomplished writer... anyone interested in writing and stories. But the camaraderie, as Traci says, what a joy Story Club is.
Not a word, as you've written such well chosen words, do I demur from Traci.
You've said it just as we, who have transitioned from 'free' to 'paid', have all found being in the full loop of twice-weekly-Newsletter-inbox-landings. In a word: beneficial.
Inner child, my dear, although you never know what writers are up to in their private spaces. George could be the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. for all we know, and that "Aw, Shucks" attitude is simply hiding his nefarious plans (cleverly coded as doodles) to stick us all in an amusement park ride...
Thank so much for our lecture about Italo Calvino. I have admired his writing for so long and did not know some of the facts. Invisible Cities all bear woman’s names. I read his mother was one of his most influential person in his early life and convinced him to fight against the Germans during World War II. Someone called him ''The Squirrel of the Pen’’. MY FAVORITE BOOK IS ITALIAN FOLKTALES that I continue to find new things for over many years. In the introduction- under “criteria of my writing” he wrote “I began doing what came most natural to me-that is following the memory of the things I had loved best in boyhood instead of making myself write the novel that was expected to write”. My favorite tuscan Proverb in FOLKTALES is “The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it-in other words its value consists of what is woven and rewoven in to it.” Perfect timing for me as I struggle to edit and slash some of my essays I wrote during the
Gloria - my fav has always been "If on a Winters Night a Traveller. . ." To me it's a unicorn in that it is the only wholly satisfying instance of that poor, maligned (perhaps justly) cul du sac called "post-modernism". If somehow, more pomo could have been like this, it might not have been such a dead end.
Paraphrasing George here, but “if you’re stuck with the ending, the trouble is not with the end but with beginning or the middle.” Working with that pertinent advice today, and going back to page one!
Sounds like everyone's having fun over on "CommComm." When you're done over there, you might come and check out my Stack. I found an article that covers the only existing motion picture footage of Mark Twain, shot by Thomas Edison no less, as well as a voice recording of William Gillette, an american actor who was a neighbor to Twain. When he was young. Gillette spent a lot of time with him, and was able to mimic him perfectly, so this is probably the most authentic recreation of his voice that we'll ever get
The second article is astounding in its implications. A scientific team has produced tantaliziing hints that consciousness may be linked to quantum entanglement interactions, which would lead to the long-sought proof that consciousness is not solely confined to the physical brain and can extend beyond it. Come check it out...
I looked at the link about quantum entanglement. Truly that might be part of the explanation for quite a few things that have been occurring in this whacky continuum. Thank you! I will look at some more of it later or sooner.
Really great that Calvino’s name comes up in a discussion of the short story. During the early days of Covid, I was interested in writing a story that was not about me or a character like me and I was looking for a model of such a story and found it in Calvino’s Cosmiccomics. Still not sure how he does it. Something like erase everything from your mind and create a world from scratch. Then people it. I did have to put the book down for a minute when “A Swim In a Pond...” came out, which answered a lot of other questions.
What a great article by Italo Calvino, many thanks to GS for the introduction. Historically I would tear ar** into a short story, as I wanted to get to the finish, and the shock appeal. After reading the article and with George's prompting, I have slowed down, re-reading, pausing and walking a lot in the local woods, just for word or line. It is better or to me it is better.
George, interested, I’ve been reading these chats which elucidate some of your CommComm writing methods all the while my waking reading self was denying the possibility of ‘not knowing’, of ‘tunnelling in’, of allowing myself to be surprised.
Then, in the middle of last night, I woke with a start, with the realisation that I do indeed just start writing and in fact, my current writing project started just this way and I spend many weeks editing and revising and scrapping and revisioning the first section. Only when I was happy enough did I continue to write the next section. And I had no idea what was coming next but I realise now, I ‘tunnelled’ in and that prodding of my unconscious evoked the continuation of my novel.
However, I then remembered, in the middle of the night, that the last time I re-read the end of section one and the beginning of section two I almost jumped out of my skin with surprise when I saw how the protagonist had come to be linked to the narrator. Initially, I thought such surprise might render a disbelievableness but am sitting with it and have yet to make up my mind whether to leave it in or not.
My question is, George, do you ever, on returning to a piece of your writing, surprise yourself with what you have written? If so, can you give an example of how you decide to keep it or revise it please?
That is always (always) the goal for me, Sally - to surprise myself. Which means, really, that the story has leapt beyond my idea of it. Which is good, because "the idea of a story" is always conceptual - we think of it when we're "regular." We're hoping for that moment when we become exceptional. I connect this with the subconscious being brought into the process, but I'm not sure about that.
So does everything happen for a reason? This is another amazing, almost psychic confluence between Story Club and my life. (As Mary G. has so wisely said, Story Club is Life Club). Many years ago, as a young architecture student, I had the good luck to be taught by a very creative and abstract thinking instructor. We were in a preliminary drawing / drafting class and he was pushing us to feel what we drew and draw what we feel, to evoke rather than duplicate. He believed that great design flowed from a deeper connection between our imaginations and subconscious. After a few weeks of drawing things literally - learning the technicalities of drafting something he put in front of us - he assigned Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and asked us to read it, pick a city and draw it so that others would understand the experience of being there. After being stumped, then maybe a little embarrassed by what we first drew, the students broke through and the creativity blossomed. The drawings that got pinned up for review that month were unlike anything I had ever done or thought that I could do. It was a profound artistic move toward designing from a deeper place of human experience rather than copying architectural styles. The process changed my approach to drawing forever. To my delight and surprise, I am having similar awakening experiences here in Story Club, thanks to George’s guidance and intuition. What a gift!
I am almost done reading *The Written and the Unwritten World* translated by Ann Goldstein, published this month by Penguin, and it's brilliant.
In one of the essays (from which the collection takes its name), he writes, "I have to say the most of the books I've written and those I have it in mind to write originate in the idea that writing such a book seemed impossible to me. When I'am convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk an start writing it." (129)
Additionally, I am halfway done with a genre-defying marvel called *Portals: Reflections on The Spirit in Matter* by Genese Grill published by Splice in the UK (available to order from the usual online places this side too) that I highly recommend as a pairing with the aforementioned Calvino.
Grateful for the Calvino lecture PDF!
I am almost done reading *The Written and the Unwritten World* translated by Ann Goldstein, published this month by Penguin, and it's brilliant.
In one of the essays (from which the collection takes its name), he writes, "I have to say the most of the books I've written and those I have it in mind to write originate in the idea that writing such a book seemed impossible to me. When I'am convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk an start writing it." (129)
Additionally, I am halfway done with a genre-defying marvel called *Portals: Reflections on The Spirit in Matter* by Genese Grill published by Splice in the UK (available to order from the usual online places this side too) that I highly recommend as a pairing with the aforementioned Calvino.
The pdf on 'Invisible Cities' was looking interesting.
"Well what's not going to be interesting about reading record of Italo Calvino talking about a work he'd written?" I was asking myself when it dawned on me that I knew something of Italo Calvino, had maybe read, as a dipper not a long-haul traveller, some of his work but definitely not 'Invisible Cities'.
Consequently, on the toss of a coin, have opted to park the author talking about one of his writings while I go read the actual work. Thanks to the miracle that is 'e-book format' I've got it downloaded and teed-up for when I get a window in which to settle and begin to set out and read this writing what he was pleased to address students about the process which brought it into being.
Here's the opening of the talk by the author:
'Invisible Cities does not deal with recognizable cities. These
cities are all inventions, and all bear women's names. The book is
made up of a number of short chapters, each of which is intended
to give rise to a reflection which holds good for all cities or for the
city in general.'
Here's the opening of the fiction about which the author was talking:
'LEAVING THERE AND proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman’s voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time.'
If there were only two pieces of text available to take with you on your travels to be shipwrecked, as a sole survivor, on a desert island which of these two would you - given that you take only one - would you choose, and why?
The poetry of the book itself, of course. But the somewhat drier poetry of the lecture is what caused me to pay enough attention to go and order the book: a little wry invitation never hurt anyone, I believe. Another thing to love (and fear) about Story Club: my must-read list just keeps on doubling.
Of course reading this Calvino lecture, George, immediately made me think of your title story, Liberation Day. "Mr. U. comes back in with a beer and some chips. 'I think,' he says, 'City. A cityscape. What do you think?'"
For any free subscribers reading here I want to assure you as a fellow lover of literature that the value of that paid subscription to Story Club is worth so much more than that itty bitty monthly payment! It's MFA-level wisdom in real time under the guidance of a master of the craft of writing, and your classmates there are some of the kindest well-read folks in the internet.
Story Club is a soothing, reassuring oasis in these times for those of us who want to write and understand stories better.
*This comment is my own and George might even be cringing at it but I don't want you to miss out if you're just here lurking because you think you need to be, do, or have anything more than a love for stories to join in. Come on over! I sure am glad that I checked it out that first month. Now I look forward to the posts, discussions, and camaraderie!
Not cringin, and thank you, Traci. :)
I’m a professor of literature and enjoy this “oasis” (well said) of wisdom and real time analysis so much. It’s like being back in the classroom as a student with my fellow literature lovers. One of the best place to be on substack.
So well said Traci! Thank you. I totally agree about the value of what is happening here, on the literary level and even on the psychological level. I think people should redirect some of their therapy money to Story Club! There is some powerful stuff shared here about vulnerability, humility, boldness, risk, failure and success....all the murky, terrifying and rewarding aspects of expressing ourselves creatively. George is a great guide and the Clubbers are a great team to explore with. So glad we all are finding this place that George carved out of the internet.
Here here! It's an amazing place for any writer, would-be writer, accomplished writer... anyone interested in writing and stories. But the camaraderie, as Traci says, what a joy Story Club is.
Not a word, as you've written such well chosen words, do I demur from Traci.
You've said it just as we, who have transitioned from 'free' to 'paid', have all found being in the full loop of twice-weekly-Newsletter-inbox-landings. In a word: beneficial.
Oh, trust me. Writers never cringe when you praise them. We humbly say "Awwww, thank you," while inside we're jumping up and down going "YES!!!"
I don't know, Michael... haha... George's humility is so sincere I have a hard time imagining him jumping up and down in his writing shed.
Inner child, my dear, although you never know what writers are up to in their private spaces. George could be the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. for all we know, and that "Aw, Shucks" attitude is simply hiding his nefarious plans (cleverly coded as doodles) to stick us all in an amusement park ride...
😂
I am found out!
😎😂
Exactly...the mastermind behind the framework in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Jumping? More likely, cartwheels!
I second all that, Traci. And, the discussion beginning last Sunday has been one incredible boat-lifting tide.
Thank so much for our lecture about Italo Calvino. I have admired his writing for so long and did not know some of the facts. Invisible Cities all bear woman’s names. I read his mother was one of his most influential person in his early life and convinced him to fight against the Germans during World War II. Someone called him ''The Squirrel of the Pen’’. MY FAVORITE BOOK IS ITALIAN FOLKTALES that I continue to find new things for over many years. In the introduction- under “criteria of my writing” he wrote “I began doing what came most natural to me-that is following the memory of the things I had loved best in boyhood instead of making myself write the novel that was expected to write”. My favorite tuscan Proverb in FOLKTALES is “The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it-in other words its value consists of what is woven and rewoven in to it.” Perfect timing for me as I struggle to edit and slash some of my essays I wrote during the
pandemic. Carry on writers -
Gloria - my fav has always been "If on a Winters Night a Traveller. . ." To me it's a unicorn in that it is the only wholly satisfying instance of that poor, maligned (perhaps justly) cul du sac called "post-modernism". If somehow, more pomo could have been like this, it might not have been such a dead end.
Thank you Stephen. I love that book and totally forgot about it. Will be reading it over week end.
Wow, thank you for sharing this. I just finished reading Invisible Cities last night, so the timing of this is a little uncanny...
Paraphrasing George here, but “if you’re stuck with the ending, the trouble is not with the end but with beginning or the middle.” Working with that pertinent advice today, and going back to page one!
Sounds like everyone's having fun over on "CommComm." When you're done over there, you might come and check out my Stack. I found an article that covers the only existing motion picture footage of Mark Twain, shot by Thomas Edison no less, as well as a voice recording of William Gillette, an american actor who was a neighbor to Twain. When he was young. Gillette spent a lot of time with him, and was able to mimic him perfectly, so this is probably the most authentic recreation of his voice that we'll ever get
The second article is astounding in its implications. A scientific team has produced tantaliziing hints that consciousness may be linked to quantum entanglement interactions, which would lead to the long-sought proof that consciousness is not solely confined to the physical brain and can extend beyond it. Come check it out...
michaeldmayo.substack.com
Thanks, Michael. I’ve been wondering what you were up to.
No good, of course...
Of course!
I looked at the link about quantum entanglement. Truly that might be part of the explanation for quite a few things that have been occurring in this whacky continuum. Thank you! I will look at some more of it later or sooner.
Really great that Calvino’s name comes up in a discussion of the short story. During the early days of Covid, I was interested in writing a story that was not about me or a character like me and I was looking for a model of such a story and found it in Calvino’s Cosmiccomics. Still not sure how he does it. Something like erase everything from your mind and create a world from scratch. Then people it. I did have to put the book down for a minute when “A Swim In a Pond...” came out, which answered a lot of other questions.
What a great article by Italo Calvino, many thanks to GS for the introduction. Historically I would tear ar** into a short story, as I wanted to get to the finish, and the shock appeal. After reading the article and with George's prompting, I have slowed down, re-reading, pausing and walking a lot in the local woods, just for word or line. It is better or to me it is better.
Again huge thanks to our "fearless leader" (though that makes us all Natashas and Boris Badanovs!).
Calvino is such a treasure and to see him inserted into our discussions makes my brain hum.
George, interested, I’ve been reading these chats which elucidate some of your CommComm writing methods all the while my waking reading self was denying the possibility of ‘not knowing’, of ‘tunnelling in’, of allowing myself to be surprised.
Then, in the middle of last night, I woke with a start, with the realisation that I do indeed just start writing and in fact, my current writing project started just this way and I spend many weeks editing and revising and scrapping and revisioning the first section. Only when I was happy enough did I continue to write the next section. And I had no idea what was coming next but I realise now, I ‘tunnelled’ in and that prodding of my unconscious evoked the continuation of my novel.
However, I then remembered, in the middle of the night, that the last time I re-read the end of section one and the beginning of section two I almost jumped out of my skin with surprise when I saw how the protagonist had come to be linked to the narrator. Initially, I thought such surprise might render a disbelievableness but am sitting with it and have yet to make up my mind whether to leave it in or not.
My question is, George, do you ever, on returning to a piece of your writing, surprise yourself with what you have written? If so, can you give an example of how you decide to keep it or revise it please?
Sally Silvers
Author
That is always (always) the goal for me, Sally - to surprise myself. Which means, really, that the story has leapt beyond my idea of it. Which is good, because "the idea of a story" is always conceptual - we think of it when we're "regular." We're hoping for that moment when we become exceptional. I connect this with the subconscious being brought into the process, but I'm not sure about that.
Happy writing!
So does everything happen for a reason? This is another amazing, almost psychic confluence between Story Club and my life. (As Mary G. has so wisely said, Story Club is Life Club). Many years ago, as a young architecture student, I had the good luck to be taught by a very creative and abstract thinking instructor. We were in a preliminary drawing / drafting class and he was pushing us to feel what we drew and draw what we feel, to evoke rather than duplicate. He believed that great design flowed from a deeper connection between our imaginations and subconscious. After a few weeks of drawing things literally - learning the technicalities of drafting something he put in front of us - he assigned Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and asked us to read it, pick a city and draw it so that others would understand the experience of being there. After being stumped, then maybe a little embarrassed by what we first drew, the students broke through and the creativity blossomed. The drawings that got pinned up for review that month were unlike anything I had ever done or thought that I could do. It was a profound artistic move toward designing from a deeper place of human experience rather than copying architectural styles. The process changed my approach to drawing forever. To my delight and surprise, I am having similar awakening experiences here in Story Club, thanks to George’s guidance and intuition. What a gift!
Your advice from Sunday is helpful as I start my afternoon writing today. Thanks George!
Yay. Delighted you're "breaking." 💓
Grateful for the Calvino lecture PDF!
I am almost done reading *The Written and the Unwritten World* translated by Ann Goldstein, published this month by Penguin, and it's brilliant.
In one of the essays (from which the collection takes its name), he writes, "I have to say the most of the books I've written and those I have it in mind to write originate in the idea that writing such a book seemed impossible to me. When I'am convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk an start writing it." (129)
Additionally, I am halfway done with a genre-defying marvel called *Portals: Reflections on The Spirit in Matter* by Genese Grill published by Splice in the UK (available to order from the usual online places this side too) that I highly recommend as a pairing with the aforementioned Calvino.
Grateful for the Calvino lecture PDF!
I am almost done reading *The Written and the Unwritten World* translated by Ann Goldstein, published this month by Penguin, and it's brilliant.
In one of the essays (from which the collection takes its name), he writes, "I have to say the most of the books I've written and those I have it in mind to write originate in the idea that writing such a book seemed impossible to me. When I'am convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk an start writing it." (129)
Additionally, I am halfway done with a genre-defying marvel called *Portals: Reflections on The Spirit in Matter* by Genese Grill published by Splice in the UK (available to order from the usual online places this side too) that I highly recommend as a pairing with the aforementioned Calvino.
https://www.thisissplice.co.uk/our-titles/living-essays/portals/
The pdf on 'Invisible Cities' was looking interesting.
"Well what's not going to be interesting about reading record of Italo Calvino talking about a work he'd written?" I was asking myself when it dawned on me that I knew something of Italo Calvino, had maybe read, as a dipper not a long-haul traveller, some of his work but definitely not 'Invisible Cities'.
Consequently, on the toss of a coin, have opted to park the author talking about one of his writings while I go read the actual work. Thanks to the miracle that is 'e-book format' I've got it downloaded and teed-up for when I get a window in which to settle and begin to set out and read this writing what he was pleased to address students about the process which brought it into being.
Here's the opening of the talk by the author:
'Invisible Cities does not deal with recognizable cities. These
cities are all inventions, and all bear women's names. The book is
made up of a number of short chapters, each of which is intended
to give rise to a reflection which holds good for all cities or for the
city in general.'
Here's the opening of the fiction about which the author was talking:
'LEAVING THERE AND proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman’s voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, that time.'
If there were only two pieces of text available to take with you on your travels to be shipwrecked, as a sole survivor, on a desert island which of these two would you - given that you take only one - would you choose, and why?
The poetry of the book itself, of course. But the somewhat drier poetry of the lecture is what caused me to pay enough attention to go and order the book: a little wry invitation never hurt anyone, I believe. Another thing to love (and fear) about Story Club: my must-read list just keeps on doubling.
Of course reading this Calvino lecture, George, immediately made me think of your title story, Liberation Day. "Mr. U. comes back in with a beer and some chips. 'I think,' he says, 'City. A cityscape. What do you think?'"