It's done. Issue 2.3 was put to bed last night, or I guess I really should say this morning, at 1AM. Thank ya Lord is all I can say about that. The cover is awesome, the content is awesome, it's all awesome.
So since we're all tired (but good tired, not bad tired) and all, instead of listening to me ramble on incoherently, why not go read Michael Snyder's really nice post about us over ChristianWriters.com ? It's pretty neat!
Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff shares his advice regarding cliché.
I don’t blame people for slipping into the cliché—I find myself fighting it often enough in my own writing. In the TV series, Dead Like Me, George’s English professor father gives a lecture on Shakespeare’s sonnets and notes that a line about his heart and a tree feels cliché. But he goes on to suggest that clichés are the things that stick, the ideas or phrases that capture a phenomenon so well for so many of us that we can’t say it better ourselves.
There’s something to that. Cliché is the idiom of the exceptional, a street jargon of mots justs for everyday use. But we know that in writing we’re not supposed to be using language in its everyday application (trust me, this goes whether you write realistic fiction or poetry). That’s because they’re so available, so common, that to use them looks like a cop-out, a failure to put something into your own words. The word cliché comes from the French, “to click,” and refers to “the striking of melted lead in order to obtain a proof or cast” (OED); it’s related to stereotype, which was a metal plate used for printing. It’s what “clicks,” but what clicks over and over again.
The trick with avoiding cliché, I think, is to recognize one when you see it. This means attending to your language and to your ideas and sentiments. When you notice one, ask, “Is this meaningful here?” Some clichés are probably admissible in those places where they continue to signify, but what makes them cliché is that they’ve ceased to glow for us, and we tend to just gloss over them as we read. You want every word to mean something.
But don’t overdo it. Word usage can be cliché, too. Adjectives, for instance, are overused because people think they are intrinsically poetic and a way to avoid cliché. They’re not either. In fact, next time you want to use a lot of adjectives, think of Lunch-lady Doris making horse-meat chili: “More testicles mean more iron!” (That ought to put a funny taste in your mouth.) More adjectives do not mean more iron.
Tend to your nouns, first, like exercising your “core” muscles or adjusting the macro focus on your camera (notice my metaphors don’t work for an automatic age). Bring in modifiers to tweak and add a meaningful zest to your words. You adject wisely when you judiciously adject.
Be aware that when you try to describe some event, emotion, person, idea, etc., the first thing that comes to mind will probably be something cliché, so be wary and try to come up with something else. Once you’ve done that, ask whether you haven’t just come up with something meaningless, forced, pedantic, or cutesy. By cutesy I mean the kind of writing that tries to play on words or ideas and to be self-consciously ironic about it at the same time. This is actually hard to do, and most people end up sounding like they’re trying to initiate the reader into some special club that “gets it,” only the reader thinks it so obvious that there’s no one who doesn’t get it, and so the author just looks foolish. You don’t want to look foolish.
One last thought—a dangerous thought, perhaps, but I stand by it. Bible verses and hymns can be cliché, too. Just because you quoted a psalm doesn’t mean you’ve shared a spiritual experience with your reader. Many poets can reference or quote Scripture powerfully, but it becomes cliché when you rely on it to do the work you are supposed to do as the writer—which is the main point about clichés, after all: they don’t work if you’re not working, and you have to work hard to make them work.
We're about to announce our complete author list for the upcoming issue, but before we do, let's congratulate our Editor's Choice Winners for the upcoming issue:
Brian Spears, for his poem "Hall Raising" Melanie Haney for her short fiction "The Last Thing Before Dirt" Mike Duran for his essay, "The Ark"
Don't miss out on these, folks. Click over to the store to purchase your subscription , or order a single issue in a few days once Coach has announced presales :)
CNF Anthology Nominations
Each year since 2006, Creative Nonfiction Journal has sponsored an anthology of the best creative nonfiction from the calendar year. Editors of both print and online journals may make nominations from their own publication. Editor Dinty Moore makes selections for the anthology, which will be published by Norton.
I sent off our nominations from Relief a couple of weeks ago, and I did so with great satisfaction. Whether or not they are selected for Best of Creative Nonfiction. Vol. 3, I am so proud to have these essays representing Relief’s work before Dinty and his readers. Two of our three nominations are pieces forthcoming in the next couple of issues. Watch for them. Here’s a sneak peek.
From issue 2.2
“The World I Breathe” by Karen Miedrich-Luo
Coming up in issue 2.3 (August/September)
“Letters Home from Sunshine Mountain” by Jill Noel Kandel
For those of you still looking for more places to submit your hard-boiled detective story, here's a call for submissions we stumbled upon:
For fiction writers (especially you Diner types) Chicago Overcoat: A Print Anthology
A print anthology, coming in late 2008 Submission Deadline: August 1, 2008
1,000 – 6,000 words No reprints Simultaneous submissions considered
Fill in the Blank: “Hard-boiled detective” meets __________.
More than anything, submissions should focus on noir. Since the term Chicago Overcoat is taken straight from The Big Sleep, the stories in this anthology will be as new and adventurous as its inspiration material was back in the day.
On July 3rd, Kevin Lucia posted a blog about what writers should be prepared to give up when pursuing their craft. I’ll start by saying that, while I agree with almost all of Kevin's thoughts, I’d like to build upon his final point: that it is important not to go too far when hacking things out of your life to make room for writing, and would add additional caveats to the ones Kevin outlined.
I’ve seen many writers maintain the illusion that writing is a purely solitary profession, one in which the artist sits secluded in a lushly cushioned chamber (or, depending on his temperament, a pleasantly impoverished one) and reflects upon the distant world outside. There is, of course, some truth in this. Many activities in writing—reading, editing, planning, revising—are best conducted in isolation, as is the sincere reflection that legitimate art requires. Nevertheless, reflection doesn’t do much good if there is nothing on which to reflect. With that in mind, the message of today’s blog is simple: if you want to be a good writer, don’t forget to do something other than write.
Counterintuitive, you say? Simplistic? Perhaps true on both counts…but the reminder is also sometimes necessary. As Kevin mentions, many writers are naturally shy, sticking to what is comfortable, familiar, and consequently they sometimes struggle to generate material. Such writers slouch paralyzed before their keyboards, claiming writer’s block; in worse cases, they substitute tired plots and situations for fresh, sincere experience; in the worst cases, they write maudlin stories about writers with nothing to write about and stick them in the mail.
I would argue, however, that the root of such difficulties is often a lifestyle problem rather than a writing problem. While you shouldn’t get up prematurely (good writing often approaches cautiously, requiring patience), sometimes the best thing you can do for writing is, for the moment, to stop writing and experience something else. Ideally, this should be something that jostles your routine, even taking out of your comfort zone entirely. Such experiences can put your own material into higher relief, sharpening it, and can even give you new material entirely.
This is especially true, by the way, for writers who churn out solipsistic prose, which sometimes results in work without the breadth and comprehensiveness of actual life. One of the worst mistakes writers can make, after all, is assuming that everyone sees things the same way they do, or (even worse) assuming that the only rationale or comprehensible perspective is their own. Both of these illusions are easier to nurture when you only occupy one sliver of the world, and therefore many writers—and, for that matter, many Christians—find it difficult to tolerate conflicting worldviews, ignoring or invalidating their existence rather than seeking them out and grappling with them. Such myopia, I think, can limit growth both as an artist and a person.
For that matter, you never know what encountering new things can teach you about your own craft. For example, one of my fresh hobbies is barbershop music, and a few months ago my chorus brought in a consultant named Steve Jameson who believed that musicality results from a calculated process of sustaining and releasing tension. I don’t mean tension in the voice; I mean tension created around and within an engaged listener. Let me put it like this: a song—through this theory—is compelling because something initially unsettled within the music is soothed (or, in contrast, something tranquil is disrupted). It can be a chord that takes its precious time resolving, a crescendo that drags the listener through the wake of its momentum, a tone sustained beyond its expected breaking point, or a narrative lyric portraying some uneased conflict—anything that causes a shift in the song. These disparities—like a thermodynamic imbalance between hot and cold—create energy that propels the music forward, resulting in a listener’s invited agony as they expect something to happen in the piece and then have those expectations skillfully denied or satisfied. These musical principles of tension and release, of course, are analogous to the notion in fiction of conflict and catharsis, the idea that we read a story because there is something compelling that we wish or expect to happen next. The best writing (like the best music) engages its reader by generating tension—in the drama of a scene, the unexpected collision of metaphor, the balancing act between phrase and line break—and then releasing that tension at key moments to optimize emotional depth. It’s a new—and useful—way of thinking about an old problem, and one I never would have encountered if I’d stayed all cooped up in an office.
And of course, there are all of the magnificent experiences, stories, and people you encounter while out of your shell. I’ve been singing with a barbershop chorus for about two years now, and the variety of people and perspectives I’ve encountered have already begun to infiltrate my fiction.
I think it’s only fair to mention, here at the end, that this is a personal axe for me to grind. I started graduate school at twenty-two (probably too young, in retrospect) and one of my greatest challenges dealt with discovering what to write, as opposed to how to write. Some of my classmate’s assessments, in the first few years, were that I wrote some lovely but unseasoned stories, ones which failed not because of lack of skill, but lack of perspective. I bristled at these comments—they were true—but once I expanded who I was and what I did, I feel that my writing improved. Such activities work best, incidentally, if you make them a deliberate part of your creative process, rather than a distraction from that process. With appropriate scheduling and moderation, outside activities can enhance your writing, rather than restrict it.
Alan Ackmann, Relief's Fiction Editor, received his MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas and teaches at DePaul University.His work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Clackamas Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, Ontario Review, and elsewhere. He is a former fiction editor of The Evansville Review and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writer’s Conference.Find out more at www.alanackmann.com.
It's done. Issue 2.3 was put to bed last night, or I guess I really should say this morning, at 1AM. Thank ya Lord is all I can say about that. The cover is awesome, the content is awesome, it's all awesome. 
Poetry Editor Brad Fruhauff shares his advice regarding cliché. 
Announcing the Editor's Choice Winners 
On July 3rd, Kevin Lucia posted a blog about 
