Deliquescing Icicles: A Bit of Amusement Here

Our beloved editor-in-chief is out with bronchitis today (something he picked up in the Scottish Highlands while we stayed behind setting type), so instead of working, we are amusing ourselves by reading Kevin Brockmeier’s “A Chronological List of Statements People Made to Me at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, 1995-1997.”

Funny stuff:

~ I really like your last paragraph. Why don’t you take that idea and use it to write a story?

~ “Half of Rumpelstiltskin”’s kind of a mouthful, isn’t it? Maybe after you introduce him, you can just call him “Rumpelstiltskin.”

~ To me you look like a person who can’t get enough Heidegger.

~ I’ll say this much — you know how to eff the ineffable.

~ For me, writing a story is like building a table. You’ve got a certain number of parts, and once they’re all in place, you’re basically finished. You, it’s like you’re drawing a picture with a Spirograph. There’s no reason you couldn’t go on and on like this forever.

~ Of course I walked. I start driving a car, and the next thing you know I’ll be carrying a gun.

~ Anyone can see the problem with stories like ours. They’re not authentic enough. Where’s the heroin, I ask you; where is the heroin?

~ [Note on the first page of a story titled “Space”]: Be careful. I know you mean space as in the space between this father and his son, but people are going to think you mean space as in outer space.

Brockmeier’s full list CAN BE FOUND RIGHT HERE