Winter/Spring 2012 Workshop and Event Guide: First Person Plural Exclusive

The Winter/Spring 2012 Workshop and Event Guide is now available; you can pick up your copy at TWC or get it online at our website.

FPP presents:

Fully Engaged: A Profile of Clifford Garstang by Barbara Esstman, with Extended Material Not Available in the Workshop and Event Guide.

Barbara Esstman: What was your experience with a small, independent publisher? Re: distribution, P.R., and all that jazz?

Clifford Garstang: My experience with Press 53 was great in terms of the book design and editing. Kevin Watson, the publisher and editor, had some terrific ideas, but he also listened to my suggestions. Marketing and distribution are tough for a small press with limited staff and resources, though, and the lesson I’ve taken from the experience is that an author really needs to learn how to reach readers online, through social media, blogs, and whatever other avenues might be available. A small press can’t do it all—the author has to be fully engaged in the process. And I really mean fully. And I guess it was an okay experience, because I’m going to do it all over again with a new book in 2012!

BE: When publishing is so difficult these days, why should people go on writing?

CG: Writing and publishing are two different things, of course. For most writers, publication is one goal, but I certainly don’t think of it as the only goal. Writing is in and of itself a worthwhile occupation. Having said that, there are so many more avenues to publication these days that it’s really only traditional publishing that is out of reach for a lot of writers. It’s increasingly possible to connect with readers online or through eBook formats, and so writing makes more sense than ever. And sometimes that can be more lucrative than the traditional approach, too.

BE: Since we have so many lawyers taking workshops at TWC, what advice would you give them in regards to switching off, re-directing, or otherwise channeling their legal training into a positive force for their fiction?

CG: First, I think any profession is great fodder for fiction— you run into all kinds of characters and peculiar situations that may spark ideas for writing, even if you aren’t specifically writing about your professional field. Lawyers are no different, and there are probably great characters lurking in everyone’s daily life—be on the lookout for them and their stories. Second, I sometimes think of fiction as an argument that I’m building—I have a goal in mind for where I want the reader to end up at the conclusion of the story—and the text is all about amassing evidence that moves the reader in that direction. Lawyers are great at that! Third, sometimes I think that psychologists have an advantage as fiction writers because they know all about twisted personalities, and that can make for great reading. Lawyers, though, have a good sense of narrative and plot, not to mention suspense and drama. Use it! But—and this is a very big but—most lawyers do have to turn off what they’ve learned about legal writing, which can be very dry. How to do this? Read good fiction.

BE: How heavily did you draw upon your life in rural Virginia and how did that material shape-shift during the writing process?

CG: When I began writing the stories in the book, I was relatively new to rural Virginia, having spent all of my adult life in cities, including Chicago, L.A., Boston, D.C., and a few foreign capitals. Each story in the book has its own plot (although they share a setting, which looks a lot like the area where I live, and also have overlapping characters), but I found myself coming back to the idea of people who find themselves in unfamiliar situations and landscapes, just as I was also an outsider in that world. But the more stories I wrote, the more comfortable I was in my surroundings, I think, and so by the end of the writing, I think the characters also might have become more comfortable.

BE: Can you tell us something about your new book coming out in 2012 and where it will be available?

CG: The new book will probably come out in Fall 2012. Currently titled What the Zhang Boys Know, it is a novel in stories—a form that fascinates me—set in a condo building in Washington, D.C. The book consists of 12 stories, half of which have appeared or will soon appear in journals, including Blackbird, Tampa Review, cream city review, New South, Wisconsin Review, and FRiGG. Ideally, a few of the remaining stories will be spoken for also before the book comes out. Although the stories all stand alone, the book as a whole is about a man coping with the tragic death of his wife and his goal of finding a new mother for his two young sons. 

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Barbara Esstman, M.F.A., is a NEA, VCCA, Virginia Commission for the Arts fellow, and a Redbook fiction award winner. Her two novels, The Other Anna and Night Ride Home, were both adapted for television by Hallmark Productions.

Fail Better: Barbara Esstman Interview's Failbetter.com's Thom Didato

Today, workshop leader Barbara Esstman interviews Thom Didato of Failbetter.com. Thom once took workshops here at The Writer's Center.


Barbara Esstman:

I didn't know the Beckett quote until I read the back of your card ("Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."), but it reminded me of a great Lucille Clifton poem about writing that ends with "Though I fail and fail, this giving of names is my job." Failure as a constant is part of writing that often comes as a shock to novices. How did you choose Failbetter for the name of your on-line lit mag (and what were the runner-up choices?) How does Failbetter reflect on your ideas of writing and what you like to publish?

Thom Didato:

We’re often asked about the origin of our name which I always think is a good thing because a good name does go a long way of distinguishing a literary publication from the sea of ”reviews” or ”journals” out there.

As to why we chose it…Well, our mag initially evolved out of a popular New York reading series called “failbetter presents” that was curated by one of our founding editors, David McClendon. David was kinda a disciple of the Gordon Lish school and the series had many great readers. I initially approached David about the idea of starting a mag and ten years later failbetter is still going strong. Thus, in a way we didn’t choose the name, it chose us.

The meaning behind the Beckett quote is much debated, and in my opinion, misinterpreted. A lot of folks see it as some sort of self help / perseverance proverb. I don’t think of it that way (nor do I fathom did Beckett). And while I’m hesitant to provide our official interpretation of the quote (I’m sure even my colleagues and I might not agree) I believe the mere act of failing is the point, and said act may result in something truly original. Wow, that sounds pretty pretentious, eh? Well, let’s just allow the mystery behind Beckett’s words remain an enigma, much like the man himself.

What would you like our readers, members and the world to know about Failbetter.com? And since you'll inevitably be getting submissions -- at least one or two -- from our writers, what are you looking for in a story?

Again, I think you would get a different answer from each of my fb colleagues, whether it be from Andy Day the co-publisher of the mag, or from our section editors. I used to say we were looking for character-driven fiction where something actually happens – but with a decade under our belt, and the changing of section editors, I think the one constant editorial slant is that we seek that which is at once original and personal -- something that could only come from you.

As an old person still struggling with basic computer functions, I'm terribly impressed that you had the foresight to start an on-line mag before on-line mags began taking over the world. What was your thinking 10 years ago? What have you changed or adjusted over this decade? How has this contributed to your survival during a time when other lit mags have been vanishing at an alarming rate?

I laugh at the assertion that we had any foresight at all. We had foresight -- only in hindsight. As I have admitted in the past, when we started failbetter, finances were a definite factor, not because we didn’t have the money (though we didn’t), but rather because we had seen several of our fellow editors start up print magazines, only to go belly up after an issue or two. That seemed like such a waste, not only in terms of money, but also for the poor writers they had published whose work was soon relegated to the used-bookstore bins (or worse yet, the trash). For us, it wasn’t merely a question of money, but of longevity and impact.

In general, the technological change over the past decade has been insane. Yes, first we were a bunch of luddites, cutting and pasting and using html-made-easy programs like Front Page and the Dreamweaver. And the mag itself has gone through several face lifts in design. Somewhere along the line we changed from html to php, started to integrate better data base usage and an online submissions system. Eventually even our publishing schedule was effected by the way folks used the web, transforming us from singularly published quarterly to releasing each work on an almost weekly basis until it culminates in an issue. We’re still by no means on the cutting edge of online technology and one must always walk the fine line between becoming too fascinated with the method over the sake of the substance. We’re constantly asking ourselves about some new technology and whether or not it will be truly useful (“Should we have a ‘share this’ button? What about a Facebook and Twiter presence? Perhaps change the “from the editors” section to a blog… All of which, might I add, we’ve done.) Now the big thing is to get our publication out/away from the computer – with e-book and iphone editions, and a soon to be 10th anniversary Kindle edition.

How do you put out Failbetter.com with a staff in cyberspace? Is there a 'real' office or only a virtual one? Do you get together in person occasionally or is this completely a net operation? If so, do you know what the other staff members look like?

We’re all very, very close facebook friends… Seriously, in most cases we have personal or professional connections. Initially, we all lived in New York City which was great as far as editorial meetings – though sometimes produced a rather costly bar tab. Nowadays my colleagues live on the east coast, west coast and points in between. The office is indeed a virtual one, with an online submissions system where we can weigh in on the slush, and an onslaught of emails and conference calls to get all the work done.

Failbetter.com is running a 10th anniversary novella contest. How great is that? Publishing-wise, novellas are usually too long for magazines and too short for book publishers. No one's even quite sure how long a novella is, or what it is exactly. What can you say to would-be submitters? What should they know about novellas before they submit their manuscript to the contest? Maybe even before they start writing their manuscript?

Let me quote our own blog for this answer: “The novella is an unduly neglected form. Death in Venice, Heart of Darkness, Miss Lonelyhearts—would any of these find its way into print today, if it came from any but a well-known author? For traditional publishers, the fixed costs of making a book are too great an obstacle—to justify this outlay, a book has to sell for a price higher than most buyers are willing to pay, for a text that may come in at “only,” say, fifty pages. So what of the new Billy Budd or Seize the Day? Will it sit forever, unread but by one, on its author’s hard drive, or in his Moleskine? No! We’ve opined before about epublishing’s unique ability to give new life—bring new readers, in loads—to fiction in all its forms. Now we’d like to do our bit to revivify this great, if lately unloved form. How can we afford to publish a novella, when our print peers can’t? Because for us, the economics are different. It costs little more to code up a 15,000-word work than a 500-worder, and the storage and distribution costs are identical. As to your, the reader’s, cost—how much time you’ll need to spend, to read a novella online… If it’s good enough, that’ll be time well-spent. And if we’re right that the lack of outlets has kept too many good novellas from being published, and others from being written, we shouldn’t have much problem turning one up.”

So dear writer, send us what you’ve got!

You once took workshops at TWC—my workshop, in fact—so can you tell us a little bit about your experiences at The Writer’s Center? How about the writing group that was a spin-off from the workshop? Of course, we're hoping TWC engendered multiple epiphanies and revolutionized your life; but if not, just some practical observations will do on how a place like this can be useful to new writers.

That may have been the first workshop I ever took and it was a great one. Indeed, I’m indebted to TWC for saving me from a listless life as a government bureaucrat (though I have to admit there are plenty of such professional souls who have far more creativity than those who claim to be an ARTIST!) That class not only got me to start putting words to paper but how said words should or could appear. And yes, for a number of years after that class, about 4 or 5 of us would meet and share our various stories and excerpts...Of course, the writing pursuit lead me to more classes and more writing groups. TWC is great not only because it provides a resource for like-minded literary souls, but serves as a catalyst for being creative. Now, I’m not sure it engendered multiple epiphanies, but perhaps did lead me to the universally-known-but-little-followed maxim – “Do what you love and love what you do.” Of course, it took me about 20 more years for that to finally sink into my thick head, but I can thank TWC for planting the seed.

What have you done since (besides Failbetter.com)? -- like that wasn't enough. Are you still writing? Does your editing get in the way of your writing? How disruptive is a four year old?

You know, I should mention that the same rule that applies to writers also applies to literary publishers, and that is: don’t quite your day job. After leaving DC I moved up to Brooklyn, first worked in a bookstore (and got a lot of writing done) but then thought I should get a more professional looking job title and went into publishing. In many ways, that was disaster (both to my writing and to my psyche). I spent a couple of years editing cat murder mysteries (where the cat was witness to, or the perpetrator of, murder!) and Christian romances (usually involving a Canadian Mountie who lost his way by taking a wee bit too much of the drink). Then I went to work for one of the larger houses (which was hauntingly reminiscent of my days in government). Thankfully, I ended up at a little literary non-profit called the Council of Literary Magazines and Press (which kinda serves as a defacto union for hundreds of literary magazines and presses). I continued to write and got about a dozen short stories published in small mags, wrote a novel, got an agent, fired an agent, abandoned another novel and started a third…and then came the kid and the relatively recent relocation to good olde Richmond, VA.

Truth be told, in the past years I’ve spent most/all of my creative energy on failbetter and have taken a break from my writing. That used to make me feel guilty but I am quite content to consider myself an editor/publisher for now (though undoubtedly I will return to writing). Meanwhile, my wife continues to humor my failbetter ways (both emotionally and financially). I was lucky enough to land an academic job at Virginia Commonwealth University where I coordinate the graduate programs in English and teach a couple of undergraduate courses a year (including one on literary publishing). I’m somewhat satisfied (never really satisfied with anything) with my literary life and perhaps most importantly have managed to prevent my four year old son from becoming a huge NASCAR fan in a town that has no professional sports teams.
It’s good times all around.


Thom Didato is the publisher of failbetter an award-winning online literary magazine. He lives in Richmond, Virginia where he currently teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and administers their graduate programs in English.


Barbara Esstman is a National Endowment for the Arts, VCCA and Virginia Commission for the Arts fellow and a Redbook fiction award winner, among other distinctions. Her two novels, The Other Anna and Night Ride Home, were published by Harcourt Brace and HarperCollins and are in numerous foreign editions. Both books were adapted for television by Hallmark Productions. She co-edited an anthology, A More Perfect Union, published by St. Martin's Press, and has taught extensively in universities. Her next workshop at The Writer's Center is Advanced Novel and Memoir.

Bob Dylan Week! Barbara Esstman's 115th Dream

Dear Abdul,

I hate to sound like your grandmother, though I’m old enough, and I won’t tell you that we walked ten miles to school through snow drifts, because we didn’t. But I did grow up in the ‘60s before PC’s, cell phones, blow-dryers, pantyhose, The Pill and other things we now take for granted. People believed the Cleavers were realistic role models; “drugs” meant aspirin; grass was mowed; and every bride was assumed to be a virgin unless she was about to go into labor, right there at the altar.

As pop art always reflects the culture, all songs on the radio were approximately three minutes long and as neat and contained as the Eisenhower administration. Their main concerns were puppy love, teen angels and directions to where the boys were, a strategic bit of info for those of us attending all-girl schools. Although the first crossover black artists were inspiring white kids to discover that their rears were moveable pieces of anatomy, Leslie Gore’s “it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” was the closest thing we had to women’s lib.

Typical lyrics: Do-wah-diddy-diddy; rama-lama-ding-dong; shimmy-shimmy-coco-pop. Maybe they were Zen koans, but I doubt it.

Anyhow, then came Dylan.

Don’t get me wrong – he was an acquired taste, and you had to get over the shock. Normal males had crew cuts; they wore skinny, proper suits with skinny, proper ties; they opened doors for females and walked on the street-side so they could stop out-of-control Mack trucks from running over their dates. Bob Dylan was another kind of animal, one you didn’t take home to Mother, not unless you wanted to be grounded for the next month or maybe the rest of your life.

Dylan didn’t sing like anyone else, either, not in that era of love songs as safe and approved of as hymns sung by a local choir. He growled. He yowled. He slid off the notes, not with the exquisite finesse of Billie Holiday skating down their edges, but more like a Chevy fish-tailing in mud. He mumbled on and on – and on – with no respect for diction or the three-minute time limit, and we first got into his music through tidier covers by less alarming artists.

But if that was the safe entrance, it was still the opening into a wider mind who slung language like Salvador Dali melted clocks and who wasn’t afraid of jumping the paddock fence. We started thinking about peace and war instead of our next date. We became aware of being caught up in the times that definitely were a-changin’. We learned to recognize when we had the Memphis blues, even if we’d never been to Mobile or Tennessee.




He became the sound track for our lives. We swung our hips like Rainy Day Women and found this a great improvement over the Good Girl Walk. We fell in love to “Lay, Lady, Lay” and yeah, got laid to it. We sent lovers away from our windows and told them not to think twice about our geranium smiles. We divorced to “I Shall Be Released” and resolved not to work on Maggie’s farm no more. We protested the war and marched for civil rights because, damn, we wanted all those white doves to sleep in the sand and everyone to get down those roads and be a man – even the women.
It wasn’t just the songs; it was how Dylan wandered around in them, kept taking them apart and putting them back together in different ways. Not the usual rote where all patterns repeated in proscribed, expected ways. More the Confucian wisdom of “There are many ways over the mountain.” Variations on a theme that let us explore the many ways a thought or feeling could work and how we could move around inside them. He punched open our Skinner baby-boxes so we could look out into larger, richer, wilder space. Even if we didn’t escape right away, we at least got familiar with the territory and knew it was out there when we were ready.

So we still make pilgrimages to his concerts, though the audience is a regular AARP convention and most of them can’t find their cars in the parking lot after. Dylan’s still stiff and weird, and God knows what key he’s singing in. I understand how you wouldn’t “get” him now. But a lot of us did, at just exactly the right times of our lives.


Barbara Esstman, MFA, is a National Endowment for the Arts, VCCA and Virginia Commission for the Arts fellow and a Redbook fiction award winner, among other distinctions. Her two novels, The Other Anna and Night Ride Home, were published by Harcourt Brace and HarperCollins and are in numerous foreign editions. Both books were adapted for television by Hallmark Productions. She co-edited an anthology, A More Perfect Union, published by St. Martin's Press, and has taught extensively in universities. The next workshop she will teach at The Writer's Center is Advanced Novel & Memoir, beginning April 8. Click here for details on this workshop and her Query Letter workshop upcoming also in April.

Wednesday Instructor: Barbara Esstman

I’d always written, but it wasn’t until my corporate husband moved me to Atlanta against my will that my real career began. I liked Georgia even less than Sherman had and vented by sending my friends accounts of my life with three small kids in a city where the locals didn’t seem to speak English and every street was named Peach-something. The friends advised me to write for badges; the company transferred my family to Virginia before I could start an insurrection among the other wives; and I found an ad for workshops at some place called The Writer’s Center.

In addition to the joy of spending Saturday mornings with adults who did not want to discuss Sesame Street, I relished the plain existence of a true center where writers at every level of expertise hung out as peers. I’m sure I didn’t say much during the first couple of sessions until I figured out how a workshop worked. I didn’t put my name on the two short stories I submitted, though I can’t tell you what combination of ignorance, an out to not claim them if they sucked, or a vague idea of using “Anonymous” as a nom de plume prompted this. I was just happy to be in the company of other writers helping each other learn how to write.

But after my first critique another student took me aside during the break and told me that I was a “real” writer – go for it. Others cheered me on in like ways, and after the last class our instructor, Warren Miller, came running after me in the parking lot. “You have two stories ready to send out,” he said. “So, send them, and don’t let the bastards get you down.”

That’s still one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever gotten, and the encouragement from the class that had become like family pushed me to keep going in ways I never would’ve on my own. Ten years, a MFA, a bunch of short stories and a published novel later, I was coming off a contract at AU when one of my students there, Julee Newberger, suggested I teach at TWC where she worked. It was like coming home. I've been here ever since.

It’s the best place to teach. A community centered on writing, a literary oasis in the midst of political Washington, no grades. From the staff, to the instructors, to the students both new and returning -- a gathering of people both like-minded in their love of the written word and wildly diverse in terms of their backgrounds, experiences and approaches to recording their stories. User-friendly. Practical. Sane. Unique.

Our world and welcome to it. I’m just glad to be here.
Barbara Esstman

About Barbara Esstman: Barbara Esstman, MFA, is a National Endowment for the Arts, VCCA and Virginia Commission for the Arts fellow and a Redbook fiction award winner, among other distinctions. Her two novels, The Other Anna and Night Ride Home, were published by Harcourt Brace and HarperCollins and are in numerous foreign editions. Both books were adapted for television by Hallmark Productions. She co-edited an anthology, A More Perfect Union, published by St. Martin's Press, and has taught extensively in universities.

Her next workshop at The Writer's Center: Advanced Novel and Memoir.

Weekly Wrap-up

There's a lot happening here these days. Abdul and I are busily trying to finish up the next Carousel (with thanks to Sunil for providng the workshops and events). We're on schedule right now, so we hope to have something in members' hands in early February.

I wanted to share this interesting piece on how "novels help drive social evolution" from The New Scientist. Oddly, I'd viewed it at the beginning of the week (a friend had sent it to me) and then later in the week another friend sent it to me. So perhaps you've already seen it.

Member Nandini Lal recently contributed to the Peace Mural here in D.C. Here you can see her standing next to the poet Huong and her poem, which is at the extreme right, third from top.

Also, she informed me that her "Erasure Poem" (where random bits are deleted from source texts to create poetry) is up on the Wave site yesterday.

Finally, Instructor Barbara Esstman chimed in to discuss Kindle (from a post earlier in the week). This is what she wrote (and it's worth noting!):

"One of my kids has a Kindle that I played around with. It was so easy to use that even a tech idiot like me can navigate around. Small, compact, and great for travel -- no more hauling tons of books or running out of stuff to read on long flights. Self-lit so you can read in the dark. Lays flat, so no more propping open the book you're reading with other books while eating your cereal. Capability to insert notes, if you like to scribble in your books. Avoids the problem of crammed bookshelves and mags that need recycling. Fun to roam around in, since you can get samples of available books to check out. For example, "Twilight" is really boring, unless you're a 14 year old girl who's not an adept reader. But I found chapters with critical commentary from a collection of Oe's novels that was brilliant. On the other hand, a bunch major lit authors like Garcia-Marquez are MIA -- esp. non-Americans; slim selection of translations (Garnett only for the Russians); and a bewildering array of others, like 44 editions of "Jane Eyre" with no way to tell the advantages of one over the other. But a pretty nifty device anyhow. I hardly ever say that about any machine."

Thanks for sharing that, Barbara. Hope to see you on Sunday for the Poem, Revised event here at the Center. We'll be closed on Monday and Tuesday, but back again Wednesday. This blog will feature an interview with member and Katherine Anne Porter Prize Winner James Mathews (Last Known Position) on Monday. He'll be reading, of course, with Alex MacLennan on Jan. 25 here at the Center. Until Monday!

Kyle