Author Archives: Lee D. Thompson

Interviewing Jeff Bursey

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As mentioned in the preface to the linked interview (see below), Jeff Bursey and I met through Joseph McElroy in 2010 when Jeff was looking to get word out about his first novel, Verbatim: A Novel. Jeff lived just two hours away but in terms of kindred interests, he was right next door. We have become good friends since. He’s the only person I’ve met (face to face) who has also read McElroy’s massive Women and Men.

The interview, focussing on Jeff’s second book, Mirrors on which dust has fallen, is up at The Winnipeg Review, another terrific resource (a la Numero Cinq) for all things literary.

Read it here.

Fictional year in review

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I started the year thinking I would have my Shabazz collection (80,000 words) complete by December, or at least nearing completion. The idea was to write a long story each month/six weeks, and when I did sit and write it … Continue reading →

Whaling (a critique)

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I’d considered calling this blog “Notes from an underpublished author” but worried I would somehow set my fate in concrete, jinx my last chance at writerly recognition, or that an agent or publisher would come along and say, “Sigh, a … Continue reading →

The Litter I See

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thompsonA few months back I was sent (by Carin Makuz) a jpg of some random trash, all part of a project called The Litter I See (in support of Frontier College), and which promotes literacy and has, of course, an anti-trash objective as well. The image was of someone’s ‘new balance’ and the word ‘withdrawal’ was prominent.  So I wrote a poem, a kind of numb, flat poem about a decision on the cusp for years.

You can find it here (or click the image):

withdrawal

Not sure if I’ve had a poem published before. Don’t think so.

Whatever it is, I’m in the middle of it

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In spring 2014, just before heading to Banff, I started a long story, one of my ‘man and woman and animals getting all confused together’ stories, with the idea that it would fill out (conclude, edify, rectify, flex hard or burnish) a themed collection entitled “Why Do Birds?”.  It goes like this: have a story collection but it’s too short (i.e. under 50,000 words) for publishers? Just end it with a long story. But on my way to writing a (not successful!!) grant request, that new story (“Mouth Human Must Die”) led to other ideas and soon a new collection was pulled out of thinning hair.  The writing of this new collection is going slowly, because I didn’t get the grant (these rejections actually affect the creation of the project, who would have guessed?) but the second story in the collection, “A Survivor’s Guide to Engine Failure at 35,000 Feet”, all 9500 words of it, will be in the marvelous online library at Numero Cinq this fall. There aren’t many publication venues for long stories, but online journals are ideal.

It’s been an odd spring/summer/life, what with the stresses of trying to make a living as a literary editor/book designer/translator/web designer/writer/beggar/impressario, so it’s nice to have some work accepted. I am a writer, dammit.

Damnit? Damn it?

Back to editing.

Editing Website

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After 18 months of knowing I needed one, I made one: a website for my editing services. Happy to have clients both big (publishers, corporations) and small (you, the Average Writing Human).  Is this an easy way to make a living? No. But it’s a satisfying one.  Check it out:

editing logo

click logo

Lee Thompson Editing +

Confessions of a Paper Hater

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Paper. Hate it. Hate the way it sounds, paper on paper, and the way it feels under my skin. Hate the sound of paper tearing, hate the dry whisper of a turned page. Hate that other things sound like this. Take off my shirt and, cloth on skin, there’s the paper sound.  Touch my hair and there’s the paper sound. Breathe in and there’s the paper sound. I’m not making this up.

It started early in life, though I don’t remember exactly when. In school, the sound of my hand moving across paper was bothersome, but tolerable. I found that if I kept my nails long, it helped. I wouldn’t explain why I kept my nails long, though. I can’t explain why it still helps (lessens touch sensitivity, I presume). I hated the sound of pencil against paper, I hated the sound of the worn-to-nothing end of a pencil, the eraser end, rubbing its nub and tin against the paper (I shudder).  At its worst, in my pre-teens, it affected my dental hygiene – brushing my teeth created a paper sound throughout my entire skull. Horrible. I also couldn’t stand the feel and sound of nylon on nylon. Or snowsuits. Pillowcases. Maybe I worried that one day I wouldn’t be able to touch anything at all?

And then it went away, mostly.  And I forgot about it, mostly. Thirty years dormant. And then two summers ago, while tearing a sheet of parchment paper, it was back: shivers up my spine, hair standing on end.  Why? Did stress trigger it? What part of my brain was reactivated? And why is there a part of my brain that makes the world sound like its being channelled through dry, paper tubes? (“That’s a really crazy description; don’t tell people that,” R. told me when I tried to describe it.)

Since the Parchment Terror it’s expanded, to toasted or old bread, to feet on carpet, and to nearly all forms of clothing (except microfibre and silk). Some days it seems every other thing has this dry, shivery sound, and I can’t see any evolutionary reason for this. Paper cuts just aren’t that deadly. (Yes, it falls under some kind of hypersensitivity disorder. Surely there are others out there.)

So, that’s the irony. I’m a writer and editor who hates paper, who is surrounded by paper, who’s had constant paper contact his entire life (you’d have expected me go into aquaculture and something similarly moist). But I’m a writer who’s never had much of a paper fetish, obviously, or a sharpie or pen collection.

Yet, somehow (praise the angels and their shivery wings), I still love the feel of books, and don’t own a Kobo or Kindle.

That says something.

LT

PS – But I love the feel of polymers. The new plastic money? Awesome.

Three Favourite Things from 2014

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Kerry-Lee Powell’s Inheritance Yesterday the short list for the poetry part of the East Coast Literary Awards came out, and there was a name missing. Sure, nothing is ever guaranteed, but word has it that Kerry-Lee Powell’s Inheritance, due to an … Continue reading →

Wither Ambition?

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Too few fiction writers write like they enjoy the process, like they’re having blast and are taking you along with them, like they have absolute command and are conducting you. So much of what I’ve read lately (published work, not my editing work) is stolid, plodding, boring.  It knows nothing of how sounds, images, rhythms work together to create something more than just plot-puppet A meeting plot-puppet B. It’s soggy white bread with the corners cut off.  Yet it’s published and marketed as great literature, stunning, original. It’s all over the cover. Welcome to sublurbia.

Where’s the ambition? Shrinking expectations? Even if there’s no play, where’s the depth, where’s that unique spark each of us has? ( We all have it, don’t we?)

What fiction has seemed masterly me in the past year?  Not much, but then I’ve read many friends’ books, nearly two dozen unpublished books, and too few on my must-read list. Michelle Butler Hallett was in command of her material in Double-Blind, and Lynn Coady’s stories in Hellgoing showed an easy, subtle control, but perhaps only my favourite fiction of the past year, Tamas Dobozy’s Seige 13, had that range I seek. Now I consider all three of these authors to be friends.  Would I have read these otherwise?  Don’t know.

Time to dive into what I want to read, shelves of urgently-purchased, waiting-for-the-right-moment titles, and what spurred this surly entry is a book I opened this morning, Gilbert Sorrentino’s The Moon in Its Flight. There’s mastery here. It doesn’t feel like a chore to pick it up.

(For the record, the book that impressed me most this past year is Kerry-Lee Powell’s poetry collection Inheritance. Is she a friend? Yes, and a good one. But more on that in a future entry.)