Guest Author: Matthew Pitt

[Brandi_R]

I’m pleased to announce that author Matthew Pitt will be joining us for a week in the Writing Room beginning Tuesday, 12 October.

Matthew Pitt writes fiction, articles, essays and reviews. His short story collection, Attention Please Now, won the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize. Matthew’s fiction has appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, Witness, and New Letters, and has received many honors, including publication in Harcourt’s Best New American Voices, citation in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and scholarships to Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. He is also an associate fiction editor at West Branch. His essays have appeared in Smithsonian, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, Food Network Magazine and more. He’s a writing machine!

And what came before all this to pay the bills? A gig as a writer’s assistant on an NBC sitcom, plasma donation, and a stint as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mascot. (We’re going to have to ask him about that last one.)

For more on Matthew Pitt, check out his website.

[Brandi_R]

The characters in Matthew Pitt's debut short story collection, Attention Please Now, strive to blend into the background only to wind up emerging from or being prodded past the scrims of convention. Some do it bravely; others with reckless abandon. In 'The Mean,' a cancer-stricken, high school math teacher's plan to live out his days in quiet moderation shatters, after he befriends a gang of stoner dropouts. In 'Au Lieu des Fleurs,' Parisian prankster-anarchist Mouna Aguigui visits a grieving office worker in his bowl of soup, nudging him and others to commit madcap acts of agitation. In 'Kokomo,' a young boy living in a rural Indiana community becomes attuned to a piercing hum a noise that may presage apocalyptic events. And in the title story, a public address announcer entertains crowds by airing the local baseball team's dirty laundry for the entire stadium to hear. Throughout the people inside these eleven stories are jolted awake, alert, and alive by patchwork alliances, bracing humor, and episodes of surreal grace. Matthew Pitt is a writer who understands and explores the strange balance between the serious and the comic, the quirky and the familiar. Irresistibly complex, always imaginative, these stories showcase an immensely talented writer grappling with the ironies and difficulties of life in the new century.

[KathyS]

Pitt sounds like an incredibly creative writer - Creating insight, out of the bazaar!  I'm thinking, with short stories, there really does have to be something about them that can hold on to the reader, and make the reader either question, or realize, something in themselves...or the society around them.

[KathyS]

---

Brandi_R wrote:

I’m pleased to announce that author Matthew Pitt will be joining us for a week in the Writing Room beginning Tuesday, 12 October.

Matthew Pitt writes fiction, articles, essays and reviews. His short story collection, Attention Please Now, won the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize. Matthew’s fiction has appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, Witness, and New Letters, and has received many honors, including publication in Harcourt’s Best New American Voices, citation in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and scholarships to Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. He is also an associate fiction editor at West Branch. His essays have appeared in Smithsonian, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, Food Network Magazine and more. He’s a writing machine!

And what came before all this to pay the bills? A gig as a writer’s assistant on an NBC sitcom, plasma donation, and a stint as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mascot. (We’re going to have to ask him about that last one.)

For more on Matthew Pitt, check out his website.

---

Looking forward.....

[tiffany57]

Ya! Can't wait.  It's so cool that real authors are on B&N!

[Brandi_R]

Welcome to the Writing Room, Matthew!

So, dressing up as mascots is part of your employment history, huh? Is it as fun as it seems? Is it as hot and sweaty in those costumes as everyone thinks? (This makes me think of the chart published by Lapham's Quarterly on the day jobs, adjusted salaries and occupational hazards of writers like Franz Kafka and T.S. Eliot. What are the occupational hazards of mascot work?)

Writers go to great lengths to pay the bills and keep time and emotional energy free for writing. This topic--finding the time and energy to write--comes up often in the Writing Room. You have a family, lots of writing obligations outside of fiction, an editorship, etc. How do you balance all that? How do you make time to write fiction?

[SetTheScene]

---

Brandi_R wrote:

Welcome to the Writing Room, Matthew!

So, dressing up as mascots is part of your employment history, huh? Is it as fun as it seems? Is it as hot and sweaty in those costumes as everyone thinks? (This makes me think of the chart published by Lapham's Quarterly on the day jobs, adjusted salaries and occupational hazards of writers like Franz Kafka and T.S. Eliot. What are the occupational hazards of mascot work?)

Writers go to great lengths to pay the bills and keep time and emotional energy free for writing. This topic--finding the time and energy to write--comes up often in the Writing Room. You have a family, lots of writing obligations outside of fiction, an editorship, etc. How do you balance all that? How do you make time to write fiction?

---

Good morning, and hello to all readers and scanners of the message board. Happy to be taking part in the Writing Room. I look forward to fielding whatever questions and comments occur to you in the coming days. As they say, "I'll be here all week, folks!"

Great that Brandi's question yesterday involves job history, and the day (or night) gigs writers rely on to pay rent while trying to write the next Great American Novel (or just a Decent American Sentence). Great, because I've been knocking out several articles on deadline while flying to this city or that for book events. Strange, sleepless existence.

Also, I've been thinking about writers and day gigs quite a bit, lately. The Lapham Quarterly chart Brandi linked to was great...reminds me of how so many book jackets used to refer to an author's work history. Now they refer to earned degrees.

I'll take part in the chart myself, and use the mascot employment as an example. In high school I did one-shot work as a crash-test dummy and a tooth for a dentist's office (can't recall if I was a bicuspid or a molar). In college, I performed at special events as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Usually, I'd have a handler, who would whisk me away for a break after 15 minutes of suit time. Once, I did a sheriff's dept. softball fundraiser; it was August, and in an open field with no shade. I didn't have a handler, and the kids jumped me. I was in the suit for what seemed like hours before I managed to shake them (another few minutes and I think I might have passed out). That definitely qualifies as a hazard. On the other hand, I was making good coin for college students. So by gritting my teeth through a few hours on the weekend, I had more time to write.

And I think that balance still applies today (though thankfully, the physical risks aren't usually as extreme). The obligations are there, and real, and only increase when you get married, have a family, etc. But something else happens, too. You don't have time to procrastinate, and learn to trust your initial writing impulses; I think that kind of necessary recklessness is good for one's work. Also, you learn to turn your obligations into opportunity. Example: a recent assignment took me to the MS Delta. I was so fascinated by my time there, and the people I met, it led directly to writing a story set in a Delta town. No way would I have been able to capture the tone or details w/o having that experience. More to the point: I wouldn't have had the spark to write the story at all w/o the work gig inspiring me. 

[KathyS]

Thank you, Matthew, for coming to our writing room, and sharing your time and knowledge with us.

Thinking about what gives us inspiration.  Taking advantage of those 'sparks' that you can recognize.  I have just a few questions.

With all the types of writing that you do, do you find your inspiration comes, specific to your varied moods?   If you have moods..... In other words, do you know what inspires your short stories, as apposed to poetry?

Also, do you seek out inspiration, or just let it happen, when it wants to happen?  Does music, or reading, affect your writing in any way?  Are there things you avoid, or perhaps drawn to, while writing?

Thanks, Matthew.

Kathy

[SetTheScene]

---

KathyS wrote:

Thank you, Matthew, for coming to our writing room, and sharing your time and knowledge with us.

Thinking about what gives us inspiration.  Taking advantage of those 'sparks' that you can recognize.  I have just a few questions.

With all the types of writing that you do, do you find your inspiration comes, specific to your varied moods?   If you have moods..... In other words, do you know what inspires your short stories, as apposed to poetry?

Also, do you seek out inspiration, or just let it happen, when it wants to happen?  Does music, or reading, affect your writing in any way?  Are there things you avoid, or perhaps drawn to, while writing?

Thanks, Matthew.

Kathy

---

Hi Kathy -- thanks for these questions. It's rare that I write w/o music. Sometimes the music I pick is random (or whatever's on shuffle mode in my iPod). But more often, the songs on my speakers are playing because I think they'll bring me closer to whatever I'm working on at the moment. This makes for a bouncy office, and often leads to some panic...say, when I desperately need to locate a Happy Mondays (or Sundays) CD I haven't played in years.

I write for an amazing magazine called Oxford American. They put out a music issue each year. For 2009, they asked contributors about our relationship with music. Here's my response.

Working in silence is a struggle for me. In fact, before starting a new story or novel chapter, I often spend time hunting songs with melodies—and more often, rhythms—that I think will inform a character, or the prose’s tone. Many writers build new work, I know, around a specific image. My first inspiration is almost always rooted in sound.

About the larger issue of inspiration: in my mind, it can strike anytime, and in any form. The worst thing I can do is wait for inspiration to fall in my lap. The best thing I can do is pick up the pen like a tuning fork and seek it out. It may take a couple sentences, it may take an hour. But I have no doubt it'll come if I'm doing the work and paying attention. On that subject: the prolific Joyce Carol Oates, who probably has killed more trees than Paul Bunyan, was once asked if she's ever not in the mood to write. Her response was: "Writing creates mood." I think that sums it up. You may find yourself with a free afternoon, and able to write some gorgeous exposition. You may find yourself with five minutes in the doctor's waiting room, ticked off and anxious...and generate something sharp and sarcastic. The point is to use whatever pocket of time you have in whatever way you can.

Speaking of time: I better close down for the evening. Hope to hear more ?s tomorrow!

[KathyS]

I much appreciate your response, Matthew.  I'm going to have to bow out of further discussions.  I just got notice from my Dr., today, that I have to immobilize my hands...tendon problems...it sucks, big time...so much for that inspiration...

All the best to you!

Kathy

---

SetTheScene wrote:

---

KathyS wrote:

Thank you, Matthew, for coming to our writing room, and sharing your time and knowledge with us.

Thinking about what gives us inspiration.  Taking advantage of those 'sparks' that you can recognize.  I have just a few questions.

With all the types of writing that you do, do you find your inspiration comes, specific to your varied moods?   If you have moods..... In other words, do you know what inspires your short stories, as apposed to poetry?

Also, do you seek out inspiration, or just let it happen, when it wants to happen?  Does music, or reading, affect your writing in any way?  Are there things you avoid, or perhaps drawn to, while writing?

Thanks, Matthew.

Kathy

---

Hi Kathy -- thanks for these questions. It's rare that I write w/o music. Sometimes the music I pick is random (or whatever's on shuffle mode in my iPod). But more often, the songs on my speakers are playing because I think they'll bring me closer to whatever I'm working on at the moment. This makes for a bouncy office, and often leads to some panic...say, when I desperately need to locate a Happy Mondays (or Sundays) CD I haven't played in years.

I write for an amazing magazine called Oxford American. They put out a music issue each year. For 2009, they asked contributors about our relationship with music. Here's my response.

Working in silence is a struggle for me. In fact, before starting a new story or novel chapter, I often spend time hunting songs with melodies—and more often, rhythms—that I think will inform a character, or the prose’s tone. Many writers build new work, I know, around a specific image. My first inspiration is almost always rooted in sound.

About the larger issue of inspiration: in my mind, it can strike anytime, and in any form. The worst thing I can do is wait for inspiration to fall in my lap. The best thing I can do is pick up the pen like a tuning fork and seek it out. It may take a couple sentences, it may take an hour. But I have no doubt it'll come if I'm doing the work and paying attention. On that subject: the prolific Joyce Carol Oates, who probably has killed more trees than Paul Bunyan, was once asked if she's ever not in the mood to write. Her response was: "Writing creates mood." I think that sums it up. You may find yourself with a free afternoon, and able to write some gorgeous exposition. You may find yourself with five minutes in the doctor's waiting room, ticked off and anxious...and generate something sharp and sarcastic. The point is to use whatever pocket of time you have in whatever way you can.

Speaking of time: I better close down for the evening. Hope to hear more ?s tomorrow!

---

[Brandi_R]

---

SetTheScene wrote:

And I think that balance still applies today (though thankfully, the physical risks aren't usually as extreme). The obligations are there, and real, and only increase when you get married, have a family, etc. But something else happens, too. You don't have time to procrastinate, and learn to trust your initial writing impulses; I think that kind of necessary recklessness is good for one's work. Also, you learn to turn your obligations into opportunity. Example: a recent assignment took me to the MS Delta. I was so fascinated by my time there, and the people I met, it led directly to writing a story set in a Delta town. No way would I have been able to capture the tone or details w/o having that experience. More to the point: I wouldn't have had the spark to write the story at all w/o the work gig inspiring me. 

---

Oh, this is so true--putting aside the procrastination, learning to trust initial writing impulses, finding opportunity in obligations. Beautifully said. I think it's so important to keep this kind of open and positive mindset when faced with challenges of time and obligation. It's easy for writers to get overwhelmed or down on themselves and, as a result, not be open to these possibilities.

Thanks, too, for such an uplifting response. I'm facing a day that's keeping my attention away from writing and was feeling rather crummy about it. This uplifting response just brightened things for me!

[Brandi_R]

---

KathyS wrote:

I much appreciate your response, Matthew.  I'm going to have to bow out of further discussions.  I just got notice from my Dr., today, that I have to immobilize my hands...tendon problems...it sucks, big time...so much for that inspiration...

All the best to you!

Kathy

---

Kathy, I hope you have a speedy recovery. Things won't be the same around here without you!

[Capuchin]

You may think this is a very odd question because, well, it is . . .

Every story you write might become someone's favorite, touching them deeply because of the characterization, setting, or any of a thousand other variables. There always comes a time when a person is feeling alone, perhaps a bit under the weather, and they find comfort in curling up with a much-loved book.

Do you ever feel you're writing to those people? Have you ever found yourself picturing such a person reading your work?

[Brandi_R]

In the acknowledgements in your collection, Attention Please Now, you give a nod to the books you’ve read over the years. You know how this reads, of course, but I’m pasting it here so everyone can read it:

Writing this collection turned out to be less solitary of an act than I feared. One reason: the extraordinary books that I read over the intervening years. The authors I discovered—their characters, sentences and spectacles of imagination—have been vessels, carrying me into astonishments, and carrying me through my own doubts and misgivings. I only hope this work in some way honors theirs.

What books have significantly influenced you as a writer? What books have astonished you? Are there specific titles that carried you though your “doubts and misgivings” while putting together this particular collection of stories?

[SetTheScene]

Kathy, Sorry to hear about your doctor's orders. That really is rough. Who says there aren't occupational hazards associated with writing? I guess you can at least catch up on reading while you heal (and maybe get some inspiration from the pages you turn). But I know that's cold comfort. Be well.

---

KathyS wrote:

I much appreciate your response, Matthew.  I'm going to have to bow out of further discussions.  I just got notice from my Dr., today, that I have to immobilize my hands...tendon problems...it sucks, big time...so much for that inspiration...

All the best to you!

Kathy

---

SetTheScene wrote:

---

KathyS wrote:

Thank you, Matthew, for coming to our writing room, and sharing your time and knowledge with us.

Thinking about what gives us inspiration.  Taking advantage of those 'sparks' that you can recognize.  I have just a few questions.

With all the types of writing that you do, do you find your inspiration comes, specific to your varied moods?   If you have moods..... In other words, do you know what inspires your short stories, as apposed to poetry?

Also, do you seek out inspiration, or just let it happen, when it wants to happen?  Does music, or reading, affect your writing in any way?  Are there things you avoid, or perhaps drawn to, while writing?

Thanks, Matthew.

Kathy

---

Hi Kathy -- thanks for these questions. It's rare that I write w/o music. Sometimes the music I pick is random (or whatever's on shuffle mode in my iPod). But more often, the songs on my speakers are playing because I think they'll bring me closer to whatever I'm working on at the moment. This makes for a bouncy office, and often leads to some panic...say, when I desperately need to locate a Happy Mondays (or Sundays) CD I haven't played in years.

I write for an amazing magazine called Oxford American. They put out a music issue each year. For 2009, they asked contributors about our relationship with music. Here's my response.

Working in silence is a struggle for me. In fact, before starting a new story or novel chapter, I often spend time hunting songs with melodies—and more often, rhythms—that I think will inform a character, or the prose’s tone. Many writers build new work, I know, around a specific image. My first inspiration is almost always rooted in sound.

About the larger issue of inspiration: in my mind, it can strike anytime, and in any form. The worst thing I can do is wait for inspiration to fall in my lap. The best thing I can do is pick up the pen like a tuning fork and seek it out. It may take a couple sentences, it may take an hour. But I have no doubt it'll come if I'm doing the work and paying attention. On that subject: the prolific Joyce Carol Oates, who probably has killed more trees than Paul Bunyan, was once asked if she's ever not in the mood to write. Her response was: "Writing creates mood." I think that sums it up. You may find yourself with a free afternoon, and able to write some gorgeous exposition. You may find yourself with five minutes in the doctor's waiting room, ticked off and anxious...and generate something sharp and sarcastic. The point is to use whatever pocket of time you have in whatever way you can.

Speaking of time: I better close down for the evening. Hope to hear more ?s tomorrow!

---

---

[SetTheScene]

Hi Capuchin (great signature line/quote, btw),

Definitely didn't think of your question as odd -- it gets to the essential core of why we write: communication and connection. I don't know that I ever consciously think about writing for the kind of reader you describe. On the other hand, I've *been* that reader... finding comfort and pleasure in a book...so it probably informs my drive to write better. With nearly every story, there's a moment when I feel it's in place...it's found its shape, its spine, etc. But even when it gets there, I'm usually game to give it at least a couple more drafts, to reach beyond the original ambition, in the hopes that I can push it from a serviceable story to one that has special meaning (to me, or a reader down the line).

And as you say, you can never account for what writing will move someone. There's one piece in my collection that I haven't read aloud at events/signings, and I'm not sure I ever will. It's the oldest in the book, and while I still love it (enough to have included it), I think of it as long in the tooth and creaky in spots. However: I've had more than a few readers single it out as their favorite. At that point, it ceases to matter what I think. It's that reader's story, and I'm honored that they think highly of it.

---

Capuchin wrote:

You may think this is a very odd question because, well, it is . . .

Every story you write might become someone's favorite, touching them deeply because of the characterization, setting, or any of a thousand other variables. There always comes a time when a person is feeling alone, perhaps a bit under the weather, and they find comfort in curling up with a much-loved book.

Do you ever feel you're writing to those people? Have you ever found yourself picturing such a person reading your work?

---

[SetTheScene]

I hesitated (momentarily) before putting that paragraph into the acknowledgments. But I'd been thinking about how when musicians put out a new CD (or collection of mp3 files, as the case may be now), reviewers often spend a good deal of time referencing what music that music reminds them of, where it fits in what lineage, what tradition. Poets do it too, but seems it happens with less frequency with fiction writers (maybe the influences can become more diffuse within all that prose, but I wonder if part of it is clinging to the mystique of the author in isolation).

Anyway, I love thinking about (and passing along) books that have had an impact. Maybe they don't always shape my own writing explicitly, but they remind me of the possibilities of narrative  imagination -- that the frontier has yet to be reached. Here are (a very few) contemporary (last 40 years) short story collections/authors that fit that bill.

Anything Alice Munro puts out (but I keep flipping through Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.

Robert Boswell: The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards and Living to Be 100.

Charles Baxter: A Relative Stranger (Baxter has a New and Selected coming out next year. Buy it, read it, devour it.)

Grace Paley: The Collected Stories

Toni Cade Bambara: Gorilla, My Love

Donald Barthelme: 60 Stories

Marilynne Robinson: Gilead (Okay, I had to include a novel at some point)

Denis Johnson: Tree of Smoke (...and another)

E.L. Doctorow: The March (third novel in a row...I'm on a roll...).

Edward Jones: The Known World (okay, back to center...let's end with a story collection...)

Lydia Davis: Almost No Memory

Like the Energizer bunny, I could keep going, and going, but I have to pick up my kids...M

---

Brandi_R wrote:

In the acknowledgements in your collection, Attention Please Now, you give a nod to the books you’ve read over the years. You know how this reads, of course, but I’m pasting it here so everyone can read it:

Writing this collection turned out to be less solitary of an act than I feared. One reason: the extraordinary books that I read over the intervening years. The authors I discovered—their characters, sentences and spectacles of imagination—have been vessels, carrying me into astonishments, and carrying me through my own doubts and misgivings. I only hope this work in some way honors theirs.

What books have significantly influenced you as a writer? What books have astonished you? Are there specific titles that carried you though your “doubts and misgivings” while putting together this particular collection of stories?

---

[Capuchin]

I've always felt authors are similar to sculptors, but that still leaves a great division -- those who work in clay start with a basic form and add a bit of material, smooth and shape it to blend in, add another bit, etc., and those who work in stone start with a big block and chisel away everything that doesn't look like the statue they want.

Which type of author are you -- do you write minimally and add material in each draft or do you write a huge block of text and subsequent drafts whittle it down? Somewhere inbetween?

[SetTheScene]

Your sculpting metaphor is a great one. I tend to approach first drafts very intuitively, and expansively. I'm not concerned with making anything shapely or neat. The chaos is how I connect with characters, and a specific story's structure. I want to plunge into unknown territory; even territory I'm not at all certain I can map out. Those (typically) messy first drafts tend to be the ones where I make the most discoveries along the way. 

In later drafts is when I tend to pare. But even there, what often happens is I start to see the deeper patterns in a story emerge and announce themselves. Suddenly it makes sense why Moment X had to happen to Character Y. So entire scenes, or characters, might be chiseled away at that point. But they're often replaced by new material that, hopefully, is serving to deepen what I now realize is the story's main ambition.

So I might start with a draft of a story that's, say, 18 pages. After the final draft, the story tends to *also* be 18 pages. But there's a good chance less than half of that first draft's 18 pages made it to the final draft's 18. In some ways, the creation and revision of each story involves a case of rapid and highly-radical evolution/mutation. Your Labrador retriever shifts into a Labradoodle, which somehow, when it's all said and done, has turned into a terrier.

---

Capuchin wrote:

I've always felt authors are similar to sculptors, but that still leaves a great division -- those who work in clay start with a basic form and add a bit of material, smooth and shape it to blend in, add another bit, etc., and those who work in stone start with a big block and chisel away everything that doesn't look like the statue they want.

Which type of author are you -- do you write minimally and add material in each draft or do you write a huge block of text and subsequent drafts whittle it down? Somewhere inbetween?

---

[SetTheScene]

It's my last day here in the Writing Room -- Wilco is playing in the background as I type this sentence -- and this morning, I had the notion to switch things up, and pose/fling a question out to the board. I'm curious to hear any replies. 

When you're working on a new piece of fiction, do you find it's easier/more comfortable to generate material that's based on life events (either events that happened to you, or that happened to someone you know), or events and scenarios that you invent out of whole cloth.

And as a follow-up (because these could generate diff. responses): What's a more *satisfying* accomplishment for you as a writer? Creating compelling fiction out of moments that occurred, or moments you completely invented?

Matt