Mark Trainer

So with the news that the estimable short-story writers Deborah Eisenberg and Edwidge Danticat got tapped for MacArthur grants, it looks like there's some hope yet for my favorite genre. Larry Dark at the Story Prize blog makes the case for the short story's comeback.

I moved to D.C. when my daughter was three weeks old, so I'm discovering the arts culture of the city somewhat slower than I might have otherwise.  But a reading of the work of Eleanor Ross Taylor last night took me to the Arts Club of Washington.  Near GW, the club is in an historic Georgian building that dates to the beginning of the 19th century.  After Monroe was inaugurated, the building briefly served as the executive residence--a mini-White House in Foggy Bottom.

The Arts Club was founded in 1916 and hosts a bunch of great musical and literary events with a wide variety of new art on display.  Their Web site has all the info.  Worth your attention, fellow DCers.

I suppose Trollope has become the patron saint of writerly productivity.  His daily schedule annoyed his contemporary critics, who thought the muse did not visit those who waited for her on a schedule.  (This opinion remains popular among undergraduates--at least the ones who took my workshops.)

But what's on my mind this morning is something I read a few years ago.  As we all know, Trollope wrote his allotted three hours EVERY day.  Was it from 5 in the morning until 8 or 6 to 9?  But apparently when he finished a novel manuscript at, say, 8:45, he would turn the page and write "Chapter One," and be off on his new novel for his remaining fifteen minutes of writing.

Now that my story collection is finished (it is finished, right?), I'm trying to get something else underway--something novel-like.  And all these Trollope questions come rushing back to me.  Did he outline anything?  Did he ever just stare at the wall and wonder how this or that strand of the plot could be made to work?  Maybe he did that at the post office  when he was supposed to be working.

Mark Athitakis' American Fiction Blog links to Donald Ray Pollock's recent interview with Southeast Review.  He's similarly mystified by the novel's prominence in these days of the limited attention span, but publishing in the tiny journals worked for him.  Good to hear.