Every Saturday we will bring you links to articles from around the web featuring members of Portland’s lit community.  Please feel free to pass along any you come across as well, by emailing us at portland@readinglocal.com, and we will include them in next week’s edition of Short Stories.

The Big Grabowski co-authors Carolyn J. Rose and Mike Nettleton are interviewed on My Shelf:

Deb: Collaborative writing presents unique challenges; how was your collaborative experience? Any hints for success?

Mike: We had some profound differences in the method of writing, and our work ethic: she has one; mine is shaky. My idea of collaborative writing came from the old Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob Petrie sat at the typewriter while his co-writers Sally and Buddy would circle the room, throwing out zingers and plot ideas for sketches. I wanted to be Sally and Buddy, while Carolyn would be Dick. So not happening. We had to work out a lot of issues before we could collaborate successfully. Hints for success? Try to get your ego out of the way. You’ve got to be objective about what’s working and what isn’t. If it doesn’t contribute to advancing the story, or illuminating a character, you need to lose it. (Actually, keep it somewhere; it may come in handy later.)

Carolyn: When you look at the changes someone wants to make in your work, you generally have a strong visceral reaction born of the desire to protect your territory. Don’t act on that. Put the comments aside for a week and look at them again. Don’t act then. Wait another week, and you might be rational. Tell yourself that it’s a joint project. Readers won’t know or care who wrote what, so you can park your ego.

Nena Baker, author of The Body Toxic, has a new article up on Huffington Post:

Persistence is a great trait if you’re job hunting, learning to play the piano or potty training your child. But when it comes to toxic chemicals, persistence is a characteristic that spells trouble for people, animals and the environment.

Congress, as it sets about updating and reforming the outmoded laws governing chemicals in commerce, can make the job easier and straightforward by restricting all non-essential uses for persistent toxic chemicals that build up in living beings and the environment. It’s simply common sense, given what we know about the hazards of substances identified as persistent, bioaccumalative toxics or PBTs.

Also on Huffington Post is an interview with Frank Meinck, whose Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead will be released by Hawthorne Books on April 1st:

The last thing we expected from Frank Meeink was a new appreciation for hockey.

Movie buffs may know him as Derek Vinyard, Edward Norton’s neo-Nazi character in American History X. The 1998 film was loosely based on Meeink’s life.

Loosely, Meeink told us at the Reconciliation Forum in Washington, D.C. The real-life version has no cathartic moment or dramatic ending. The true story begins after the credits. Oddly enough, it involves hockey. Meeink grew up in Philadelphia watching the Flyers. The games were his escape. At home, Meeink was abused by his step-father. At school, he was beaten up for being the only white kid.

“Imagine you shook a pop bottle for 13 years,” he said. “But I could always watch the Flyers.”

But hockey wasn’t enough and the 13-year-old found another escape – a hate group.

The PBS Kids blog “It’s My Life” has an interview up with The Big Book of Gross Stuff author Bart King:

IML: In the book, you talk a little about what makes something “gross” and how Gross Stuff is pretty much the same across most cultures. But has Gross Stuff changed with the times? Is it different now than what was considered gross say, 100 years ago? Has technology introduced a whole new collection of gross things?

Bart: On one hand, we are now exposed to more “fake” gross stuff than at any time in history. Our video games, movies, and TV shows can all show the latest in gruesome special effects. And technology’s impact on gross stuff can even be seen with cell phones. Even a mini-app like iFart might make us less sensitive to how we feel about things like flatulence.

On the other hand, we’re more cut off from the world’s “real” gross stuff than ever before. Our sewage systems are so advanced that we have just the briefest encounters with our urine and poop. Most adults have never seen an animal slaughtered, much less a dead human. It wasn’t that long ago that even really young children had experiences with all of these things. (“Junior, go clean the outhouse. Then slaughter a pig and bury your Uncle Jed!”)

Sage Cohen’s article “The Life Poetic: The Art of Revision” is up on Read Write Poem:

One of the trickiest –– and most liberating –– aspects of poetry is that there is no Gold Standard against which we measure its worth. Without this standard, it can also be difficult to evaluate when a poem is finished. Because each poem is trying to accomplish something different, it is up to us to decide when the poem has arrived. This is not easy to do, even when one has been writing for decades; but it sure is satisfying to practice!

Image credit Book People.

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