Michelle Rae Anderson's Blog

There's a organization in Portland called Show and Tell Gallery that hosts a weekly hour-long show on Monday evenings at the Three Friends Cafe. They call it Three Friends Mondays: Caffeinated Art Series.

The premise is that three friends have an hour to use the coffee shop stage for a show. Audio of the show is recorded and uploaded to the Show and Tell Gallery website. Many people read. Some play music. It's a popular event (we're #136 in the series!) and on Monday, December 5, my friends Sarah Holloway and Robin Catesby are headlining…but we're doing things a bit different: we're reading each other's stuff.

Robin is reading a chapter I wrote from the first draft of The Miracle in July.

Sarah is reading a short story that Robin wrote that features a webbed protagonist.

And I'm reading a couple of poems and a very personal section of Sarah's dissertation on the effects of war.

My friends and I plan to have fun, and we'd like to see you there, so please join us at 7pm for an evening cup of java.

December 5, 2011

7-8pm

Three Friends Coffee House

201 Southeast 12th Avenue

Portland, OR

How do you deal with social network overload? What makes The Miracle in July a Media Ecology experiment? And who is this Marshall McLuhan fellow, and what's the deal with his Global Village? I chat about all of that (and more) with Suzanne LaGrande on The Digital Divide, a KBOO community radio program that explores the effect technology has on society.

Check it out:

I'm writing an essay for my book First Draft that's tentatively titled What the hell is a semi-autobiography? and let me tell you…it the answer is complicated.

It's not the definition that's complicated. A semi-autobiography is universally defined as "a fictionalized account of real events and people" or something along the thread of turning a story that is real (as one person sees it) into something that could be real (as multiple characters see it).

This essay I'm writing for my book is about the experience of writing a story in the semi-autobiography genre and publishing it as a first draft, like I did with The Miracle in July. Writing MIJ was a very complicated experience. I think it was because stripping away the "real" parts of events and people to create a "based-on" narrative is both terrible and liberating. Writing a semi-autobiography is like being a half-mortal god, or like being a phoenix who rises again and again from ashes of the past at the expense of a lifetime of reality.

But no matter how complicated the act of re-writing history can be, the fact that truth is woven into a semi-autobiography is a powerful storytelling device. A good semi-autobiography leads the reader into hunting for clues that the writer may have left in the narrative, little markers that invoke experiencing the story on an intimate level. Like these stories do for me:

Adaptation (2002)

Almost Famous

All That Jazz

Adaptation

On the Road

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Bell Jar

A Farewell to Arms

Little House on the Prairie

Tropic of Cancer

What are your thoughts on writing a semi-autobiography? Is it complicated, as I'm finding in my work with MIJ? Any favorites you have, that leave you wondering just how much was fictionalized?

I'll be at the Reading Local booth on Saturday at Wordstock from 4:00-5:30 on Saturday, October 8th!

Come find me in booth #806 at the Oregon Convention Center ready with arms open to dispense uncomfortably long hugs. I'll also let you pet my newly shorn silver headhairs if you ask nicely. I'll have free The Miracle in July buttons on hand, as well as a stack of my book Venice is for Lovers for sale…and I'll give you a free MIJ t-shirt if you do.

Plus, there will be chocolate.

So please come!

I'll be signing limited copies of my erotic anthology Venice is for Lovers and answering questions about my work at St. Johns Booksellers in Portland, Oregon this Saturday from 11am-12pm. If you're in the area you should stop by. Here's three reasons why:

Anyone who buys a copy of my book (or pre-orders my next book First Draft: The Miracle in July Web Series) gets a free The Miracle in July tshirt.
St. Johns Booksellers is a full-service independent bookstore that graciously stocks its shelves with the works of self-published authors and indie presses. Supporting bookstores that support authors and small presses earns you like a bajillion karma points. At least.
The neighborhood Farmer's Market will also be going on, right on the corner, and St. Johns Booksellers has a Market Day Special: $5 off a purchase of $20 or more with proof of same-day purchase from and market vendor. (Fresh fruit cores or other such evidence is sufficient proof of purchase.)

So, to recap: Buy local fruit or produce from the market and get a coupon for $5 off a purchase of $20 or more at St. Johns Booksellers. Buy my book Venice is for Lovers (or pre-order my book First Draft: The Miracle in July Web Series) at St. Johns Booksellers and get a free MIJ tshirt and loads of good karma. Win-win, I'd say. See you there :)

St. Johns Booksellers

8622 N Lombard Street

Portland, Oregon 97203-3731

A couple of weeks ago I cut off all my hair. I had it buzzed by Rachel Cisco at Bouffant Hair Salon. Rachel is a very talented tress artist who's been sculpting my long, black locks for a couple of years now. She knows every cowlick on my head and does a great job making each hair behave.

Here we are in the act of eliminating the need for months of future appointments:

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Why did I cut off my signature locks?

The truth is, I've never had an attachment to my hair. I've been dying it since I was 13 years old, and I just turned 40, so forever it's been kind of a pain. That first time my mother brought home some dye for me because she noticed all the gray one day. It's to be expected, this pre-mature gray, since the heads of both my mother and my father had turned very early in their lives as well. I hadn't noticed one silver strand until mom brought that box of a nice medium brown; I was still too unaware of my appearance or why I should care about it then.

For a quite a while I've had very dark, very long hair. (Here I am in a publicity photo that was shot for my storytelling experiment The Miracle in July with said very dark, very long hair.) But before it was black and long it was short and beige blond. (Not a good look on me, by the way.) And before that it was red/orange, mid-length and layered. (I managed to pull that off, I think.)

Over the years I've really learned to hate dying my hair. The time wasted, the mess, the smell. And, over the years, I've been cooling promising myself that I'd someday let my hair be the color it really is. I love the streaks of light through the hair of others, so why not?

Now my hair is really gray…and in some places a beautiful silver-white…a silver-white that is all-too noticeable against the ink black dye. So I made an appointment with Rachel, and after I convinced her that I was of sound mind and body she cut my hair off in chunks with large scissors and then used an electric razor to finally free me from every artificially-colored hair on my head.

And. I. Love. It.

And not just because it turned out great (don't you think?) or because I no longer have to waste my time trapped in the bathroom filled with the scent of permanent hair color. I also love it because I finally did something I've said that I was going to do, for a long time.

Cutting my hair off feels as good as it did publishing new chapters of MIJ. Each time I revealed a new part to my fictionalized past into the world—which is a scary and exhausting feat—it was like reaching milestones in a journey, which told me I was on the right path. Meeting each publishing deadline infused me with the sense of having control of something in my life through the act of choosing: I could keep writing and publishing MIJ until I was done, as promised. Or I could use any number of really good excuses as to why I couldn't possibly find a second of time or trace of desire to write another gut-wrenching 8,000 word chapter about loving hard, losing it all, and following your bliss.

Almost 100,000 words later, I finished that first interactive draft. And lots of people liked it. But then I stopped working on it, for a lot of very good reasons that don't matter beyond the fact that the work stopped because of them.

But then I cut off all my hair, because I said I was going to. I again feel empowered by choice and the satisfaction of passing an important milestone.

Type-ity type type.

WordPress is my platform of choice to build websites and publish stories. I often get asked by writers what themes and plugins I recommend for storytelling, and although that list changes frequently, I do have some favorites. Here they are:

Themes for Storytelling

The Erudite is the theme I used for The Miracle in July (hacked all the hell to make it do my bidding). It makes good use of whitespace so that the focus is on the story, not the jazz-hands design of the website. Free.

http://somadesign.ca/projects/the-erudite/

The Novelist is a premier portfolio theme for authors and/or copy writers that mimics a page-turning book and has outstanding typography capabilities. (Hat tip to ZeroStrategist) $35

http://themeforest.net/item/the-novelist-responsive-wp-theme-for-writers/526345

BONUS: Although PressBooks is still in alpha/beta and not really a theme (it's a multi-site/multi-author platform) you should know about it anyway. Using the power of WordPress, PressBooks lets you easily write and output books in multiple formats such as epub, Kindle, print-on-demand-ready PDF, HTML and inDesign-ready XML. Sign up for an account and see what I mean. Free (for now).

http://www.pressbooks.com

Plugins for Storytelling

The Web Fiction Table of Contents plugin is a sidebar widget that generates a TOC from a category of posts in chronological order. Free.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/web-fiction-table-of-contents-widget/

The Organize Series plugin helps with the organization and presentation of articles/chapters/posts you write as part of a series. Use this plugin with the Organize Series Publisher plugin for easy bulk publishing of all articles/chapters/posts in a series all at once.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/organize-series/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/organize-series-publisher/faq/

Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that grabs posts from your WordPress blog, imports feeds from external sites, or creates new content then outlines, orders, and edits your work to craft it into a single volume for export in several formats such as PDF, ePUB, TEI.

http://anthologize.org/

Do you have WordPress themes and plugins to recommend that are good for writers publishing their work online? Please leave a comment and let us know. We're all in this together, yo.

XO

@mediaChick

I'm three days into my vacation-that's-a-whole-lotta-working in a small Eastern Oregon town. I'm visiting family and Oh, yeah…working. I have a room at my mom's house with bunk beds (I prefer the bottom…take that as you will) with a desk where I've spread out my work-related crap and a fan that I point directly at the back of my head because it's actually SUMMER here (unlike the pathetic showing of the season back home in Portland). I'm working veryvery hard on finishing my next book First Draft: The Miracle in July Web Series, which is due out next month. It features a foreword by one of the digital strategy firestarter I respect the most, Mr. Dave Allen.

I'm not gonna lie, you guys. Workcations are hard, and this one has been fraught with serious technical difficulties and insane-brain content problems that need clever, universally appealing solutions. So, you know…no pressure.

PLUS my family wants to hang out with me and there are cute baby bellies that beckon for loud, slobbery mouthberries.

PLUS PLUS there are a BUNCH of really great events going on at home (356 horribly long miles away) that I'd love to be at this weekend.

Like Beer and Blog is being sponsored by Groupon Portland on Friday which means FREE beer. And the super geeky IndieWebCamp is this weekend. But one event in particular that's pretty much burning my britches is the 6th anniversary shindig for the St. Johns Booksellers. Now, my pants aren't on fire just because they're my neighborhood bookstore, and it's not just because they carry my erotic anthology Venice is for Lovers. (Look: Photographic evidence!)

No, the flames ignited the instant I saw that the St. Johns Booksellers are planning a Mini-Sledgehammer Writing Contest.

IS THAT MARVELOUS OR WHAT?!

From their announcement:

Participants will be given 4 writing prompts: a character, a fragment of dialogue, an action, and a prop. A timer will be set for 36 minutes. Each participant will produce a new work of fiction on the spot, using the prompts provided, before the timer runs down. All work must be new, and produced especially for this contest. There is no minimum or maximum length. At the end of 36 minutes, participants will read their stories aloud for the audience and our panel of judges, which will include a representative of St. Johns Booksellers and a representative of Indigo Editing. Entries will be judged for completeness, overall quality of writing, and best use of all prompts. Judges' decisions are final.  Prizes include a copy of Ink-Filled Page, Indigo Editing's yearbook of fine writing, and a St. Johns Booksellers gift certificate.

Participation is limited to 10 writers, on a first-come, first-served basis.  Signup opens at 6:30pm.

And all writers who participate get a Moleskin pocket notebook.

Do you smell smoke? Oh, ignore it. That's just my pantaloons.

Lest you live in Portland and think the St. Johns neighborhood is sooooo far away here's another incentive: the bookstore's anniversary party is in conjunction with a whole lot of other awesome events, including a pig roast by the most excellent James John Cafe. The NoFest Music and Art Fair will be rocking the streets as well.

But, you know what? Even though I can't be home right now to enjoy all the fun stuff that's going on, I'm OK with my life being all about type-ity type type-ing my way into a finished novel and mopping up superhero-strong baby drool in a town that doesn't have the courtesy to stock my favorite microbrews.

For another few days.

Ahem.

P.S. SEND BEER

Do you have what it takes to follow your bliss?

Too many talented writers are afraid to share their work before it's "finished." But the pursuit of so-called perfection is a relic from traditional publishing, a model that only hurts aspiring authors and compromises artistic freedom. My goal with The Miracle in July is to melt assumptions about what it means to be a "successful" author. Rather than write a manuscript all at once, I published weekly segments and invited my readers to help shape the story. The result has been every author's dream come true: a deeply devoted fan base, complete artistic freedom, and a better story than I could have written on my own.

I'm using the innovative challenge-and-be-challenged community of Bolder to encourage all writers to follow their bliss and just publish the damned thing already…whatever that damned thing may be.

Top action gets a signed copy of First Draft: The Miracle in July Web Series, my visceral first draft semi-autobiography about love, loss and what it means to follow your bliss.

Help me influence the future of storytelling. Let go of perfection and be BOLDER by publishing your works in progress. The results will amaze you. Start here: Bolder Challenge

What are you waiting for? Your future starts the moment you do. Bliss is calling…

My 2010 WordCamp Portland un-conference presentation on Using the Apture Plugin to Tell Interactive Stories is now available for viewing on WordPress.tv!

Sadly, the Apture plugin has been discontinued (which honestly breaks my heart) but since I was able to introduce The Miracle in July to new readers, my session wasn't totally for naught. (But did I mention I'm heartbroken?)

Note: The badass media hubs that are used throughout MIJ still work…but should one of the links break, I'll never be able to update them :(

On a much happier note, the response to my WordCamp session was very positive. Here's one attendee's review:

I imagine most people who embed media are doing it to enrich news type of content. Michelle is doing it to deepen engagement with story. She's an engaging writer already, then she adds music clips, photos, videos, and maps to offer the reader additional insights into what she's thinking. They don't interrupt the flow of the text since they are just small icons that appear inline when there is something else to experience. It's very different than reading with illustrations.

I had a total blast at WordCamp Portland, and I hope to get to lead a session again this year, too.

In the meantime, I'm getting ready for my next speaking gig at the FREE 140 Character Conference scheduled for May 19, 2011 in Vancouver, WA. I'll be on a panel called Twitterdipity: Relationship Returns & Social Media Results. I'm really excited for the opportunity to share how Twitter (and Facebook and blogging and Kickstarter) has been invaluable in attracting my dedicated, supportive tribe of MIJ readers, and I hope to inspire other writers to start gathering their own tribe around their work, as well.

If you're in the Portland/Vancouver area, I highly recommend that you RSVP soon because there are a limited number of seats available. If you do make it to the 140 Character Conference, please come find me and say Hello. I'd love to meet you!