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Late Last Night Books

because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours

Late Last
Night Books
because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours
Since 2013
Gary Garth McCann, founder and managing editor
an ad-free magazine about fiction by authors Terra Ziporyn * Sally Whitney * Eileen Haavik McIntire * Gary Garth McCann * Peter G. Pollak * Garry Craig Powell * Jenny Yacovissi * Lily Iona MacKenzie * Todd S. Garth * Daniel Oliver
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Author Archives: Lily Iona MacKenzie

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 OCTOBER 2020

Are writing and sex connected?

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Is there a connection between writing and sex? Between selling one’s skills as a writer and being a prostitute?

I opened the door to my husband’s psychoanalytic office, a neutral ground where I could meet with my own clients, writers (or potential writers) that needed help. I was about to enter into the complexities of narrative with a young man who would graduate from college soon as a computer major. Yes, the poor guy had been bitten—not by the Zika mosquito carrier but by the writing bug.

He’d emailed me for help after taking his first writing workshop with a fellow writer whom I know from an on-line critique group. She’d recommended me as a writing coach.

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Where do characters come from?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 AUGUST 2020 Where do characters come from?
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Where do fictional characters come from? I’ve been asking myself that question for as long as I’ve been writing, but the complete answer still evades me. The process is as mysterious as the origins of life itself, maybe even more so. At least we know that life on earth evolved from some primordial soup. But what concoction serves as the foundation for those who inhabit our stories?

Seeds come to mind. Seeds give birth to plants and other living things. Humans start as a kind of seed. And so do our creations. As writers, we have experienced multiple settings and experiences. We’ve connected with many different types of people. All of those contacts can provide us with material that we sift through, plant in our fictions, and watch grow.

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Why do characters in novels we read become part of us?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 JUNE 2020 Why do characters in novels we read become part of us?
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I’ve recently finished reading Susan Choi’s A Person of Interest, and mathematics professor Lee, the main character, continues to live on in my imagination. It’s as if he actually inhabits the external world and was intimately interacting with me during the time I read the book. Lee is Asian American, though his origins aren’t a main focus in the narrative, and it’s never made clear just where he was born. Still, though he ends up being an outsider at the university where he teaches and in his wider community, that stance seems more to do with his irascible personality and natural aloofness than with him being racially distinct.

Of course, you could argue that these qualities may be the result of Lee never quite fitting in because of his Asian origins.

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Words as Animals!

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 APRIL 2020 Words as Animals!
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I recently read the book Words as Eggs by Jungian analyst Russell Lockhart. The idea for the work, and the chapter from which the title comes, originated in one of Lockhart’s dreams. A voice in his dream said, “Do you not know that words are eggs, that words carry life, that words give birth?” (92). Lockhart later points out that this dream revelation isn’t exactly new in the larger scheme of things. In the beginning, it’s rumored that God spoke the world into existence: “the word is seed and gives birth to life and living things” (92). As eggs, words are constantly delivering new ideas and thoughts, filling our minds with possibilities and worlds we otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

A writer, I’m fascinated with anything to do with words and how they inform, form, and reform our surroundings—and us.

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Bursting through barriers to story

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 FEBRUARY 2020 Bursting through barriers to story
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I’ve been so busy taking care of marketing demands for my three novels (Fling!, Curva Peligrosa, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy),  and finishing up the creative writing workshop I’m teaching at the Fromm Institute of Lifelong Learning, that I haven’t had time to write new material, fiction or otherwise. Prose, especially non-fiction, is easy for me to produce. I can spin out words and sentences that end up making sense, as I’m doing here.

But writing fiction? It’s like digging a ditch or chipping away at the concrete of my brain to find a way back into a story. That’s why I usually have several projects in motion. I move back and forth between them. When I run into a dead end with one, I can enter a vein in another, carried along until something stops me again.

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What role does music have in good writing?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 DECEMBER 2019 What role does music have in good writing?

I was fortunate to have piano lessons when I was a girl. In Canada, if students are learning classical music, teachers usually follow the Royal Conservatory of Music progression from grades one through ten and utilize the books for each level. These lessons include theory as well as musical scores for students to progress in. 

Very early, I decided that classical was not my preference, and, after I’d completed four grades of the Royal Conservatory program, I convinced my mother to send me to a teacher who could help me learn pop tunes. That involved learning how to chord so when I used sheet music of popular songs, I only had to read the right-hand score, improvising with my left hand using chordal variations.

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What are the origins of fiction?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

11 OCTOBER 2019 What are the origins of fiction?
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Whenever I give a talk or reading, someone in the audience asks where my stories come from. I find the answer more complex that what it would appear to be on the surface. What are my narrative seeds? What starts me on these explorations of others’ lives?

One of my bios states “Lily sprouted on the Canadian prairies under cumulous clouds that bloomed in Alberta’s big sky. They were her first creative writing instructors, scudding across the heavenly blue, constantly changing shape: one minute an elephant, bruised and brooding. The next morphing into a rabbit or a castle. These billowing masses gave her a unique view of life on earth.”

I do credit those experiences I had as a child for my impulse to write, my desire to explore (and expand) my immediate surroundings, to move beyond them.

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Trusting Ourselves as Writers

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 AUGUST 2019 Trusting Ourselves as Writers

“I write to make sense of my life.” —John Cheever

I’ve been reading Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life, and it’s been extremely illuminating in many ways. John Cheever, considered one of the best 20th Century short story writers, struggled at times, as most writers do, to trust his impulses in creating short stories and novels. Many of his works first appeared in the New Yorker, and for much of that time, William Maxwell, long-time editor at that magazine, was both his good friend and editor. This relationship eventually became a problem for them both.

Maxwell, a fine writer himself, wore blinders when his writers attempted to move beyond the traditional realist fiction that he favored. At a critical time in Cheever’s life and career, Maxwell refused to publish any Cheever stories that didn’t fit into this narrow groove, causing Cheever to doubt his craft.

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How are writers detectives?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

11 APRIL 2019 How are writers detectives?
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I’ve been thinking recently how writers are like detectives. They need to be constantly observant, picking up clues from what people are wearing, how they gesture, the words they speak, the way they interact with others. They study people’s facial expressions and what they suggest, storing away the data in their memory banks or taking notes in a writer’s journal that they’ll refer to later.

Detectives need to ask questions, the right questions, without arousing the suspect’s suspicions. Writers are also usually operating undercover in this way, querying their family members, friends, and acquaintances on unfamiliar subjects, building up their store of knowledge.

A good detective, like an amateur psychologist, also is skilled at looking beyond surfaces, trying to discover the hidden meanings in words, expressions, gestures, aware that most things have multiple meanings.

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Why I read novels!

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

9 FEBRUARY 2019 Why I read novels!
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As a fiction writer, I often ask myself why people read novels and how can I convince them to read mine? That question occurred to me again recently when I finished a novel that had me questioning why I read fiction. The book was engaging enough. The writer was competent and had created characters that seemed believable (though that isn’t necessarily a criterion for me). There was enough tension to keep me reading in order to discover more about these lives I had immersed myself in. But the experience felt flat, and I wondered why I had spent several precious hours on something that wasn’t more satisfying.

So why do I read? For me, reading isn’t necessarily to escape my daily life.

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Recreating the Self Through Memoir

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 DECEMBER 2018 Recreating the Self Through Memoir

hand-325321_1920I opened the I Ching at random this morning and came up with #38, K’uei / Opposition.   The commentary says it is common for two opposites to exist together, needing to find relationship.  I realize an opposition is being set up just in the act of writing my memoir Drop Out:  my inner writer will be observing everything I do closely and recording what she finds valuable.  I’m reminded of a review of Journey into the Dark:  The Tunnelby William Gass that appeared in The New York Times Book Review:

Writers double themselves all the time in their fictions, of course.  That’s one of the reasons for writing them:  to clone yourself and set yourself out on a different path, or to reconfigure yourself as a marginal observer of your own childhood, as Lawrence does with Rupert Birkin in Women in Love, and as Woolf does with Lily Briscoe in To The Lighthouse; or to split yourself in two and reimagine one side of yourself through the eyes of the other, as Joyce does in Ulysses, and as Nabokov does in Pale Fire.

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A Reader’ Evolution: How Annie Oakley & Wonder Woman taught me to read!

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

9 OCTOBER 2018 A Reader’ Evolution: How Annie Oakley & Wonder Woman taught me to read!

girl-flying-on-book-2970038_1920As a pre-TV child (television arrived in Calgary in the early 50s, about ten years after it appeared in the U.S.), radio dramas fed my imagination: Boston Blackie; Suspense Theatre; and The Green Hornetcome immediately to mind. Though they provided the plot and dialogue, I was able to supply the images myself, far more dramatic than what any TV director could create. In my young mind, Boston Blackie was the white knight in spite of a name that implied otherwise. Evenings spent shivering in front of a radio, shivering from glorious fear and not cold. The room crackling with drama—suspense. And I was an important participant: the program needed myimagination to give it life.

At some point in those early years, someone sold my parents a set of the Books of Knowledge.

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Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 AUGUST 2018

 

Is Poetry Necessary?

As a poet, I recognize poetry’s tremendous importance to a society. Still, I can get caught up in the complexities of modern life: I have classes to teach, papers to read and grade, writing projects demanding equal attention, a family to care for. Therefore, it’s easy to forget that poetry is as necessary to our well being as food, though when I say this to my students, they look at me skeptically.

Many have trouble with poetry, and I discuss this difficulty with them. “Why,” I ask, “in a class of twenty literate, intelligent young men and women do only two or three read or write poetry—even occasionally?”

They think about the question, and then a few raise their hands tentatively; they try to articulate why poetry is hard for them: “It doesn’t have anything to do with my life,” says a female business major from Hong Kong.

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Per Petterson, the Writer’s Writer

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 JUNE 2018 Per Petterson, the Writer’s Writer

I’ve gone bonkers over Per Petterson’s writing. Born in Norway in 1952, Petterson was a librarian and a bookseller before he published his first work in 1987, a volume of short stories. His third novel, Out Stealing Horses, became an international best seller. Since then, he has published three other novels, which have established his reputation as one of Norway’s best fiction writers.

Document38 copyI’ve now read all of his books, and, as a writer, I’ve learned a great deal from him about technique, especially point of view and his use of time. I Refuse, Pettersen’s most recent novel, captures the main characters’ lifetime in a compressed space.

September 2006 reunites Tommy and Jim, devoted friends in their youth, after they’ve been separated for 35 years.

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Writing for Love Or Money?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 APRIL 2018 Writing for Love Or Money?

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for money. —Moliere

Recently, I’ve been struggling with this idea of writing for money. Moliere suggests writers are prostituting themselves if they write for money. But what of doctors or lawyers? Doctors charge patients for treating them, and lawyers do the same for advocating, things they’re trained and skilled to do? I’m sure Moliere had complex reasons for thinking this way about selling one’s writing, many connected to his era, economics, and his philosophy on life.

But when I read this quote, I felt a certain twinge, as if I might be damaging myself in some way, exploiting myself, or misusing a talent.

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Perseverance Furthers!

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 FEBRUARY 2018 Perseverance Furthers!

In “Spirit of the Law,” a short story I’ve written, I wanted to explore life after death and something else—how the dead go on living or not living, if only in our memory, in the physical places where we’ve known them.

Of course, I’m not really capturing what life is like after death. It’s my imaginative portrayal of one woman’s experience, and it’s a way of articulating metaphorically how the dead live on in our minds.

It helped to read that Bernard Malamud would write eighteen drafts of a story, working until he got it right.  It takes that kind dedication to find a story’s heart. To reach her readers, a writer needs the same kind of persistence as a religious person does in her determination to reach god.

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Novelists as Tornadoes

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

9 DECEMBER 2017 Novelists as Tornadoes

Whenever I read another writer’s novel, I’m curious about what that person’s process was in composing the book. Writer’s approaches to their work are as individual as the various themes they write about. No two methods are the same.

For me, Curva Peligrosa first took hold of me back in 2000. Here is what I wrote in my writer’s journal on 7/16/00:

cyclone-2102397_1920Was taken with the image of the tornado that swept into Pine Lake, a resort near Red Deer, Alberta, yesterday, and has killed several people, flattening trailers etc. It isn’t the destruction that interests me. It’s devastating and unimaginable. It’s the image of the tornado, so innocent in itself, flattening a community, bringing with it so much sorrow. The tornado has a magical, mythical quality, reminding me of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

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The Tyranny of Show Versus Tell

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

9 OCTOBER 2017 The Tyranny of Show Versus Tell

If you’ve ever taken a writing workshop, you’ve heard many times the bromide “show, don’t tell,” but often the showing part dominates the telling and becomes tyrannical. As a writer friend once pointed out, when we’re writing fiction, we are storytelling and not storyshowing, and there are many ways to tell an engaging story.

Of course, some beginning writers do tend to summarize more than dramatize. They haven’t learned yet how to traverse between generalities and specifics. And in our early drafts, even more experienced writers often are just trying to capture their characters before they can disappear. Showing, then, tends to happen later in the drafting process.

However, it is important to know when one or the other is required, and that’s the advantage of using this shorthand workshop comment.

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WHAT IS THE REAL STORY?

Late Last Night Books
LILY IONA MACKENZIE

Author of the novels  Curva Peligrosa,  Fling!, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, and the poetry collection All This

10 AUGUST 2017 WHAT IS THE REAL STORY?

“The artist must be deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and harken to its words alone.”  —Kandinsky.

Several years ago I entered a Masters in Creative Writing program as a poet, but I was equally interested in writing fiction and signed up for several short story workshops. My experience in the poetry classes led me into exciting new places as a writer, opening me up to undiscovered parts of myself and of the poetry world. But it has taken me all these years to fully recover from the fiction workshops.

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