submissions due july 9.

A new contest, “Ambient White Noise,” is announced there.

_____________________

Anna Brones is a writer and the co-founder of Under Solen Media. She writes for various green blogs and travel magazines including EcoSalon, Planet Green, Matador, and Huffington Post. She maintains a blog at je vais où.

*For notes and analysis on this story, as well as a link to the mixtape based on this story, please check here.

I feel like “where” and “when” are more meaningful questions than why.  Why seems closed and finite: “I did this because of x,” whereas “when” gives this sense that  whatever happened and however you felt about it existed in an infinitesimally short amount of time, and that you have “forever” for other things to occur and other ways to feel about them: “I did this when I was 10.”

This week’s contest was partially an examination of how certain juxtapositions of time and space can lead to these kinds of spontaneous revelations–not necessarily epiphanies but more a kind of “airing out” of certain thoughts or feelings.

The most interesting entries, the ones that seemed “successful” in the context of the intentions  behind the contest, were the ones where the thought or emotion revealed didn’t even correlate necessarily to what the juxtapositions were. In other words, the external scene may have helped “trigger”  the narrator’s revelation or confession, but the confession wasn’t necessarily a direct “response” to the scene.

[I should note that the instructions in the contest didn't necessarily lead people in this direction; it just happened naturally in some people's responses.]

I feel like this disjointedness–say for example we’re in Paris looking at the Eiffel Tower but we’re actually thinking about being in basketball camp 20 years ago–is very common in life but is super uncommon in writing.  Even “good” nonfiction can seem “untrue” to me when everything is linear, each observation, description, action, and thought in direct relationship with one another.

[This  leads to a conversation about what nonfiction's "purpose" is--some may argue that the whole point is to create linearity out of turbulence--but I'm more interested in nonfiction writing as something which breaks out of traditional forms in a search for more closely and transparently approximating the writer's way of seeing the world.]

With this in mind, here was Anna Brones’s story:

An old man sits on the park bench, paintbrush poised in hand. Behind him, a dog sprints away from its owner. I have a hard time saying no.

At first when I read this I just felt a certain emotion, something like “damn, I have a hard time not saying no.”

Then I went back and started analyzing the lines.  I thought about symbols–the old man painting as someone both inside and outside of the scene, someone “motionless,”  while the dog is forever in motion and forever “in the moment” (and yet strangely “sprinting away from its ‘owner’”).

Then I tried to “figure out” the story. Is the narrator the dog owner? Is she having a hard time saying no to her dog? That could be one reading, and if it were true  it would still seem interesting to me. Does she literally “have a hard time saying no” because she doesn’t want to disturb the old man?

But then I thought that like the symbols, these questions were all based on “what” or “why,” and seem to matter less than the effect the story had on me and the way I interpreted it the first time I read it, which was the narrator is just someone watching the scene with these disparate elements–a dog, a dog owner, a man on a bench, and for reasons that are only known (or perhaps not known) to her–she realizes she has a hard time saying no.

Even if that wasn’t the way Anna intended for the story to be read, it still feels very true.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a story, and congratulations Anna, for winning!

Here’s a mixtape based on Anna’s piece.  Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?1uztzjtyzjw

Tracklist:

1. Billie Holliday – I’m painting the town red

2. Beach Boys – That’s not Me (Outtakes from Pet Sounds Recording Sessions)

3. Zizek – Excerpt from Fauna Megamix 03 (mixed by Daleduro)

4. Babasonicos – El Loco

5. Atlas Sound – Walk a thin Line (Cover of Fleetwood Mac)

6. Brian Wilson – Put Your Head on my Shoulder (Outtakes from Pet Sounds Recording Sessions)

Final notes: if you enjoyed reading about or participating in this contest, please visit the MIXTAPE WRITING page on Facebook.

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For example, here is an excerpt from an email my dad sent me earlier:

Please write down my cell number.  It is always on and always with me. Still using my Atlanta number.  I can’t let go of some things.

Pilgrims sitting in contemplation beneath the tree chase after the leaves like mad hens. Sometimes monks will watch them and smile. Sometimes, sheepishly, they will join in. I am against participating in mad dashes.

I’m not sure what exactly to call these kinds of sentences. “Statement” sounds too general. “Declaration” sounds too formal. “Assertion” sounds like it’s some kind of mental construct, a product of intellect rather than emotion. “Confession” has religious overtones but it seems the closest approximation–it’s almost as if the writers are revealing some truth about themselves that they hadn’t really discovered until they wrote it down.

So the contest this week is to use this kind of confessional sentence in a tiny story, 3 sentences max, or perhaps just a single scene or snippet of a conversation, but with that one sentence hinting at some deeper story,  something which seems to exist outside of the sentences in time and space.

Guidelines:

Contest starts now and ends at 2 pm EST on Thursday, May 13.

Please submit your entry to david at matadornetwork.com with ’3-sentence confession’ in subject line.

You can submit as many entries as you like.

Each entry should be NONFICTION – this is the challenge.

Each entry should be three sentences. Two of the sentences can be whatever you want descriptions that set up a scene, dialogue, information, but one sentence must be a statement of belief, which, ideally, hints at a more profound story or sense of character that goes beyond–that exists outside of–these 3 sentences.

Don’t try too hard. Last week it seemed like people were really going for something perfect–just write down sentences that are true. Don’t worry about how it “sounds.”

As with last week, I will make a mixtape based on the winning entry with possible recording / remixing of the author’s work in the mix, as well as (potentially) an essay explaining why I chose the winner(s).

The challenge was to write a nonfiction piece using at least two different narrators. I felt like it was a difficult challenge.

As the “prize,” I made a mixtape based on their winning entries. It’s available to everyone to download:

faulkner narration mix (dm mixtape 2).mp3

Track List:

1. [intro] Enduser – Bollywood Breaks -

2. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Pretty little Ditty

3. Pibes Chorros – Andrea -

4. Enduser – Bollywood breaks

5. Brian Eno – Music for Airports 1-1

6. Deerhunter – Octet

7. Atlas Sound (w/ Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab) – Quick Canal

Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. I’m working on a new contest idea–something a bit shorter and more spontaneous perhaps–and will be posting that on Monday. Please enjoy the stories and the mix.

It took exactly 18 minutes

The clock said 7pm. Amidst all the chaos I make a mental note of that. Maybe I’m trying to calm myself with something to focus on. It didn’t last long as here comes another one. Christ that hurts. My fingers are gripping the bed rails. There are about six women in the room and a man has taken Mark away to change into overalls. I’m being pricked and prodded from all directions. Paperwork being flicked through. Questions being asked. Previous answers being confirmed. What the hell does it matter? Just get on with it would you! That bright light right above my head is pissing me off. Onto my left side. In goes the epidural and my third blood vessel catheter in four weeks. Through the next set of swinging double doors and we’re in theatre. Curtain goes up. My husband is six-foot-five, he’ll be able to see over that when he gets here. My arms are placed out like I’m on a cross. Bags of blood are lined up. Reassuring words come from very nice midwives and anesthetists, all women. This room is full of specialists. Mark arrives in green overalls and a blue shower cap and even though I’m scared shitless I’m laughing as he looks hilarious. They’re too short and they haven’t got wellies to fit his size 15s so he’s wearing thongs! He’s sitting beside my head and sure enough they raise the curtain up another few inches. Can’t have him passing out. He’s trying to be comforting, makes a joke with the doctors. Here she is, our tiny daughter. It took exactly 18 minutes. They whisk her away for an immediate test and its five minutes until she’s introduced to us. Is she still breathing? Yes, thank god. So far, so good. We’ve known for the last eight weeks that she’s a girl. Comforting as they grow faster in the womb than boys and apparently suffer less disabilities when they’re born. I can feel someone rummaging around in there, like they’re washing their hands in my stomach. Now she’s sewing me up. I wonder what I’ll feel like when these drugs wear off. A gaping hole in my stomach is going to hurt for a while. They’re saying she’s a good length and weight for one almost three months early. Five weeks on and she’s still in the special care nursery. Mark went back to work after two weeks with us. I’m here beside her cot reading to her again. I wonder if she’ll remember anything about Richard Branson’s autobiography! Sometimes I cry totally unexpectedly. The stress of all this is unbelievable but still it’s a bit embarrassing. There are far worse cases than ours. Oh god, another one. I don’t think I can watch their faces again. That’s the third time they’ve pulled the curtains around an incubator. That baby isn’t going to make it and any minute those young parents are going to cry and wail. It makes me cry too. Out of heartbreak for them and guilt that ours is still alive. I’m going to turn my stool around and tomorrow I’ll buy those damn headphones.

~

I’m so tired. It’s what I feel the most with these long shifts. And it’s Saturday night again. My social life has vanished. I suppose the money is good but I miss my wife. I’m getting to like living here and I’ll keep sending the money home so she can join me soon. Cheap flights these days from India. I’m certainly missing her cooking! That Indian takeaway near my apartment isn’t much good. Who do they think they’re kidding calling that authentic Indian food? Got to make some spare beds soon as these premature babies just keep coming. Which ones are we going to send home today I wonder? And the sick ones. Dear God, yesterday’s boy with that massive distended stomach. They tell me you get used to that after a while. There’s plenty of check ups for me to do tonight. Better get a coffee then get stuck into it. Yes please, this baby here, I need you to hold her on her side while I withdraw the spinal fluid. Checking for any abnormalities. She’s a passive little thing isn’t she. Not fussed while some scream the place down. Nearly done. Oh here’s her mother. Hello, did you get some dinner? Good timing as we’re all done here now. Look she’s totally fine. Many babies born earlier and smaller than her turn out perfectly normal. You can stop crying. Really? Nine weeks away from home is a long time. I give her a reassuring shoulder squeeze. My wife is called Tina too. Your baby will be fine. She just has to rest, eat and grow stronger. She’ll stop the apnea episodes and be able to breathe unassisted soon. Maybe you should get some rest too. I move on and from a few beds along I see Tina get her book out and start reading aloud. Just loud enough for her baby to hear but not disturbing anyone else. She reads a lot. That’s good as her baby will know her voice. What’s she reading? Can’t see it from here. This baby on the end has an infection I think. His blood pressure is too high and his pallor isn’t right. Better get a second opinion. Yes I thought so. Where are those catheters? I bet that English nurse has used the last one again and hasn’t refilled the box. We’ll give him antibiotics until he comes good. Oh no, another one. Glad it’s not on my round. I’m not looking forward to the first time I have to tell the parents that their baby is going to die. Some seem to go into shock and don’t say anything. Others start to cry, some loudly. I’m not comfortable with hugging strangers but sometimes they just want to hug. These parents are young ones tonight. I think they knew it was coming. There’s a lot of nodding going on and the look of acceptance. I can see Tina watching. She can see through the mobile curtains from where she’s sitting. She twists her stool around, turns away frowning and keeps reading, probably so she doesn’t cry again.

Author’s Notes:

The first narrative is obviously from my personal viewpoint. It is entirely true and I could have rambled on for ages as the whole hospital experience lasted 13 weeks.

The second viewpoint is from one of my doctors.  He wasn’t one I knew very well but I’ve written it as true to form as possible. I chose him because he performed the spinal fluid extraction which is an event that will sit in the not so nice picture bank of my memory forever.

________________________________

Tina Spice recently turned 40 and has decided to make a career change to pursue writing. She is a student in the MatadorU travel writing program. This is her first published story.

Author’s Note: The scene: 6 p.m., a hiking trail in Mexico. 1st narrator: Mexican police officer. 2nd narrator: Sarah

6 p.m., Cerro Fortin

Estábamos subiendo la colina cuando vi una guërita, bajando lento con un perro, no mames, buey, un perrote, con unos pinches dientotes, jalando por adelante este guërita flacita. Ella lo jaló por atrás y lo intento parar pero parecía que iba el perro ganando.

“No mames, buey,” le digo a mi compañero, “mírale este guërita. Que madres esta haciendo solita por aquí a las 6 de la tarde?”

“Pidiendo desmadre,” dijo este compañero mío, aburrido.

“Verdad?” le digo. “Quieres pararla?”

“Para que?” pregunta. Pretende ser flojo, pero sé que es mas nervioso que yo, que se pone nervioso con estes jueguitos.

“Para que no, cabrón?” le digo.

La guëra para de repente con su perro, parece pastor alemán, bien pinche grande este perro. El perro se siente y sus dientes brillan como lobo hambriento, buey. Es impresionante este perro.

Paro a un lado de la guërita. Me vea. Es un poco rara, ella. Como que tiene una cara de niña, pero hay algo allí que esta muy dura. Sus ojos son azules, azules. Nunca he visto ojos tan azules. La verdad es que me espantan un poco. Puedo ver que tiene miedo, claro – que madres esta haciendo caminando aquí sola a esta hora? – pero también hay cierto desafio como que no se va a dejar tan fácil. El perro me mira fijo.

“Es bravo, tu perro?” Le pregunto en tono muy serio, para intimidarla un poco.

“No!” dice al principio, y luego rápido ajunta, “pero si le digo, si puede ser bravo.”

“Esta entrenado,” le digo.

“Si,” responde, “normalmente es muy tranquila, pero si tengo una problema me proteja.”

No esta como pensaba – su tono de voz tiene algo firme, como si nos están confrontando. No esta como otras mujeres que a veces paramos – las borrachas que intenten coquetearte y luego se ponen bien pinches bravas, gritando, o las niñas de la escuela que tengan miedo y escondan sus caras, a quienes podemos chiflar todo el puto día sin que dicen nada. Este, no, este tiene otra agenda.

Mi compañero no quiere ver la guërita. Ella te vea directo a las ojos, y no baja su mirada hasta que bajas la tuya. Mi compañero esta incomodo con todo eso – el perro, la guërita, el cerro lentamente oscureciendo. A mi me encantaría tomar este guëra por su pelo hasta que grita, dominarla bien cabrón y enseñarla estar tan pinche seguro de si misma, me gustaría cogerla allá mientras que mi compañero vea, pero creo que no podía suportar sus ojos. Y luego hay el perro.

“Bueno,” dice la guërita, mientras que la veo pensando, “buenos tardes.” Y sigue caminando.

“Ni modos,” le digo a mi compañero, y seguimos subiendo la colina.

~

The wind whipped Stella’s hair back so that she looked like a carefree kid beaming in the back of a speeding truck. She had on that big goofy dog grin she gets after we’ve done a good hike on the Cerro and are heading back in the chill of the early evening. The light played on the tall grasses on the hillside and made them look like something from the afterlife, flashes of memory and place.

I bent down to pick up a stick for Stella and when I looked up there was a blue and white patrol car coming up the bottom of the hill. I gasped, then cursed. Shit. They do patrols sometimes at this hour and they always frighten me, those cops jeering with their power and their dumb uniforms and their total lack of responsibility, driving around looking for a kitten to play with.

All you have is instinct in these situations, instinct and the dog, so I riled Stella up. “Go girl c’mon girl GETEM go girl GO!” until she was yanking at the leash and jumping and pulling and heaving from side to side. When the patrol car got closer I suddenly made her sit, calmly, hoping that the show had had an effect and that they’d size her up and keep on going.

They stopped. Fuck. The officer, a young guy with hair gelled into stiff submission and that fleshy, inflated quality of a certain type of dude here, the body of a fit young man plumped out a few inches by too much food and beer, leaned out the side window.

“Is she aggressive?” he asked with the mock casualness I’m so familiar with.

He was really asking,

“What are you doing here, and do you know I can fuck with you?”

All my power goes to my eyes, then; all the energy of my body that’s under their gazes courses up to my eyes, and I widen and narrow them slightly, making them flash.

“No,” I respond at first, to avoid them trying to use that as an excuse to detain me, but I back it up with, “but if I tell her to, she’ll get aggressive.”

“She’s trained,” he said.

I looked at his partner in the car. The guy was staring straight ahead. He wouldn’t look at me. He was obviously nervous, this guy, not comfortable with taking these risks with a guerita. I had that to my advantage. But the other guy seemed almost to feed off of that nervousness, to want to push it further. Fine, fucker, I thought; people are always surprised at how I respond to these situations. I look so much the part of the lost guerita, the doe-eyed, soft-haired, whispery blonde girl, but if he said anything, tried anything I would grab this guy by his cheap rooster do and shake it around until he punched me.

I said, “Normally she’s very calm, but if I have a problem she’ll protect me.”

I stared into their dank little cave of a police car. I directed that searing energy in my eyes towards them– every gota of my presence on top of them, boring into them. You want to do it, do it, but you’re going to have one hell of a fight.

In their moment of hesitation I said,

“Bueno,” and started walking without looking back. “Buenos tardes.” And they drove on.

_________________________

Sarah Menkedick is a writer and editor currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is the senior editor of Glimpse.org and the director of the Glimpse Correspondents Program. She is also a contributing editor at the Matador Network, and she writes weekly articles about women’s rights for Change.org. She will begin The University of Pittsburgh’s Creative Nonfiction MFA Program in the fall of 2010.

One thing I work with travel writers a lot on is the concept of narrating a story from a POV and style that most closely approximates the way the author actually experienced the events in real life.

I feel like other kinds of writers–novelists or playwrights–continually focus on these things because they define the overall rhythm and flow of each story.

For many travel writers and other kind of nonfiction writers however, considerations of how the narrator’s age / sex / worldviews / experiences shape the narration are often overlooked.

This week then, I wanted to try a challenge that examines the concept of who the narrator is and how he/she would perceive a scene or incident in a different way than a different narrator, or perhaps the same narrator, but only at a different age or “stage ” in his / her life.

The inspiration for this comes from one of my favorite (and also, I think, one of the strangest) novels, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. The novel takes place in a fictional town in rural Mississippi in the late 1920s. The scenes happen over just a few days, and most of them around a house where the mother is dying. There is the almost continual sound in the background of one of her sons, Cash, sawing and hammering her coffin. What’s really interesting about the novel is how each chapter is told from the point of view of view of a different character.

Faulkner, William – As I Lay Dying

For example, here’s an excerpt from page 13. It’s narrated by Tull, a friend of the family. He’s middle-aged and a farmer:

That boy comes up the hill. He is carrying a fish nigh long as he is. He slings it to the ground and grunts “Hah” and spits over his shoulder like a man. Durn nigh long as he is.

“What’s that?” I say. “A hog? Where’d you get it?”

“Down to the bridge,” he says. He turns it over, the under side caked over with dust where it is wet, the eye coated over, humped under the dirt.

“Are you aiming to leave it laying there?” Anse says.

“I aim to show it to ma,” Vardaman says. He looks toward the door. We can hear the talking, coming out on the draft. Cash, too, knocking and hammering at the boards.

Now check this excerpt from page 26, where the boy, Vardaman, aged 8 or so, narrates:

Then I begin to run. I run toward the back and come to the edge of the porch and stop. Then I begin to cry. I can feel where the fish was in the dust. It is cut up into pieces of not-fish now, not-blood on my hands and overalls. Then it wasn’t so. It hadn’t happened then. And now she is getting so far ahead I cannot catch her.

The trees look like chickens when they ruffle out into the cool dust on the hot days. If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can feel the floor shake when he walks on it that came and did it. That came and did it when she was all right but he came and did it.

Narrating nonfiction definitely has more constraints than fiction. I’m not sure how–other than actually crowdsourcing individual viewpoints around an event–you could achieve the same “effect” as Faulkner’s narrator here, his imagination.

So that’s why I thought we’d try this as a contest. I’d like to see what other people come up with.

Here are the guidelines:

• Contest starts now and ends at 2 pm EST on Thursday, May 6.

• Please submit your entry to david at matadornetwork.com with ‘faulkner mixtape writing contest’ in subject line

• You can submit as many entries as you like

• Each entry should be NONFICTION – this is the challenge

• Each entry should be narrated by at least two different narrators (how you create the narrators, who they are–could, for example, be two different ‘ages’ of yourself–is up to you)

• The thing narrated could be a scene, a dialogue, an event–whatever you want, but it should be (a) true, (b) short (less than 500 words per narration), the shorter the better

• Each entry should begin with a brief  sentence or two setting up the scene and explaining who the narrators are

• “Points” for imaginative ways to “invent” “real” narrators

• As with last week, I will make a mixtape based on the winning entry with possible recording / remixing of the author’s work in the mix, as well as (potentially) an essay explaining why I chose the winner(s).

Thanks so much for your participation. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section.