Going to Bragtown

This is a double decker brag post as the clever people in my life are succeeding left and right. Let’s dive right in.

Flood Streets, the film created by my friend Helen Krieger and her husband Joseph Meissner, will premiere at WorldFest Houston on April 11th and is also showing at the Boston International Film Festival April 23rd. Helen just had a signing event for her book In the Land of What Now, which inspired the film.

Lindsay Rae Spurlock just had several shows during SXSW and is performing regularly now in L.A., supporting her CD Heart On.

Zack Godshall just the Louisiana premiere of his film Lord Byron at the Manship Theater in Baton Rouge. I loved reading this:

Made in Lafayette for less than $1000, the film features the first all-Louisiana cast and crew film to go to the Sundance Film Festival.

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Q & A to follow, so stick around to hear from Zack and some of his talented cast spill the beans on how they pulled off this no-budget film right here in Louisiana! And what it was like to bring to Sundance the lowest budget film in the festival’s history.

Barb Johnson will be reading April 12th at 7 p.m. as part of Loyola’s 1718 Reading Series at the Columns on St. Charles. If you’ve never seen her read, you really shouldn’t pass up this opportunity. And if you have seen her before, it’ll be a great time to catch up with her. 🙂

Maurice Ruffin just had his short short “Zimmerman” published on the Gold Room reading series’s website and his story “The Sparer” is a finalist in the Country Roads Writing Contest. During the month of April, all of the finalists’s stories are up and we can vote for the winner of the Reader’s Choice Award. I hope you’ll go read them all and vote for your favorite. My favorite is “The Sparer.” 🙂

Terri Stoor has a funny, touching piece published with the St. Petersburg Times. It’s on their website, so you can read it in its entirety. I heard her read it recently, which was a special treat.

While I was writing this, Nick Fox gave me the great news that a story of his has been accepted for publication by Third Coast.

And my latest 225 piece is about writer’s block. I got to talk to some of my amazing writer friends for this and what they had to say is incredible. Check it out. Unfortunately, we had to cut some great quotes from Brian P. Moore and Jamey Hatley because of space. I want to include a bit of what they said below. Enjoy.

Brian, who writes for the New York Post, told me:

It’s my guess that the despairing totality of, say, Dashiell Hammett’s paralysis is a rare bird. Most writer’s block is case specific, and with some time away can be tackled with minimal angina. Writer’s block isn’t something to be confronted so much as elided, which should suit the non-confrontational personalities of most writers. If I can’t get a character out of a room in my novel, there’s always a newspaper story to work on. It’s a reverse whac-a-mole approach, where the mole is free to roam without fear of head wounds.

And Jamey said:

When I think of writer’s block, I mean that something isn’t working. I remember reading an interview with Toni Morrison where she said, ‘You shouldn’t write through it. It’s blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven’t got it right now.’ So, being blocked for me is crucial information. When the writing is stalled, when I can’t get the right words, there’s usually something that I haven’t figured out yet that I need to know.  This is not to say that I am gracious during the waiting process. I whine, I complain. I draw dramatic red lines through pages of text. I have never regretted waiting out the block. The rewards have always been worth it.