From Lon Wagner from the Virginian-Pilot:
"Dear Gangrey:
"The Virginian-Pilot narrative team hosted our annual (it was the second one, so I think I can call it “annual” now) conversation about narrative last weekend, and I thought you would like to know about it. We invite 10 to 12 writers, in addition to the four on our team, and sit on the deck of an oceanfront beach house and talk about narrative. We had 16 people this year, each of whom emailed around a story ahead of time, we read all the stories, then got together in person and broke them apart. Why’d you choose to begin here? What made you select this dialogue? This detail? This character? We talked about making a story about one idea, one thought, one main character. We had narrative writers, courts reporters, an enterprise editor, from the New York Times, Atlanta, Charleston, Lincoln, Neb., Jacksonville.
"On the second day, we focused the discussion on organizing longer pieces. Jane Hansen from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explained how she and Jan Winburn made sense of the materials Hansen gathered for her 22-part series, Through Hell and High Water. Hansen brought the vinyl notebook that she developed to use as her reference file. Then Earl Swift, of the Pilot, showed how he used a colored grid system to keep track of his characters and timeline during an eight-part serial narrative.
"We call the conference Word., and the idea – as our meant-to-look official invitation reads – is to “talk craft, in the sort of session you’re probably more accustomed to experiencing over beers after most conferences.”
"In the evenings, after the official sessions end, we hang around the Outer Banks beach cottage, talk stories some more and – yes – have beers."
Sounds pretty damn cool. Check out this piece from Lon, by the way.
Title: A look inside Date: October 2, 2006
Lon Wagner The Virginian-Pilot
The items inside Carey Stacey's grocery cart:
A wall clock with a tiny billiard ball representing each hour, and a broken face. "I'll just take it and put new glass in it," Stacey says.
Six books, including a hardback about American history, that he just crammed into a front corner. "I'll take these all to the bookstore right over on 26th and Granby. That man'll give me 50 cents apiece for these. That's some money."
He'll have to push the cart about nine blocks to do that, from where it's parked on a cool September morning, at 35th Street and Colonial Avenue in Norfolk.
A yellow, plastic vacuum cleaner. He doesn't know if it works. "I got another one too, a carpet cleaner, that I found somewhere else."
A pair of ear buds. He found them in a Dumpster.
A never-opened box of 3-inch deck screws.
A box of plastic tabs for some sort of Stihl power tool.
A "Thomas and Friends" backpack, with a broken handle. Stacey crams the deck screws and plastic tabs into it.
An RCA stereo speaker. "I found another one, too," Stacey says. "I left it in the bushes somewhere. I'll get it later."
A black garbage bag deep in the grocery cart. What's in that? He reaches through the cart's crack with a skinny finger and pokes it. "That's food I found. I got it at 7-Eleven. Every day they have to change all their sandwiches out, but some days a guy named Peanut is there and he puts it around the side. They're not fresh, but a day old. My girl won't eat it."
Stacey's grocery cart is like a giant muffin. Its contents mushroom out of the top and drape over the sides, hints of where he's been and where he's headed.
A Pacific brand bicycle, with no front tire. "Then I found this tire," he says, pointing to another, "on 20th Street in a Dumpster. I was getting cans out of there."
Another bicycle tire. "I got a 10-speed, too. See, this tire will go on that one." Stacey found 19 bicycles, more or less whole, last year.
Two strips of aluminum. He'll sell those for scrap along with: Two big, blue bags full of soda and beer cans that flies are swarming.
A size 9½ leather Nike high-top shoe. One. "I still got to find the other one," Stacey explains. "That's my size."
On the bottom rack, a microwave oven. "Sometimes I stay at my friend's house on 36th Street. That's who the microwave is for. He needs one."
A sleeping bag. For sleeping. On the cart's handle hangs a portable police scanner. It works.
Pushing the cart is, of course, Stacey: He wears a camouflage cap, and the collar of a bright orange golf shirt sticks out from a red, white and blue jersey that says "PHILA" on the front and has a "3" on the back. He has on cargo jeans, Nike high tops and, over all that, a purple apron. Eight metal bracelets jangle on his left hand.
He's 61 years old, and he's spent his entire adult life, save for some years in Philadelphia, fending for himself on this city's sidewalks, streets and alleys. He's not looking for pity or a handout; "junkin' " is just what he knows and what he does.
"I don't buy no clothes . I find all my stuff."
His sporty wrist watch, he didn't find that. "Oh, no, I traded a guy."
The guy had taken an interest in something in Stacey's cart.
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