Author: Alex Steele

Sure, lots of places shutter the shop in August and go off for a spell of leisure. And we hope you can slow your pace a bit, perhaps relish a slice of watermelon. (And, of course, we have many readers in the Southern hemisphere who might prefer a hot cocoa on a winter’s day.)

If you wish to weave some writing into your August, Gotham is here for you. We’ve got classes starting in August, free Friday Write-Ins, our monthly edition of The Razor, and these two special things…

The Writer’s Mind

The Writer’s Mind is a fascinating new course, or rather a reinvention of a course we offered a while back.

Unlike most writing courses, it’s not about the craft of writing. It’s about something deeper and more mysterious. It’s about techniques for thinking as part of your writing process. Such as …

Letting your mind aimlessly roam, which often leads to great ideas and solutions.

Slipping back in time to engage in child’s play, where the imagination runs wild.

Accessing your dreams and semi-awake state, as a path to your subconscious.

The Writer’s Mind debuts August 6, in an asynchronous Online class. Sorry, that one is sold out, but it also be offered Online starting September 10 and October 8. And you can put it on your Gotham Wish List to be notified about future dates and formats.

I don’t know of a course like this offered anywhere else. Are you up for an odyssey of the mind?

Gotham in Bryant Park

Every summer, Gotham takes up residency in NYC’s Bryant Park for free Thursday night classes. We just did three of them in July. Now, we’ve got three of them in August:

August 1 – Fiction Writing
August 8 – TV Writing

August 15 – Memoir Writing

These outings are maybe my very favorite Gotham event. The park is a luscious green rectangle surrounded by soaring buildings and right next to the magnificent NY Library building (the one with the lions). Not only do we get great crowds at our classes, but it’s a collection of interesting folks, a real mix of what the city and its visitors can provide.

As the summer day turns to night, the magical light brings a kind of magic to the writing people do in these classes, and those who want to can share their words into a microphone.

These events are worth the trip.

Have a great rest of summer…with us.

Alex Steele,

Gotham President

Hey, this is part of a series on writers who kicked down a metaphorical door with their writing. Like Marie Curie with science and Little Richard with music.

Alice Munro passed away in May at the age of 92, after a long career publishing fiction. The first unusual thing about her is that she only wrote short stories, never a novel. The even more unusual thing is what she did with her short stories. 

Reading Munro takes patience. The writing style and characters aren’t flashy, most of the stories about folks living in small Canadian towns, facing the kinds of things you face in life.

The stories seldom start with a hook. For example, here’s the opening line of “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”:

Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university.

Gosh, nothing terribly exciting there. Indeed, after reading the first few paragraphs of a Munro story, you might be tempted to set it aside. If you stick with it, however, you’ll soon find yourself inside a tunnel that keeps leading you deeper into something fascinating.

As in “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Fiona and Grant are a married couple in their golden years. When Fiona discovers she has dementia, she consents to enter a “home” when it gets bad enough, which it does. One day Grant comes to visit and finds that Fiona has taken a beau at the home, something that happens when spouses forget that they’re married. But did Fiona really forget, or is she slyly chiding Grant for all those casual affairs he used to have? Either way, Fiona is genuinely upset when her beau’s wife removes him from the home. And then Grant begs the beau’s wife to bring her husband back, hoping to make his wife happy. And that tunnel keeps on deepening.

Did I mention that her short stories are long? A good deal longer than they’re supposed to be. When you’re inside them, though, they don’t feel long because they’re delivering the depth and complexity of a novel, leaping through time and evolutions so seamlessly you barely feel it until you’re done, dazed by what you’ve been through.

Though considered one of the best—if not the best—writer of contemporary short stories, Munro was a modest person. She led a quiet life and had no real interest in publicity or accolades (she won all the big awards). As she said, “I always got lunch for my children.”

If you forced me to pick my all-time favorite short story, I would tap Munro’s “Carried Away.” Don’t get me started on how wondrous I find it.

Alex Steele,

Gotham President

For your travels, I wish you well with the places you rent through Airbnb and such. Myself, I prefer hotels.

The way you leave your life behind, allowing others to cook and clean and point you in the right direction. Watching a TV that may take you to strange channels, especially overseas. Working out the labyrinthine layout of the place. Oh, yes, room service.

Most of all, hanging out among a collection of random strangers that could be anyone from an insurance salesperson to a serial killer, without you knowing which is which. Sometimes you chat with them, sometimes you just watch and wonder.

As the Gotham tagline says: Stories. Everywhere.

Three of my favorite hotels:

The Menger Hotel – San Antonio, Texas, next to the Alamo. (It’s in the pic.) You feel the complicated spirit of the Old West in these walls. Teddy Roosevelt recruited Rough Riders for the Spanish-American War here and they say his ghost still lingers at the bar.

Hotel Kempinski – Geneva, Switzerland, right on Lake Geneva in view of the Jet d’Eau. In the elevator, I was alone with a man unimaginably magnificent: a pilot for Egypt Air, tall and straight as an airplane with jet-black hair and mustache and the face of an eagle.

Kwa Maritane Bush Lodge – Pilanesberg Game Reserve, South Africa. They offer game drives at dawn and dusk where you see lions and impalas and the like. You can also follow an underground tunnel into a “hide” to glimpse the animals without them knowing you’re around.

My life isn’t so grand as these places would lead you to believe, though I have stayed at each. I’m also drawn to the humbler places, even a low-slung motel along a strip of highway.

Hotels light up my imagination. I’m not alone; many great tales take place in these habitats:

The Shining – Stephen King’s horror novel and itsoffshoots,set at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. REDRUM!

Schitt’s Creek – The TV series (created by Daniel and Eugene Levy) about a fallen-from-grace family forced to live in a run-down motel in rural Canada.

A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles’s novel about a Russian aristocrat sentenced to spend his life in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel, forbidden to ever set foot outside.

“Hotel California” – A song by The Eagles about a metaphoric hotel that’s seductive for a while; though you can check out, you can never leave.

What is it that excites your imagination, causing you to buzz with delight or intrigue or trepidation? There must be a handful of things that do the trick for you. Find those things and make them your muses.

Alex Steele

Gotham President