Here Blood Orange Review editor Heather K. Hummel shares how she learned to let go of rejection slips and keep going:
I am not one of those writers who plasters her wall with rejection slips. I do not have a file overflowing with "Sorry, not for us" notes. Some time ago, I decided that habit was a really bad one for me--one that would weigh me down and wear me out. So, now, when the rejection slips arrive in the mail (and it's an almost daily occurance) I make note of it on my submissions spreadsheet and recycle it immediately. If it is a really disappointing one--say for the Wallace Stegner Fellowship, I let it sit on the counter while I cook dinner and I pout at it for all I'm worth while I chop and stir-fry. And then I recycle it.
One spring, I lived at a yoga ashram and my parents handled my mail. My dad would read the rejections outloud over the phone and then launch into a peptalk about not giving up. Every day. Having my rejection slips read out loud was miserable--and ludicrous. But somehow, it gave me a sense of humor about receiving them. Try reading your next rejection slip outloud, and then at the end add a "buck up kiddo, your are trying and that's all that counts" in a concilatory fatherly voice. I guarantee you'll laugh. Or, maybe cry and then laugh. And then it just becomes part of the process, like tilling the soil or weeding, and waiting for the squash and pumpkins to burgeon.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Sunday, September 07, 2008
My Favorite Failure: One of my first rejection notes
The editors of Blood Orange Review know a lot about rejection. Not only do we reject about 90% of the submissions we receive, but we receive rejections ourselves. All the time.In the next few weeks, Heather, Bryan, and Stephanie will share some thoughts on failure and rejection in the writing life. We'll also post an excerpt from a forthcoming essay by Brandon R. Schrand entitled "On Failure", to be published in full later this month in Blood Orange Review.
To get started, Stephanie posts one of her favorite rejection letters from fellow literary journal Bellowing Ark along with some comments:
I save all my rejection slips in neatly labeled manila folders that hang in a file cabinet with tabs marked "Rejections 2000", "Rejections 2001", "Rejections 2002", etc. Some files are larger than others as my confidence over the years ebbs and flows. When rejections come in, I log them into a spreadsheet and then drop them unceremoniously into the file. The process has become so automatic that there's little emotion involved any more.
But there are a few failures I cherish more than others, and this is one of them. I had been submitting my poetry to journals for a few years, but one day in 2000, I received my first personal rejection. It was handwritten by the editor of Bellowing Ark, a still-active literary journal out of Shoreline, Washington.
Though the editor rejected my work, he wrote that my poems showed "a good deal of promise." Those few positive words kept me going. I submitted again to the same journal and received one of my first publications. I've continued the trend of being rejected first by almost every journal that has later published my poetry. The "failure files" are my proof that even when my work isn't getting picked up and published by literary journals, I'm doing the work that needs to be done.
--Stephanie
Monday, July 21, 2008
Only Connect!
Last week, Heather Hummel and I had the chance to present together at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference. We presented on “Creative Collaborations” and talked about how to make partnerships work when you’re not in the same town or time zone. The conference provided a wonderful opportunity to reflect on our decade-long partnership and what we’ve accomplished together. While working on the presentation, Heather and I realized that we have not been in the same room for more than 24 hours in over seven years. But because of our ongoing work with Blood Orange Review, we were able to sit down and work together face-to-face as though no time had passed between us.
In more than a few presentations I attended over the week, participants expressed the desire for community. How do you find like-minded writers? How do you continue to grow as a writer if you can’t find anyone to share your words with? For Heather and I, the key to making a partnership work has been creating an environment where we can share ideas. Because in the past decade the two of us have moved over 14 times, that communal space had to be virtual. Blood Orange Review is our café and our classroom.
Some people, some very credentialed and qualified people, believe that online forums allow us to isolate ourselves further. We participate in discussion boards with people around the world but still feel lonely. We have 200 “friends” on a social networking site, but still have no one to pick us up from the airport. I agree.
However, at the conference last week, I had the pleasure of meeting three contributors from past issues of Blood Orange Review: Pat Daneman, Sayantani Dasgupta, and Emily Evans Larson. I sat in presentations with them or heard new work they’ve written, and it’s exciting to meet these writers in the flesh. What I’ve learned from working on Blood Orange Review is that the world is not as huge as I once thought it was. If anything, this forum can be a doorway and an introduction to new people and ideas, as it has been for Heather and I.
PS – The editors have some fun stuff planned for upcoming issues, including a themed edition of the Swing Shift Writers’ Series all about rejection and failure. Check it out!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Blood Orange in Port Townsend -- part 2
Blood Orange Review had the opportunity to sit on a panel this week to discuss literary journals. Here are some of Stephanie’s thoughts, continued from yesterday:
In the panel on literary journals in which I participated with several others at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference this week, Brenda Miller from the Bellingham Review discussed how she educates her staff about responding to submissions. If someone sends in writing that is clearly not ready for publication, she encourages her staff not to consider the individual an unskilled writer. With her staff, Brenda talks about the importance of seeing submitting to literary journals as part of the creative process, not just the final step in the creative process.
I really enjoyed her perspective on this because I’ve felt this myself. Submitting to journals and receiving rejections is how we calibrate our writing. It’s one method for understanding audience and making this abstract concept more tangible. Submitting is a way to see how your work stands on its own beyond the friends and teachers who are invested in our work and who know what we’re trying to do.
A rejection from a literary journal can be an educational tool. It should not be viewed as a declaration that a work is unforgivably flawed, but that it’s not ready yet for publication in that journal and may never be due to the aesthetic preferences of the editors who make the decisions. Samuel Ligon, editor of Willow Springs, says he loves it when a piece that is almost accepted but ultimately rejected by his journal is accepted into the Georgia Review or some other reputable journal. It’s encouraging that writers have options in the literary world and can find a publication that is suited to their unique creation.
In the panel on literary journals in which I participated with several others at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference this week, Brenda Miller from the Bellingham Review discussed how she educates her staff about responding to submissions. If someone sends in writing that is clearly not ready for publication, she encourages her staff not to consider the individual an unskilled writer. With her staff, Brenda talks about the importance of seeing submitting to literary journals as part of the creative process, not just the final step in the creative process.
I really enjoyed her perspective on this because I’ve felt this myself. Submitting to journals and receiving rejections is how we calibrate our writing. It’s one method for understanding audience and making this abstract concept more tangible. Submitting is a way to see how your work stands on its own beyond the friends and teachers who are invested in our work and who know what we’re trying to do.
A rejection from a literary journal can be an educational tool. It should not be viewed as a declaration that a work is unforgivably flawed, but that it’s not ready yet for publication in that journal and may never be due to the aesthetic preferences of the editors who make the decisions. Samuel Ligon, editor of Willow Springs, says he loves it when a piece that is almost accepted but ultimately rejected by his journal is accepted into the Georgia Review or some other reputable journal. It’s encouraging that writers have options in the literary world and can find a publication that is suited to their unique creation.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Blood Orange in Port Townsend
Yesterday, I had the chance to represent Blood Orange Review on a panel about literary journals at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference . At the table were editors from Concrete Wolf Press, Crab Creek Review, Tidepools , Bellingham Review, and Willow Springs.
We each had the opportunity to introduce our journal and talk about what goes behind the scenes once a submission leaves the writer’s hands. While the other journals had online components, Blood Orange Review was the sole example of an online-only journal. I took some time to talk about the benefits of publishing online, both for writer and editor:
1) Accessibility – Not only can readers access the journal free from anywhere in the world (provided they have a keyboard and an internet connection), but contributors can develop an online presence for their work which can be distributed easily.
2) Affordability – Some writers don’t realize that most editors, even editors of glossy print journals, are not paid for their work. Blood Orange Review is a completely volunteer effort, a labor of love funded by the shallow pockets of writers just like you. Fortunately, the overhead for an online journal is minimal, and as a result an online journal is more sustainable financially. It’s also more affordable for writers to submit. No postage, no copies, no SASE.
3) Exposure – Willow Springs has a print run of about 1,400. Crab Creek Review is somewhere around 400 per issue. Not every issue sells out, so there are a lot of back copies to contend with. In an online forum, issues continue to receive exposure beyond their publication dates. Readership is not limited by geography, distribution, or subscription.
I am, of course, not suggesting that you should submit to online journals instead of print publications. I do both, and I encourage you to do likewise. I love being able to hold a print journal in my hands and put in on my bookshelf. But I also love being able to easily forward a link of my online work to anyone who might be interested.
As for Blood Orange Review, here are a couple points to consider when submitting to us:
1) We’re selective – We reject about 90% of submissions we receive. We’ve published high-schoolers, and we’ve published established writers who have published multiple books. We’re opening to all literary work that shows concern for language and is artfully constructed. However, our decisions on what to publish are extremely subjective.
2) We promote writers – When we accept a work for publication, we’ll ask the writer for “fan club” contacts, a list of emails to which we’ll send a one-time announcement upon publication. We recognize that writers are not always good at self-promotion, so we take on some of the chore. And once you publish with us, we continue to support our writers by presenting opportunities to submit to themed issues and posting notices of awards and other publications here on our blog.
3) We’re respectful – One way Blood Orange Review demonstrates its respect for writers is by responding to submissions in a timely manner. Our guidelines say we respond within 8 weeks, but often it is much faster than that. Each submission receives three reviews by the three editors on staff. When we get together to discuss submissions, we argue for the ones we like, and we take our time trying to convince the other editors that a work is worth publishing. When we say your submission “provoked discussion” in our editorial meeting, we really mean it.
We each had the opportunity to introduce our journal and talk about what goes behind the scenes once a submission leaves the writer’s hands. While the other journals had online components, Blood Orange Review was the sole example of an online-only journal. I took some time to talk about the benefits of publishing online, both for writer and editor:
1) Accessibility – Not only can readers access the journal free from anywhere in the world (provided they have a keyboard and an internet connection), but contributors can develop an online presence for their work which can be distributed easily.
2) Affordability – Some writers don’t realize that most editors, even editors of glossy print journals, are not paid for their work. Blood Orange Review is a completely volunteer effort, a labor of love funded by the shallow pockets of writers just like you. Fortunately, the overhead for an online journal is minimal, and as a result an online journal is more sustainable financially. It’s also more affordable for writers to submit. No postage, no copies, no SASE.
3) Exposure – Willow Springs has a print run of about 1,400. Crab Creek Review is somewhere around 400 per issue. Not every issue sells out, so there are a lot of back copies to contend with. In an online forum, issues continue to receive exposure beyond their publication dates. Readership is not limited by geography, distribution, or subscription.
I am, of course, not suggesting that you should submit to online journals instead of print publications. I do both, and I encourage you to do likewise. I love being able to hold a print journal in my hands and put in on my bookshelf. But I also love being able to easily forward a link of my online work to anyone who might be interested.
As for Blood Orange Review, here are a couple points to consider when submitting to us:
1) We’re selective – We reject about 90% of submissions we receive. We’ve published high-schoolers, and we’ve published established writers who have published multiple books. We’re opening to all literary work that shows concern for language and is artfully constructed. However, our decisions on what to publish are extremely subjective.
2) We promote writers – When we accept a work for publication, we’ll ask the writer for “fan club” contacts, a list of emails to which we’ll send a one-time announcement upon publication. We recognize that writers are not always good at self-promotion, so we take on some of the chore. And once you publish with us, we continue to support our writers by presenting opportunities to submit to themed issues and posting notices of awards and other publications here on our blog.
3) We’re respectful – One way Blood Orange Review demonstrates its respect for writers is by responding to submissions in a timely manner. Our guidelines say we respond within 8 weeks, but often it is much faster than that. Each submission receives three reviews by the three editors on staff. When we get together to discuss submissions, we argue for the ones we like, and we take our time trying to convince the other editors that a work is worth publishing. When we say your submission “provoked discussion” in our editorial meeting, we really mean it.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Call for Submissions for the Blood Orange Review Swing Shift Series 2008
Attention writers, it is time again for the Blood Orange Review Swing Shift Writers Series. This is your chance to use our blog as a forum for discussing the often undiscussed challenges of being a writer.
Each week for the month of August, the Blood Orange Review blog will post field reports from working writers across the country. Our theme for this year's series is "failure."
We want to hear about how writers' deal with the struggle to become published. Writing and publishing is a hard line of work. What do you do when you get writer's block? What methods or practices help you buck up and continue in this cut-throat field? What philosophies sustain you, even if the book you wrote three years ago still hasn't gotten picked up by a publisher? Do you have a whopper of a rejection letter that you want to share?
We will be accepting submissions for the Swing Shift Series during July and August 2008. Send your blog submissions (100-800 words) to submissions@bloodorangereview.com. Please attach your submission as a word document as well as embed the text directly into the email.
If you'd like to see last year's Swing Shift Series, look in this blog's archive for June 2007. We look forward to reading your responses.
Each week for the month of August, the Blood Orange Review blog will post field reports from working writers across the country. Our theme for this year's series is "failure."
We want to hear about how writers' deal with the struggle to become published. Writing and publishing is a hard line of work. What do you do when you get writer's block? What methods or practices help you buck up and continue in this cut-throat field? What philosophies sustain you, even if the book you wrote three years ago still hasn't gotten picked up by a publisher? Do you have a whopper of a rejection letter that you want to share?
We will be accepting submissions for the Swing Shift Series during July and August 2008. Send your blog submissions (100-800 words) to submissions@bloodorangereview.com. Please attach your submission as a word document as well as embed the text directly into the email.
If you'd like to see last year's Swing Shift Series, look in this blog's archive for June 2007. We look forward to reading your responses.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Meet the Writers: Arthur Saltzman
We'd like you to meet Arthur Saltzman from Blood Orange Review issue 2.3.
“What keeps me writing is the deliciously partial satisfaction of getting something shaped and something said. It is a goad and a gratification at once, on the order of Samuel Beckett’s advice to ‘fail again, fail better.’ Or if I need greater comfort when the keys seize, there’s E. L. Doctorow’s contention that writing is ‘like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.'"
This is the motivation that keeps Arthur writing. We hope you take the time to read his essay entitled, Trompe L'Oreille.
“What keeps me writing is the deliciously partial satisfaction of getting something shaped and something said. It is a goad and a gratification at once, on the order of Samuel Beckett’s advice to ‘fail again, fail better.’ Or if I need greater comfort when the keys seize, there’s E. L. Doctorow’s contention that writing is ‘like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.'"
This is the motivation that keeps Arthur writing. We hope you take the time to read his essay entitled, Trompe L'Oreille.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Good News from Blood Orange Contributors
At Blood Orange Review, we want to celebrate writers, not just for the moment they grace our virtual pages, but for their continued accomplishments. Heather and I are both writers, and we know how much rejection plays a role in the writer’s life.
So, when good things happen to our contributors, past and present, we want to spread the word. Become part of this stellar group by submitting your work or signing up to receive notification of new issues!
We’ll post several good news items each week. Keep up the good work!
****************************************
Thomas Lux chose Michelle Bitting’s (Volume 2.3) full length manuscript "Good Friday Kiss" as the winner of the inaugural C & R Press DeNovo First Book Award. It comes out in May 2008. Her chapbook Blue Laws, published last December by Finishing Line Press, was recently nominated this year for a Puschcart.
Doug Ramspect’s poetry collection, Black Tupelo Country, has been awarded the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and will be published in the fall of 2008 by BkMk Press. We’re proud to have published his poetry in Blood Orange Review 2.2.
We wanted to share the news about Arthur Saltzman’s newest book. We were pleased to have him be a part of Blood Orange Review 2.3. Check out his short essay, and then check out this book:Solve for X, the fourth collection of creative nonfiction by Arthur Saltzman, demonstrates the writer's continuing effort to expand on the thematic range, lyrical capacities, and imaginative possibilities of the essay in a signature style marked by what Publishers Weekly deemed Saltzman's "riskily mellifluous language."
Eileen Malone was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes: one from Perigee and one from Cezanne's Carrot.
Joel James Davis, whose story appeared in Blood Orange Review Volume 2.4, has been nominated for a Pushcart by redivider for his story "jars."
Brent Fisk has won an honorable mention in Boulevard’s Emerging Poets Contest. His poetry previously appeared in Blood Orange Review Volume 2.5.
So, when good things happen to our contributors, past and present, we want to spread the word. Become part of this stellar group by submitting your work or signing up to receive notification of new issues!
We’ll post several good news items each week. Keep up the good work!
****************************************
Thomas Lux chose Michelle Bitting’s (Volume 2.3) full length manuscript "Good Friday Kiss" as the winner of the inaugural C & R Press DeNovo First Book Award. It comes out in May 2008. Her chapbook Blue Laws, published last December by Finishing Line Press, was recently nominated this year for a Puschcart.
Doug Ramspect’s poetry collection, Black Tupelo Country, has been awarded the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and will be published in the fall of 2008 by BkMk Press. We’re proud to have published his poetry in Blood Orange Review 2.2.
We wanted to share the news about Arthur Saltzman’s newest book. We were pleased to have him be a part of Blood Orange Review 2.3. Check out his short essay, and then check out this book:Solve for X, the fourth collection of creative nonfiction by Arthur Saltzman, demonstrates the writer's continuing effort to expand on the thematic range, lyrical capacities, and imaginative possibilities of the essay in a signature style marked by what Publishers Weekly deemed Saltzman's "riskily mellifluous language."
Eileen Malone was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes: one from Perigee and one from Cezanne's Carrot.
Joel James Davis, whose story appeared in Blood Orange Review Volume 2.4, has been nominated for a Pushcart by redivider for his story "jars."
Brent Fisk has won an honorable mention in Boulevard’s Emerging Poets Contest. His poetry previously appeared in Blood Orange Review Volume 2.5.
Meet the Writers
What can you learn from a writer’s bio? Publication credits and degrees give a skeletal outline of a writer’s movement through the literary world. From these, you can learn about new places to read and publish and discover new resources. But credentials don’t answer the big question: how do they do it? At Blood Orange Review, we ask all our writers what keeps them moving forward, day to day, with their writing. We’ve been inspired by what they’ve said. We hope you’ll take the time to get acquainted with the writer below and an issue from our archive. Don’t skip the bios! They’re worth reading in and of themselves. We’ll be posting answers to our question throughout the month, so come back and read some more.
Meet Sarah Bonifacio from :Blood Orange Review 3.1:
“I’m not even halfway into the writing life, so I know my answer will change as I mature. Needing to believe Jorge Luis Borges’s claim that 'in this world, beauty is so common' drives me to continue writing poems the way I do, to write them persistently and with the urge to make the everyday and oft-neglected epiphanic. I dwell in surroundings plainer than I’d wish them to be. I don’t know how I’d survive without the sensitivity to respond, by poem, to the small and the sudden: the glint in a fish’s eye, muffled shards of dialogue at a street corner, those 'certain slants of light' that Dickinson spoke of. To write about such moments is to try renewing them; it’s to plead them to be beautiful, to push myself to see them as so for I must see them as so if I’m to keep living. Should poem after poem be completed without my pursuit having ended, this is so only because it is transience itself—to which all human lives are subject, that which is common to us all—that I strive to contain, in the way Odysseus grappled with Proteus. Joyce accomplished this feat in Finnegans Wake and Ulysses. I want to do the same. Only when I do would I quit writing, and be through with life too.”
Meet Ace Boggess from Blood Orange Review 1.2:
“I write poetry to take photographs. When crafting verse, I’m trying to capture an image, a scene or an idea that’s important to me at the time. My poetry books are my photo albums. Through them I can relive those parts of my past and, if I’ve done my job well, share them with others in a way that they can see what I’ve seen or know and understand what was on my mind at a particular moment in time. My notebook is the only camera I have, so if I stopped writing poems, I’d have no tether left to my past.”
Meet Sarah Bonifacio from :Blood Orange Review 3.1:
“I’m not even halfway into the writing life, so I know my answer will change as I mature. Needing to believe Jorge Luis Borges’s claim that 'in this world, beauty is so common' drives me to continue writing poems the way I do, to write them persistently and with the urge to make the everyday and oft-neglected epiphanic. I dwell in surroundings plainer than I’d wish them to be. I don’t know how I’d survive without the sensitivity to respond, by poem, to the small and the sudden: the glint in a fish’s eye, muffled shards of dialogue at a street corner, those 'certain slants of light' that Dickinson spoke of. To write about such moments is to try renewing them; it’s to plead them to be beautiful, to push myself to see them as so for I must see them as so if I’m to keep living. Should poem after poem be completed without my pursuit having ended, this is so only because it is transience itself—to which all human lives are subject, that which is common to us all—that I strive to contain, in the way Odysseus grappled with Proteus. Joyce accomplished this feat in Finnegans Wake and Ulysses. I want to do the same. Only when I do would I quit writing, and be through with life too.”
Meet Ace Boggess from Blood Orange Review 1.2:
“I write poetry to take photographs. When crafting verse, I’m trying to capture an image, a scene or an idea that’s important to me at the time. My poetry books are my photo albums. Through them I can relive those parts of my past and, if I’ve done my job well, share them with others in a way that they can see what I’ve seen or know and understand what was on my mind at a particular moment in time. My notebook is the only camera I have, so if I stopped writing poems, I’d have no tether left to my past.”
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Happy Two Years, Blood Orange Review!
Blood Orange Review celebrates year two with the arrival of its 12th volume of poetry, prose, and artwork. Check it out: http://www.bloodorangereview.com/.
Don't just read for the literature; read for the bios. Here you will find real writers talking about what keeps them going. Check out what Rebekah Judson, one of our newest contributors, has to say about her work:
“I write because I’m addicted to the idea of translation. I’m fascinated by this cycle that occurs when I translate images or concepts into words, only for these words to be translated back into the mental imagery of the reader. I’m constantly trying to better understand this process, to become more intimately aware of the nuances, the gradations, the shades of meaning that become magnified within this sequence of transformation.”
“I write because I’m addicted to the idea of translation. I’m fascinated by this cycle that occurs when I translate images or concepts into words, only for these words to be translated back into the mental imagery of the reader. I’m constantly trying to better understand this process, to become more intimately aware of the nuances, the gradations, the shades of meaning that become magnified within this sequence of transformation.”
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Found this in my father-in-law's shed
"Blood Makes Good Paint," says this can of lead paint I found in my father-in-law's shed.This has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm going to say next. As a poet, my job is to make connections, but my wiring is stripped. In the past six months, our editorial staff of two has relocated a total of 2,156 miles. You know the drill: packing, job searches, finding your way through a new grocery store. Exhausting.
The one constant has been Blood Orange Review -- the fall issue will be coming out next week, amazingly on schedule. With laptops on boxes and manuscripts in traveling bags, we thank all the writers who have submitted and who have been a part of this year's issues. It's your writing that keeps us going.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Final Installation of Swing Shift Writers Series
Paper Ceiling?
Sara Oliver Gordus
A creative writing professor once said that he thought I still believed that there was something mystical about the writing process. I needed to let that go, he said – the sense of thinking that writing meant throwing everything into a black box, crossing my fingers and hoping it would come out sparkling. Writing was a skill to be mastered, like welding or sausage-making. It required a thoughtful and consistent process honed over time. I liked this advice – it took a lot of pressure off of me. I didn’t need to pray I’d find a golden ticket each time I opened up Microsoft Word. I just needed to draw confidence from developing my skills, from becoming a better writer. That self-validation (wow, that sounds so self-help), has armed me as I’ve sent my stories out into the literary world, where external validation is hard to come by. I want to think of becoming a “successful” writer as more like a trip through the sausage factory. A grind (I kill me) with a measurable outcome, just as long as I remember to use the right ingredients and techniques. And despite all this mental cheerleading, in quiet moments, I fear that it might be more of a crapshoot. There are probably more talented people out there writing interesting things than there are bookstore shelves to fill or readers to find them. It is entirely possible that I could do everything “right” and still remain unknown. That’s weighty to think about.
I compare the somewhat nebulous path it takes to become a writer with a capital W to the path I would take to move up the ranks of the large publishing house I work for. I’m not saying it would be easy to one day become company president, but if I think that if that were my goal and I failed, at least, in later reflection, I would be able to pinpoint the stage where I reached my limit. The day I hurled a file folder at the CFO, say, or simply just reprioritized by life goals. Wow, that makes it sound awfully depressing– to think that I could look back on my life and know the point where I faltered. It seems much better to stick with the writing, the crapshoot, and keep on hoping, nay believing, that my next piece of work will be better than the previous one.
It’s a tough gig, this writing, no doubt. But it’s a part of me – I need it. Even if I never top a critic’s list, I’ll be content at the end of my days knowing that I was here and I left something behind – a record of having lived a thoughtful life.
Have a Heart
Molly Meneely
My first moment in the State of New York, I slipped and fell in LaGuardia Airport on the way from the gate to the baggage claim like an idiot, my forty-pound carry-on of books accelerating the descent. Miraculously, two people helped me to my feet and kindly said nothing to amplify my humiliation. But this—my first step? It foreboded doom, and on the sidewalk each day to work, I see it again and again in my head—my knee cap cracking at contact with the urinated pavement, the flail of my borrowed coat a quick flash of beige before the strides of hurryers pave across my back. My lips pressed to cold, flattened gum, I hear the thump of a stack of newspaper upon the shelf that is my rear end. “New York Times Sunday, New York Post,” hawks the woman above my flattened body.
“Have a heart” calls the troll-voiced man collecting donations each day as I leave the deli with my latte I convince myself I pay for by walking everywhere. “Help is on the way” reads the circular button above the office building elevator numbers which I’m assuming would light up if I were really in trouble. “If I were a gay prostitute, that’d be a different matter altogether” said the man in front of me on the sidewalk two nights ago, and I think, no kidding, that would really be something to write about.
Because how can I write this place, this bulb of literary, cultural, urban, American brightness? How dare I feel unique to be dazzled by the energy of it all?
But I do. I do have a heart. And it’s my heart that clenches each time I step outside, squeezing itself dry, again and again drafting that moment on the edge of something—a moment that hovers, without oxygen or sense, birthing stars in my eyes and a flicker of what the depths of things can be—all before the world begins to flow again and I can never be the same. It’s exactly why we jump out of planes or fall in love, or move here. To get back to that place. The place inside our minds that takes our breath away, that permits us to ride upon the wind like space ships or voices. The only help I know to get there, see, is to keep writing.
Sara Oliver Gordus
A creative writing professor once said that he thought I still believed that there was something mystical about the writing process. I needed to let that go, he said – the sense of thinking that writing meant throwing everything into a black box, crossing my fingers and hoping it would come out sparkling. Writing was a skill to be mastered, like welding or sausage-making. It required a thoughtful and consistent process honed over time. I liked this advice – it took a lot of pressure off of me. I didn’t need to pray I’d find a golden ticket each time I opened up Microsoft Word. I just needed to draw confidence from developing my skills, from becoming a better writer. That self-validation (wow, that sounds so self-help), has armed me as I’ve sent my stories out into the literary world, where external validation is hard to come by. I want to think of becoming a “successful” writer as more like a trip through the sausage factory. A grind (I kill me) with a measurable outcome, just as long as I remember to use the right ingredients and techniques. And despite all this mental cheerleading, in quiet moments, I fear that it might be more of a crapshoot. There are probably more talented people out there writing interesting things than there are bookstore shelves to fill or readers to find them. It is entirely possible that I could do everything “right” and still remain unknown. That’s weighty to think about.
I compare the somewhat nebulous path it takes to become a writer with a capital W to the path I would take to move up the ranks of the large publishing house I work for. I’m not saying it would be easy to one day become company president, but if I think that if that were my goal and I failed, at least, in later reflection, I would be able to pinpoint the stage where I reached my limit. The day I hurled a file folder at the CFO, say, or simply just reprioritized by life goals. Wow, that makes it sound awfully depressing– to think that I could look back on my life and know the point where I faltered. It seems much better to stick with the writing, the crapshoot, and keep on hoping, nay believing, that my next piece of work will be better than the previous one.
It’s a tough gig, this writing, no doubt. But it’s a part of me – I need it. Even if I never top a critic’s list, I’ll be content at the end of my days knowing that I was here and I left something behind – a record of having lived a thoughtful life.
Have a Heart
Molly Meneely
My first moment in the State of New York, I slipped and fell in LaGuardia Airport on the way from the gate to the baggage claim like an idiot, my forty-pound carry-on of books accelerating the descent. Miraculously, two people helped me to my feet and kindly said nothing to amplify my humiliation. But this—my first step? It foreboded doom, and on the sidewalk each day to work, I see it again and again in my head—my knee cap cracking at contact with the urinated pavement, the flail of my borrowed coat a quick flash of beige before the strides of hurryers pave across my back. My lips pressed to cold, flattened gum, I hear the thump of a stack of newspaper upon the shelf that is my rear end. “New York Times Sunday, New York Post,” hawks the woman above my flattened body.
“Have a heart” calls the troll-voiced man collecting donations each day as I leave the deli with my latte I convince myself I pay for by walking everywhere. “Help is on the way” reads the circular button above the office building elevator numbers which I’m assuming would light up if I were really in trouble. “If I were a gay prostitute, that’d be a different matter altogether” said the man in front of me on the sidewalk two nights ago, and I think, no kidding, that would really be something to write about.
Because how can I write this place, this bulb of literary, cultural, urban, American brightness? How dare I feel unique to be dazzled by the energy of it all?
But I do. I do have a heart. And it’s my heart that clenches each time I step outside, squeezing itself dry, again and again drafting that moment on the edge of something—a moment that hovers, without oxygen or sense, birthing stars in my eyes and a flicker of what the depths of things can be—all before the world begins to flow again and I can never be the same. It’s exactly why we jump out of planes or fall in love, or move here. To get back to that place. The place inside our minds that takes our breath away, that permits us to ride upon the wind like space ships or voices. The only help I know to get there, see, is to keep writing.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Zombies Are Horrible Writers: Advice from Bryan Fry and Sara Oliver Gordus
Trying to Get it Right
Bryan Fry
I am a writer, husband, and father of three. So lately, when someone asks me about my profession, I tell them I’m training to be a professional juggler which draws a lot more attention than when I say I’m a writer. If I’m a writer, the conversation halts because my acquaintance has met one of our types and does not want to travel down another path of strange intellectualism. If I’m a juggler, I’ve broken the ice with a bad joke and I find it easier to slide into a comfort zone, minimizing my romantic profession and getting down to the real, matter-of-fact purpose of life: children.
Approaching eight, Gracie is the oldest member of our troupe and now that she is in second grade and finishing her first year of piano lessons, I’m relearning the art of concentration and detail. With writing, cleaning, and continuous diaper changing, it is difficult to find fifteen minutes to sit down and help with her studies and some days, when the work piles up, I break down into a trance, a real zombie-like state. If you’re a juggler like I am, this is important to avoid. Zombies are horrible writers.
Needless to say, Gracie hates homework and piano practice. After a few minutes of either, she begins to wiggle around, stare up at the ceiling, or break into guttural laughter when she hears her little brother sing, “shake yo bootay.” Of course, this is to be expected because she is young and her mind is free, but I often hear myself telling her to pay attention to detail. When she writes words wildly in her notebook, I have her erase them and start again. When she misses the second beat in a half note, I point it out.
“Try it again,” I say.
Starting over is a hard concept to grasp, and I try not to force my daughter too hard for fear she’ll end up hating school and music altogether. But more importantly, I realize I’m telling her what I’m constantly trying to tell myself. For years, I pushed writing aside because I was waiting for moments when words would begin to rain down and I’d have no other choice but sit down and pound them out. I admit I’ve felt electrifying moments when writing seemed easier. But those don’t happen very often, definitely not every day, and they don’t last long.
No. Writing is concentration. It’s starting over, erasing and trying again. If you walk into a music building, like the one my daughter practices her lessons in, you’ll hear music through the doors of the little rooms where musicians spend hours every day practicing, repeating the same three measures over and over until they get it right. Isn’t that what writers do?
I make it a point to write every day. This is difficult for a juggler, but it’s something I must do. I lock myself up in my own little room where I spend at least an hour writing and rewriting sentences. When the work isn’t going well, it makes it easier to know that I’m just practicing my own little language, twisting sentences around, replacing lame verbs, and chopping out corny devices. I know eventually I’ll get it right.
**********************************************
Bryan Fry lives and writes in Pullman, Washington with his wife and three children.
**********************************************
Snooze3
Sara Oliver Gordus
I set my alarm for 5:00 AM each weekday and hit the snooze button three times. Each time, I need to propel my self out of bed, stumble across the room, blindly press the snooze button, and flop back into bed. I must do this in order to gradually accept the injustice of leaving the warm cocoon of my dreams. Beep, propel, stumble, press, flop. Three times. My husband is a wonderful man.
I torture myself this way so I can write in the mornings. Does this make me a morning person? Not in the slightest. I obviously don’t wake up early naturally and it’s a struggle every single day. I strive to get up at 5:30, but sometimes it’s 6. Any time spent is better than nothing, right? I don’t know why I’m asking your approval. Of course it’s right. It’s right for me.
I stick with it until about seven when the rising sun begins to glare on my keyboard and my coffee cup is empty and cold. My mind is quieter in the morning. My inclination toward anxiety and self-criticism is still groggy and I can write fairly unencumbered by my own self-doubt. I can get my words out in a quiet, lucid space before inviting my editor brain in.
Robert Pinsky purportedly was once asked by a student how one could become a great writer and a noted one. Pinsky’s alleged response: “Three words. Ass. In. Chair.” Well, my ass is in my chair and its 6:33 in the morning. I’m drinking black tea because I was too tired to make coffee. But I’m doing what I love, right? Well, I love the outcome of my writing, but damn, the process sure is hell.
**********************************************
Sara Oliver Gordus was born in California and now resides in Massachusetts, where she is an associate editor at a textbook publisher. Her fiction has previously appeared in the Jamaica Observer. She is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She celebrated her marriage last August.
**********************************************
Bryan Fry
I am a writer, husband, and father of three. So lately, when someone asks me about my profession, I tell them I’m training to be a professional juggler which draws a lot more attention than when I say I’m a writer. If I’m a writer, the conversation halts because my acquaintance has met one of our types and does not want to travel down another path of strange intellectualism. If I’m a juggler, I’ve broken the ice with a bad joke and I find it easier to slide into a comfort zone, minimizing my romantic profession and getting down to the real, matter-of-fact purpose of life: children.
Approaching eight, Gracie is the oldest member of our troupe and now that she is in second grade and finishing her first year of piano lessons, I’m relearning the art of concentration and detail. With writing, cleaning, and continuous diaper changing, it is difficult to find fifteen minutes to sit down and help with her studies and some days, when the work piles up, I break down into a trance, a real zombie-like state. If you’re a juggler like I am, this is important to avoid. Zombies are horrible writers.
Needless to say, Gracie hates homework and piano practice. After a few minutes of either, she begins to wiggle around, stare up at the ceiling, or break into guttural laughter when she hears her little brother sing, “shake yo bootay.” Of course, this is to be expected because she is young and her mind is free, but I often hear myself telling her to pay attention to detail. When she writes words wildly in her notebook, I have her erase them and start again. When she misses the second beat in a half note, I point it out.
“Try it again,” I say.
Starting over is a hard concept to grasp, and I try not to force my daughter too hard for fear she’ll end up hating school and music altogether. But more importantly, I realize I’m telling her what I’m constantly trying to tell myself. For years, I pushed writing aside because I was waiting for moments when words would begin to rain down and I’d have no other choice but sit down and pound them out. I admit I’ve felt electrifying moments when writing seemed easier. But those don’t happen very often, definitely not every day, and they don’t last long.
No. Writing is concentration. It’s starting over, erasing and trying again. If you walk into a music building, like the one my daughter practices her lessons in, you’ll hear music through the doors of the little rooms where musicians spend hours every day practicing, repeating the same three measures over and over until they get it right. Isn’t that what writers do?
I make it a point to write every day. This is difficult for a juggler, but it’s something I must do. I lock myself up in my own little room where I spend at least an hour writing and rewriting sentences. When the work isn’t going well, it makes it easier to know that I’m just practicing my own little language, twisting sentences around, replacing lame verbs, and chopping out corny devices. I know eventually I’ll get it right.
**********************************************
Bryan Fry lives and writes in Pullman, Washington with his wife and three children.
**********************************************
Snooze3
Sara Oliver Gordus
I set my alarm for 5:00 AM each weekday and hit the snooze button three times. Each time, I need to propel my self out of bed, stumble across the room, blindly press the snooze button, and flop back into bed. I must do this in order to gradually accept the injustice of leaving the warm cocoon of my dreams. Beep, propel, stumble, press, flop. Three times. My husband is a wonderful man.
I torture myself this way so I can write in the mornings. Does this make me a morning person? Not in the slightest. I obviously don’t wake up early naturally and it’s a struggle every single day. I strive to get up at 5:30, but sometimes it’s 6. Any time spent is better than nothing, right? I don’t know why I’m asking your approval. Of course it’s right. It’s right for me.
I stick with it until about seven when the rising sun begins to glare on my keyboard and my coffee cup is empty and cold. My mind is quieter in the morning. My inclination toward anxiety and self-criticism is still groggy and I can write fairly unencumbered by my own self-doubt. I can get my words out in a quiet, lucid space before inviting my editor brain in.
Robert Pinsky purportedly was once asked by a student how one could become a great writer and a noted one. Pinsky’s alleged response: “Three words. Ass. In. Chair.” Well, my ass is in my chair and its 6:33 in the morning. I’m drinking black tea because I was too tired to make coffee. But I’m doing what I love, right? Well, I love the outcome of my writing, but damn, the process sure is hell.
**********************************************
Sara Oliver Gordus was born in California and now resides in Massachusetts, where she is an associate editor at a textbook publisher. Her fiction has previously appeared in the Jamaica Observer. She is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She celebrated her marriage last August.
**********************************************
Monday, June 25, 2007
Having a Heart, Finding Contentment: Molly Meneely & Sara Oliver Gordus
Help is on the Way
Molly Meneely
I have just become the greatest writer cliché. I moved to New York this month, and I would like to Make It. Too bad no one gives a rat’s ass (and that actually means something here) about the fact I consider myself a writer and have only an armful of old notebooks and a few small credits to prove it. At least I didn’t move to Los Angeles to act.
But the city is lapping me up, at least in some ways that don’t matter at all. Consider the wind, whose gusts, exuberant to the point of violence, rocket me up 7th Avenue to my epically boring day job, propelling my hair into a galactic tangle above my head. Or the broad, dawdling snowflakes that hover over intersections, luring me to take a deep inhalation of winter—only to find myself drowning in the sour molecules of the sewer, the burdened fumes that could only be subway-born, or the thick and salty cooking smell of sausages and franks (what is the difference anyway?) sizzling nearby which convince me one can eat affordably anywhere if you aren’t picky about the content of your meat products. The instantaneous bumps and brushes of shoulders, bags, and U.S. postal service push carts—my path to most anywhere has evolved into an infinite series of collisions as we all try to out-jaywalk each other in front of an accelerating cab. These physical connections lack the soft stroke of a lover I’ll surely be months without, but still seem the most exhilarating human contact—that briefcase against my ribs—it’s the city battering me, egging me on: You really like think you’ll make it out alive? I do, I do.
My first moment in the State of New York, I slipped and fell in LaGuardia Airport on the way from the gate to the baggage claim like an idiot, my forty-pound carry-on of books accelerating the descent. Miraculously, two people helped me to my feet and kindly said nothing to amplify my humiliation. But this—my first step? It foreboded doom, and on the sidewalk each day to work, I see it again and again in my head as if happening anew—my knee cap cracking at contact with the urinated pavement, the flail of my borrowed coat a quick flash of beige before the strides of hurryers pave across my back. My lips pressed to cold, flattened gum, I hear the thump of a stack of newspaper upon the shelf that is my rear end. “New York Times Sunday, New York Post,” hawks a woman above my flattened body.
“Have a heart” calls the troll-voiced man collecting donations each day as I leave the deli with my latte I convince myself I pay for by walking everywhere. “Help is on the way” reads the circular button above the office building elevator numbers which I’m assuming would light up if I were really in trouble. “If I were a gay prostitute, that’d be a different matter altogether” said the man in front of me on the sidewalk two nights ago, and I think, no kidding, that would really be something to write about.
Because how can I write this place, this bulb of literary, cultural, urban, American brightness? How dare I feel unique to be dazzled by the energy of it all?
But I do. I do have a heart. And it’s my heart that clenches each time I step outside, squeezing itself dry, again and again drafting that moment on the edge of something—a moment that hovers, without oxygen or sense, birthing stars in my eyes and a flicker of what the depths of things can be—all before the world begins to flow again and I can never be the same. It’s exactly why we jump out of planes or fall in love, or move here. To get back to that place. The place inside our minds that takes our breath away, that permits us to ride upon the wind like space ships or voices. The only help I know to get there, see, is to keep writing.
*********************************************
Molly Meneely lives and writes in New York, in addition to working in editorial at an academic publisher where her time spent teaching composition at Arizona State University is actually coming in handy. She has her M.F.A. from ASU and her B.A. from Stanford. She has been published in the Blood Orange Review, SOMA Magazine, and GetOut! Phoenix and used to be a professional ballet dancer. In her free time, she smells the roses and, relatedly, gets passed by speed walkers while jogging in Central Park. *********************************************
Those Who Can’t Do
Sara Oliver Gordus
I work at a publishing company, so it’s no surprise that I work with people who love books. No, I don’t take three martini lunches with Michael Chabon or Zadie Smith (besides, I think those lunches have been replaced with two-Pinot dinners). I work with academics on college textbooks. The majority of my coworkers have degrees in English and have smart observations when our office book club meets every six weeks or so at a restaurant that we try to nebulously tie into the book’s theme. Watership Down? No doubt a vegetarian dining spot. Our discussions are at times rather insightful and I’m impressed and thankful to be around so many people who value literature.
Some of my coworkers even write and, with a few people, I have formed an informal writing group. It’s tough though. I had to ease up somewhat on my fear of blurring the line between my professional self (capable, upbeat) and my writer self (nuanced, occasionally sarcastic). I think it helped that I didn’t often work directly with those in my writing group. Generally, I don’t talk about my writing much at work. Perhaps out of fear of being a publishing company cliché – “I’m an associate editor, but what I really want to do is write!” (Insert big blinking eyes and vacant smile here). But when my writing does come up, many people say, “Oh, I used to write, I should really get back to it,” and “It’s so hard to find the time.” And that really is the crux of things; once you commit yourself to an adult, full-time job, things change. A job produces tangible benefits, namely money, but makes it harder to prioritize other goals in life, like writing. And who, but a fortunate few with means or a very unfortunate few without, doesn’t eventually succumb to the lure of a paycheck?
A writer of poignant, regret-filled travelogues once told me that a writer should pick a job he hates. That way, he won’t become too content, too lazy, and therefore he could ensure that his writing is his number one priority. I took this advice once, inadvertently, when I found myself in the unfortunate position of having a job I hated. I felt angry and resentful all the time at work. My time away from work was spent de-compressing and fretting about finding another job. I wrote a lot less. The best situation is to find a job you are content with (even if it doesn’t speak to your soul), and make sure the hours are fairly well defined so you can treat your writing time like a second job. If the people you work with like books, well, that’s a bonus.
*********************************************
Sara Oliver Gordus was born in California and now resides in Massachusetts, where she is an associate editor at a textbook publisher. Her fiction has appeared in the Jamaica Observer and Blood Orange Review. She is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She celebrated her marriage this August.
*********************************************
Molly Meneely
I have just become the greatest writer cliché. I moved to New York this month, and I would like to Make It. Too bad no one gives a rat’s ass (and that actually means something here) about the fact I consider myself a writer and have only an armful of old notebooks and a few small credits to prove it. At least I didn’t move to Los Angeles to act.
But the city is lapping me up, at least in some ways that don’t matter at all. Consider the wind, whose gusts, exuberant to the point of violence, rocket me up 7th Avenue to my epically boring day job, propelling my hair into a galactic tangle above my head. Or the broad, dawdling snowflakes that hover over intersections, luring me to take a deep inhalation of winter—only to find myself drowning in the sour molecules of the sewer, the burdened fumes that could only be subway-born, or the thick and salty cooking smell of sausages and franks (what is the difference anyway?) sizzling nearby which convince me one can eat affordably anywhere if you aren’t picky about the content of your meat products. The instantaneous bumps and brushes of shoulders, bags, and U.S. postal service push carts—my path to most anywhere has evolved into an infinite series of collisions as we all try to out-jaywalk each other in front of an accelerating cab. These physical connections lack the soft stroke of a lover I’ll surely be months without, but still seem the most exhilarating human contact—that briefcase against my ribs—it’s the city battering me, egging me on: You really like think you’ll make it out alive? I do, I do.
My first moment in the State of New York, I slipped and fell in LaGuardia Airport on the way from the gate to the baggage claim like an idiot, my forty-pound carry-on of books accelerating the descent. Miraculously, two people helped me to my feet and kindly said nothing to amplify my humiliation. But this—my first step? It foreboded doom, and on the sidewalk each day to work, I see it again and again in my head as if happening anew—my knee cap cracking at contact with the urinated pavement, the flail of my borrowed coat a quick flash of beige before the strides of hurryers pave across my back. My lips pressed to cold, flattened gum, I hear the thump of a stack of newspaper upon the shelf that is my rear end. “New York Times Sunday, New York Post,” hawks a woman above my flattened body.
“Have a heart” calls the troll-voiced man collecting donations each day as I leave the deli with my latte I convince myself I pay for by walking everywhere. “Help is on the way” reads the circular button above the office building elevator numbers which I’m assuming would light up if I were really in trouble. “If I were a gay prostitute, that’d be a different matter altogether” said the man in front of me on the sidewalk two nights ago, and I think, no kidding, that would really be something to write about.
Because how can I write this place, this bulb of literary, cultural, urban, American brightness? How dare I feel unique to be dazzled by the energy of it all?
But I do. I do have a heart. And it’s my heart that clenches each time I step outside, squeezing itself dry, again and again drafting that moment on the edge of something—a moment that hovers, without oxygen or sense, birthing stars in my eyes and a flicker of what the depths of things can be—all before the world begins to flow again and I can never be the same. It’s exactly why we jump out of planes or fall in love, or move here. To get back to that place. The place inside our minds that takes our breath away, that permits us to ride upon the wind like space ships or voices. The only help I know to get there, see, is to keep writing.
*********************************************
Molly Meneely lives and writes in New York, in addition to working in editorial at an academic publisher where her time spent teaching composition at Arizona State University is actually coming in handy. She has her M.F.A. from ASU and her B.A. from Stanford. She has been published in the Blood Orange Review, SOMA Magazine, and GetOut! Phoenix and used to be a professional ballet dancer. In her free time, she smells the roses and, relatedly, gets passed by speed walkers while jogging in Central Park. *********************************************
Those Who Can’t Do
Sara Oliver Gordus
I work at a publishing company, so it’s no surprise that I work with people who love books. No, I don’t take three martini lunches with Michael Chabon or Zadie Smith (besides, I think those lunches have been replaced with two-Pinot dinners). I work with academics on college textbooks. The majority of my coworkers have degrees in English and have smart observations when our office book club meets every six weeks or so at a restaurant that we try to nebulously tie into the book’s theme. Watership Down? No doubt a vegetarian dining spot. Our discussions are at times rather insightful and I’m impressed and thankful to be around so many people who value literature.
Some of my coworkers even write and, with a few people, I have formed an informal writing group. It’s tough though. I had to ease up somewhat on my fear of blurring the line between my professional self (capable, upbeat) and my writer self (nuanced, occasionally sarcastic). I think it helped that I didn’t often work directly with those in my writing group. Generally, I don’t talk about my writing much at work. Perhaps out of fear of being a publishing company cliché – “I’m an associate editor, but what I really want to do is write!” (Insert big blinking eyes and vacant smile here). But when my writing does come up, many people say, “Oh, I used to write, I should really get back to it,” and “It’s so hard to find the time.” And that really is the crux of things; once you commit yourself to an adult, full-time job, things change. A job produces tangible benefits, namely money, but makes it harder to prioritize other goals in life, like writing. And who, but a fortunate few with means or a very unfortunate few without, doesn’t eventually succumb to the lure of a paycheck?
A writer of poignant, regret-filled travelogues once told me that a writer should pick a job he hates. That way, he won’t become too content, too lazy, and therefore he could ensure that his writing is his number one priority. I took this advice once, inadvertently, when I found myself in the unfortunate position of having a job I hated. I felt angry and resentful all the time at work. My time away from work was spent de-compressing and fretting about finding another job. I wrote a lot less. The best situation is to find a job you are content with (even if it doesn’t speak to your soul), and make sure the hours are fairly well defined so you can treat your writing time like a second job. If the people you work with like books, well, that’s a bonus.
*********************************************
Sara Oliver Gordus was born in California and now resides in Massachusetts, where she is an associate editor at a textbook publisher. Her fiction has appeared in the Jamaica Observer and Blood Orange Review. She is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She celebrated her marriage this August.
*********************************************
Friday, June 22, 2007
Collaboration & Creativity: Two Writers Discuss Finding the Time, Energy & Curiosity to Keep Going
Curious George and Jacquie
Mary MacGowan
Regardless of how busy I am, I write poems at the average couple's lovemaking rate: 1-2 per week. I do this not through sheer force of will but mostly out of curiosity. I keep writing and/or revising, day in, day out, because I don’t know how to not write and/or revise. Really. I mean it. My curiosity would probably, literally, kill me.
If I don’t write, then I won’t know what could have happened. And maybe, if I had chosen not to write that night or that day or that moment, then maybe – if I had written at that time – then maybe I would’ve gotten the next poem “right.” Maybe I would’ve been close. Maybe I would’ve surprised myself. Who knows what I could miss.
Maybe my poems get written inside of me, and they will stay there forever unless they become words on paper. And yes, maybe it’s okay to carry around unwritten poems for the rest of my life, but if that’s the case, then I won’t get to know those poems. And they are my biological parents – I can get through life all right never having met them – hey, my adoptive parents are very nice and loving. But I’m just so curious! I just want to know what they look like, and if they look anything at all like me. I think they do. I think they look like me. But first I have to put them on paper to find out.
If I start a new poem in the evening, I print it out and take it to bed with me where I read it and make changes before I fall asleep. Then, in the morning, I plod over to my computer to type the changes. Then I email the poem to myself so I can see it while I’m at work. Then I send it to Jacquie, my soul-poetry-mate.
I’ve never met Jacquie and she hasn’t met me, either. That was a joke. Considering my previous poetic inner voice confession, you probably think Jacquie is a another delusion. But she’s not, she’s a very real person I met (online) through the MFA in Writing program at Fairleigh Dickinson University. And that is not a joke. We email each other almost every day to exchange poems and stories. We are brutally honest with each other. We challenge and edit and get stuck and solve problems. We loudly celebrate success with typographic symbols and plenty of exclamation marks. And we will probably never meet in person, because our relationship would probably promptly lose its magic.
*******************************************
Mary MacGowan's bio:
“Regardless of how busy I am, I write poems at the average couple’s lovemaking rate: 1-2 per week. I do this not through sheer force of will but mostly out of curiosity: What will I write next? And how close will I come to saying it right?”
*******************************************
About Wigs
Karen Hausdoerffer
Wednesday, two o’clock, and my co-teacher and I pose in front of the thrift shop mirror, trying on used wigs. Platinum blond. Ink black. Hot-pink. These are the discount wigs, tangled and balding like animal pelts. Tonight we will play “The Price is Right” with our adult, English as a Second Language students, and we want hair to compliment our bridesmaid-dress costumes. By the time we purchase our selections, it’s past three, and time to prep the rest of my lesson. I’ve missed my writing time again.
After finishing my MFA, I began teaching ESL, thinking the flexible hours would give me space to write. But my writing times often fill with lesson planning. The potential hours of preparation expand limitlessly, and the rewards for good lessons come immediately. Tonight, when our students jump out of their seats shouting numbers in English, I’ll fill with adrenaline. On writing afternoons, I work alone, sending off stories to magazines I won’t hear back from for months.
I know why I let these writing afternoons slip away; the question is, why block off the times at all? When I was a teenager, I daydreamed that my writing would help people politically. Now I understand that even when I achieve publication, my audience is small and generally like-minded. If my goal is to help people, maybe I should pour myself exclusively into this job serving immigrants.
Driving home, transformed into a platinum blond, I am not thinking about my students, though. I’m thinking about wigs: wigs as costumes; wigs for women with cancer; plastic wigs; wigs from human hair, itchy wigs in winter; hot wigs in the summer; the black wig that transformed my co-teacher’s face into a stranger’s. I begin fiddling with the first line of a story about small-town teenagers with wigs.
Why create time for writing? Ideas for the story flood me with energy, distinct from the energy of teaching. I want to see language and stories not just as practical skills for surviving in America, but as the source of this feeling of creation. And I want to live in a world where people keep making stories and poems, regardless of where the words go after they are written.
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Karen Hausdoerffer lives and writes in Gunnison, Colorado, one of the coldest towns in the country. She teaches English as a Second Language to adults, and to families with small children. She also teaches writing and Spanish at Western State College. *******************************************
Mary MacGowan
Regardless of how busy I am, I write poems at the average couple's lovemaking rate: 1-2 per week. I do this not through sheer force of will but mostly out of curiosity. I keep writing and/or revising, day in, day out, because I don’t know how to not write and/or revise. Really. I mean it. My curiosity would probably, literally, kill me.
If I don’t write, then I won’t know what could have happened. And maybe, if I had chosen not to write that night or that day or that moment, then maybe – if I had written at that time – then maybe I would’ve gotten the next poem “right.” Maybe I would’ve been close. Maybe I would’ve surprised myself. Who knows what I could miss.
Maybe my poems get written inside of me, and they will stay there forever unless they become words on paper. And yes, maybe it’s okay to carry around unwritten poems for the rest of my life, but if that’s the case, then I won’t get to know those poems. And they are my biological parents – I can get through life all right never having met them – hey, my adoptive parents are very nice and loving. But I’m just so curious! I just want to know what they look like, and if they look anything at all like me. I think they do. I think they look like me. But first I have to put them on paper to find out.
If I start a new poem in the evening, I print it out and take it to bed with me where I read it and make changes before I fall asleep. Then, in the morning, I plod over to my computer to type the changes. Then I email the poem to myself so I can see it while I’m at work. Then I send it to Jacquie, my soul-poetry-mate.
I’ve never met Jacquie and she hasn’t met me, either. That was a joke. Considering my previous poetic inner voice confession, you probably think Jacquie is a another delusion. But she’s not, she’s a very real person I met (online) through the MFA in Writing program at Fairleigh Dickinson University. And that is not a joke. We email each other almost every day to exchange poems and stories. We are brutally honest with each other. We challenge and edit and get stuck and solve problems. We loudly celebrate success with typographic symbols and plenty of exclamation marks. And we will probably never meet in person, because our relationship would probably promptly lose its magic.
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Mary MacGowan's bio:
“Regardless of how busy I am, I write poems at the average couple’s lovemaking rate: 1-2 per week. I do this not through sheer force of will but mostly out of curiosity: What will I write next? And how close will I come to saying it right?”
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About Wigs
Karen Hausdoerffer
Wednesday, two o’clock, and my co-teacher and I pose in front of the thrift shop mirror, trying on used wigs. Platinum blond. Ink black. Hot-pink. These are the discount wigs, tangled and balding like animal pelts. Tonight we will play “The Price is Right” with our adult, English as a Second Language students, and we want hair to compliment our bridesmaid-dress costumes. By the time we purchase our selections, it’s past three, and time to prep the rest of my lesson. I’ve missed my writing time again.
After finishing my MFA, I began teaching ESL, thinking the flexible hours would give me space to write. But my writing times often fill with lesson planning. The potential hours of preparation expand limitlessly, and the rewards for good lessons come immediately. Tonight, when our students jump out of their seats shouting numbers in English, I’ll fill with adrenaline. On writing afternoons, I work alone, sending off stories to magazines I won’t hear back from for months.
I know why I let these writing afternoons slip away; the question is, why block off the times at all? When I was a teenager, I daydreamed that my writing would help people politically. Now I understand that even when I achieve publication, my audience is small and generally like-minded. If my goal is to help people, maybe I should pour myself exclusively into this job serving immigrants.
Driving home, transformed into a platinum blond, I am not thinking about my students, though. I’m thinking about wigs: wigs as costumes; wigs for women with cancer; plastic wigs; wigs from human hair, itchy wigs in winter; hot wigs in the summer; the black wig that transformed my co-teacher’s face into a stranger’s. I begin fiddling with the first line of a story about small-town teenagers with wigs.
Why create time for writing? Ideas for the story flood me with energy, distinct from the energy of teaching. I want to see language and stories not just as practical skills for surviving in America, but as the source of this feeling of creation. And I want to live in a world where people keep making stories and poems, regardless of where the words go after they are written.
*******************************************
Karen Hausdoerffer lives and writes in Gunnison, Colorado, one of the coldest towns in the country. She teaches English as a Second Language to adults, and to families with small children. She also teaches writing and Spanish at Western State College. *******************************************
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Telling Stories: An ESL Teacher and Recreation Therapist Write Back
Here is the Story of Itzel
Karen Hausdoerffer
Here are my students, learning English. Here is Lidia, 65 years old, from Santiago, Mexico, half an hour from the sea. Here is Julio, prep-cook at Club Med, wants to read T.S. Eliot in English. Here is Itzel, Indigenous Cora, mother of three. When she found her husband in bed with her niece, she kicked him out of the house and stayed in the U.S. Eduardo is not here; he heard a rumor that la migra was in town.
My co-teacher says, “Americans are so ignorant, and our students have incredible lives. You’re a writer—why don’t you tell their stories?”
And yet here am I, beginning another novel, with a white, middle-class, American protagonist. I have been told, “If we can’t empathize outside our own culture, even in fiction, there is no hope for human understanding.”
So why not write Itzel’s story? My first temptation is to make her a symbol of subaltern strength, this single, twenty-six-year-old woman struggling for her children against an ugly world. That would be a factual story. But a true story is never so easy. There is another piece that I would need to tell. When Itzel found her husband naked with her niece, she blamed thirteen-year-old Juliana for everything. “Men are weak,” she told me in Spanish. “We can’t expect any better of them. But Juliana was like a sister to me.” A sister pulled out of school at age twelve, sent from her home, entrusted with three preschoolers, paid only in food and lodging.
How do I tell that part of the story, embellished with detail, metaphor, epiphany? It’s an important story, and Itzel, with her two jobs and three children, does not have the time or resources to write it. But I ask myself so many questions before beginning: is there a difference between empathy and presumption? Can I trust my own motives as a writer? Could this be misread as racist? How can we judge Itzel, from a culture so different from ours? How can we not judge her, in a story about statutory rape? Is this whole endeavor invading my student’s privacy? My questions paralyze me, and I return to my white protagonist.
Eduardo is mistaken about the migra; they haven’t come to Gunnison all year. But his neighbors swear they saw the vans just this morning. Perhaps then, fear drives what stories we believe, what stories we tell, what stories we can’t bring ourselves to tell. Here is my remaining question, after all the rest grow quiet: which fears do I combat, and which fears do I let guide me?
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Karen Hausdoerffer lives and writes in Gunnison, Colorado, one of the coldest towns in the country. She teaches English as a Second Language to adults, and to families with small children. She also teaches writing and Spanish at Western State College.
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Nursing Home Stories
Mary MacGowan
I work full time at a nursing home. My title is Recreation Therapist, which means I plan and implement activities that are fun and stimulating for the residents on my unit – all of whom are at the end of life. Most people say that they couldn’t imagine doing my job, but for some reason I don’t mind it, which is probably why I do it. I’m paid crap for it, but I find my day relaxing, the benefits good and, best of all, I’ve had some awesome poems come out of it. In fact, I’ve begun a series based on nursing home experiences. The challenge is avoiding over-sentimentality, but so far I feel good about them.
My nursing home poems are often funny. I mean, come on. . . .There’s Libby, who gets angry at me as resident chorus director. She yells at me that everyone is whispering – but, of course, she is the one who is deaf. And there’s Basya, who eats a red bead and refuses to spit it out, and then eats apple pie while miraculously keeping the bead in her mouth, and then, finally, sweetly spits the bead into my hand while looking at me and tsk-tsk-ing like I am the crazy one. These images counteract the sadder ones, like a young man, Barry, who died while I sang for him – he was so thin his body was folded and folded until he was as thin as an origami peace crane.
*******************************************
Mary MacGowan's bio:
“Regardless of how busy I am, I write poems at the average couple’s lovemaking rate: 1-2 per week. I do this not through sheer force of will but mostly out of curiosity: What will I write next? And how close will I come to saying it right?”
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Monday, June 18, 2007
Swingshift Series continues with Mary MacGowan and Karen Hausdoerffer
Angry for Meetby Karen Hausdoerffer
The man meets the woman at the restaurant. Ten adults lean over the sentence in
their books, parsing the English phonemes.
“Meet?” Consuelo says. “Carne? Como steak?”
I picture the man in the story meating his date, smearing prime rib across her face and bare shoulders in some perverse American custom.
“Es diferente,” Georgina tells her classmates. “Pero se pronuncia igual.”
I write the two words on tag-board strips in big letters that smell like markers. I set the cards in front of Manuel. “Which one do you eat?” Manuel picks up M-e-a-t. “Meets the woman? Or meats the woman?” He chooses M-e-e-t. I tape both words to the wall.
Everyone copies meet into notebooks and guesses at definitions. Conocerse like nice to meet you or else reunirse, like have a meeting. Even without its homonym, meet has so many definitions that it does not translate directly into a single Spanish word, let alone into Cora, the indigenous language some students speak.
What about the past tense? Like the people in the story, Georgina met her husband at a restaurant. I cut the card, removing one e and reconstructing the word, met. But why m-e-t? They want to know. Why not m-e-e-t-e-d?
“Because,” I say, “English is a crazy language.”
Unlike children, the adults in my classes begin with mastery of at least one other language. English words are three times removed from the concepts they signify. The picture of meat becomes carne before it becomes m-e-a-t. My students teach me to see English from the outside, to see its rules as startling, rather than inevitable. As a writer, I so often float my hands over a keyboard without even seeing the letters. I like this chance to hold the words in my hands, pass them around the room, pronounce them until the sounds become meaningless even to me: meet, meet, meet, meet, meet. At times, the language opens up, revealing new metaphors invisible to me as a native speaker.
Manuel says, “Meat. Restaurant. Now I am angry.”
Georgina corrects him, “Not angry. Hungry.” She annunciates, so we hear the nasal bight of the ang, and the gut-longing of the ung.
I write these words on tag-board as well and ask everyone to practice with me: clutching our stomachs, we groan “hungry”; scowling, we shout, “angry.” In the spaces between the cards and the silences between the words, I feel the closeness of the concepts along with their signifiers. Anger. Hunger. Two desires that twist in the stomach.
At times, I am angry with English, the way it confounds my students, refusing to settle into regular patters of spelling and usage. But mainly, I am hungry for it, hungry for the language I have grown up in, the language I write in, the language I have ignored, as an insider. I want to devour English, like meat. I want to encounter it, and to join with it, like meet.
Taking Dictation
Mary MacGowan
My inner poetic voice is quite a character. He bosses me around (and yes, he is a he) and he forces me to write, even when I think I don’t have the time. How does he do this, you may ask? He makes me feel miserable until I cave in. I check my emails, do the dishes, bang around the house, all the while wondering what the heck’s wrong with me? And then, finally, it happens.
So I start to write, and this is me, writing: I lean – hard – into the air in front of me, listening carefully to take a kind of dictation from the voice of this entity. Sometimes I get the words right on the first try, but usually I have to “try out” this word or that word, one line or another, and then I ask my inner voice, “Is that it? Did I get it right?” My best poems are the ones that come through the clearest, like FM radio.
And yes, I have a name for him, but I’m not going to reveal that here because it might upset him and then he’ll leave me and then I’ll be on my own and I’ll never write again. And don’t be signing me up for multiple personality therapy, I won’t go. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with hearing this inner poetic voice; in fact, in the Mary MacGowan Universe he is a national hero.
Mary MacGowan's bio: “Regardless of how busy I am, I write poems at the average couple’s lovemaking rate: 1-2 per week. I do this not through sheer force of will but mostly out of curiosity: What will I write next? And how close will I come to saying it right?”
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Issue 2.3 | Now Available!
Blood Orange Review 2.3 is now here. Go check it out: http://www.bloodorangereview.com/.
Loss, regret, absence: these themes play a dominant role in this issue of Blood Orange Review. I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I am. I think the selection has less to do with editorial mindset than with a subterranean swell, a collective unconscious, the likes of which inspire David Warren, this issue’s featured artist. As an editor, it’s sometimes eerie to read the works of strangers and feel like you’re eavesdropping on part of a single conversation.
However, this issue is no morose dinner party; these writers are not in a funk. Though they might write of failed relationships, aging, and grief, they do so through the filter of humor, philosophy, religious imagery, culinary arts, nature, technology, and music. Everything they touch and everything that touches them becomes material to be converted into language and meaning.
The Swing Shift Writers Series will continue on Monday with posts from Karen Hausdoerffer and Mary MacGowan. You won't want to miss them!
Loss, regret, absence: these themes play a dominant role in this issue of Blood Orange Review. I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I am. I think the selection has less to do with editorial mindset than with a subterranean swell, a collective unconscious, the likes of which inspire David Warren, this issue’s featured artist. As an editor, it’s sometimes eerie to read the works of strangers and feel like you’re eavesdropping on part of a single conversation.
However, this issue is no morose dinner party; these writers are not in a funk. Though they might write of failed relationships, aging, and grief, they do so through the filter of humor, philosophy, religious imagery, culinary arts, nature, technology, and music. Everything they touch and everything that touches them becomes material to be converted into language and meaning.
The Swing Shift Writers Series will continue on Monday with posts from Karen Hausdoerffer and Mary MacGowan. You won't want to miss them!
Friday, June 15, 2007
Palpant Dilley on Eisenstein
Film & Diction
Andrea Palpant Dilley
Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is famous for his theory of filmic montage, the idea that meaning is made through the collision of images, through juxtaposition, and is therefore dialectical in how it “talks” to an audience. He tested his theory by editing together a number of sequences with the same neutral face and then showing it to a test audience: sequence number one showed the neutral face cut next to a bowl of hot oatmeal, and the audience interpreted the scene as expressing hunger; sequence number two showed the neutral face cut next to a crying baby and the scene was interpreted as frustration, etcetera. In other words—meaning came not just from one image, but from the particular syntax of a sequence. The way things were put together changed everything.
Eisenstein’s theory of montage applies more to writing than I ever understand early on. I’ve always had this terrible propensity to over-write, as all my writer-friends can attest. The very first poem I wrote in seventh grade is almost physically painful to read, five lines about a weeping willow tree as a metaphor for suicide composed with totally excessive, over-the-top language. I loved words. Big words. Polysyllabic words. Dramatic, hand-across-the-forehead-with-woe words.
What I have learned since seventh grade, by the simple refining power of time, editing and frank feedback, is that the non-diction aspects of writing are every bit as important as what words I choose to use. The way I put words together carries meaning, the medium is message, the nonverbal nod that means more sometimes than the word “yes.” And simplicity matters: the juxtaposition of two, plain monosyllabic words can be more thrilling to read than the most ornate word, just as well-framed, juxtaposing film images mean more than the most decorated set. As such my understanding of film editing has informed my literary editing. Now when I edit something I’ve written, I read for pacing and sequence and simplicity, I stand back and stare at the dialectical tension of ideas and moods and images all galloping across the page. I have learned to look at the big picture.
My seventh grade teacher managed somehow to look at the big picture, too. She wrote at the top of my weeping willow suicide poem, with the mad kindness of a creative writing teacher, “Great job, you have a knack for writing. Keep at it.” And so I did.
Andrea Palpant Dilley
Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is famous for his theory of filmic montage, the idea that meaning is made through the collision of images, through juxtaposition, and is therefore dialectical in how it “talks” to an audience. He tested his theory by editing together a number of sequences with the same neutral face and then showing it to a test audience: sequence number one showed the neutral face cut next to a bowl of hot oatmeal, and the audience interpreted the scene as expressing hunger; sequence number two showed the neutral face cut next to a crying baby and the scene was interpreted as frustration, etcetera. In other words—meaning came not just from one image, but from the particular syntax of a sequence. The way things were put together changed everything.
Eisenstein’s theory of montage applies more to writing than I ever understand early on. I’ve always had this terrible propensity to over-write, as all my writer-friends can attest. The very first poem I wrote in seventh grade is almost physically painful to read, five lines about a weeping willow tree as a metaphor for suicide composed with totally excessive, over-the-top language. I loved words. Big words. Polysyllabic words. Dramatic, hand-across-the-forehead-with-woe words.
What I have learned since seventh grade, by the simple refining power of time, editing and frank feedback, is that the non-diction aspects of writing are every bit as important as what words I choose to use. The way I put words together carries meaning, the medium is message, the nonverbal nod that means more sometimes than the word “yes.” And simplicity matters: the juxtaposition of two, plain monosyllabic words can be more thrilling to read than the most ornate word, just as well-framed, juxtaposing film images mean more than the most decorated set. As such my understanding of film editing has informed my literary editing. Now when I edit something I’ve written, I read for pacing and sequence and simplicity, I stand back and stare at the dialectical tension of ideas and moods and images all galloping across the page. I have learned to look at the big picture.
My seventh grade teacher managed somehow to look at the big picture, too. She wrote at the top of my weeping willow suicide poem, with the mad kindness of a creative writing teacher, “Great job, you have a knack for writing. Keep at it.” And so I did.
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