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Podcasting and plotzing

Sunday, November 3, 2024

It’s been a pretty intense year, writing-wise, since I last posted. I visited Texas A&M in Texarkana, where ENTRY LEVEL: STORIES was chosen as the All-Campus Read for 2023. I attended my first Jane Austen North America general meeting. I went to AWP in Kansas City, where I primarily just hung out with friends, people-watched, sold out my signing at the Autumn House Press booth for the second year in a row, and ate a bunch of BBQ. I also went to Barrelhouse’s most excellent Conversations and Connections in D.C. with the effervescent Corinna Makris and met a bunch of new friends, as well as giving my first Plot Candy presentation (I’ve given it in different forms but I’ve been refining it to its current state).

As well as continuing on with This Thing We Do on Zoom most Monday nights at 7:30 pm Central (IYKYK), I’ve set goals to send out my author newsletter on a regular basis and be more active in building/nurturing the writing community here in my little neck of Wisconsin, including hosting the first reading in eons at the community arts organization where I volunteer regularly.

Another of my goals was to read at least 5 new books (Long Covid Brain has been very bad for my eyeballs and concentration levels so I’ve been mostly listening to audio books while driving, but I did notice that I’ve been more able to read traditional books again over the summer, so I’m making up for lost time now) as well as update my author newsletter at least 12 times this year. I’m on course for that (and well over my book goal already), but the cost for my newsletter is that this blog doesn’t get much love.

It’s been a pretty intense year outside of writing too — we gained a pet, we lost a family member, we lost a pet, a parent had a heart attack (but has recovered), we lost more family members, family members lost more pets, and surprise, we bought our old house back.

So, I’m a bit exhausted, to say the least, and that’s before all the election business. Hopefully you’ll forgive this reprise of the most recent newsletter.

Unbelievably, Entry Level: Stories has been out in the world for two whole years! Crazy business!

Speaking of anniversaries, happy 15th anniversary to Electric Literature, which should be in every indoorsy reader’s daily check in. I was very honored to see that my short story “Ghosting” is one of the fifteen most popular stories on the site of all time. If my math is correct, it was the fifth most read piece (in just two years!) in the site’s fifteen years of history. Gracie has come so far, despite being such an unlikeable narrator.

“Ghosting” was a super tough story to get published, to be honest. I kept trying and trying and trying. I think it was declined over 30 times. Then the first time I worked with Dan Chaon in workshop, I submitted it for discussion, trying to figure out what the actual problem was. It was missing a very short scene, in his opinion, and also, that workshop began our friendship.

Dan actually came up with the name Entry Level for my collection, which was so much better than my working title “Shitty Jobs.”

The story did finally find a home in the lovely print journal Non-Binary Review, the Alice in Wonderland theme issue. I had a line in the story about the Red Queen, but of course the story overall has allusions to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party too, and growing and shrinking. It was a good accidental fit to the theme. And then when Kristen Arnett suggested it for the Electric Literature feature, Doug Julien at Texas A&M read it, bought the book and then chose it for the all campus read, which then involved me going to Texarkana last year, so I got a ton of new friends from Texarkana too.

For an unlikeable narrator, Gracie has done a lot of good in my life. She might be difficult to love but I love her dearly.

Speaking of friends I love dearly, the always amazing and gracious Tonya Todd asked me to return for her podcast special on Banned Books. Even despite me crying on camera a little bit when talking about Charlotte’s Web last year.

This year, she asked me to be part of the discussion on Kazuo Ishiguro’s absolutely stunner Never Let Me Go, one of my favorite books of all time. I studied this book during an independent study during my Masters program as I was developing my study on unreliable narrators, and it was the seed that brought me to make “unreliable narrators” a primary part of my doctoral studies. It very much is a touchstone for me when I think about how voice, perspective and language drive the reader’s emotional response to a narrative, and I was thrilled to take part in this discussion.

One of the delightful things that Tonya does with these podcasts is we have NO idea who else will be on the discussion with us, so I was surprised and delighted to join Kat Fieler and Brandon Mead on this discussion. I almost never rewatch things I participate in (I hate my voice, my hair is doing SOMETHING BIZARRE, and I often regret my face on Zoom calls) but I’ve rewatched this one. Tonya has put together an entire series in a single week, and if you haven’t subscribed to Tonya’s channel, be sure to do so. I can personally vouch for many of these guests!

I couldn’t get enough of Tonya and her Femme On podcast, so I agreed to record another episode where I had the chance to rant about a bunch of my literary Inconvenient Truths, including Plot Candy, my intense loathing of Percy Shelley (and William Godwin for that matter), my love of The Cure’s Disintegration, and a bunch of other randomness that Tonya and I get after when we’ve been chatting for more than ten minutes. I cherish our friendship so much and if you listen to this, you’ll start to realize that we’ve both forgotten that we were being recorded about twenty minutes in (when all the f-bombs start dropping).

In this episode, Tonya’s guest Dr. Wendy Wimmer (author of the short story collection Entry Level) explains Plot Candy, reveals her discovery of Mr. Collins as a salty snack, and goes on a Ria-style Rant about her beef with Percy Bysshe Shelley.

https://www.femmeon.show/episodes/femme-on-creatives-wendy-wimmer

And here’s a link to that banned books episode — great stuff here if you love Kazuo Ishiguro too!

https://www.femmeon.show/episodes/banned-books-conversations-never-let-me-go-by-kazuo-ishiguro-2005

An opinion* you did not request

My favorite plant-based dips, in no particular order

  • Bitchin’Sauce in original, pesto and Bombay
  • Trader Joe’s Ultra Smooth lemon hummus
  • Cherry salsa from Door County
  • Garlicky guacamole
  • Toum (if this were a ranked list, this might be number one)
  • Extra garlicky Sabra hummus
  • Vio-Life French Onion Dip
  • Anything made with Hellman’s plant-based Mayo (which is better than the regular, I swear)
  • Peanut Butter in all forms
  • Bean dip with extra red sauce
  • Hidden Valley plant-based ranch dressing
  • Pesto made with nutritional yeast instead of parm

*I am not plant-based as a rule but I realized that I eat plant-based far more frequently than I realized.

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Where I’m From with Alyson Shelton

Monday, October 16, 2023

I had the great honor of being asked to contribute to Alyson Shelton’s Where I’m From series. Here’s the video, especially if you enjoy talking about cheese curds, genealogy and inspiration.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8f2YsbmTWE8%3Fsi%3DrKUxjxffeR0R-zQO%26start%3D1
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Happy pub day, Entry Level!

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

It’s sold out of Amazon and Barnes and Noble on pub day! What a weird and great problem to have. Your indie bookstores should have lots of copies available, and of course, there’s always e-books!

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How to get an editor to read beyond Page One

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Ugh, it’s so hard, isn’t it?

You pour your heart into the page and then you receive repeated “no thank you” emails from editors and agents who clearly must have not missed your beautiful and lyrical words. Is it you? Is your breath bad? Does your manuscript have BO?

It might be your first page.

And we’ve all been there — we’ve all opened a book that seemed boring or lackluster in the opening chapter. Usually the thing that keeps us reading might be the buzz from the literary world or maybe a friend who pressed the book into your hands and said “You’re going to love this, trust me.” But a fresh submission doesn’t have that street team whispering into the agent’s ear. Your first page has to seduce, woo, tantalize and show the reader what the rest of your book is about.

Editors and agents are busy people and they receive submissions in the THOUSANDS. Just simple math shows that they physically have no time to read to the end of each and every one of those hopeful submissions. When I read submissions, I can usually tell by the fourth page that I’m going to keep reading until the end, and if something hasn’t hooked me by the end of page two, it’s unlikely that I’ll keep going.

Unfair? Maybe. Realistic? Definitely.

There’s got to be something special to keep them on your submission. Not just your hopeful expression and your open heart. If they’re not making it beyond page 1, they’ll never get to your character’s amazing sense of humor nor your compelling plot twist.

The first page is generally where we start drafting — but sometimes it’s not where your story actually starts, and that’s a problem. Occasionally we start building in back story that’s going to be crucial for the reader to understand for future elements.

Consider the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill. It’s a pretty simple tale — two people went up a hill to get water (why? We don’t know — they just did), one was terribly injured in a fall (what caused the fall? Dunno. Was it Jack’s fault? Jill’s fault? Dunno) and the other “came tumbling after” (what does that mean — was Jill hurt as well? Was she upset? Was she doing gymnastics? Dunno). One writer might draft this story beginning with Jack and Jill’s relationship — are they married? Are they siblings? Coworkers on the water reclamation project? What’s the story there? Perhaps it makes sense to tell the story of Jack and Jill meeting for the first time? Maybe it’s a meet cute. Another writer might start the story entirely differently. Perhaps we must explain why Jack and Jill’s father asked them to climb up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Perhaps he’s ill and can’t do it himself. Still another writer might choose to begin the story at the bottom of the hill after they’ve fallen, with Jack suffering his traumatic brain injury and Jill looking to stop the bleeding.

While all of these stories would be essentially the same tale, the first pages have varying degrees of urgency and conflict. If we start with their father, the reader will assume the father is the main character — that it’s his story. If we start with Jack and Jill meeting for the first time, the reader understands that this is the story of their relationship. If we start with the bloody aftermath of the fall, the story is entirely different and entirely focused on Jill responding to a victim’s emergency while their relationship, the need for water, the hill and everything else will take a backseat.

One of the most elemental parts of writing is that the first draft exists to for the writer to tell themself the story. All subsequent drafts are for the writer to tell the reader the story. What exists on page one (or more reasonably, pages one through twenty or more) is very likely going to look FAR DIFFERENT in the first draft than the final draft. This is not to say that those first draft first pages are useless — they performed a very necessary task in that they helped the writer find their way to the story they are trying to tell. Much like a brick layer constructs a wooden form to support masonry while the mortar cures, the writer needs those pages for a time until they aren’t needed anymore.

And that’s the rub. Identifying what isn’t needed anymore. Because you’ve read and reread your story so many times that it becomes difficult to see that the mortar has firmed up and the wooden supports aren’t necessary. In fact, they’re getting in the way.

Your first page must be directly relevant to the story — the bucket of water is the least interesting thing in the story of Jack and Jill, unless it is the last bucket of water in a village that is dying of thirst, at which point, Jack breaking his crown is actually fairly low stakes in comparison to the greater need. The hill is a physical obstacle — it COULD be an interesting element to the story if that’s the thing that causes the fall. But if the story begins with the day Jill is born and given her name, we have a very different value proposition than Jill trying to carry Jack’s bloody corpse down the hill. Most editors will not make it past page two of the childbirth story.

Additionally, the first page must have a hint of conflict. If we opened with a four page description of all the people who lived in Jack and Jill’s quaint village, a description of the clock tower and the gazebo and the farmer’s market, our editor is going to give up before they ever turn the page. So what, they’ll think, and they’d be right.

I’m teaching a free workshop on the tricks of writing a winning first page. It’s hosted by the Friends of the Brown County Library’s UntitledTown and it’s open to everyone. We’ll go through first pages from literature as well as real stories I’ve accepted during my tenure as fiction editor at Witness Magazine — and a few examples that don’t work. We’ll also talk about the common first page mistakes that writers of every ability frequently make — and why they’re incredibly difficult to pull off well.

Register here.

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Let’s fill the Little Free Libraries in rural and underserved communities #nifty50books

Friday, June 11, 2021

Hey, it’s my birthday. Let’s buy presents for readers who need books.

Happy summer! So, it’s my birthday this month. And while I’m struggling to age gracefully, I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of legacy and the marks we make on our communities and this planet.

If you know me at all, you know how much I value the power of a good story. Stories help us see the people we are destined to become. When I think about the way my personality has been shaped throughout the years, I know much of it was due to my friends Charlotte the spider, two rabbits who lived on Watership Down named Hazel and Fiver, pioneer girls like Caddie Woodlawn and Laura Ingalls, a motorcycle-riding mouse named Ralph, and a British girl named Lucy who hid inside a wardrobe and returned a queen. Stories teach us how to imagine and identify with people who aren’t like us, and they also teach us how to recognize and appreciate and accept our strengths and ourselves.

What I’d like most of all is to put a story someone needs most into their hands, so for my birthday, my biggest wish is to give books to people who need them. I’m asking you to send me books that I’ll then place in the Little Free Libraries throughout Northeastern Wisconsin. I’ll target boxes in areas that are far from libraries or in communities where children historically don’t have as much access to their own books.

My goal is simple — put amazing books in places where kids and young adults can access and read them with no barriers to the books. It’s been a tough 16 months — let’s spread some stories to help everyone feel like they’re not alone. Let’s plant some seeds of empathy, of compassion, of understanding. Let’s fill the summer and their lives with stories.

I’ve curated a list of books appealing to all ages and themes. I’ve prioritized books that look like my community, including BIPOC characters, LGTBQ authors and themes, strong girls and non-traditional or chosen families and non-English language translations. To do the heavy lifting (literally) I’ve partnered with my friends at northeastern Wisconsin’s book store and community gem Lion’s Mouth Books who will hold the books at the store for me to pick up. The link to the list of suggested books is here, but also, feel free to add books you love too. Please notate your order with Wendy’s Nifty 50 Book Drive in your order so the staff knows to hold them.

If you have your own books, you can also help support my initiative by filling the Little Free Libraries in communities that need diverse books near your home, or you can IM me for an address to send books to, and I’ll do the distribution here in Northeastern Wisconsin. You can even include your wishes of encouragement and donation inside the books you send.

My goal is to collect 50 books and I need your help. I know this is a big ask and a big exciting initiative. I hope you’ll join me and make something awesome happen this summer and book it to the Little Free Libraries!

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PhDffffffpbhbh

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

I am now more than half way through my PhD.

I also did not pass my first attempt at testing out of the “language reading proficiency” requirement. Half way might be longer than it seems.

In other news, in 2016, I started a thing, along with a co-founder friend. We asked some other friends to join us, and then asked a few people who weren’t friends yet. It was pretty good. Then in 2017, we did it again. Right after that, I realized that there was no way I could continue to coordinate a book festival for 4000 people when I was a mere 1850 miles away. Something had to go, and it was going to be my sanity if I stayed. So I exited, as did my co-founder. I’d like to think we left that baby in good hands.

This year, all I have to think about is my school work. Or that was the plan. Then one parent got sick. Then another parent got sick. Then an ankle broken. Then my landlord decided he wanted to sell the house and oh, hey, can you move out in 35 days even though your lease isn’t up until July, k thnx bai.

In about two weeks, I’m heading to Portland for AWP, where I have a reading on Wednesday with the good people from Zoetic Press, and I am organizing a panel to talk about how my co-founder and I pulled off a major literary festival in less than six months (hint: we had a lot of help), which will be on Thursday at 10:30 am in the Conference Center Level 1. I hope you can make it. I’ll also be at the Witness table, pulling my time as Fiction Editor of that fantastic literary journal, generally on Friday and Saturday morning. I’ll also be at the Witness/ALR co-sponsored reading on Friday night at Paddy’s. I also will be at the Believer party at 4:30 on Thursday although I don’t have specifics for that, so I guess ask around or ask at the Believer table if you want to get in on that action. After that, I’ll be presenting at the Las Vegas Writers Conference in early May (there’s still lots of tickets available and this is going to be a REALLY good time). At that conference I have two sessions: One is how to submit to literary journals on Saturday, and then the other is held twice: once on Friday and again on Saturday called “The Magic Pill for Writer’s Block”. This is an encore for the class I taught at Barrelhouse’s Conversations and Connections in Pittsburgh this fall — it was standing room only, which kind of blew me away, but it looked like we had a lot of people who enjoyed what they produced, so hopefully magic happens in reliable increments!

All this to say, thank GOD I am not also trying to organize a literary and book festival at the same time! Phew!

I updated the publications page, with new work published at Barrelhouse and Waxwing, as well as a reprint at Evansville Review. I also instituted an Events thing so you can track my movements, much like a tagged shark in the clear waters off the coast of Baja. Only not as streamlined or as interested in eating seals, but otherwise just like that.

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Business time

Saturday, October 21, 2017

 

Some things:

  • The short story I mentioned in the previous blog post was “Ghosting” and it’s up on the publications page for its appearance in Non-Binary Review.
  • My flash story “Feogin” placed in the Syntax and Salt autumn flash fiction contest. It will be published on 10/30 and I’ll update the link when that happens. If you were at Neon Lit in Las Vegas’s Writer’s Block bookstore last month, you already heard the story so you don’t have to read it, plus you heard me pronounce “Feogin” and “Eyjafjallajökull” which I managed to do without having a complete systemic breakdown.
  • Since the last blog post, I co-founded and held an entire book and author festival! Margaret Atwood! Sherman Alexie! Dan Chaon! Ben Percy! A.S. King! Kate Harding! Tom McAllister! Wendy Flipping McClure!!! So many amazing authors! We had over 80 authors and something like 75ish different events on the schedule and it was entirely free for participants and then I was pretty sure that no one was going to come, maybe seven people, and then like 6000 people showed up and it was pretty awesome.
  • And then I slept for a month.
  • And then we moved to Las Vegas because I’m the newest Black Mountain Institute PhD fellow in fiction. That’s right, I’m doing the grad school thing along with teaching and also living in Las Vegas which is very weird and has scorpions and a terrible asshole who shot 500 people at a concert but so many kind and good and generous people who make up for all of the scorpions and dry heat and assholes.
  • Every day I am so grateful that I made the decision to be part of UNLV’s writing program. I have already seen a difference in my productivity and reading. Plus one of my classes is all Jane Austen all the time, and I can’t believe they are paying me to do this stuff and I can’t believe I get to hang out with these tremendously talented people. When I made the rather drastic decision to put my house in Wisconsin on the market and put all of my stuff in a moving truck and then get on a plane with my dog and cat to go to a place that involves a lot of sweating and is the metaphor of fake experiences and excess and more or less the antithesis of everything the upper Midwest represents, it was a real leap of “Oh well, how bad can it be” but now that I’m here and seeing the amazing things that are happening in this community and getting to hang out with my students who are a cross-section of America (UNLV is one of the most diverse campuses in the entire nation — number 2 last year and probably number 1 this year), I am the embodiment of grateful. It’s not often that you can actually feel yourself becoming a better writer and a better person, but this is one of those times.
  • Plus, I now live in a place where there is a Trader Joe’s less than 10 minutes away. Can I get an amen?
  • Also, part of my job is selecting and curating the fiction in Witness literary journal, so you should totally send me something awesome to read.
  • The photo above was my office in my house in Wisconsin. I miss it every day.
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Notes from writer camp III

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Pastoral

 

I spent my summer vacation with a bunch of really amazing people named Evee the Pokemon and Super Fantastic Bubble Plastic and Scrounge and Lady Lazuli in the Hudson Valley region of New York. We ate a lot of hippy food, drew until our hands hurt and then laughed and read aloud and laughed some more and then took a nap. It was a good time.

I was there because Dan Chaon and Lynda Barry let me come along and be their classroom assistant. Or, as Lynda called us, a classroom pixie. Basically it’s the best part of teaching — picking up class work and making dozens upon dozens of tape circles and then whispering about how much we were craving beef, because at this camp, there was no beef. As it turned out, that’s actually totally livable — although I did miss coffee an awful lot until I found out that they sold decent coffee in the cafe, and then, well, dear reader, I could have lived there forever, in my 10×12 little private room with zero air conditioning and wifi that really was more of a whisperfi and the groundhog who lived under the front porch whom I named Mister Tubbins. Writer camp was the best. This was so so so a million times better than the last time I went to Writer Camp. And kind of silly that Lynda and I live in the same state and end up going to these other states to be writer camping. Or glamping, as the case was at Writer Camp. Again, best vacation ever.

As with all things, if Lynda Barry asks you to do her a favor, you do it. Whatever it is. Give me a kidney? Sure, Lynda Barry, here’s a kidney. You want a matched set? I’ll be over here in this tub of ice, happy as can be.

While there, I was alerted to the acceptance of the short story that I wrote the last time I was in Dan’s workshop — and the story I workshopped the time before that just found a home in Zoetic Press’ Non-Binary review — so clearly I need to hook my wagon to the Chaon/Barry party and be content to follow wherever they may lead because it’s working for me.

Work continues on the novel. Still. The same novel. Okay, I wrote two other ones right now too, but I need to get this asshole out the door already. It has overstayed its welcome. Out the door, you! Unfortunately, I’m in the weeds of the final quarter, basically rewriting the entire shit and works. Which I should just do rather than continuing to putz with the first half until it is just so. It will never be just so. This is the problem with writing on computers, Lynda Barry says. This is why you write by hand. Using ink. For real. A Flair pen is where it’s at, according to Lynda Barry. She is wise.

And now school has started up again — I’m teaching, again, even though I swore that I’d spend fall working on my novel and my terribly busy day job that continues to consume my every waking thought but keeps a roof over our head and allows me to say “Fuck it all” and buy a fifth row seat for Hamilton while in New York. Because who needs to make rent? Not this kid. (I’m joking. We don’t rent.) However, it sounds very much like the company I work at for my day job is currently in the end stages of life, the musicians pulling up deck chairs to play while the boat sinks. My plan: Like Leo and Kate, I’m going to stay on this boat for as long as I can. And also teach this fall because if I end up not having a job all fall, I’m going to be mad, plus it’s my favorite class to teach. And also, maybe sign up to take the GRE to finish my PhD. Or just finish the damn novel and get it published because really. Really.

I finally put a publications page up — it was about 85% complete when I got frustrated with the formatting and just hit publish. This is why Lynda Barry is right — I should really just use a Flair pen.

But then I couldn’t talk to you, fair reader. Hello. Are you there? I enjoy you, just as you are.

 

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Not Writing time

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Wendy Wimmer Stars French horn

I have a funny little OCD problem: I can’t concentrate if resources are being wasted. For instance, if the light is left on in the bathroom, I’m incensed. I will think of nothing else until I can turn it off. Similarly, the dishwasher can drive me to distraction. We live in an old house, the kind with a kitchen that can fit on the head of a pin, and as such, our dishwasher is the kind that you roll over to the sink and hook up through a long hose and an elaborate series of janky blocades that we then install so that the leaky faucet won’t cause water to flow Niagara-style down onto our hardwood floors. Once you hook it up, you physically turn on the water full blast on hot, where it then stays “on” until someone turns it off. In theory, there’s some kind of mechanism inside the dishwasher that stops the water from flowing freely, except that doesn’t stop the water from dripping at the hose/faucet connection NOR does it stop the water from flowing, Victoria Falls-style from the point at which the faucet connects to the sink. Yes, there are more problems at play here than our microscopic kitchen, but basically it just means that the dishwasher must be babysat like an incontinent bulldog and the instant that the dishwasher moves from the rinse cycle into the heated dry cycle, the faucet must be turned off, lest all havoc ensue.

My entire life, I suspect, is spent in avoidance of ensuing havoc. I firmly believe that havoc is waiting for all of us, just around the next corner.

And yet, with all of my attention to the wasted utilities, I think nothing of days and weeks and months passing by, with my little creative projects languishing. I have a friend named Jen Larsen who published a real book last month. A real and honest book! I am possibly mentioned in that book.  In fact, this friend of mine was in shit-you-not People Magazine, along with a photograph that was taken by yours truly (but not credited, thus alas I am not ultra-famous by association, my backwards name was not pressed up against Jennifer Aniston on the very next page). It is a very very good book. You should go buy three copies at the very least (you need one for yourself and two to pass along to friends who you absolutely will realize must read that book.) In fact, buy it from your independent bookstore and if they don’t have it on the shelves, ask them why the hell not and explain that you want to buy at least three copies and you intend to tell your neighbors to do the very same immediately.

It’s a little intimidating having fancy writer friends, who do things like write books, who actually know how to write books without crying in a closet.

I had a bit of a meltdown, dear reader, I confess. It happened a few months ago. I declared to the dear boy that I wasn’t meant to be a writer, not the fancy kind of writer anyway, and that maybe being a tech journalist was Good Enough. It certainly pays better than being a fancy writer, so why do I get all of these inflated ideas about being a fancy fiction writer anyway? Maybe I’d just learn to play golf better instead. And he took me by the shoulders and said “Cut it out.” And then I said I would cut it out, and at some point, I started cutting it out and finished the first draft of my novel.

Then I took a month off from thinking about it, took a short story workshop with the awesome guys at Barrelhouse (which you should also do, immediately. Look, you come here to read a blog post for free, you’re going to get a few homework assignments. I think that’s a fair trade) and then Christmas and New Year’s happened and then I went on the world’s longest press junket and then I sat back down, opened up my novel and thought “Well, fuck.”

It turns out that the second verse is very much not like the first. Second drafting? That’s apparently where the hard work happens. Man, I conveniently forget about that all the time. Thus, this is what I’m working on now. I realized that my life is too busy for novelizing. I realized that when things get in the way, I tend to push my creative work aside and let the rest of it wash over me. Something drastic was called for.

So I took a drastic step: I evaluated everything that was Not Writing time and decided what was essential and what wasn’t. I stepped out of all but the most crucial social engagements. I chose to quit a writer’s group that would have required attention to one short story a week. I stopped doing pottery. That one hurt the most, actually. I really enjoy doing pottery, even though it’s such a predictable middle-aged woman thing to do. It takes a lot of time, though: It eats up at least one night a week and most of the time, an entire Saturday. Two entire chunks of personal time that weren’t being spent maintaining crucial relationships, keeping my clothes clean or any other of the crucial time sucks that writers fight with on a daily basis.

The first 8000 words of my novel went out to three trusted readers for a sanity check/organizational questions first read. They gave feedback (well, two of them did) and now I’m onto the second draft. If you don’t hear from me for awhile, that’s where I am. Drafting like a motherfucker.

Until then, my short story “Where She Went” is now live at the fantastic Per Contra for your reading enjoyment.

 

 

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What I did on my summer vacation

Sunday, July 29, 2012

 

This summer, I have been awash in the fiction world. At least, as awash as I ever get, which is probably a bit more like a Wet Nap dabbed lightly over my brow.

In June, I attended Writer Camp in Indiana once more. Last year’s was so magical that I couldn’t resist applying, especially when Lynda Barry and Dan Chaon were up for return appearances. Also, Jean Thompson! Whose writing is near and dear to my heart and whose sharp prose I admire immensely. It was touch and go, however, with scheduling because the small conference had the annoying reality of scheduling Lynda Barry’s workshop at the same time as Jean Thompson’s workshop. I mean, I’ve worked with Lynda Barry before and she is amazing and seriously, up there next to Mr. Rogers in my sacred shrine of human deities, but Jean Thompson? How could anyone decide between these two fantastic writers? Unpossible!

I made a rash decision when I applied, deciding that it would be foolish to forsake a new experience just to bask in the magic that is Lynda Barry once more. It’s a bit like feasting in front of starving people, after all, to soak up all the Lynda Barry awesome for myself and leaving none for others. I put the X in the box for Jean Thompson’s workshop, with Lynda Barry’s workshop as my second choice, and then put no further thought into the matter. I think perhaps I was hoping they would change the conference schedule to fit my mental anguish and offer the Barry workshop during a more convenient time.  For me, of course.

They didn’t. And while it was painful to see those people hunched over their spirals in Lynda’s workshop (including Mr. Chaon himself) while I passed by and turned into our cramped little conference room, I do not regret this decision.

I do, however, regret that there was a time slot of the Writer Camp agenda given soley to the purpose of crafting journals. Not writing journals, dear reader, making them. With glue. By folding papers. I mean, I know I jokingly call it Writer Camp but arts and crafts? Really? With all due respect to the organizers and the leader of that class, it was heartbreaking that journal making had the luxury of a time period all to itself while Lynda Barry and Jean Thompson were fighting it out, gladiator-style, on the agenda. And I’m sure that there was some grand master plan of evil genius (because again, I am greedy and I recognize this), but still. Gluing stuff. I fled that class in the middle of the first meeting, I’m afraid. While I found it interesting on a Martha Stewart level, I had taken an entire week’s vacation from my day job to focus on writing fiction and I decided not to spend precious minutes of that time gluing shit to cardboard.

In the Thompson workshop, my story (“Where She Went”) was the first on deck for Day One. I got fantastic feedback from Jean and helpful comments from the class, specifically from a few individuals who turned out to have enjoyable treats for workshop themselves. It’s so funny how that always happens, but I guess it makes sense.

As things always happen, I had submitted the story to a few places when I was getting it cleaned up to send with my application for Thompson’s workshop. And last week, that older version of the story was chosen by the fantastic Per Contra. I have since sent them the tweaked post-Thompson version, which I think is tighter and more agreeable.

Which reminds me: I need to update my BASS database, as well as run some new numbers on the Top BASS Markets and whatnot. I just got the new BASS last week (Shout out to the rock star Roxane Gay! Can’t wait to read your story! Congratulations on hitting the big show!) That will be forthcoming, although admittedly it’s on the backseat until I come to a procrastination point in the novels that I’m working on. I’m also cleaning up my published and unpublished short stories for publication in a collection, sort of a one-two punch with the novel. And it’s already the end of July, which is distressing, as I’d like to have everything set by the end of the year. Oh plans, plans, they are such attractive things.

Which reminds me (part two): the enchanting Paper Darts (see my AWP blog post) has selected my first ever flash fiction story “Lower Midnight”. I was able to read about a paragraph and a half during one of the many Writer Camp readings and gave a plug for Paper Darts to the conference attendees, sight unseen, but seeing it published is even better than I expected. I am in love with the illustrations. Gorgeous work. I bow at the feet of the illusionists behind Paper Darts and moan “I’m not worthy!” and then scuttle off to the corner to stroke the curly smoke pictures when no one is looking.

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