Lisa Romeo Writes

When Metaphors Run Amok

2009-07-10T10:25:00.007-04:00

A while back, when I was moving from journalism and public relations writing to creative nonfiction, I was worried that I was not handy enough with metaphor, with imagery, with a dozen other literary devices utilized, and expected, in more literary work.

I did learn.

Still, in the back of my head is always a journalism-based sensibility. I ask myself if a fact-based description can do the job, and if the answer is yes, I try not to deploy anything more. Can a sensitive but literal passage about say, an older-than-average father and his keen but unathletic son discussing baseball strategy in a dugout, really be improved upon by describing the scene with a suggestion of a decorated field general advising a scared new recruit in a foxhole? Often, the answer is no.

Following the excellent suggestion of a former writing mentor, I question every use of a metaphor or suggestive image, each simile and allegory, all the crafty doo-dads I sometimes tend to throw into a first draft and ask, is this really necessary? Does it add to the pleasure of reading, or simply strive to impress the reader, even slow down the flow because it asks the reader to do a little too much in the way of mental gymnastics? Is it original?

I think this serves me well.

I do kill a lot of “little darlings.” Good riddance.

I’m reminded of this because occasionally I read something – an essay or an entire book -- which suggests that it may have first come to life as an assignment in a writing craft class in which students practice their skill with metaphor and imagery, by over-exaggerating.

A novel I read the other day was just this kind of book. Although by the half-way mark I wanted to toss it on the floor and cry Uncle!, it was in fact a terrific story, with rich characters, percolating dialogue, a sense of urgency. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that the author’s constant use of metaphor and imagery – new ones seemed to sprout in every paragraph – was getting in the way. I found myself not fully engaged in what was happening, because instead I was watching for how the author was going to describe it. And, being annoyed that this was overshadowing the experience of the book.

Something else too. Getting through this book made me feel like a terrible reader -- not intelligent enough, creative enough, imaginative enough, not literary enough. It was as if the author was saying, in almost every other sentence: see if you can keep up with my writerly prowess.

I’m not an expert of course in how and when and why to use metaphor and its literary cousins. I suppose the answer is different for each piece of writing. I do know, however, when I reach the saturation point as a reader. Or, was I just was not the “right” reader for this particular book?

I know there are ultra literary novels, even experimental ones, in which the writing matters more than the story -- craft above context -- and it may be that I simply don’t have the patience for them. But this book didn’t feel that way; it felt like a novel trying to tell its story in spite of what on the surface appears to be inspired writing.

If nothing else, however, this reading experience served as a potent reminder to me about the fine lines which exist in a piece of writing, separating something terrific when done in moderation, and – as my mother used to say – too much of a good thing.

Writer at Home: Working, working, day and...oh, forget it.

2009-07-07T11:40:00.007-04:00

Yes, it's just a Tuesday in early July, and I'm working, working, working day and....oh, forget it. Today, the pull of the 52-inch TV is just too much, and even if I don't quite understand why I'm so drawn to it, I've decided not to fight it: To the couch then, with the laptop. Meanwhile, I'll pass on a few items of interest...

> Those who wish to get feedback on their work from qualified published writers, but would like to do so on a controlled hourly basis instead of committing to a more structured and expensive multi-week course, ought to check out the affordably priced Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions.

> Just in case you think you've written a really terrible sentence (or in my case, when you are absolutely sure you have), take heart. At least your prose didn't win this contest.

> Great guest post over at literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog, with plenty of insider info on how books get sold -- not to the public, but to bookstores. Definitely worth a read.

> When a writer needs a freelance editor for his or her manuscript, here are some excellent tips on how to choose one, from acquisitions editor and freelance developmental editor Alan Rinzler.

> Looking for reviews of a particular book and not especially interested in wading through what Google has to offer? Check out Metacritic, where all of the major reviews for any book are grouped, sorted, annotated, and linked.

> If you are female and a writer, you need to get involved over at SheWrites.

Write. Publish in Good Company. Read.

2009-07-04T13:21:00.008-04:00

I was updating my writing/teaching CV, which turned into a half-day project; not because I have so many interesting new accomplishments to add, but because each time I pulled a magazine or journal off the shelf to check the issue date in which my work appeared, and every time I clicked to verify that a link to published work was indeed still working, I would find myself reading the work of fellow contributors.

How often do writers take the time to read what surrounds our own work – whether in a print or online venue? Certainly we make it a practice to read a magazine, journal, or website deeply before submitting to be sure it would be a good fit for our work. But how about after, when the piece actually appears? Do we read all, or at least a good portion, of the other material which appears in that issue?

Sometimes I’m guilty of only checking on my own work – are the final edits correct, is my name spelled right, does the writer bio appear, are links working, is my work where and how I expected, what do I think of the photos or illustrations chosen by the editor? Sometimes I admit, that’s the extent of it. Then I either put the journal, anthology, or magazine on a shelf (for safety, I tell myself), or bookmark the link into my published work file, and call it a day.

Not always. I’ve spent hours reading the other essays which appear in the anthologies to which I am often fortunate enough to contribute. I discover new-to-me writers, revel in the work of writers I already admire (and sometimes know personally), and usually find myself marveling at how such an assortment of good writers have found so many interesting angles from which to approach the same theme.

When it’s a magazine in which my work appears, I might leaf through quickly, put a sticky note on pages I want to read later. Then I get busy and forget that. For work that’s online, I’m more apt to notice interesting titles of other work, or bylines I recognize, and usually click right away. But when I get there, do I read the piece through to the end, or do I email it to myself to read later, and then lose it in the abyss of the email inbox?

A few months ago, I decided that when a literary venue of any kind is interested enough in my work to publish it, then I’m going to “return the favor” and make a more conscious effort, when the piece appears, to read more of the other writing within its pages. By doing so, I’ve read wonderful work, some of which I’ve studied closely for craft and structure, learning a few things in the process.

I’ve also gotten several ideas for future work, connected online with at least three new writers whose work intrigued me enough to visit their websites or blogs and reach out. I’ve been entertained, informed, and pushed to more thoughtful consideration of important issues. This makes so much sense. If we like a media venue enough to want our work to appear in its print or online pages, wouldn’t it mean that we respect the editors’ choices? That we will find, likely not more than a few pages or a click away from our own work, other writing to inspire, challenge, and take pleasure in?

The other surprising advantage of doing this, I’ve noticed, is perspective. I realize my work is just one small part of a whole, no more or less important than what surrounds it; that as independent as writers are, we are also part of a team which makes that particular issue of that particular literary venue work.

Occasionally I’ve read a piece of mine in print and agonized, “how awful.” But when I read pieces on the pages before and after, they seemed so good, that I had to reason that if my work is swimming in the same waters, then it’s likely better than I think. On other occasions, I’ve read something of mine and smugly thought how good it was. Then I skipped around a bit, read some other pieces which seemed far, far better, and decided how lucky I was to even be in that kind of company. Then there were the (very few) times when I found my work surrounded by other work which seemed on a lower skill and craft level, and then I knew I had probably undershot when I made the submission. No matter, I just chalk it up to the learning curve of submissions.

So, fellow writers, if our work appears side by side, adjacent, or nearby, from here on in, I’ll be reading.

Now, back to that CV. And the worry that it’s not as impressive as it could be. Too bad there’s not a section on it for reading. Now that would take up some pretty impressive space.

Read any good books lately? No, it's not an entirely rhetorical question.

2009-07-01T16:56:00.010-04:00

Read any good books lately?

My answer, always, is yes, of course. I sometimes want to add (usually silently) – and, some not-so-good books, some damned-if-I-know-what-that-was-about books, and the occasional wish-I-hadn't-read-that book. Also, the stopped-reading-it-halfway-through book, the don't-know-why-I-ever-wanted-to-read-that-in-the-first-place book, and the can't-believe-I read-the-whole-thing book.

I don't always mind the clunkers. As a writer I understand the energy the author expended on the effort and I tend to be forgiving. I learn what not to do. And, unless I'm stranded somewhere with no other reading material and no Internet access, I don't get upset. I move on. There's always that never-depleted tower known as TBR (to be read).

While I've had most of the above reading experiences lately, I'm not going to itemize the disappointments. But if you want to know if I've read any good books lately: Yes, of course.

I just finished the memoir, Here If You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup, a chronicle of her experiences as a chaplain for the Maine Warden Service (think rescue rangers, not prison) and being widowed with four kids. It's also about (and though this will sound cliche, in Braestrup's hands, it isn't) finding joy in unexpected places. She writes with unusual clarity and occasional kind humor about the most terrible circumstances – she's called out to minister to families of lost hikers, children missing in the woods, husbands who don't return from drunken ice fishing trips.

The book was published in the summer of 2007, and has since been in my TBR pile. It's a slim volume, so I'm not sure what took me so long to read it. In the interim, I've taught from personal essays Braestrup's published. I admire the way she structures her shorter pieces (and hence her essay-like memoir chapters), how she withholds a key piece of information until exactly the right moment in the narrative and then deploys it with grace, and the way she invites her reader to engage with the nonfiction story by writing just enough and not one word more. I knew immediately that this qualified as a good book I've read lately.

Then there are the books which don't immediately announce themselves to be in that category.

A few weeks ago, I read the not-yet-published memoir by Stephen Elliott, titled The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder (Graywolf Press, Sept. 2009). Wanting to widely distribute advanced reading copies, Elliot asked a group of those interested in reading the book (and by extension, hopefully talking about it online somewhere) if they would read it and then, for the cost of postage, pass it along to the next person on the list.

This appealed to me on so many levels: as a former public relations person (and someone who currently advises authors on do-it-yourself book PR), I found the plan brilliant – it builds community, encourages online pre-publication buzz via a select group of readers who are often also writers, and puts the author directly into the conversation. And yet. I knew that Elliot's book was being compared with Nick Flynn's unusual memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Now that's a book I read and didn't like. At first.

Flynn's book was assigned during my first semester in an MFA program by a faculty member whose entire required reading list seemed to consist of memoirs written by men about troubled relationships with their now-dead fathers. I explained that, as my own father was then currently in his final days, I would appreciate a change in the reading list. I was told to buck up and read. I did. (A few weeks later I asked for, and got, a new faculty mentor, but that's another story.) I wrote my required annotations, angrily, and tossed the books aside.

Fast forward a few months: I am writing about my deceased father. What books do I find myself re-reading? Of course. (I still think the faculty mentor was insensitive, not prescient, in refusing to adjust my reading list; but again, another story.) Today, Flynn's book is still one of those on my shelf which I occasionally pull out, read a chapter and feel I've learned something. I'm still not all that fond of it cover-to-cover, but it's a book I'll keep and keep reading, in sections.

Now, here I was three years later, with Elliot's book fresh out of the mailing envelope from the last reader. It is not another bullshit book about dysfunctional families, not only a participatory witness-to-the-dark-side take on Elliot's criminal friends, and not just a chronicle of his dependence on prescription drugs; but then it's not entirely something else either.

As I read, in terms of subject matter, I was by turns disturbed, fascinated, interested, disapproving, engaged, repelled; I was eager to find out the ending but at the same time not always all that sure I wanted to turn the page. Elliot's writing made sure I did turn those pages. The fact is, I wasn't always comfortable reading this book. I was careful not to leave the book around the house where my teen and pre-teen sons might find it. But occasionally being taken out of one's comfort zone is a good thing, as a reader and a writer.

This is not a joy-from-grief kind of memoir. It's raw, frank, graphic, odd. Yet, it's also well-crafted, structurally interesting, equivocal, and a shift from all the happiness-growing-out-of-sorrow memoirs crowding the genre today. It shook me up. Made me think about the rougher worlds outside of those I usually read about. Elliot edits the edgy online magazine The Rumpus; the sexual/cultural/literary mix of material over there will give you a small idea of where this book might fall on your TBR list.

I also read a bunch of good novels last month, too. I'll write about them later this week or next, especially in terms of how reading fiction feeds my own nonfiction work.

Meanwhile, what good books have you read lately?

Update: Just got this note from Stephen Elliott:
Thanks Lisa. That's very kind of you. Could you let people know that they can still sign up to get advanced copies by going here.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Tech Tasks for Writers, Literary Roads not Taken, Poetry in NJ, Memoirs & More

2009-06-26T09:41:00.005-04:00

• This list, found at the 10,000 Words site (“where journalism and technology meet) is designed to keep recent journalism school graduates busy sharpening skills while job hunting. But I think it’s even better advice for anyone who graduated from J-school more than ten years ago (uh, that would be me). I groaned at some of the suggestions, but by tackling at least half, I’ll be more valuable to future editors and clients in any area of media or literary life. And I might add, it wouldn’t hurt any newly (or soon-to-be) published authors to try their hands at these skills for the sake of savvier do-it-yourself book marketing.

• Some rare literary insight over at Daily Finance: the career road not taken, tweaked for writer types.

• Working on a To Be Read list for summer? If memoirs are of interest, this list of 50 suggestions might be useful, from Library Journal, where I often find gems, and not just about libraries.

• Crowd-sourcing a book. Hmm.

• I live in New Jersey. (Yes, not far at all from those hideous Bravo housewives, but please, hold the condolences.) When people ask where in New Jersey I live, I say Montclair. Not because it’s true, but because almost everyone has heard of Montclair, the urban-like suburb, known for its racial-, social-, cultural- and economic-diversity, the liberal little cityburb full of literary types, media elites, artists and low-key celebrities, a hip hamlet with a thriving downtown, nightlife, and direct 30-minute train service to Manhattan. The tiny obscure town where I live, which borders Montclair? None of the above. Now, it looks as if Montclair has a good chance to be the new home of the Dodge Poetry Festival (the largest poetry event in North America), which is vacating its usual venue some 20 miles west.

• Write Young Adult fiction? Eileen Cook’s blog will be of interest, and be sure to check out her link list to find more blogs of YA (and other) authors.

• Read these Five Common Flaws of Memoir Projects. Actually, it’s not all about you.

• If you are on Twitter (like me @LisaRomeo) and you are a magazine junkie (again, me), and you want to add some magazines to your Twitter feed, you might find want to check this out.

Have a great weekend.

Good News for Good Neighbors: Really Good Writing by a Good Writing Friend

2009-06-25T06:00:00.002-04:00

I’m always pleased to get a note from one of my favorite creative nonfiction writers, Mimi Schwartz, letting me know what she’s up to writing- and teaching-wise. Mimi’s excellent memoir-in-essays, Thoughts From a Queen-Sized Bed, played a part in the critical research thesis I prepared as an MFA student, and when I contacted her with questions, instead of a return email, I received an invitation to visit and talk writing. I’ve been meaning to post something about her newest book, and am a little embarrassed not to have done so already.

So I’m going to pass Mimi’s most recent note on directly to my readers:

“I want to let you know that Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Echoes of My Father's German Village is a winner of the ForeWord Book of the Year Award in Memoir for 2008. It will be coming out in paperback this November, complete with "Discussion Questions" for use in courses, book groups, etc.
If you know of teachers and book groups who are interested in issues of decency during Nazi times of hate--and the implications for us, as neighbors, today--please refer them to my website for more information about the book and me.”

I recommend a tour around her site, where I found, among other gems, these behind-the-book insights about her process and key decisions on the writing and craft aspects of Good Neighbors. This isn't surprising since Mimi also wrote Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. My suggestion: put her newest book on your list. Not the To Be Read (sometime) List, but the To Be Read SOON List.

When all Writers are Welcome. Then what?

2009-06-24T10:28:00.010-04:00

I do the occasional gratis talk or presentation about creative writing at libraries, community centers, and other places. There is no money in it, the audience will be small (usually about a dozen folks), and it takes as much of my time and mental energy to prepare and present these talks as it does to do so for a (paid) class or seminar. But I have my reasons.

Recently, I gave a talk at my local library titled, Creative Writing: Making it Stick, and promised to talk about developing a writing habit, motivation, process, writers block, the art of rewriting and other topics which frequently derail the newer writer, the writer without benefit of a writing group, and the writer who is not sure whether what they are doing can even be called writing. Fourteen people registered and nine arrived on a rainy Monday morning for the 90 minute session.

I asked participants to talk about what they were working on and what was holding them back in their writing endeavors.

Participants one and two: a 40-years-married couple, recently retired.
Husband: At my brother's funeral, everyone was laughing their heads off during the eulogies because my brother was such a funny guy. I thought, I should write this stuff down, maybe write a book of stories about all the funny things he did and said.
Wife: We started working on it together and it's fun. He dictates and I record it, then we go over it together.
They asked great questions which opened up a lively and rich discussion: "How can I make sure anyone will want to read about someone else's life? What makes a personal story interesting to others?" They took notes. They stayed after the session ended and asked more questions. I got a terrific sense that this was not going to be one of those retired couples who drive one another around the bend. On the way out, they checked out a book about writing and a memoir of short humorous essays. I saw them holding hands on the way to their car.

Participant three: Retired paralegal with decades years of hilariously unlikely observations about life in that otherwise stuffy industry. She needs organizational help, wants to shed her tendency to write it right the first time, and thinks she hasn't got time to write an entire book anyway. She's visibly intrigued over a few relatively routine writing suggestions I make about how to get a first draft down on paper (and why it's okay for it to be so awful her former attorney boss would have fired her for producing anything quite so crappy), how to turn some of her otherwise off-limits time into writing time, and my suggestion that she group her stories according to theme or decade or situation. Few things measure up to the feeling of seeing light bulbs go on in the eyes of anyone who has come to you for help.

Participant four: Someone who took one of my creative nonfiction classes last Fall. She has the personal essayist's quiet gift for the telling detail. Her short pieces about life in the 1940s, and today, are exquisite charms. I've encouraged her to write more. She arrives with a bulging notebook, questions about revision, and that look. You know that look? The one which says, everything I take in, everything I see, think about and observe, is getting filed away and may show up somewhere, sometime, on the page. That look which says I'm listening, but I’m also already somewhere else, way inside my head, working with words, playing with phrases, intrigued by ideas. I love that look in a writer. One day I feel certain I will be reading her pieces somewhere other than at the library. Or maybe not; she is not so much interested in publication, as much as she is excited about working on her craft (huzzah!).

I like to think I helped at least that particular group of writers that morning. But maybe not Participants Five, Six and Seven, though: the grumbling old gentleman who wanted to talk (and talk and talk) about his poetry (any why he refuses to write it down); the woman who writes archly conservative political rants and felt ill treated when submitting to newspaper editors; and the self-published author of four romance novels hoping I could to interest an agent.

It had said on the flyer for the class, all writers welcome. And while it was fleetingly tempting to pass over the demands of this second group, I take it as a challenge to find something to offer everyone. So at the end of the session, I invited the elderly man to recite one poem – and he had us all laughing and nodding. I suggested to the political writer that she research right-leaning websites and tossed out the names of two to get her started. As for the romance writer, I directed her to a few agent resource sites and advised against sending copies of all four books along with her cover letter.

Sometimes, even weeks or months later, I hear from participants, which is almost always terrific (except when they ask me to edit 50 pages for free). But mostly, silence is okay too. I just take it to mean they are all busy writing. That may be just an illusion I use to keep myself going. That's okay too.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Memoir Pitfalls, Literati Write the News, Your Summer Submission Schedule, and a bit 'o fun

2009-06-20T00:15:00.009-04:00

Welcome to all my new readers!

It's the end of the week (okay, technically it's already Saturday, but humor me) and that means Friday Fridge Clean-Out. Unfamiliar with the term? It's what I call "dinner" when I manage to pull together a meal of sorts from a refrigerator overloaded with leftovers (home cooked or take out), scraps, tidbits, and, if I’m lucky, a few delicious but overlooked fresh items hiding behind the ketchup. On the blog, Fridge Clean-Out means it's time to pass along a selection of what I found of interest around the web recently, and hope you find a few gems along the buffet line.

> First up is this piece in the Los Angeles Times' Books section, by Marion Winik, aptly titled, "The pitfalls of one's recall," and addresses the thorny issue of the other characters in memoir; the relatives, spouses, friends, former lovers, ex-friends, and others who find their way into a memoir, and who may or may not like it. One of Winik's many excellent points is:

"This was the beginning of my understanding of the most serious moral principle of memoir: The act of writing about another person occurs not just in the world of literature but in real life. It cannot help but change your relationship, and this should be the first thing you think about."

> Can a website thrive by making "handpicked book recommendations"? The folks at Flashlight Worthy Books think so. Looks interesting.

> What happens when the daily newspaper is reported, written, and edited by novelists, memoirists, and poets? Check this report in The Forward on the June 10 experiment by an Israeli newspaper. While there was solid, traditional reporting, there was also, perhaps predictably, this:
"…the stock market summary by author Avri Herling. It went like this: Everything’s okay. Everything’s like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything’s okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place… Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points …The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again…."
But also this:

"…79-year-old author Yoram Kaniuk, whose novel “Adam Resurrected” was recently adapted for a movie starring Jeff Goldblum and Ayelet Zurer. He went into the field to write about couples in the hospital cancer ward. The thing is, he’s a cancer patient, too. “A woman walking with a cane brings her partner a cup of coffee with a trembling hand. The looks they exchange are sexier than any performance by Madonna and cost a good deal less,” Kaniuk wrote. “I think about what would happen if I were to get better…how I would live without the human delicacy to which I am witness?”

“I got more telephone calls today than I have in years past,” Kaniuk said in a phone interview. “People were very moved, because I wrote it like a writer and not like a journalist. If you see something beautiful and touching, why not write it?”
> At her blog, Sara in Vermont, author Sara J. Henry asks, what's the deal with MFA students who thinks it makes sense to draw dividing lines between the merits of their peers based on who is a "literary writer" and a "commercial writer"? I find this especially destructive because most writers who do become at least moderately successful at earning a partial living from their words, will find it necessary to straddle the line at some point. Enough said

> Pamela Redmond Satran has a new book due out soon titled after her hilarious blog, How Not to Act Old. An excerpt also appears in the current issue of More magazine. Pam is also, by the way, the author of "Maya Angelou's best poem ever." Really.

> On her blog, Poet Diane Lockward lists Journals That Read in the Summer, parts One, Two and Three. There, that ought to keep you out of the hammock.

Have a great weekend.

Writing in Text

2009-06-10T10:18:00.006-04:00

A little linguistic fun for a dull grey day.

I don't pretend to know all the abbreviations, acronyms, and other texting tricks, but I can get my digital point across. Deciphering what others write in a text is not always so simple, though maybe writers have an edge when trying to puzzle it all out.

Need some practice? Try this, from McSweeneys: God Texts the Ten Commandments by Jamie Quatro.

Can putting more book content online drive print book sales?

2009-06-09T03:00:00.000-04:00

In the current (June) print issue of Wired magazine, columnist Clive Thompson makes a compelling case for putting more free book content online - sometimes. He posits that once a book's text is open for discussion online, the resulting community which grows up around that conversation will support the print product.

Thompson writes, in part:

"You're far more likely to hear about a book if a friend has highlighted a couple brilliant sentences in a Facebook update—and if you hear about it, you're far more likely to buy it in print. Yes, in print: The few authors who have experimented with giving away digital copies (mostly in sci-fi) have found that they end up selling more print copies, because their books are discovered by more people."

The "mostly in sci-fi" qualifier may make for some skepticism, but there's not much reason to doubt why it couldn't happen across all the genres and in literary publishing as well. He notes:

"Every other form of media that's gone digital has been transformed by its audience. Whenever a newspaper story or TV clip or blog post or white paper goes online, readers and viewers begin commenting about it on blogs, snipping their favorite sections, passing them along. The only reason the same thing doesn't happen to books is that they're locked into ink on paper."

What do you think?

You can read the entire (brief) Wired column, "The Future of Reading," here.

Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: Will Edit for Money (but compliments work too)

2009-06-08T10:31:00.014-04:00

The editing and writing coaching parts of my freelance business have been expanding of late, which makes me happy -- it's good for the budget, of course, but it's also work I love and it brings me into relationships with such interesting and hard-working writers, all of whom (at least so far) are people I happen to like as well. I also love the variety of the material; lately I've worked on memoir, comic fiction, a coffee-table photography book, and even a dissertation.

Last month, one of the writers I worked with won a regional personal essay contest. The sound of her voice on the telephone -- after she returned from the award luncheon where she read her work to an audience for the first time -- was indescribably satisfying.

Last night I emailed a new client a summary of developmental editing comments for a chapter of her memoir-in-progress. When I opened my inbox this morning, I found this from her: "Wow! Best money I ever spent."

I don't think I can improve on that, so I won't even try, except to say that what was wonderful was not only did she feel her money had been well spent, but that I had delivered something of value to a fellow writer, something which may move her toward a richer, more nuanced next draft.

Getting confirmation that I have something to contribute matters, and on days when my own writing is not going so well, on days when the rest of life seems to usurp all my creative energy and figuring out how to slice up the freelance pie seems impossible, I can think about that happy client email. I've already printed it out and posted it just above the computer.

Now, end of self-promotion blather, and back to work, because it's still a Monday...

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Of author blogs, writing contests, jilted journalists, and a J-school's flub

2009-06-05T06:00:00.000-04:00

The fridge is overloaded, links are threatening to leak all over. Here goes:

• Follow along as (my friend) novelist Christina Baker Kline chronicles the year ahead as she writes a new historical novel, Orphan Train. Along the way, her upcoming novel Bird in Hand will hit the market, she'll teach in London and at Fordham's MFA program, and otherwise be her amazing self. She's a first-time (and already a first-rate) blogger. So go, visit!

• Gotham Writers' Workshop is holding a two day writing weekend, June 20-21, in Manhattan, at a very reasonable fee.

• Here's a thoughtful piece on writing contests, and oh yes, those contest fees.

• One estimate has it that nearly 15,000 folks have already been laid off, downsized, terminated, bought out, or otherwise thrown from the media train in the last year. This new site's title says it all: Jilted Journalist.

• I have "met" so many interesting writers and other literary types over on Twitter, many of whom have terrific blogs which I never would have found otherwise. I’m going to try to list at least one here each week, and I'll start with Blog of Innocence, where Lethe Bashar (find him on Twitter @blogofinnocence) shares "essays and meditations on social technology, science, writing, art, and life."

• I got my journalism degree at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, and have always been proud of that. But this week I couldn't agree more with Simon Dumenco's AdAge column drubbing the (relatively new) Dean of Newhouse for presenting the University's Lifetime Achievement Mirror Award to….wait for it…Arianna Huffington.

Yes, the same Arianna whose Huffington Post refuses to pay writers, who says that's "not our business model," and who instead insists that "visibility, promotion and distribution" are compensation enough.

If I were a parent paying $40,000 a year for an SU journalism education I'd want to ask: Why is my child's journalism school Dean more or less affirming the Huffington "business model" of not paying writers, by honoring its founder? And if I were a student there now, I'd want to know: Why is SU condoning the decimation of the very profession it is preparing me to enter?

• Since it is Friday, and I don't want to end on a sour note, here's another blog about a forthcoming memoir which pivots on the popular what-I-did-for-a-year theme. This one's The Happiness Project. The question is, can one woman get happy by following all the theories, suggestions, and advice out there?

Have a great weekend.

The Writing Go-Round: Getting On, Getting Off, Getting Dizzy

2009-06-03T13:49:00.008-04:00

Sometimes one needs a break. Even from something pleasurable. And sometimes a break is forced upon one. I knew I needed a break -- from chasing work, from the blog, from networking, networking groups, project proposals, the submissions carousel (and tracking & inventory management), conferences, all of it; all the external interactions and machinations which, while necessary and vital and even enjoyable in order to sustain a writing life, were also, it seemed, sucking me into a vortex where productivity was paramount, but without passion.

I needed the time-out for what I might call a mental writing realignment, a time to tie up loose ends and then reposition myself at a psychic level. I needed to figure out how to allot my time and creative energy over the next six months-to-a-year. Among tangible tasks, I wanted to finish a stalled book proposal, revisit the sputtering college teaching job search, plan out what private writing workshops and classes to offer in the fall, and bring a bit of order to my office. At the more conceptual level, I hoped to think about which essays-in-progress were worth revising or rewriting, to plan new creative nonfiction work, and to take a long look at the memoir-in-progress to see where it's going (ahem, if anywhere).

I wanted to ask myself where am I as a writer and where do I need to go?

Yet while I was procrastinating about whether or not to take this break, as often happens, life intervened – or should I say asserted itself. First, more paid work came in the door – an editing assignment, an editorial research project, a new author client for book publicity coaching. Absolutely no complaints, of course. I'm thrilled to have the work, happy that people trust me with their words, their editorial space, their marketing needs.

So, I'd get through this batch of work, I told myself, and then take that centering break. Instead, family "events" pulled me even further out of my head and nearly all at once wiped every appointment from both my work and personal calendar. Among other things, one of my kids had an accident (think blood, stitches, cast, crutches, me in Mom-on-call mode).

Put it all together and, well, I got a break. But it certainly has not been the break I wanted or needed. I've been doing client work at the dining room table -- when not been bandaging, following a teetering kid around, supervising said child's backed-up schoolwork, cooking for extended family, or getting a teenager through finals and settled into his first summer job. (There's more, but you get the picture.)

That mental re-alignment? It's still on the schedule, absolutely. I'm not sure how I'll fit it in. Can I say no to paid work in order to take it? Absolutely not. Hire someone to take over some home front duties so I can concentrate on the memoir, the essays, revamping the CV? I could. But I won't. I have this weird quirk about hands-on mothering (I know, I know, but I can't help it). I'm going to have to, I suppose, take that break, not in one gulp as I want to, but instead in sips, and I'm setting aside an hour or so each day for the rest of the month. I have my doubts about how that's going to work out: I'm the sort who likes to do things all at once, with a concentrated narrow, forget-everything-else focus.

Funny that I still think this way, when most of my career has been about successfully and simultaneously juggling -- multiple freelance writing assignments, assorted client expectations and media demands when I worked in PR, the progress and goals of several writing students, the varying requests and deadlines of editorial clients and private writing students. And, of course a few things in my life have been trying for years to disabuse me of this notion of sprints versus marathons, namely: navigating motherhood, a long marriage, mortgages, and midlife.

Not long ago, I helped edit a first novel and its agent letter and synopsis, for a local writer, who complained about the almost impossible dilemma of finding the time to research agents and submit, all while caring for two young children, working part time, pinch-hitting for a husband who works killer hours, and volunteering. I said something at the time, rather too blithely I now recall, "Just say no to some of it. Figure out a way to slice up the pie. And by the way, welcome to the writer's life."

Welcome to the writer's life.

A life in which that which intervenes – kids, aging parents, household disasters, health concerns, logistics – is often absorbed and accommodated at the expense of writing. The page counts dwindle, contacts made but not followed up on begin to yellow with age, enthusiasm wanes and resentment sometimes creeps in. A life in which what we get paid to write/edit is not always what we envision spending our best writing time on: the not-sure-where-it's-going project, the let's-take-a-chance book proposal, the never-wrote-this-genre-but-why-not-take-a-plunge draft, the book-in-progress-that's-not-under-contract.

For me, over the last six months or so, it's not been a question of finding time to write, but of finding the time and mental space to write with freedom -- to write something new, something daring, something that's not expected to land on someone's desk by X deadline.

I'm still working on finding the best way to slice the pie myself. And I'm not whining. At one time, someone must have said to me, "welcome to the writer's life," and I stayed. I’m not going anywhere. But maybe I can see about getting a bigger pie.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Writing Process, Animals as Authors, Exclamations and More

2009-05-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

• Interesting interview with rarely-interviewed author S.E.Hinton over at literary agent Nathan Bransford's always enlightening blog. One gem:

(Bransford): What is your writing process? Do you get it on the page and revise later? Outline? Plan ahead? Let the writing go where it goes?
(Hinton): I think I've tried every writing process there is, trying to find an easy way to write a novel. If I do find it, I'll publish it and retire. Sometimes I revise as I go. Once I used an outline. One time I thought in terms of movies and wrote scenes out of order, as they occurred to me, and stitched them together later. I wrote That Was Then, This Is Now, two pages a day and did almost no revision. I originally wrote Rumble Fish as a short story, did the novel, and threw that one away because it was too easy, and wrote it again with Rusty James as the narrator, which was not easy at all. The Outsiders was forty pages long, single-spaced, typed, in its first draft. The third draft was the one Marilyn saw. The only thing I am sure of in my "process" is that it involves a lot of staring out the window.
Read the entire interview here.

• Ahem. A web-based media internship going to the highest bidder? Nah, that just seems wrong, right? Wrong. The folks at the Huffington Post think it's okay, because it's for charity. What's next for HuffPo? Asking their (unpaid) bloggers to pay them for space?

• I don't have cats or dogs. I did have horses (five of them over 15 years), and although I'll admit I was smitten with Mr. Ed when I was a kid, I never really thought about writing anything in the voice of a pet. But apparently, many writers do. A student in one of my recent workshops, writing in the voice of her cat, got me thinking about it, and then I stumbled over the Pets and Their Authors blog, where pets "interview" their humans, who happen to be writers.

• If Elmore Leonard really meant it about exclamation points when he said, "You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose," then imagine what he'd think about this Guardian article and the (no, say it ain't so) resurrection of that questionable punctuation mark.

• Finally, one more item from across the pond. Britain crowns its first female poet laureate. Hear her roar.

Have a great weekend.

How are literary journals like other magazines?

2009-05-14T22:32:00.005-04:00

One of my freelance editorial jobs is to gather and analyze news about the magazine industry for a trade newsletter, so I'm very familiar with (actually too familiar, more like overwhelmed and saddened by) the precarious state of magazines in the U.S. right now. Major titles have folded, more certainly will follow, and many publishers are instituting employee furloughs, shortened workweeks, pay cuts, and making severe reductions to editorial and sales staffs.

It's not quite as simple as online killing print (although of course that's part of it), but a much more complex set of circumstances – too many magazines chasing finite ad dollars; spiraling paper, printing and delivery costs; too-cheap subscriptions; low newsstand sales vs. high print runs; and many other factors. Bottom line, magazines need to find a better business model.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear that the excellent literary journal The New England Review, published by Middlebury College, is facing the possibility of folding unless the journal can figure out a new way to fund their existence. We expect our literary journals to be more or less protected from the pressures consumer magazines face, but the recession isn't playing favorites.

Most lit journals are almost wholly dependent on university funding and/or grant support, and colleges are apparently now taking a harder look at their journals. Are they seeing only numbers rather than the value these books add to the literary world at large (and in many cases, to the prestige of their graduate writing programs)? For more about the NER's plight and that journal's intrinsic worth to Middlebury, see this thoughtful article in Inside Higher Ed.

I have subscriptions to only five literary journals – three of which exclusively publish creative nonfiction. Since I'd like to help support other journals, I've made it a practice to buy a copy of any issue in which a writer friend is published. It's not enough, but it's what I can afford and it assures that a supply of quality literary work moves through my house on a fairly regular basis.

I don't have any answers really for how literary journals can pay their own way. Publishing online only? Aggressively seeking private philanthropic underwriting? Throwing a rent party? Who knows. Perhaps, like in the consumer magazine market, there are just too many journals…or, maybe not enough. Maybe some new business model will emerge. I only know that eventually, it's readers, and supporters of the arts of all kind, and not only writers, who will suffer if titles like the New England Review don't survive.

Speaking of literary journals, two years ago, I had a really terrific Saturday in Manhattan meeting up with a visiting Canadian writer friend, on a gorgeous early summer day. We attended a group reading by editors and authors from a varied group of lit journals at the main branch of the NYC library (and then talked over a tasty lunch outdoors in adjacent Bryant Park).

The occasion was the Annual Lit Mag Marathon Weekend, which is scheduled this year for June 9 and 10. There will be numerous readings at the library, and for those who have never been inside this amazingly beautiful building, it's worth the trip just to walk through it -- slowly. Rounding out the event is a Literary Magazine Fair downtown at Housing Works Used Book Café, where it's going to be possible to leave with bulging bags of lit mags (price tag: $2 each) and still have money left over for a New York City-priced meal. Many editors will be hanging about at the shop, too, ready to chat.

Get Your Ghost(writing) Game On

2009-05-11T06:00:00.000-04:00

Here's something of possible interest to out-of-work journalists, experienced freelance writers facing a recession-fueled lull, and writers who simply want another arrow in their editorial services quiver.

My friend Ellen Neuborne, an experienced ghostwriter or co-author of 11 books, is offering an online class, The Writer’s Guide to Ghosting. It's reasonably priced, and I know anyone who works with Ellen will be in good hands – she's disciplined, has a good sense of humor, and most importantly, knows her specialty -- period. Plus, she's a seasoned teacher and writing coach, former magazine editor, and well-published freelance writer.

Here's her nutshell description: The Writer's Guide to Ghosting is an online class designed for professional writers interested in breaking into this profitable specialty. Topics covered include breaking into the business, the mechanics of ghost writing a book, marketing yourself as a ghostwriter, contract and payment issues, and building a ghost writing pipeline.

The class begins June 1. For more info, email Ellen: eneuborne (at) aol.com.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Quindlen Quits, Conferences & PR for Writers, & Something I Wrote

2009-05-08T18:24:00.005-04:00

• If I were a self-published author, I would check out the Self Publishing Online Conference, May 13-15, where all the basic sessions are free on the web, including a full day (Friday) devoted to marketing and publicity. In fact, even if I were a traditionally-published author (or soon to be one), I might drop in on Friday anyway, since publishing house PR budgets have been drastically slashed, and much of a book's success today depends on what authors can do independently to market their books and themselves.

• Anna Quindlen – essayist, Pulitzer Prize winner in the commentary division, former New York Times' Hers and Life in the 30s columnist and OpEd writer, and most recently, regular Newsweek columnist – was one of the reasons I first became interested in writing personal nonfiction. So I was understandably dismayed when she gave up her Newsweek column last week, citing a need to move aside for a younger generation of journalists.

Quindlen is only 56, and I for one, don't see her as anywhere near ready for retirement. Yes, she'll continue to write novels (she has several best-sellers on the shelf already), and undoubtedly she'll turn up on another major media venue before too long. I only wish she hadn't mentioned the age issue. Or maybe I am, as it puts a spotlight on the ageism issue in journalism and literary matters. And maybe her departure is not as voluntary as it first seemed, as this piece suggests, noting that the magazine is moving in a new (read: younger demographic) direction.

As for me, I'm solidly with Joanne123, a commenter at Newsweek who wrote: "Something is deeply wrong when the voices of one class of people must be silenced in order to make room for another." And I agree with AnnSent, who said, "Move on -- to greener pastures -- if you wish. Quit because the magazine makeover doesn't fit with your philosophy or goals. Quit because you're tired of bad news and brutal deadlines. Or brutal news and bad deadlines. Or the relentlessness of both. Or quit because you can. Because you want to write another novel. But not because you were eight years old when JFK was inaugurated."

• Novelists and short story writers in the Manhattan vicinity might want to consider the one-day 2009 Center for Fiction Writers Conference at the Mercantile Library on June 27. For the relatively low fee, you also get a space for one-month at the Center’s Writers’ Studio on East 47th Street.

• Writing about family is tricky; very often it's both the wheat and the chaff for the nonfiction writer attempting to craft interesting memoir and moving personal essays. It is for me. My memoir-in-progress, and most of my personal essays, would fall apart without the on-page characters to whom I am related off-the-page. They did not ask to be there, and yet as part of my life, they are part of my story, although my story of course is never their story.

One of my pieces, titled "Tip Not Included" (second place in the essay category of the Charles Simic Graduate Student Writing Contest a year or so ago), appears in the current edition of the journal Barnstorm. It's mostly about my father, and while he cannot let me know what he thinks, in my story, he approves.

Have a great weekend.

Self-Promotion 101 for Writers: Point Readers to Your Work. Check.

2009-05-04T12:08:00.012-04:00

Time for a bit of shameless self-promotion. Since I do it rarely on the blog, I don't feel guilty about it one bit.

One of my personal essays is running in Skirt, a print and online magazine. This one's especially dear to me. Although it recalls a time in my life that was particularly painful, by looking at that period through a particular lens, I came to an understanding of an elemental truth beyond the current misery.

Here's the opening.....

When my first child, Sean, was nine months-old, I regarded myself as a failure at motherhood. My husband, Frank, would come in from work each day to find me at the kitchen table, sobbing. I would explain it all again: I am miserable. I am no good at this. I do not know how to be a mother.
I needed to know I could do something right. A quilt seemed like a worthy project. Systematic. Sequential. One square after another...
You can read the complete essay here on the Skirt! site.

Tomorrow, we shall return to our regularly scheduled (non self-promoting) programming. Thanks for reading.

Seven Habits of (Not Necessarily Highly) Effective Writers

2009-05-03T14:22:00.005-04:00

So, I am preparing notes for a seminar this week on the subject of overcoming common obstacles to creating and maintaining a writing routine. As I look over my topic headings, I'm tempted to take a short-hand, back-handed approach. For example:

Finding Time to Write: If you can find time to do the laundry, watch TV, gossip, browse YouTube, and talk about how much you really do want to write, you can find time to write.

Writer's Block: Ever heard of plumber's block? Accountant's block? Knitter's block? Playoff-watching block? Golfer's block? Get over it. How? You write.

Quieting Your Self Censor: Find a fellow writer working in the same genre, someone more experienced, who will read your work and when necessary, use the word bullshit a lot. Listen. Rewrite.

Getting Support: Might not happen with those you want it from the most. Write anyway. Look elsewhere for support. Don't wait to find it.

Improving Your Writing: Write. Read. Write. Read. Write. Get instruction. Get feedback. Rewrite. Read. Rewrite. Read. Rewrite. Repeat as necessary.

Getting From Idea to the Page: Write the idea(s) down. Any time, any place, any idea. On a piece of paper. Or a screen. Voila.

Establishing a Writing Routine: Write, beginning today. Repeat tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. See a pattern here?

I don't mean to sound flippant. And of course, I won't say these things to anyone who is interested enough in writing to come to a seminar about forging a creative writing habit. It's not as if I think the answers to these real writing dilemmas are quite so simple or obvious. They're not. Each and every writer, or would-be writer, or wannabe writer, or tentative writer, has to figure much of it out solo. Writing is the ultimate in on-the-"job" training. For the new writer, of course, there is a lot of value in listening to advice from those a bit, or a lot, further down the road. So I'm planning to offer lots of ideas, options, suggestions, tips and alternatives. I want to help as many people who want to write, to get writing.

Still, I find myself thinking that what I really want to say – and maybe I can find a diplomatic, encouraging way to do so – is, don't make more of this than it is. Don't romanticize writing. Or put it in the category of some mystical communion that only happens between muse and channel, some mysterious other-wordly thing to which only select individuals have access. Of course there is some of that. But only a very little of that. And only sometimes. And mostly, not when you desperately want it to materialize. Mostly the recipe is this: Read. Write. Learn the craft. Repeat. That recipe won't necessarily make you a great writer. But if your "problem" is that you can't get started, or feel blocked, or wonder if can write anything at all, the recipe holds up.

I'll have lots of handouts and will talk for an hour about creating the time and the mental and physical space to write. About finding writing organizations and conferences and online resources. About writing prompts and writing exercises and books for writers. About the value of writing groups and attending readings and getting feedback. About some routines, habits, and tricks that work for accomplished writers when they have trouble putting words on the page. I hope it all helps.

But then I wonder if I should tell the attendees: You can go home and think about all of it and read all of the handouts for an hour. Or you can write for an hour.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Bookfests, Book Marketing, Books in NJ, and Going Bookless?

2009-04-24T11:27:00.011-04:00

• Check out this funny "syllabus" in McSweeney's, by Robert Lanham, on writing and reading in the "postprint era."

• Authors and other book folks in northern New Jersey might want to see about getting involved in BooksNJ 2009 coming up in June.

• A few (new-to-me) online lit journals I've stumbled across and enjoyed recently: Litter Box, Stone's Throw (with an essay by my friend Harriet Brown), and something unusual (hint: keep those envelope backs, folks): Hit and Run, "publishing the raw materials of fiction, poetry and other creative work: scrap metal; index cards; napkin notes; etc."

• Walter Boyer is co-owner of the dominant independent bookstore Bookends, in Ridgewood, NJ, not far from where I live. The store is known for celebrity author appearances, but also puts on its share of lesser-known author events. Boyer is interviewed in the latest Bookhitch newsletter (which by the way always delivers a bunch of smart book marketing ideas). Here's a small part of his response to a question about what he looks for when asked to schedule an event for a newly published author:

"Since we’re talking about relatively unknown authors, I prefer a detailed email including a bio of the author, a bio of the book, a picture of the jacket, and a publicity plan, or a marketing outline. With an unknown or first-time author, a lot of what they do to market themselves is what determines the success of a book signing. I want to know what they are doing already, before the signing is even proposed, to market themselves and their book. I want to know what kind of following they have now. It’s a challenge, and you cannot expect success without the author’s involvement in publicity."

It looks like the current (April) newsletter content is not yet up on the Bookhitch site, but you can sign up for the electronic newsletter here.

• Wish you were at the London Book Fair recently? Then enjoy this vicarious visit.

Have a great weekend. Don't forget to write.*

* I say this all the time, with a smile, to my writing workshop students and even to writers whose essays, manuscripts, synopses, book proposals and other works I'm editing or critiquing. They think I'm being funny. I'm not. I know firsthand how easy it is to "forget" to write, though it's often cloaked in other wording: too busy, too tired, blocked, stuck, burned out, overworked in the day job, uninspired, muse-less, etc. So I'll say it again: Don't forget to write.

And, have a great weekend too.

Writing & Editing Blogs & Tips, Author Events & the Metaphor Gauntlet

2009-04-22T17:37:00.007-04:00

I've decided to spare you all from my planned post today about how reading poetry has helped my nonfiction writing. (Maybe I'll get back to that next week.) Meanwhile, I noticed my lists of links and interesting things to share has gotten too long. So here goes:

• There are so many blogs over at NYTimes.com, it's difficult to keep up with the half-dozen or so I really like. When I'm in a word geek mood – or when something I'm editing makes me want to throttle someone – I head over to After Deadline, which "examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times." Yes folks, I actually find that sort of thing entertaining.

• Not as nimble with metaphors as you'd like? I like this advice, from novelist Lisa Michaels, via the Write Free newsletter:

Take one of your missed opportunities, one you feel is crying out for metaphor, and Throw Down the Gauntlet. Give yourself two minutes to delve into that part of your brain that's creative and juicy, and fill a page with possible metaphors for that passage. You might have a moon that's rising over the eastern ridge. Set your timer and go, barring none: "The moon is a . . ." . . . "golden pocket watch," "white crystal of snow," "full circle," "round cherry pie." Just go until you find one you like. If too many minutes pass and you've exhausted your possibilities, give it a rest. Come back to it later. You may find you like one you've already written, or you may want to try again.

• The self-publishing industry has planned its first major national book expo for this fall.

• There is a deep archive of fiction writing advice and tips at Casting The Bones, a blog maintained by screenwriter/novelist Robert Gregory Browne, who seems genuinely interested in helping aspiring novelists.

• Creative nonfiction is the subject of No Titles, which is "what happens when a blog meets a literary magazine," according to the site. Lots of interviews with accomplished practitioners of the craft, including this one with Dinty Moore.

• I live an "easy" commute from Manhattan, and each month make a list of the literary events I plan to attend in the city. Then what usually happens is one kid's important game conflicts with a reading; another kid's important school project is due the morning after an authors' panel; both kids get sick the day of another….until one by one, all of the alluring literary outings get crossed off the calendar until there is often only one left. One month soon, I'm going to make sure that the one I get to is the reading series sponsored by PenParentis, "a confluence of authors who are parents." It would be all too ironic if I didn't, no? Their next After Work Reading Series, on May 12, features Jonathan Henkin and Joanna Hershon. (I'm pretty sure they don't always pair authors with identical initials, but hey, it does have an interesting ring to it.)

Be back tomorrow with some more.

Literary Journal Subscription Winner

2009-04-18T10:28:00.004-04:00

We have a winner.

Congratulations to Bonnie Naradzay, a poet and fellow Stonecoast MFA alum, who is now the recipient of the one-year subscription to the literary journal Prairie Schooner.

Bonnie's name was chosen at random by my very high tech in-house random selector, otherwise known as an 11-year-old who reached into a bowl filled with folded up pieces of paper on which I had written the name of each commenter from the two Prairie Schooner posts we ran.

Thanks to all who entered and have a great weekend.

Guest Blogger Susan Lilley on Delicious Truth: A Poet in Nonfiction Land

2009-04-17T02:00:00.001-04:00

Susan Lilley has a fine literary bio and I'll get to it. But first, something about Susan her terrific bio doesn't say. When thrown into the mix of genres, personalities and possibilities in an MFA program, it's easy – and wrong – to dismiss entire groups of people and ideas in order to focus intently on one's interests (in my case, creative nonfiction). Lucky for me, during my MFA experience, among the wonderful (and patient) faculty and students from other specialties, was poet Susan Lilley, whose outstretched hand and genuine interest in connecting across genres made a real difference. She's a gem both off and on the page.

Okay, now the facts: A Florida native, Susan is the 2006 co-winner of the Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest for Florida poets for her collection, Night Windows. She's a 2009 recipient of a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, and her work has appeared in anthologies and journals including The Florida Review, The Apalachee Review, The Fourth Genre, and Poet Lore. Susan has taught literature and writing at the University of Central Florida, currently teaches at Trinity Preparatory School, and is an adjunct professor at Rollins College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at University of Southern Maine

Please welcome Susan Lilley.

When I had the chance to be part of a cross-genre workshop last summer during my MFA graduation residency, it made sense to me that poetry and nonfiction should be paired together. After all, don’t my poems usually start with true-life experience? Many times I have wondered if a certain poem or another really should be allowed to grow into an essay, but usually ended up cutting back instead of pushing outward, distilling further instead letting loose the tide of information and detail that would surely overwhelm me if I dared to consider the subject more fully--and in prose.

But I followed the orders of our master class leader, poet Kazim Ali, and wrote one piece in the other genre to put before the group, all women of rich and skillful experience in the craft of creative nonfiction. They did the same, and their brave and lovely poems convinced me that poetry is indeed closer to CNF than it is to fiction. And the poetry I found in their prose—such moments of dazzling lyricism and liberating (sometimes shattering) honesty! They also blessed me with special insights on tone and the overall shape a poem takes for a reader. With less emphasis on line breaks and other nuts and bolts of a poetry workshop, I was able to see my work through a different kind of literary reader’s eyes.

Mostly, I was in awe of these writers’ commitment to courageously telling the truth. I began to wonder; as a poet, don’t I tell the truth? It’s complicated. My friend Ruth Foley, a poet, reminds me of this complication in every email with a quotation from Cocteau that appears as her signature: The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

I hadn’t fully realized how much I depended on the liberty, in poetry, to speak emotional truth by making stuff up. Sure, I start with the truth. Then as I work on a poem, if things are going well, the piece begins to have needs of its own, which I now must pay more attention to than the facts. Sometimes people are surprised or feel cheated when they learn that there are a few big fat lies in one of my poems they just read or listened to. (“You mean you did NOT eat the poison berries in your grandmother’s garden?” “What? That wasn’t you who had that fight and roared off in the silver car?”*)

In trying to produce a viable piece of nonfiction, I found that I constantly had to restrain my natural urge to change, replace, embellish along the way. And I developed even greater respect for the writers of nonfiction who stick to the facts while still shaping a riveting piece of writing. I am not saying that poetry is full of bald-faced lies. Some of life’s most ineffable truths are best illuminated in poetry, I believe.

Lately, it’s clear that the once-reliable division between poetry and nonfiction is turning into a delicious, messy shoreline. The concept of the lyric essay is exciting for those of us looking for new ways to think about writing. Some subjects lure me to explore the edges, where one genre spills into another and becomes a new element. I hope I’m brave enough to wade in.

Note from Lisa: C'mon in, Susan. The water's fine.

Readers, to enjoy one of Susan's poems, The Endless Boogie, click here. She swears every word is true.
* Susan has also allowed me to post below more of her work, this one from Night Windows (Yellow Jacket Press 2006; originally published in The Florida Review). She's not saying how much of this one springs from real life.

A Woman and Her Car

Gone. Gone in a blaze of red tail lights
and dust, that’s me,
dust swirling on the dirt road.
Better than horses, it roars—
my ally, weapon,
partner in crime.
Helps me say, “I’m leaving,”
and really do it,
floor it.,
miles in minutes.

There’s no sense in running after me.
So you don’t.
I exceed the limit,
but I won’t be stopped.
Patrolmen look into their coffee
when I streak by.
They, too, are terrified of angry women;
they don’t want to know why.
But my car is not afraid,
my chariot of fury,
my dented silver beauty!
My demons are released in little screams
with every curve.

Later, I’m back in your driveway
honking brazenly for forgiveness,
car idling nonchalantly beneath me.
I put on lipstick in the rear view
while I wait for you,
my laughter spilling out
through eyes washed blank with happiness.

Two Takes on an Essay from Prairie Schooner

2009-04-14T08:28:00.004-04:00

It was no fun last week being a writer with a double eye infection, sinus infection, mega-headache, head cold and assorted other complaints. Can you imagine how much reading or writing got done? Enough said. Now that I'm clear-headed and, ahem, clear-eyed, let's move on. We're giving away a subscription to a fine literary journal this week.....

Last week I had the privilege of previewing and commenting on one of the poems in the current issue of the literary journal Prairie Schooner, now in its 83rd year. Today, it's a creative nonfiction essay which has our attention. The piece, A Grand Canyon, by Lee Zacharias, appears in the print version of the journal, and in part online at their website.

Of the four good essays in the Spring 2009 of PS which I was graciously permitted to preview, I knew immediately I was most connected to A Grand Canyon. She had me at hello, with an opening sentence that's tight, enticing and effective – and not only because it brought up something intensely personal for me, and I suspect, for many adult children juggling teenage children and the seemingly trivial wish of an aging parent.

In Zacharias's piece, it's a trip to the Grand Canyon her mother yearns for; for me, it's Williamsburg, Virginia my own mother longs to see, never mind that she's unable to handle the walking about required. Okay, I admit that's perhaps a bit like judging a book by its cover, but there you go. Yet, I can think of no better way of selecting how to spend my reading time than to find an opening line so arresting it makes a reader decide, immediately, yes, I'll spend time with that narrator, I'll follow where she leads – take me.

Zacharias opens her narrative this way:

"My mother said she always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Actually what she said was "I always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, but I guess I'll never get there." Then the guess fell silent, the comma disappeared, she was sure she'd never get there, and the pause between the two clauses grew so short, the thought was one, desire and disappointment a single breath. She wasn't going to see the Grand Canyon before she died, and to her it surely seemed a melancholy measure of her life."

You can read a longer excerpt of the opening of the piece here.

Then, after a few paragraphs of backstory, we're off, physically and metaphorically; daughter and mother will travel to the Canyon, along with the narrator's 14-year-old son: "But the truth is I didn't really decide to take her to the Grand Canyon. One night when she began, "I always wanted...," I snapped, "I'll take you," because I never wanted to hear the rest of that sentence again."

Now here, Zacharias had entered my particular emotional territory, and the landscape in which I often travel as a writer – mothers and sons, daughter and aging parent, grandparent and grandson. Yet the truth is, Zacharias's prose is excellent all around, and her narrative style is compelling enough to pull a reader through the journey of the plot as well as the journey on the page, regardless of whether a reader shares any of her particular situational dynamics. Of course, isn't that the sweet spot of personal nonfiction, the embodiment of why people read nonfiction at all? Not because they necessarily want the narrator's story, but because they wish to find, somewhere within that story, some way to process and understand their own.

Zacharias delivers, weaving a piece rich in family dynamics and generational chasms. The questionable pairing of travel companions, grandmother and teenage grandson, begins sweetly, devolves into perhaps predictable bickering, and – once all have seen the physical Canyon – ends with the narrator's confiding a future separation between mother and son of a far greater emotional distance, with more at stake than a mother's unrequited wanderlust. There is as especially effective segment where, much later, the narrator is looking at photographs from the trip, and trying to make sense of the gaping distance to come: "Max and I should have lingered on the trail – why didn't we? My mother is fine and he is so soon to retreat from me – but the shadow is long, it's late, we're tired and hungry, it's time to move on."

In reading through Zacharias's essay and the Christiano poem, I was struck by the mirrored themes of sons growing away from their parents, as of course, all teenagers must As Zacharias puts it, "One day the love affair ends for the child, though it never does for the parent….As children always do, he grew up and became someone else, a young man I love more than anything on earth even though I will never know him in the way I once thought I knew the boy."

Prairie Schooner's managing editor James Engelhardt, had this to say about A Grand Canyon:

"Here again, families are at stake. What’s good to note, at least in passing, is how the two genres (poetry and creative nonfiction) differ in their compression. Zacharias has a lot more (dare I say it?) space in which to work. But also notice the strength of the opening and how the narrator moves so deftly through the paragraph, establishing the breadth and narrowness of the mother’s ambition (note, too, the sly alliteration of “Nashville, New Orleans, and Niagara Falls”). We get a very quick look at how the mother/daughter relationship around travel was built, but with very little commentary or judgment. And then the end of the second paragraph when we read that the Grand Canyon “was big enough to hold everything that had failed to come her way in life.”

Then the focus switches to the narrator's son and by the end of the third page (probably five or so manuscript pages) the characters are onstage and off on their adventure. As the essay moves along, I find myself nodding over the ways that Zacharias situates each tension explicitly. I mean that instead of saying that the grandmother and teenaged son bicker constantly over small things, she picks two small points: legroom and earphones. There are other conventions that Zacharias borrows from fiction besides a tight focus. She tells us that “the stark beauty of the land seemed to bode well” in a deft example of foreshadowing that seems lovely (and notice that the comment is within a visual detail) and yet ominous. Not too much later, she sketches out some of the trouble her son would have, but not on this trip.

She compresses time marvelously at different points to work us through the narrative more quickly. Every scene picks up some new aspect to the characters and their relationships. The narrator is slightly distracted, distressed, we wonder about some of her decisions, but we never lose identification with her.

At the end of the essay, Zacharias does a kind of summary that is pretty well strictly forbidden for poetry. She makes explicit that the Canyon is a metaphor for the divisions within family, and the erosion that left the Canyon AS a canyon reveals how a relationship can change and yet remain wonderful. And yet she leaves some things unsaid, and it’s the wonderful job of the reader to find the theme of Otherness that also runs through the piece, as we discover with her how each of them experiences their environment and each other as wholly different."

UPDATE: If you leave a comment here, or over on last week's post about the Roberto Christiano poem, you'll be entered in a giveaway of a year's subscription (four issues) to Prairie Schooner. (Be sure to leave an email or another way for us to contact you.) We're going to extend the contest until midnight PST on Friday, April 17. You can also order your own subscription or back issues here.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Writers' Stew

2009-04-03T12:48:00.008-04:00

• Gerry Marzorati, editor-in-chief of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, spoke last week about long form journalism at an industry conference. I found this excerpt of interest:

"Always, always, it requires a tremendous amount of reporting. Weeks and weeks of reporting. Hanging out with the subject of your piece, hoping some scene will emerge that because of where it is and what the dialogue is, will reveal that subject. Journeying to all sorts of places, hoping the trip will encounter drama, and meaning. Painstakingly re-creating a moment – like the one when the tsunami hit – through hundreds of interviews. It is arduous, all this reporting. The weeks, the months. And all this time, of course, costs money. A typical cover story in the Times Magazine, when you add up what we pay the author and what the expenses for travel are -- and this leaves out the editing and fact-checking costs, the photography, and so on -- the tally is north of $40,000, and often, if a war zone is involved, considerably more. Do we still have the time to report and read such pieces? And will we have the money? If the reader is an on-line reader, paying nothing, who is going to foot the bill?"

You can read the rest here.

• Was glad to read some good news apparently for some smaller independent book stores.

• Author Allison Winn Scotch (novelist, magazine freelancer) regularly answers readers' questions about writing and publishing over on her blog.

• This week, another media outlet asked -- for what, the thousandth time? -- if poetry is dead. Funny, the question keeps being asked, year after year, for decades. And yet, poetry thrives.

• Simple, short advice, on so-called(?) writer's block and first draft phobia, via WriterJenn blog, which also frequently posts interviews with authors of new books –
"Write. Write it well, write it poorly, write it with margin notes and incomplete sentences; just get it down. Write."

•In my writing classes I don't have to "grade" papers, but if I did and it was getting to me, and I thought I needed a proven scientific guide, I might seriously consider this stress-free grading method.

Have a great weekend!