In Defense of the Sexy New Idea

It happens to the best of us.

You're engaged in a committed, long-term relationship with your current work-in-progress (or C.W.I.P.) when things start to sour. You're fighting all the time, you stop listening to one another, and all those little flaws you overlooked in the beginning start to drive you crazy. You and C.W.I.P. are engaged in a particularly heated battle one day--perhaps at a coffee shop--when the Sexy New Idea walks by.  The S.N.I. (just go with it) gives you a wink as it saunters past, and then, for weeks, whenever you and C.W.I.P. are fighting, you think of S.N.I. One day you are at the coffee shop without C.W.I.P. You've decided that you need a little time apart, some space to think things over. And then S.N.I. appears again, as if out of nowhere, only this time it doesn't stop at winking. It sits down next to you, leans over, whispers sweetly in your ear. It tells you that it sees you are unhappy with C.W.I.P., that you've been fighting far too long, and you should just give in to your impulses and leave C.W.I.P. behind, run away with S.N.I., who would never treat you so poorly, who will always love you and listen to you and never fight with you. And then you have to make a decision--to be faithful to C.W.I.P. or to be seduced by S.N.I.

At some point every writer will face this situation, especially those who work on novels. Writing a novel is like running a marathon, and when you're on your fourteenth mile and think there's absolutely no way you can finish and all you want to do is collapse into a pile in the middle of the road, someone reaches out and offers you a tall, cool glass of water--but you can only have it if you stop running. At first you resist, but the person runs along beside you, holding the water glass in front of you so that you have to see it, can't stop thinking about it, until you finally give in.

Writers are warned about these S.N.I.s, these tall glasses of water, that we are supposed to resist. If we give into temptation, we are told, we will never finish anything.  We will never achieve that ultimate level of commitment to our C.W.I.P.s (seeing them turned into books), and we will never finish the marathon.  For a long time, I reminded myself of the dangers of succumbing to S.N.I. I resisted the temptation as it strutted past and whispered in my ear. But a couple of weeks ago, when C.W.I.P. and I were having a particularly bad fight, I gave in. I stopped resisting. I allowed myself to be seduced by S.N.I., and I have never been happier.

What's that, you say? This happiness is only temporary?  In a few months, S.N.I. and I will be fighting and I'll be begging C.W.I.P. to come back? Possibly. But C.W.I.P. and I have an understanding. It isn't over between us, I just want to explore other options, see what else is out there. After my relationship with S.N.I. is over, I hope to return to C.W.I.P. a better writer and creator. I hope then I'll be able to give C.W.I.P. what I haven't been able to give it in the past.

For now though, S.N.I. and I are in the honeymoon stage, planning the future and building a world together. We are starting the first chapter of our life together, and, despite the memories of C.W.I.P. still hanging over my head, at least I'm writing again.

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For the love of prose poetry

My poem "Hat Box" is up at The Prose-Poem Project. You can check it out online or, if you like prose poetry and want to support a fantastic journal, order the print version when the Spring issue is released in April.

I actually wrote "Hat Box" several years ago when I first discovered the prose poem and the way it often fuses the surreal and the mundane. (Which my poem attempts to do.) The first writer to really introduce me to this delicious combination of violence, beauty, and truth, prose and poetry, was Joel Brouwer, and his Centuries (a collection of fifty prose poems that are each a hundred words long) remains one of my favorite poetry collections. For those of you who are unfamiliar with prose poetry, I'll leave you today with one of my favorites from Centuries.

"Aesthetics"
by Joel Brouwer

Your brother has leukemia? Carve ivory. The elections were rigged? Write a villanelle. A girl shivers in streetlight, takes off her mittens, pulls a silver yo-yo from her pocket. Dogs bark behind a fence. Use oil on wood. Concentrate on pacing when choreographing your divorce; you will have to move through it forever. Two men in green fatigues tie a woman flat to a metal table. One has a rubber hose, the other a pliers. A third man arrives with sandwiches and a thermos. A body has soft and hard parts, like a piano. Music comes from where they meet.

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Fact from Fiction

And the winner is...Monita!  Okay, so Monita was the only one to guess, but she was absolutely right; number 3 was the fact in the list of fictions in the previous post.  Here are the "truths" about all five statements:

1. I actually did see Bill Murray at CDG, but instead of sipping wine at a bar, he was waiting in line to board his flight.  (Celebs--they're just like regular people!)  Either way, I didn't talk to him, mainly because every time I see someone famous in person I imagine what it must be like to have strangers constantly asking for your autograph/picture or just wanting to talk with you, and I imagine it must get really tiresome, so I never actually talk to them, I just admire them from afar.  (And occasionally sneak a pic under the guise of photographing a friend.  *cough* Dr. Dre *cough, cough*)
2. I actually did work on Big Fish, and the set for the town of Specter was built from scratch on this little island in the middle of a lake near Prattville, AL.  The day I went out there with Kari, another production assistant, to check in the extras, we did sneak on set so she could take some pictures (why, oh why, didn't I have my camera?!) but they hadn't started shooting yet, so I don't think that was technically against the rules.  And nothing fell on my head, and we didn't get "caught."  The set guys who were wandering around were pretty cool about us being there, actually.
3. This is the true statement.  I did take anywhere from 19-22 hours almost every semester I was in undergrad so that I could have a light senior year, mostly because I figured I would need more time that year to look for jobs or apply to grad school and not be worried about writing my senior thesis (which I actually wrote and presented my junior year).  Instead, senior year I took fun electives like backpacking and dream psychology and advanced fiction writing, and I did an honors project--editing an anthology of short fiction--which was a lot of fun and really improved my writing.
4. I never wanted to be a skateboarder, though I have always loved the X-Games, skateboarding, and skateboarders. (Bob Burnquist, anyone?)
5. I did take a course to be certified in small vessel sailing, but I never filed my paperwork.  In the end, although I loved sailing and being out on the water (and I never ran into anything!), I knew sailing wasn't something I'd ever really want to do alone.  It's a lot of work, and when it comes down to it, I'm just too lazy to want to be more than a passenger or to occasionally man the jib on someone else's boat.  My sailing experience is going to come in handy with one of the characters in my new W.I.P.--but more on that later!

So there you have it!  I few fun facts about me.  I've got a few other posts in the works, so I'll hopefully be back later this weekend or early next week with interesting writing news.  Until then, I'll be grading and enjoying this fabulous spring-in-February weather!

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Sharing the Love

Over the weekend I was tagged by my lovely friends Tawnysha Greene and Monita Bell with the Memetastic Award that's making the rounds in the blogosphere.  (Don't worry, girls.  I still love you anyway.)

Here are the requirements for this award:

1. Link back to the blogger who awarded you 
2. Display the graphic from award creator Jillsmo 
3. Post 5 statements, 4 of which must be lies
4. Pass the award on to 5 other bloggers, who must also follow the rules
5. Link the post back to "Memetastic Hop" so that Jillsmo can keep track of recipients

So here are my five statements.  See if you can guess the true one.  (Hint:  All of them contain some element of truth.  I've had a weird life.)

1. In Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I once saw Bill Murray drinking whiskey at a bar.  It was very Lost in Translation, but I was too shy to go up and talk to him.
2. I worked on the film Big Fish when I was in college, and when we were shooting the Specter scene, another assistant and I sneaked on the set to take pictures.  We got caught when one of the shoes hanging on a line fell and hit me in the head.
3. I overloaded on courses during my first three years of college (usually taking anywhere from 19 to 22 hours) so that I could goof off my senior year, when I took classes like backpacking, psychology of dreams, ceramics, and French culture.
4. I've always wanted to be a writer, but when I was a kid I also wanted to be a professional skateboarder.  I used to watch the X-Games religiously, but I got discouraged by the scarcity of female skaters and decided to give up my skateboarding dreams.
5. I'm a certified small craft sailor, and the first time I ever went out on my own I ran into a speedboat because I tacked too late. 

So that's my five!  Which is the truth, and which are the fictions?  Feel free to guess in the comments below.

Now for the five bloggers I love enough to inflict bestow with this award.  Don't worry, ladies; it isn't a chain letter.  If you decide not to do it, no one is going to die, you won't be cursed with seven years bad luck, and it won't rain everyday for the next two weeks.  (At least I hope not.)  Instead, at the very least, a few more people will read your words and hopefully be as inspired by you as I am.  So without further ado, here they are:

1. Werecows:  A humorous blog on life as a college student by the awesomely talented Carolyn Kate.  When I taught junior high and high school at Edgewood, my favorite class was my seventh period creative writing students.  In the five years I have been at Auburn, my favorite class has hands-down been my Spring 2010 World Lit II class.  CK was in both of these classes.  Coincidence?  I think not. 
2. Yucababy:  Multi-talented poet/short story writer/novelist and professor Chantel Acevedo muses on books, writing, publishing, and family.
3. Reading Writing Rachel:  Fabulous YA author Rachel Hawkins delivers humor and insight into the writing/publishing world.  Her second novel, Demonglass, the sequel to last year's Hex Hall, will be out in two weeks.
4. A Century of Nerve:  Superwoman, poet, and feline companion Emma Bolden blogs on writing, teaching, and life in the arctic north Kentucky.  She's also re-introducing America to poetry, one Yawp at a time, through her public poetry project. 
5. American Puzzle:  Professor, scholar, and photographer Amanda Morris discusses pedagogy, politics, and rhetoric on this intelligent, thought-provoking blog.

Tomorrow I'll post again to sort the truth from the lies.  Until then, I hope you enjoy reading these other blogs as much as I do.

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"The west is a knot of thundershowers"

It's been raining here all week, and while I normally enjoy the rain, I've officially had enough. With the rain came the cold, the kind of cold that seeps down into my bones and makes it near impossible to get warm, no matter how many cups of coffee or hot chocolate I drink. Despite the fact that all I've wanted to do today is curl up under my down comforter and take a nap, I made myself a vanilla macchiato, sat down at my desk, and forced myself to read and work on my prospectus instead. I read a few chapters of some important critical books this morning and wrote a solid page and a half of my prospectus, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider that before this morning I had written nothing, a page and a half feels pretty good.

As a reward for actually making progress toward my three page goal for the weekend, I got to read Meena Alexander's book of poetry Quickly Changing River this afternoon. I happened upon the book when I was wandering through the stacks at the library the other day, and I decided to give Alexander's poetry a try because I loved her novel Nampally Road so much.  At barely a hundred pages, Nampally Road packs a mean punch.  Alexander's prose is lyrical and poetic and full of haunting lines and images, such as when a despotic ruler constructs a cardboard city that goes up in flames, or this recurring image she borrows from Indian philosopher Nagarjuna: "If fire is lit in water, who can extinguish it?"  These lines and images resonate all the more in the wake of what is happening in Egypt.  The fire has certainly been lit there, in a way that is both exciting and terrifying.  

Like her prose, Alexander's poetry, which moves effortlessly across time and place, has much to say about love and death and youth and memory--but especially war. In particular, these lines, although written about a different place and different circumstances, spoke to me this afternoon:

The west is a knot of thundershowers,
The east, a nest of small-scale fires.

On terraces covered with roses
Instead of honeybees, bullets swarm.


Alexander's writing is full of this sort of juxtaposition between beauty and destruction.  Her writing is elegant yet raw, never shying away from the unpleasant realities of revolution and war, never ceasing to give a voice to the disenfranchised, such as in this poem, "He Speaks: A Former Slave from Southern Sudan":


Hands were cut off, arms too,
as punishment for flight. Legs too.
For not cleaning the camels, for letting the horses loose.

Yes, I prayed to God.
God have mercy I prayed inside my soul
(the soul is a very silent place).

I had gone to sell beans my mother gave me,
eggs too, in the market in Nymlal,
a friend was with me,

twelve years old, tall as a reed.
He piped up when the raiders trapped us both,
they cut him in the throat.

[...]

A boy of seven, I saw this with my own eyes
and now I shut my eyes.
I want to see no more.


Her poetry is not always so heart-breaking--she writes just as fluidly, just as beautifully about trips to Monet's "water garden" in Giverny and Venice's "floating portals" as she does about a girl who writes with her elbows because her hands have been cut off--and her poetry is almost always hopeful, but today, in the wake of attacks against journalists, museums being looted and gardens set ablaze, and riots in Tahrir Square, it was her haunting images of violence that spoke to me.

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Getting organized

Tomorrow is February 1st, but I'm pretending it's the first day of the year and I'm starting my resolutions tomorrow.  I didn't make any resolutions at the beginning of 2011, and perhaps in part because of this, January was the least productive month ever.  Even if I rarely keep resolutions, they at least make me work harder at something for awhile.  Without having any set goals for the year, I feel like I made no progress on the dissertation, the novel, or any other important thing going on in my life during this past month.  I went two weeks without grading a single thing, and these were the first two weeks of the semester!  Not a good way to start a semester, so I'm committing to starting fresh and working hard in the month to come.

This isn't to say I was a total barnacle this past month.  My dissertation director set a March 4 deadline for my prospectus, so I have been ordering and printing primary texts, making my bibliography, reading up on the history of the British East India Company, and trying to narrow down chapter topics.  Even though this journey has only begun, I'm getting organized, which to me is fun.  (In another life I think I was a professional closet organizer.)

My home file cabinet is completely full of boring paperwork (read: bills and bank statements), and since I'm trying to avoid my office at AU as much as possible, I needed a new home filing system for the diss.  At the beginning of the month I went to Office Depot and bought two filing crates and two-hundred files in bright, happy colors, and so far my color-coded system has worked fantastically.

I have files for appendix-related materials (charts, maps, pictures), for bibliographies I come across, for each woman writer I'm working with.  I have files for each chapter and each sub-topic within the chapters, so when I come across an article I don't need now but that might be important a year from now, I just print it and drop it into the appropriate file.

Even more important than my paper filing system, though, is my electronic one.  I'm using Microsoft One Note to keep all of my notes, web links, pictures, and even to-do lists together, and it is so much fun and so easy to use.  I highly recommend it to anyone taking on a massive project.  (I have a separate one for The Novel and another for planning trips.)

For anyone not familiar with One Note, it works like an electronic notebook.  You give your "notebook" a name, set up tabs for the different sections, and then make individual pages for each section.  In my screenshot above, you'll see I have a "To-Do" tab and then a different to-do list for each month.  I also have a  "Summaries" tab, with a separate page for each of the women I'm working with and a breakdown of all of the topics they wrote about.  If I find a picture or image I like online, I copy it and paste it onto the appropriate page of my Appendix section, and One Note automatically records the title and web address of the picture.  One Note is awesomeness incarnate.

I'm just one page away from completing my January to-do list, which I'll finish up this afternoon, and then it's on to February!  Here's to hoping it's a fun, productive month for all of us!

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On learning patience

I am by nature an impatient person.  So far I've never found this quality to be of any benefit to me, and it certainly isn't a good characteristic for a writer or a reader to have.  Right now I'm suffering from impatience because I just (as in ten minutes ago) finished Ally Condie's dystopian YA novel Matched, the first in a three book series.  That's right.  Part one of three.  And the second doesn't come out until November 2011.  Soooo, that means I have a long wait ahead of me.  And I am not good at waiting.  I want instant gratification.  I'm so happy I read the Twilight series after all the books were out. Otherwise, I might have been up for days wondering "Who will Bella choose?  Edward?  Jacob?  Mike?  Or that Tyler kid?  Will she become a vampire?  And will she and Edward ever just do it already?!"  ;-)  And I'm very thankful that I waited until last July to read The Hunger Games, so I only had a month to wait before the final book came out.  If I'd had to wait much longer the stress might have killed me.

I think, as a reader, it is sometimes difficult to remember how long it really takes to put a book together--not just the writing, and that alone can take years.  I'm a slow writer, so even on a good day I can usually only write about five pages.  Five pages that took five hours to write, and maybe another hour of research, and another hour or two of revision.  A full work day to compose five pages that the average reader will consume in ten minutes.  Today I read 200+ pages of Matched, a 366-page book.  Since Ally Condie also admits to being a slow writer and that the second Matched book, Crossed, has already taken fourteen months, I'm going to estimate that today I read what it took Condie ten months or so to write--and that's in addition to all of the editorial revisions she must have made and all of the hurdles of publication.

Sometimes when impatience sets in I must remind myself of how long and arduous the journey is from a single idea to a published book, that while one can receive almost instant gratification from reading a great novel or seeing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or listening to Brahms' First Symphony, years can go into their making.  Years, for just a few hours of individual joy.  But anything truly great takes time, commitment, the belief that the end result will be worth all the wait.  And so, as I begin the long wait until November for Crossed to be released into the world, I will also try to remember to be patient with my own writing, that writing isn't glossy book covers and acid-free pages and reviews in the Times--it's long hours staring at a computer monitor, rearranging words and sentences and pages and deleting them and adding them back and questioning whether any of it works and whether anyone should want to read it.  That it's work--hard work.  But that in the end, the result is so worth the wait.

Who could resist this fantastic cover!

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Publication News

I have to thank my friend Tawnysha Greene for her wonderfully honest and inspiring post yesterday over on her blog.  A lot of writers are open about their rejections, but Tawnysha took this kind of honesty to a new level by revealing exactly how many times each of her published works had been rejected.  The numbers were truly astounding.  While some pieces were accepted after just a few rejections or even accepted by the first place she submitted them, a couple of pieces were rejected well over a hundred times before finding a home!  I know how good a writer Tawnysha is, so there were two different ways I could have responded to such statistics--I could have been depressed that the publishing world is so competitive (and subjective) that talented writers like Tawnysha are overlooked, or I could have been inspired by her tenacity and determination.  I chose the latter.

After I read Tawnysha's post, I decided to dust off some old pieces that had been rejected and resubmit them.  I realized that by only submitting a story four or five times, I wasn't really giving it a fair shake.  I started with a story I discussed in another post last summer, a piece that I really love but that had been rejected four times.  Last semester I made a lot of excuses for not resubmitting the story--usually blaming comps, my (very weak) excuse for everything last semester--but yesterday I decided to stop making excuses and just do the damn thing.  So I submitted the story to seven places.  I've never sent a story to so many places at once before, but Tawnysha's post made me realize I needed to cast my net wider and deeper.  And this time I caught something.

This morning I received an email from The Citron Review--less than 24 hours after I submitted my story to them--asking to publish "Black & White" in their Spring 2011 issue in March.  Of course I then had to withdraw the story from six other places, but it was well worth it to see this story finally published.

So I have to give a special thanks to Tawnysha for writing such an honest and inspiring post.  It's thanks to her that today I have one more publishing cred to my name.

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