August 2009 Archives
When Is It Okay to Write About Your Family?
And when isn't it? I meet a lot of memoirists, published and un-, and most of us agonize over that question.
And for good reason, as Julie Myerson found out when her memoir about her son's drug addiction appeared in the UK: "A bit of a witch burning was what it felt like," she says. Now it will be released in the US, and she's braced for further controversy.
As today's New York Times piece about Myerson asks, "Are there limits to writing about loved ones, particularly one's children?" Among the memoirists canvassed, David Sheff feels that "the imperative to protect a loved one, particularly a child, outweighs the responsibility to tell the truth," while Susan Cheever, who tried to buy off her 5- and 12-year-old to get their approval to write about them, disagrees: "I strongly believe everybody has the right to their own story," she says, and she sees this as including other people's stories that intersect with the writer's own.
Writing about children, whom one has the obligation to protect, is one thing, while writing about parents and older relatives--as Beatriz Terrazas did, in the great piece below--is another. Tayari Jones, a novelist, blogged recently about shying away from the genre due to her parents' responses when she floated the idea of writing a memoir. As she writes, "the notion of parental displeasure is a real creativity killer." So true.
This whole question has fascinated me since The Truth Book came out, and I've spent the last couple of years collecting essays by writers who've lived the question, who've published about their families and lived to tell about the fallout. Now it's an edited collection tentatively titled Family Trouble: Writers on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family, currently biding its time on an editor's desk at a good university press--and I sure wish they'd hurry up, because I think you'll be fascinated by the surprises, good and bad, that people have encountered when they've published work about their family members: their alcoholic cousins, abusive parents, troubled or long-suffering spouses, adopted children, biological mothers.
Long story short? Ethical consensus does not emerge, but it's definitely a lively read. Writers hold strong views on all sides of the issue. Some of the essays in Family Trouble offer useful principles about where to draw lines, while others share painful cautionary tales. The pieces are funny, blistering, moving, selfish, smart, humble, and warm by turns. I can't wait for them to see the light of print!
If you have an experience in this regard, please leave a comment (or email me privately) and let me know. I would love to hear about it.
And for good reason, as Julie Myerson found out when her memoir about her son's drug addiction appeared in the UK: "A bit of a witch burning was what it felt like," she says. Now it will be released in the US, and she's braced for further controversy.
As today's New York Times piece about Myerson asks, "Are there limits to writing about loved ones, particularly one's children?" Among the memoirists canvassed, David Sheff feels that "the imperative to protect a loved one, particularly a child, outweighs the responsibility to tell the truth," while Susan Cheever, who tried to buy off her 5- and 12-year-old to get their approval to write about them, disagrees: "I strongly believe everybody has the right to their own story," she says, and she sees this as including other people's stories that intersect with the writer's own.
Writing about children, whom one has the obligation to protect, is one thing, while writing about parents and older relatives--as Beatriz Terrazas did, in the great piece below--is another. Tayari Jones, a novelist, blogged recently about shying away from the genre due to her parents' responses when she floated the idea of writing a memoir. As she writes, "the notion of parental displeasure is a real creativity killer." So true.
This whole question has fascinated me since The Truth Book came out, and I've spent the last couple of years collecting essays by writers who've lived the question, who've published about their families and lived to tell about the fallout. Now it's an edited collection tentatively titled Family Trouble: Writers on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family, currently biding its time on an editor's desk at a good university press--and I sure wish they'd hurry up, because I think you'll be fascinated by the surprises, good and bad, that people have encountered when they've published work about their family members: their alcoholic cousins, abusive parents, troubled or long-suffering spouses, adopted children, biological mothers.
Long story short? Ethical consensus does not emerge, but it's definitely a lively read. Writers hold strong views on all sides of the issue. Some of the essays in Family Trouble offer useful principles about where to draw lines, while others share painful cautionary tales. The pieces are funny, blistering, moving, selfish, smart, humble, and warm by turns. I can't wait for them to see the light of print!
If you have an experience in this regard, please leave a comment (or email me privately) and let me know. I would love to hear about it.
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So Moved and Proud
Gentle Readers, good news! More magazine has just published this moving piece by the wonderful journalist Beatriz Terrazas. It's about making peace with wrenching childhood trauma and with the imperfect, inadequate actions of the adults most responsible for protecting us.It was my privilege to meet Beatriz when she took a memoir-writing workshop with Lorraine López and me at Macondo in 2008. Our week together was so intense and sparked so much good work. I loved getting to know Beatriz there in San Antonio and have since taught one of her other essays in the Chicana/Chicano lit classroom.
I love the bravery and strength of this new memoir piece and am so glad that More is sharing it with a broad readership. Congratulations, Beatriz!
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What a Relief
One of my colleagues always signs his emails with this passage, below, from Gilles Deleuze's "Mediators." In our era of compulsory Facebook status updates, in a time when teenagers photograph themselves doing nothing and report the most boring drivel of their lives to someone at the other end of their cell phones (is there really someone on the other end, listening to whole streams of the stuff of which I catch snatches at street corners?), I have to say: I like this passage.
Of course, the irony is that I'm blogging about it. (Of course, another irony is that I write memoir.)
I may just be feeling curmudgeonly as my days fill up with meetings and classes where I'm compelled to utter things, and where (the weakest of) my students feel that mere self-expression is entirely sufficient--that no craft, reasoning, or particular significance is required. I may just be grieving for solitude and silence.
Be that as it may, here's your Deleuze du jour:
Of course, the irony is that I'm blogging about it. (Of course, another irony is that I write memoir.)
I may just be feeling curmudgeonly as my days fill up with meetings and classes where I'm compelled to utter things, and where (the weakest of) my students feel that mere self-expression is entirely sufficient--that no craft, reasoning, or particular significance is required. I may just be grieving for solitude and silence.
Be that as it may, here's your Deleuze du jour:
The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.It's not wholly true, obviously, because sometimes "[r]epressive forces" do "stop people from expressing themselves," as you know and I know. But it's an interesting way of thinking about where we are now.
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Take Heart, Teachers!
Ah, school supplies! Lunchboxes, crisper air, new knee socks. . . . It's that time of year for fresh starts, intellectual excitement, new hope--and, if you're anything like me, the deep, reluctant panic of the born introvert.
Creative writers, who need solitude and tend to get surly when it's interrupted, may be especially prone to end-of-summer mourning. Our luscious peace: shattered. It's very hard to love the 51 beaming faces who've ended your idyll.
And then there's the self-confidence issue. (Am I smart enough? organized enough? They're going to revoke my doctorate and kick me to the curb!) I've been teaching college students since 1992, and I still have those damn anxiety dreams before each new semester. You know: it's time for class, 30 students are waiting, and you don't have the syllabus (your notes, your clothes, teeth).
At least I'm not alone. Award-winning professor, wonderful writer, and adored mentor and friend Gail Griffin acknowledges "the unremitting self-doubt and self-flagellation that accompany [her] as a teacher," and confides in "On Not Knowing What We're Doing: Teaching as the Art of Faithful Failure":
If you've chosen to teach, you already know all the good things about teaching: the beauty, excitement, and deep service of it. But you should know--especially if you're a grad student preparing to TA--that panic attacks and the sudden willingness to trade a limb for another month of summer do not make you weird. They make you utterly normal. If "[i]t's unspeakably risky business"--facilitating learning, growth, and change; challenging people whom you've just met--then being scared means you're rightly aware of that.
But it's super-fun, too. Or so I'm telling myself as hyperventilation sets in.
When I was in graduate school, one of my favorite professors, a Cambridge-educated powerhouse of a brainiac, intimidated the hell out of me. She was brilliant and tough; she intimidated the hell out of everyone. (Even the other professors tiptoed around her.)
Later I learned that, before every conference paper she gave until she got tenure, she threw up. From sheer nerves. Yet in the classroom, it never showed. I never would have guessed that anxiety darkened her door. She was a steamroller, baby, and she rolled all over us.
Nowadays, people often thank me for my poise after I give a lecture or reading, my confidence and risk-taking. My duende, even! Good lord. They have no idea of the medieval agonies that assail me, no idea of how close to failure I feel I'm skating every time.
So just remember that no one can tell you're nervous. (Again, I'm talking here primarily to TAs.) If you don't say you are (and don't, please), your students will never fathom the depths of your terror.
If your hands shake, clasp them, or grab the lectern (or the sides of your head), or sit on them. If someone asks something you don't know, it's okay to say, "I don't know." And you can then employ the tried-and-true line of professors everywhere: "That's a fantastic question. Will you look into that for us and report back to the class on Thursday?" It's okay to not know stuff, even stuff in your field. Our fields are huge, and you're an instructor, not an encyclopedia. Always do your best to prepare, and then let the worry go.
One other thing that always helps me is to think, What do they need? What will most help them learn? How can I connect with them? How can I not bore them? With a little imagination and empathy, you can put yourself in your students' shoes. You can even gather information from them that will help you do so. (Ah, those first-day index cards, a treasure trove of surprising information.) And then teach from that place. Focusing on the students takes the pressure off you to render a perfect performance. Forget about yourself, and focus on them--what they need, want, can benefit from. For me, it's comparable to the internal shift called for by parenting. Instead of being you-centric, you're just them-centric. Simple, but transformative, and it melts the anxiety away. Try it! And good luck!
In terms of folks who challenge people they've just met, if you want to take a moment to thank and encourage Barney Frank for calling a wingnut a wingnut and providing the whole nation with a memorable teaching moment, here's a place to do so: http://site.pfaw.org/ThankFrank. And in totally unrelated news, if you've written a creative nonfiction piece involving animals or about the end of life (Faye R.?), Creative Nonfiction wants to see it.
Creative writers, who need solitude and tend to get surly when it's interrupted, may be especially prone to end-of-summer mourning. Our luscious peace: shattered. It's very hard to love the 51 beaming faces who've ended your idyll.
And then there's the self-confidence issue. (Am I smart enough? organized enough? They're going to revoke my doctorate and kick me to the curb!) I've been teaching college students since 1992, and I still have those damn anxiety dreams before each new semester. You know: it's time for class, 30 students are waiting, and you don't have the syllabus (your notes, your clothes, teeth).
At least I'm not alone. Award-winning professor, wonderful writer, and adored mentor and friend Gail Griffin acknowledges "the unremitting self-doubt and self-flagellation that accompany [her] as a teacher," and confides in "On Not Knowing What We're Doing: Teaching as the Art of Faithful Failure":
I might be wrong, but what I hear around the faculty tables . . . and . . . during our pedagogy workshops is how miserably we're all doing, how incorrigible this or that class is, how impossible and hopeless is this task for which we are paid, and how little we know about it. . . . It's unspeakably risky business. (120)Gail's whole book is wonderfully heartening: honest, reassuring, funny, true.
If you've chosen to teach, you already know all the good things about teaching: the beauty, excitement, and deep service of it. But you should know--especially if you're a grad student preparing to TA--that panic attacks and the sudden willingness to trade a limb for another month of summer do not make you weird. They make you utterly normal. If "[i]t's unspeakably risky business"--facilitating learning, growth, and change; challenging people whom you've just met--then being scared means you're rightly aware of that.
But it's super-fun, too. Or so I'm telling myself as hyperventilation sets in.
When I was in graduate school, one of my favorite professors, a Cambridge-educated powerhouse of a brainiac, intimidated the hell out of me. She was brilliant and tough; she intimidated the hell out of everyone. (Even the other professors tiptoed around her.)
Later I learned that, before every conference paper she gave until she got tenure, she threw up. From sheer nerves. Yet in the classroom, it never showed. I never would have guessed that anxiety darkened her door. She was a steamroller, baby, and she rolled all over us.
Nowadays, people often thank me for my poise after I give a lecture or reading, my confidence and risk-taking. My duende, even! Good lord. They have no idea of the medieval agonies that assail me, no idea of how close to failure I feel I'm skating every time.
So just remember that no one can tell you're nervous. (Again, I'm talking here primarily to TAs.) If you don't say you are (and don't, please), your students will never fathom the depths of your terror.
If your hands shake, clasp them, or grab the lectern (or the sides of your head), or sit on them. If someone asks something you don't know, it's okay to say, "I don't know." And you can then employ the tried-and-true line of professors everywhere: "That's a fantastic question. Will you look into that for us and report back to the class on Thursday?" It's okay to not know stuff, even stuff in your field. Our fields are huge, and you're an instructor, not an encyclopedia. Always do your best to prepare, and then let the worry go.
One other thing that always helps me is to think, What do they need? What will most help them learn? How can I connect with them? How can I not bore them? With a little imagination and empathy, you can put yourself in your students' shoes. You can even gather information from them that will help you do so. (Ah, those first-day index cards, a treasure trove of surprising information.) And then teach from that place. Focusing on the students takes the pressure off you to render a perfect performance. Forget about yourself, and focus on them--what they need, want, can benefit from. For me, it's comparable to the internal shift called for by parenting. Instead of being you-centric, you're just them-centric. Simple, but transformative, and it melts the anxiety away. Try it! And good luck!
In terms of folks who challenge people they've just met, if you want to take a moment to thank and encourage Barney Frank for calling a wingnut a wingnut and providing the whole nation with a memorable teaching moment, here's a place to do so: http://site.pfaw.org/ThankFrank. And in totally unrelated news, if you've written a creative nonfiction piece involving animals or about the end of life (Faye R.?), Creative Nonfiction wants to see it.
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Friends in Great Places!
A happy shout-out to Heather Sellers, who's been here on the blog talking about writing by hand and whose unique voice is preserved in her piece for O magazine this month, "Cups of Men." Single and 42, 100 men, 100 cups of coffee. Do the math.
Yay to Michelle Tea, a four-time memoirist and the editor of the blowaway collection Without a Net, who takes her working-class lens to hang out with Beth Ditto at Paris's Fashion Week for The Believer. Here's a snippet:
And last but not least, I am very excited to be able to recommend to you the amazing Casey Ebro, who acquired and edited my own memoir The Truth Book and is now available on a freelance basis to help people refine their manuscripts and proposals. I can honestly say that working with Casey was an unmitigated joy. She has pitch-perfect taste, knows structure and sentences like you wouldn't believe, and is always kind and immaculately professional. If you have a proposal or a manuscript you're unsure about or would like some very knowledgeable help with, you should get in touch with her.
Casey received her Master of Science in Publishing, with distinction, from New York University. While a graduate student, she interned at Farrar, Straus, & Giroux and at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. For the past nine years, she worked at Arcade Publishing, where she acquired and edited books in the categories of history, politics, current events, biography, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and literary fiction. Now a freelance book editor, Casey shapes proposals and works of nonfiction and fiction and consults with authors on the publishing process.
Her latest book was THE TEMPLARS by Vatican Secret Archives historian Barbara Frale, for which she solicited a foreword by Umberto Eco. An alternate selection for the History Book Club, Military Book Club, Book of the Month Club, Book of the Month Club 2, Science Fiction Book Club, and One Spirit Book Club, THE TEMPLARS was hailed by Booklist as "the first-choice primer on its legend-laden subject."
She was also the acquiring editor of the trade paperback original WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT POLITICS . . . BUT DON'T by Jessamyn Conrad. Published before the elections, it has a blurb from Barack Obama, who hailed the book as "engaging and inspiring."
But honestly, she can do anything. Casey's fantastic. She's a great listener, both to people and to manuscripts: she can hear what's really there, and she can make it even clearer and stronger. To inquire, e-mail her at caseyebro@yahoo.com, and if you do, please tell her I sent you.
Now, shhhh. Make Mommy a cocktail. (But just one.) Mad Men's back.
Yay to Michelle Tea, a four-time memoirist and the editor of the blowaway collection Without a Net, who takes her working-class lens to hang out with Beth Ditto at Paris's Fashion Week for The Believer. Here's a snippet:
For a long time I hated beauty for the way people used it as a measuring stick to beat people, especially women. But I came to believe in a vast idea of beauty, one that included me and all my beautiful weirdo friends. As for more conventional beauty, I didn't have to hate it just because people let it make them stupid.Speaking of which, I scoured the NYT's style magazine this morning, and I can edit down what's on offer for fall to one website for you: Babette, the only truly interesting one in there. (Nothing can touch Ports 1961, imho, but folks have to try.) And you can read about Colette's foray into the beauty biz, too.
And last but not least, I am very excited to be able to recommend to you the amazing Casey Ebro, who acquired and edited my own memoir The Truth Book and is now available on a freelance basis to help people refine their manuscripts and proposals. I can honestly say that working with Casey was an unmitigated joy. She has pitch-perfect taste, knows structure and sentences like you wouldn't believe, and is always kind and immaculately professional. If you have a proposal or a manuscript you're unsure about or would like some very knowledgeable help with, you should get in touch with her.
Casey received her Master of Science in Publishing, with distinction, from New York University. While a graduate student, she interned at Farrar, Straus, & Giroux and at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. For the past nine years, she worked at Arcade Publishing, where she acquired and edited books in the categories of history, politics, current events, biography, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and literary fiction. Now a freelance book editor, Casey shapes proposals and works of nonfiction and fiction and consults with authors on the publishing process.
Her latest book was THE TEMPLARS by Vatican Secret Archives historian Barbara Frale, for which she solicited a foreword by Umberto Eco. An alternate selection for the History Book Club, Military Book Club, Book of the Month Club, Book of the Month Club 2, Science Fiction Book Club, and One Spirit Book Club, THE TEMPLARS was hailed by Booklist as "the first-choice primer on its legend-laden subject."
She was also the acquiring editor of the trade paperback original WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT POLITICS . . . BUT DON'T by Jessamyn Conrad. Published before the elections, it has a blurb from Barack Obama, who hailed the book as "engaging and inspiring."
But honestly, she can do anything. Casey's fantastic. She's a great listener, both to people and to manuscripts: she can hear what's really there, and she can make it even clearer and stronger. To inquire, e-mail her at caseyebro@yahoo.com, and if you do, please tell her I sent you.
Now, shhhh. Make Mommy a cocktail. (But just one.) Mad Men's back.
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Why to Be Wry
In Iowa City with time--so I thought--on my hands, I asked the shopgirl at the Aveda salon to help me choose a lipstick, one just right for me. We tried reds and browns, which made my mouth look small. I wiped them off, shaking my head.
And then she found one. Soft, cool, bright. Just right. Just for me, tailor-plucked for my particular mouth. I turned it over, hoping for a sexy color name, something lush, some verbal promise swollen with candy or fire engines and slick biteable pleasures, like a fortune in the cookie I hadn't eaten yet.
Fossil, it read.
Not so much time, really.
And then she found one. Soft, cool, bright. Just right. Just for me, tailor-plucked for my particular mouth. I turned it over, hoping for a sexy color name, something lush, some verbal promise swollen with candy or fire engines and slick biteable pleasures, like a fortune in the cookie I hadn't eaten yet.
Fossil, it read.
Not so much time, really.
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A Bystander in a Dangerous World
Tayari Jones's blog had a link to this piece by Walter Mosley on why people like crime stories. His thoughts on guilt and salvation are not startlingly new, but I like his insight about the feelings of powerlessness and distrust that motivate readers/watchers of crime narratives.
"Crime shows, mysteries, and films speak to the bystander in a dangerous world," writes Mosley. "[M]ost of us see ourselves as powerless cogs in a greater machine; as potential victims of a society so large and insensitive that we, innocent bystanders in the crowd, might be caught at any time in the crossfire between the forces of so-called good and evil."
We want to identify with the heroic character who does the right thing, who blows the whistle, tracks down the bad guy, or solves the puzzle just in time to save innocents. Or, as in Mosley's formulation, we want to believe that someone would do that for us.
What motivates people to write crime stories, I wonder? The desire to invent such do-righters? The urge to avenge ourselves on paper on the type of person ("Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental," wink, wink) who wronged us or someone we loved? The need to make a tidy clockwork narrative, beginning-middle-end, out of the tentacled, massy sprawl of real-life violations?
I don't know. And I don't know that I want to cater to or foster feelings of powerlessness and distrust, if Mosley's right.
I just know that I woke up on Friday with a rare morning of nothing to do, and instead of enjoying some of that nothing, like a sane person, I wrote chapter one of the sequel to THE DESIRE PROJECTS.
And then I sat there, staring at my notebook, with that feeling like you're going to cry, but you don't. I'd thought Nola, my protagonist, was done with me. I thought she'd said her piece, done her deeds, and moved on. Ridden into the sunset and all that.
Yet there she was, full of trouble and ready to go.
"Crime shows, mysteries, and films speak to the bystander in a dangerous world," writes Mosley. "[M]ost of us see ourselves as powerless cogs in a greater machine; as potential victims of a society so large and insensitive that we, innocent bystanders in the crowd, might be caught at any time in the crossfire between the forces of so-called good and evil."
We want to identify with the heroic character who does the right thing, who blows the whistle, tracks down the bad guy, or solves the puzzle just in time to save innocents. Or, as in Mosley's formulation, we want to believe that someone would do that for us.
What motivates people to write crime stories, I wonder? The desire to invent such do-righters? The urge to avenge ourselves on paper on the type of person ("Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental," wink, wink) who wronged us or someone we loved? The need to make a tidy clockwork narrative, beginning-middle-end, out of the tentacled, massy sprawl of real-life violations?
I don't know. And I don't know that I want to cater to or foster feelings of powerlessness and distrust, if Mosley's right.
I just know that I woke up on Friday with a rare morning of nothing to do, and instead of enjoying some of that nothing, like a sane person, I wrote chapter one of the sequel to THE DESIRE PROJECTS.
And then I sat there, staring at my notebook, with that feeling like you're going to cry, but you don't. I'd thought Nola, my protagonist, was done with me. I thought she'd said her piece, done her deeds, and moved on. Ridden into the sunset and all that.
Yet there she was, full of trouble and ready to go.
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So Much Stuff! (including chocolate)
I'm still catching my breath after finishing THE DESIRE PROJECTS, but I want to share a bunch of great and interesting things with you:
Step up, Sotomayor fans, and get your hot pink "Wise Latina" t-shirts here--with props to the UT Latinas for making it happen.
Scroll to the bottom of O Magazine's "How to Write Your Own Memoir" (redundant title? but okay, whatever) for ten good exercises. (Thanks, Rachel Rinehart Johnson!)
Here's some really smart advice on writing memoir--from an agent, no less. My favorite bits are these:
Speaking of agents, some of you have asked me about mine, and I'm excruciatingly proud to show off Curtis Brown's pretty new website. I love the image at the top. (And guess which one my agent is!)
For instant humility, scroll through "Bestsellers & Awards," as I did. Feel immediately wee. Resolve not to care. Fail. Sigh. Resign yourself to caring. Turn to chocolate.
Which leads me to . . .
At Pine Manor, writer Anne-Marie Oomen gave me a taste of Grocer's Daughter chocolates (which she hand-carried with her from Michigan to Boston), and I am now in love. They make Godiva taste like wax. Sorry, but they do. They're now my go-to gift for special occasions. (Note that I had to add a new category, below.)
Last but definitely not least, the launch party for Belinda Acosta's new novel (which I blabbed about here--and Belinda and I gabbed together about here) is coming up in Austin, Texas. Who wouldn't want to celebrate at Cuba Libre for an evening? If you're in town, you should so go. (Yes, you too, Julie.)
Tuesday, August 18
6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Cuba Libre
409 Colorado
So you don't know Belinda. So you haven't read the book. So what? If you were throwing a launch party for your first novel, wouldn't you love it if an enthusiastic stranger showed up?
Step up, Sotomayor fans, and get your hot pink "Wise Latina" t-shirts here--with props to the UT Latinas for making it happen.
Scroll to the bottom of O Magazine's "How to Write Your Own Memoir" (redundant title? but okay, whatever) for ten good exercises. (Thanks, Rachel Rinehart Johnson!)
Here's some really smart advice on writing memoir--from an agent, no less. My favorite bits are these:
Memoir is a tricky category, one that I love but one in which the bar for writing is high and the demand for platform still higher. . . . [N]ot only had you better write very, very, very well, but do so in service of a story in which the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.And again:
[Good memoir is] work that has drama, that surprises, that toggles between the personal and the universal, and is also very, very well written.I couldn't have said it better. But there's more on the site--and she links to another site she likes--so check it out.
Speaking of agents, some of you have asked me about mine, and I'm excruciatingly proud to show off Curtis Brown's pretty new website. I love the image at the top. (And guess which one my agent is!)
For instant humility, scroll through "Bestsellers & Awards," as I did. Feel immediately wee. Resolve not to care. Fail. Sigh. Resign yourself to caring. Turn to chocolate.
Which leads me to . . .
At Pine Manor, writer Anne-Marie Oomen gave me a taste of Grocer's Daughter chocolates (which she hand-carried with her from Michigan to Boston), and I am now in love. They make Godiva taste like wax. Sorry, but they do. They're now my go-to gift for special occasions. (Note that I had to add a new category, below.)
Last but definitely not least, the launch party for Belinda Acosta's new novel (which I blabbed about here--and Belinda and I gabbed together about here) is coming up in Austin, Texas. Who wouldn't want to celebrate at Cuba Libre for an evening? If you're in town, you should so go. (Yes, you too, Julie.)
Tuesday, August 186:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Cuba Libre
409 Colorado
So you don't know Belinda. So you haven't read the book. So what? If you were throwing a launch party for your first novel, wouldn't you love it if an enthusiastic stranger showed up?
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Hallelujah!
Praise and glory be! THE DESIRE PROJECTS--the long-agonized-over literary thriller/chica lit novel that you just might have heard me kvetch about on here--has gone into the mail. Hurray! Thank you for all your support, suggestions, advice, and just general goodwill. By tomorrow afternoon (the U.S. Post Office willing), it will arrive on my agent's desk in Manhattan to await its fate.
Now that I have kissed the manuscript for luck and let it go, I have this bizarre urge to obsess over the quantifiable aspects of it. Why? I guess maybe because the qualitative parts are so nebulous. (Will my agent like it? Will an editor at a publishing house? Will readers?) So, for the record, & because I cannot help myself: THE DESIRE PROJECTS is 25 chapters, or 372 pages, or 98,469 words long.
Note to my hardworking writing students: You should know that when I started my most recent revision, the manuscript was about 106,000 words long, so you can see that I made substantive cuts. Over 7,000 words! Looking back now at my first draft, I can't believe how self-indulgent it was. (Sigh of embarrassment.) But that's what revision's for. And you don't outgrow it. And having to do a lot of it doesn't mean you suck.
Now I'm brainstorming ideas for a website for the novel. I envision lots of gorgeous photographs (already taken by yours truly) of the settings in the book, sound files of the songs that are mentioned (Does anyone out there like the Radiators? or Papa Grows Funk?), a map of the places where my cranky protagonist, Nola, goes during the book, recipes for the food and drinks she makes, links to the restaurants and clubs where she goes, and more. I'm kind of excited about it.
In other happy news, I'm working on my graduate course for this fall, ENGL 810, which focuses entirely on modernist women writers from both sides of the Atlantic: Gertrude Stein, Jean Rhys, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Mansfield, Nella Larsen, Margery Latimer, Virginia Woolf, and Meridel Le Sueur. Nice variety, right? Rhys is originally from Dominica, Mansfield's originally from New Zealand, Hurston and Larsen are usually grouped only with the Harlem Renaissance, and Latimer and Le Sueur were Midwestern labor activists as well as experimental writers. So it'll be a little eclectic--and fun.
It's the first time I've ever gotten to teach only women writers of the period--thanks, UNL! (Typical academic course configurations restrict their focus to either U.S. or British modernism, so I'm usually expected to cover the big guys of either: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, & Eliot, or Conrad, Joyce, Eliot, & Pound. Notice how Eliot gets double play?) So I'm interested in seeing what new questions emerge--especially from the interests and theoretical expertise of my grad students--when we read all these women's texts together, now that the field has so thoroughly absorbed the impact and implications of the 1990 Gender of Modernism moment.
We won't have to just keep repeating that these women writers are worthy of serious investigation; that battle, thank goodness, has been won. And we won't have to concentrate on issues of gender--though we can, if we're interested. We have the luxury of seeing what else is interesting about these books.
My goal is for every student to get one good conference paper and a related scholarly article out of the semester. We'll see.
I'm also currently lucky to be reading the stellar memoir pieces of UNL Ph.D. student Andy Nash, who's working on his creative dissertation, and Pine Manor MFA student Faye Rapoport DesPres, who's working on her MFA thesis. So far, both manuscripts are smart, honest, revealing works--and so well written, I'm envious. Hurray for good students everywhere! You make your teachers' days.
Now that I have kissed the manuscript for luck and let it go, I have this bizarre urge to obsess over the quantifiable aspects of it. Why? I guess maybe because the qualitative parts are so nebulous. (Will my agent like it? Will an editor at a publishing house? Will readers?) So, for the record, & because I cannot help myself: THE DESIRE PROJECTS is 25 chapters, or 372 pages, or 98,469 words long.
Note to my hardworking writing students: You should know that when I started my most recent revision, the manuscript was about 106,000 words long, so you can see that I made substantive cuts. Over 7,000 words! Looking back now at my first draft, I can't believe how self-indulgent it was. (Sigh of embarrassment.) But that's what revision's for. And you don't outgrow it. And having to do a lot of it doesn't mean you suck.
Now I'm brainstorming ideas for a website for the novel. I envision lots of gorgeous photographs (already taken by yours truly) of the settings in the book, sound files of the songs that are mentioned (Does anyone out there like the Radiators? or Papa Grows Funk?), a map of the places where my cranky protagonist, Nola, goes during the book, recipes for the food and drinks she makes, links to the restaurants and clubs where she goes, and more. I'm kind of excited about it.
In other happy news, I'm working on my graduate course for this fall, ENGL 810, which focuses entirely on modernist women writers from both sides of the Atlantic: Gertrude Stein, Jean Rhys, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Mansfield, Nella Larsen, Margery Latimer, Virginia Woolf, and Meridel Le Sueur. Nice variety, right? Rhys is originally from Dominica, Mansfield's originally from New Zealand, Hurston and Larsen are usually grouped only with the Harlem Renaissance, and Latimer and Le Sueur were Midwestern labor activists as well as experimental writers. So it'll be a little eclectic--and fun.
It's the first time I've ever gotten to teach only women writers of the period--thanks, UNL! (Typical academic course configurations restrict their focus to either U.S. or British modernism, so I'm usually expected to cover the big guys of either: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, & Eliot, or Conrad, Joyce, Eliot, & Pound. Notice how Eliot gets double play?) So I'm interested in seeing what new questions emerge--especially from the interests and theoretical expertise of my grad students--when we read all these women's texts together, now that the field has so thoroughly absorbed the impact and implications of the 1990 Gender of Modernism moment.
We won't have to just keep repeating that these women writers are worthy of serious investigation; that battle, thank goodness, has been won. And we won't have to concentrate on issues of gender--though we can, if we're interested. We have the luxury of seeing what else is interesting about these books.
My goal is for every student to get one good conference paper and a related scholarly article out of the semester. We'll see.
I'm also currently lucky to be reading the stellar memoir pieces of UNL Ph.D. student Andy Nash, who's working on his creative dissertation, and Pine Manor MFA student Faye Rapoport DesPres, who's working on her MFA thesis. So far, both manuscripts are smart, honest, revealing works--and so well written, I'm envious. Hurray for good students everywhere! You make your teachers' days.
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I Know It's Last Minute, But . . .
Stroll the Haymarket and do a good deed! If you live in Lincoln and you have a little free time this evening (Sunday), please consider coming to Indigo Bridge Books to help the 17 men who lost their possessions during a recent house fire at the Latino drug & alcohol rehab house at 18th and P.
They're in need of these items:
Many thanks to the folks at Indigo Bridge Books, who took this initiative, and who write:
They're in need of these items:
Men's shoes and tennis shoes in sizes 7, 8, 8 1/2, 9, 9 1/2, 10 1/2, 11, and 12Toiletries such as toothbrushes, shampoo, shaving needs are welcome, and so is bedding (pillows, blankets, etc.).
Men's t-shirts in sizes M, L, XL, and XXL
Men's pants in a variety of sizes
Men's boxers in M, L, XL, and XXL
Men's socks, socks, socks
Many thanks to the folks at Indigo Bridge Books, who took this initiative, and who write:
If you have time this Sunday evening, you can come and extend a hand of friendship to these men. If you desire and are able, bring any item to provide for their material need as well.I've got a commitment this evening, so I'm going to take things over early, but if you do, too, maybe I'll see you there.
Thanks for considering supporting these men with a greeting or gift!
Sunday August 2nd
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Coffee and cookies at Indigo Bridge Books
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