Looking Ahead, Looking Back
As the spring semester winds to its close, a stack of student papers looms, waiting to be graded, and a dozen little bureaucratic tasks remain, but I'll confess--merrily--that my thoughts are a little bit elsewhere.
They're with Nearer Home, which will be out this July, and from which I gave my first reading last week at El Museo Latino in Omaha. They're with the collection Family Trouble, which will be out this fall and which I hope will be illuminating and helpful to anyone who's working on memoir. (Now that both books have ISBNs and are available for pre-order, it's all starting to feel more real.) My thoughts are with the proposal for a third Nola Céspedes novel, which I sent to my agent yesterday. (Fingers crossed!) They're with the 2013 International Latino Book Awards, which named both Island of Bones and Hell or High Water finalists. (I'll find out on May 30th.)
And they're very much with the beautiful, wonderful, incredible prospect of a year's sabbatical, which begins as soon as I get those academic tasks finished.
Academics are typically eligible for a sabbatical every seven years. At my institution, sabbaticals are competitive, not guaranteed, so I was thrilled and relieved to find out that my request had been approved--especially because it has been (since I switched institutions and lost a few years on my clock) ten years since my last one. (When I first began working at UNL, I did negotiate some course releases, and I put them together into one semester. That time allowed me to draft Hell or High Water.)
Typically, institutions let you choose: you can take one semester off at full pay, or two consecutive semesters off at half pay. I chose the latter. Like any writer who can possibly swing it financially, I'd much rather tighten my belt, make a few sacrifices, and have the time. If you're an academic and have the choice, I strongly recommend the full year: with a summer tacked on at the beginning and the end, it's fifteen straight months of writing time. Miraculous. Only the retired or the independently wealthy ever get to see anything like that. You get to dwell in the artist's psyche for an unusually long period of time, and the outcomes can be tremendous.
During my last sabbatical, 2003-04, I finished The Truth Book. Now I'm even more disciplined. During this one, I hope to polish up a collection of short stories, How Winter Began, with which I've been threatening my agent for the last few years, and actually get it out there to publishers. If that proposal for a third Nola novel gets accepted, I'll be writing the manuscript. And I have another novel project that I've been working on as well, but let's not get ahead of ourselves...
All this is not to say, however, that you need lengthy bouts of downtime to be productive. I wrote both Island of Bones and Nearer Home without course releases, and I think that's very doable when you have summers off. (I don't generally do summer teaching--again, for me, the money's worth less than the time.) Writer-teachers are very fortunate. (Well, of course, teaching was a choice we made, and it has its downsides, too, but we're fortunate to have had that choice available to us.) During the semesters, it's very difficult--for me, at least--to write anything of much length. I get too absorbed by teaching and prepping; most of my creativity and attention goes into the classroom.
I always keep in mind, too, how impossible my current level of productivity would have been when I had a child at home. There's just no way. So I think writers who are actively parenting and have year-round, full-time jobs should be very, very kind with themselves. And patient, and gentle. Acknowledge that it's hard; appreciate what you're able to accomplish.
Sabbaticals and summers off are both great privileges that enable artists and intellectuals to do their work, and I mention them in order to be transparent about the material conditions that underpin creative production. Last fall, I wrote about this issue in Brevity. I think it's important to acknowledge the material base (wealthy spouse? trust fund?) that makes our work possible.
Personally, I am not heroic about work. I like spending time with my friends and family; I read a lot; I like my sleep. I do not get up at four a.m., like some writers; I do not soak my head in cold water after a day of labor in order to be able to write at night, like Meridel Le Sueur did as a single mother during the Depression. Instead, I write during the weekends and summers and, every so often, a precious sabbatical.
With my son grown up and a position at a research institution, I'm very grateful for what now seems to me to be immense stretches of free time in which to work. Even so, life can get crazy. When you fold an active publicity schedule into your typical academic calendar, plus the editing and revising cycle with your publishers, it can get very hectic. Take your iron supplements! This last year, with two new books out and two more in production, life has been quite wild.
So I'm really looking forward to what promises to be a beautiful and humane respite from that schedule--and I'm looking forward to what issues from this time to be immersed in my work. Wish me luck!
They're with Nearer Home, which will be out this July, and from which I gave my first reading last week at El Museo Latino in Omaha. They're with the collection Family Trouble, which will be out this fall and which I hope will be illuminating and helpful to anyone who's working on memoir. (Now that both books have ISBNs and are available for pre-order, it's all starting to feel more real.) My thoughts are with the proposal for a third Nola Céspedes novel, which I sent to my agent yesterday. (Fingers crossed!) They're with the 2013 International Latino Book Awards, which named both Island of Bones and Hell or High Water finalists. (I'll find out on May 30th.)
And they're very much with the beautiful, wonderful, incredible prospect of a year's sabbatical, which begins as soon as I get those academic tasks finished.
Academics are typically eligible for a sabbatical every seven years. At my institution, sabbaticals are competitive, not guaranteed, so I was thrilled and relieved to find out that my request had been approved--especially because it has been (since I switched institutions and lost a few years on my clock) ten years since my last one. (When I first began working at UNL, I did negotiate some course releases, and I put them together into one semester. That time allowed me to draft Hell or High Water.)
Typically, institutions let you choose: you can take one semester off at full pay, or two consecutive semesters off at half pay. I chose the latter. Like any writer who can possibly swing it financially, I'd much rather tighten my belt, make a few sacrifices, and have the time. If you're an academic and have the choice, I strongly recommend the full year: with a summer tacked on at the beginning and the end, it's fifteen straight months of writing time. Miraculous. Only the retired or the independently wealthy ever get to see anything like that. You get to dwell in the artist's psyche for an unusually long period of time, and the outcomes can be tremendous.
During my last sabbatical, 2003-04, I finished The Truth Book. Now I'm even more disciplined. During this one, I hope to polish up a collection of short stories, How Winter Began, with which I've been threatening my agent for the last few years, and actually get it out there to publishers. If that proposal for a third Nola novel gets accepted, I'll be writing the manuscript. And I have another novel project that I've been working on as well, but let's not get ahead of ourselves...
All this is not to say, however, that you need lengthy bouts of downtime to be productive. I wrote both Island of Bones and Nearer Home without course releases, and I think that's very doable when you have summers off. (I don't generally do summer teaching--again, for me, the money's worth less than the time.) Writer-teachers are very fortunate. (Well, of course, teaching was a choice we made, and it has its downsides, too, but we're fortunate to have had that choice available to us.) During the semesters, it's very difficult--for me, at least--to write anything of much length. I get too absorbed by teaching and prepping; most of my creativity and attention goes into the classroom.
I always keep in mind, too, how impossible my current level of productivity would have been when I had a child at home. There's just no way. So I think writers who are actively parenting and have year-round, full-time jobs should be very, very kind with themselves. And patient, and gentle. Acknowledge that it's hard; appreciate what you're able to accomplish.
Sabbaticals and summers off are both great privileges that enable artists and intellectuals to do their work, and I mention them in order to be transparent about the material conditions that underpin creative production. Last fall, I wrote about this issue in Brevity. I think it's important to acknowledge the material base (wealthy spouse? trust fund?) that makes our work possible.
Personally, I am not heroic about work. I like spending time with my friends and family; I read a lot; I like my sleep. I do not get up at four a.m., like some writers; I do not soak my head in cold water after a day of labor in order to be able to write at night, like Meridel Le Sueur did as a single mother during the Depression. Instead, I write during the weekends and summers and, every so often, a precious sabbatical.
With my son grown up and a position at a research institution, I'm very grateful for what now seems to me to be immense stretches of free time in which to work. Even so, life can get crazy. When you fold an active publicity schedule into your typical academic calendar, plus the editing and revising cycle with your publishers, it can get very hectic. Take your iron supplements! This last year, with two new books out and two more in production, life has been quite wild.
So I'm really looking forward to what promises to be a beautiful and humane respite from that schedule--and I'm looking forward to what issues from this time to be immersed in my work. Wish me luck!
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Why I Write About Evil
I've written two Nola Céspedes murder mysteries now: Hell or High Water, which came out last summer, and Nearer Home, which comes out this July. Readers sometimes ask, "Where do you get your ideas?"When I prepared to write Hell or High Water, I researched unpleasant facts extensively: recidivism rates for sexual offenders, penile plethysmography, and the painfully high suicide, alcoholism, drug dependency, and depression rates experienced by survivors of sexual assault. When I researched Nearer Home, I studied the long history of police brutality in Louisiana.
I did this to be able to underpin the story with accurate data, but also to educate myself. I wanted to learn about these kinds of violence from a distance, as a scholar does, and understand them analytically.
What I did not have to research was the texture of evil up close.
When I was twelve, my mother married a sexual predator, and she remained married to him for much of my adolescence. He was also a violent man, prone to beating her, my brother, and me. Though uneducated, he was not stupid. Rather, he was smart the way a sadist is smart: he enjoyed finding ways to hurt our spirits and our feelings, not just our bodies. What kind of person forbids a child to sing?
If you're lucky, you get away, as I did. Eventually, our mother's husband went to prison. Many years have passed since then. My life now is a very good one, and in some ways I am sane and whole and healthy.
In other ways, it's fair to say I have never recovered.
In writing murder mysteries, I write about cruelty vividly from memory, but it's also my goal to offer--by means of the added data and research--a larger framework for understanding systemic patterns of violence, the kind of illuminating framework I could not imagine when I was twelve.
When you live with evil, you don't forget.
In writing these murder mysteries but enriching them with Nola's friends and family, it's my goal to say that yes, horrific evil exists, but there are alternatives, and there is hope: there are also friendship, and safety, and kindness, and love. Peace is a thing we can make.
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Lively!
Thanks to Lorraine López, I got to read with these folks at Vanderbilt University a couple of weeks ago. Our symposium was called "The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity," and the writers, left to right, are Lisa D. Chávez, Blas Falconer, Daniel Chacón, and me. We had a fantastic and very busy time on the Vanderbilt campus, doing a panel, a craft discussion with MFA students, and evening readings.
AWP in Boston was great, although I'd agree with Julianna Baggott (who was a powerhouse on her panel, by the way) about the absence of the major trade houses for fiction and nonfiction. Here's her smart post about it.
Editor Jenn De Leon chaired a terrific panel with four contributors to her forthcoming anthology Wise Latina: Writers on Higher Education. The pieces were great: warm, funny, painful, true. I can't wait to get the book when it comes out in Spring 2014.
I also learned a lot from Katha Pollitt and E.J. Graff on a panel about the most recent VIDA count--including the fact that the publishing ratio in many cases (sadly) mirrors the submission pool. Many women writers take 'no' too easily for an answer, whereas men writers tend to persist.
Moreover, men writers tend to say 'yes' to an assignment when an editor contacts them, even if they don't have the background or expertise. They learn by doing. Women, conversely, tend to decline if they don't feel like they have the authority to opine on a subject. Men thus become the go-to writers upon whom editors rely. "Go be a boy," E.J. Graff advised, meaning that women can get farther if they're bolder and tougher and ignore rejection. Go get confident.
It was a good panel; lots of food for thought. The inimitable Jennine Capó Crucet chaired that one.
My own reading, signing, and panel all went well, and I met a lot of lovely people whom I'd only known through the Twitterverse before, so that was fun, as was--as everyone says--reconnecting with old friends and former students.
This Saturday, I get to meet the bestselling novelist Joy Fielding, with whom I'll be reading in Fort Myers at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival. Excited about that! If you're in the Fort Myers area, come out and say hi!
AWP in Boston was great, although I'd agree with Julianna Baggott (who was a powerhouse on her panel, by the way) about the absence of the major trade houses for fiction and nonfiction. Here's her smart post about it.
Editor Jenn De Leon chaired a terrific panel with four contributors to her forthcoming anthology Wise Latina: Writers on Higher Education. The pieces were great: warm, funny, painful, true. I can't wait to get the book when it comes out in Spring 2014.
I also learned a lot from Katha Pollitt and E.J. Graff on a panel about the most recent VIDA count--including the fact that the publishing ratio in many cases (sadly) mirrors the submission pool. Many women writers take 'no' too easily for an answer, whereas men writers tend to persist.
Moreover, men writers tend to say 'yes' to an assignment when an editor contacts them, even if they don't have the background or expertise. They learn by doing. Women, conversely, tend to decline if they don't feel like they have the authority to opine on a subject. Men thus become the go-to writers upon whom editors rely. "Go be a boy," E.J. Graff advised, meaning that women can get farther if they're bolder and tougher and ignore rejection. Go get confident.
It was a good panel; lots of food for thought. The inimitable Jennine Capó Crucet chaired that one.
My own reading, signing, and panel all went well, and I met a lot of lovely people whom I'd only known through the Twitterverse before, so that was fun, as was--as everyone says--reconnecting with old friends and former students.
This Saturday, I get to meet the bestselling novelist Joy Fielding, with whom I'll be reading in Fort Myers at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival. Excited about that! If you're in the Fort Myers area, come out and say hi!
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So if you're going to AWP...
So if you're going to AWP this year, there are about fourteen thousand different things you can attend, all of which look at least semi-intriguing.
In case you want to say hi, which I would love, here are the things I'll be doing:
Thursday, 3/7
3:00-3:00 p.m.
I'll be signing copies of Island of Bones--and the new paperback edition of The Truth Book, if people are interested--at the University of Nebraska's booth in the Bookfair. The bonus part about this is that we're giving away five audiobooks of Hell or High Water to the first five people who show up. The CD sets are still in their shrink-wrap, and they retail for about twenty-five bucks, so it's a good deal.
Friday, 3/8
1:30-2:45 p.m.
Hynes Convention Center, Room 210
The Weathergirl Reading is one of the conference's featured readings, so I'm pretty excited about this. With novelists Iris Gomez and Jenna Blum, I'll be reading about natural catastrophe and mental illness--which means I'll be reading from Hell or High Water. There'll be books available in the room, and there'll be a signing afterward. Please, if you haven't gotten a copy, get one there and have me sign it, or just come stand in line and talk to me for a minute, or else I'll have a super-short line or no line at all and have to pretend not to be embarrassed in front of Iris and Jenna, whom I'll have just met and will be trying super-hard to impress. Not that I'm obsessing about this or have even thought about it at all, really.
Saturday, 3/9
4:30-5:45 p.m.
Hynes Convention Center, Room 310
So this panel promises to be pretty cool: "Addressing the Silence: Editing as a Political Act." It's about the Fall issue of Brevity, which was devoted to the nonfiction of women writers as a response to the VIDA counts. Kate Ver Ploeg will be moderating, and Sarah Fawn Montgomery and Nuria Sheehan, the other two assistant editors, will also be on the panel with us. I have it on good authority that one of my co-editors, Barrie Jean Borich, will be in the audience to chime in, but unfortunately Susanne Antonetta, the other co-editor, can't be there.
We'll talk about how the issue came together and the political and aesthetic choices we made, as well as our work as editors on various journals and projects in addition to the Brevity issue. I think Kate's going to try to make the session as interactive/collaborative as possible, so if you've done editing work or have thoughts about the politics of editing, please come be part of the conversation.
If you can't make it to the session, you should still check out the issue. It's gorgeous. Thirteen flash CNF pieces by great writers, 3 book reviews by the assistant editors, and 3 craft essays by Barrie, Susanne, and me--together with some stunning photographs by the disturbingly talented Gabrielle Katina.
If you're going to be in Boston, drop by and say hi. That would be great. Also, given that I'll be doing three events in three days and probably be running around like mad to other people's cool panels, I will need a drink, so if you drink, don't be shy. Drag me off to a bar.
~
Right now, however, I'm snowed in in Lincoln, Nebraska and hoping I make my flight next week to Nashville for this very cool event that Lorraine López has organized.
I hope you're warm and happy where you are. Stay that way.
~
You know those writers whose work you read and it's so real, so simple, so honest and tender and observant that it makes you feel like a cheat and a fake and a superficial fraud and the cheap shill of a false agenda?
I have one of those writers. And I've just been reading some of his work. (No, I'm not going to say who it is.) And it makes me want to hang it all up--because I know, when I confront his vision on the page, that I lack that kind of depth and vulnerability.
My bet is that every writer has a writer or two like that out there, a writer who haunts them. Not necessarily someone who's more proficient technically. Rather, someone who has more soul. Because that is not something you get with practice, I think. It's something you have or don't have.
So your lack stares up at you from the page, accusing you, indicting you. And you read that writer's words with love and grief--grief at your own sorry-ass self, your unwillingness to risk being that humble and vulnerable and wild on the page.
Just thought I'd share. A hazard of the trade.
In case you want to say hi, which I would love, here are the things I'll be doing:
Thursday, 3/7
3:00-3:00 p.m.
I'll be signing copies of Island of Bones--and the new paperback edition of The Truth Book, if people are interested--at the University of Nebraska's booth in the Bookfair. The bonus part about this is that we're giving away five audiobooks of Hell or High Water to the first five people who show up. The CD sets are still in their shrink-wrap, and they retail for about twenty-five bucks, so it's a good deal.
Friday, 3/8
1:30-2:45 p.m.
Hynes Convention Center, Room 210
The Weathergirl Reading is one of the conference's featured readings, so I'm pretty excited about this. With novelists Iris Gomez and Jenna Blum, I'll be reading about natural catastrophe and mental illness--which means I'll be reading from Hell or High Water. There'll be books available in the room, and there'll be a signing afterward. Please, if you haven't gotten a copy, get one there and have me sign it, or just come stand in line and talk to me for a minute, or else I'll have a super-short line or no line at all and have to pretend not to be embarrassed in front of Iris and Jenna, whom I'll have just met and will be trying super-hard to impress. Not that I'm obsessing about this or have even thought about it at all, really.
Saturday, 3/9
4:30-5:45 p.m.
Hynes Convention Center, Room 310
So this panel promises to be pretty cool: "Addressing the Silence: Editing as a Political Act." It's about the Fall issue of Brevity, which was devoted to the nonfiction of women writers as a response to the VIDA counts. Kate Ver Ploeg will be moderating, and Sarah Fawn Montgomery and Nuria Sheehan, the other two assistant editors, will also be on the panel with us. I have it on good authority that one of my co-editors, Barrie Jean Borich, will be in the audience to chime in, but unfortunately Susanne Antonetta, the other co-editor, can't be there.
We'll talk about how the issue came together and the political and aesthetic choices we made, as well as our work as editors on various journals and projects in addition to the Brevity issue. I think Kate's going to try to make the session as interactive/collaborative as possible, so if you've done editing work or have thoughts about the politics of editing, please come be part of the conversation.
If you can't make it to the session, you should still check out the issue. It's gorgeous. Thirteen flash CNF pieces by great writers, 3 book reviews by the assistant editors, and 3 craft essays by Barrie, Susanne, and me--together with some stunning photographs by the disturbingly talented Gabrielle Katina.
If you're going to be in Boston, drop by and say hi. That would be great. Also, given that I'll be doing three events in three days and probably be running around like mad to other people's cool panels, I will need a drink, so if you drink, don't be shy. Drag me off to a bar.
~
Right now, however, I'm snowed in in Lincoln, Nebraska and hoping I make my flight next week to Nashville for this very cool event that Lorraine López has organized.
I hope you're warm and happy where you are. Stay that way.
~
You know those writers whose work you read and it's so real, so simple, so honest and tender and observant that it makes you feel like a cheat and a fake and a superficial fraud and the cheap shill of a false agenda?
I have one of those writers. And I've just been reading some of his work. (No, I'm not going to say who it is.) And it makes me want to hang it all up--because I know, when I confront his vision on the page, that I lack that kind of depth and vulnerability.
My bet is that every writer has a writer or two like that out there, a writer who haunts them. Not necessarily someone who's more proficient technically. Rather, someone who has more soul. Because that is not something you get with practice, I think. It's something you have or don't have.
So your lack stares up at you from the page, accusing you, indicting you. And you read that writer's words with love and grief--grief at your own sorry-ass self, your unwillingness to risk being that humble and vulnerable and wild on the page.
Just thought I'd share. A hazard of the trade.
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The Mardi Gras Itch
Super Bowl aside, all the talk of Mardi Gras has me itching to be in New Orleans, so I was glad when Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience showed up in frozen Lincoln last night. And gentle readers, did they ever throw down.Okay, look: I've been to events at the Lied Center in the past. But never one where the audience was on its feet, dancing in the rows, by the middle of the first number. Nor have I seen Lincolnites whipped into a screaming frenzy by Mardi Gras beads. (Terrance Simien, barefoot onstage and playing the accordion, not only flung them far and wide, but he could toss them into the crowd with his toes.) Honestly, Lincoln? I did not know you had it in you.
The zydeco classics and the band's originals were great, and the fusion stuff was cool, too: I'd never before heard a zydeco-reggae version of Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" (an old favorite of mine), but it was actually pretty awesome, and I've definitely never heard a cover of "No Woman, No Cry" with a guitar solo that sweet.
The HH and the Baby came with me, and they each caught beads, which I got to sport. Family love and zydeco: some very welcome warmth on a day that started at three below zero.
The Zydeco Experience is currently touring the Midwest--Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota... You might want to check them out. (If you're on Twitter, they're @ZydecoRocks.) They are definitely a good time.
In lit news, I'm very grateful to Mandy Van Deven for this beautiful new interview with me for In the Fray, a magazine that focuses on social justice.
And I'm very grateful to Lorraine López for taking the time to give me some helpful feedback on a crazy short crime story I've been wrestling with. I'd been thinking it was maybe a failed experiment, doomed to the drawer, so you writers can imagine my relief and excitement when Lorraine gave it the thumbs-up and said I should read it when I visit Vanderbilt later this month. (If I can get it placed in a journal somewhere, I'll let y'all know.)
Thank you, Mandy & Lorraine! Thank you, Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience!
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