Recently in writing Category
Fairy Tales & Transformation
When I teach ENGL 215, Intro to Women's Literature, I begin with fairy tales. Not because women's literature is childish, but because scholars believe that fairy tales and folktales are the oldest forms of women's authorship in the West. Mothers, grandmothers, nursemaids, and nannies made up tales that expressed their intuitions, experiences, and sense of form (those neat sets of three!), and passed them on orally, generation to generation, until folks like Perrault and the Grimm brothers collected and reshaped them.
In class, we move on then to Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, through which the strains of fairy tales echo, and to texts that followed, like The Yellow Wallpaper, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bluest Eye, The House on Mango Street, and A Gate at the Stairs (which we're also reading this week in ENGL 852, in preparation for Lorrie Moore's visit here). Gothic echoes of fairy tales--with their frank acknowledgment of the reality of cruelty, the divisive role of beauty, and the structures of power at even the most intimate levels--waft through them all.
As Marina Warner argues in her excellent critical study From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, all those seemingly absurd (yet undeniably enchanting) stories of talking animals, people turning into birds, and frogs turning into princes alert us to a deep truth: the possibility of transformation. Our ethics and our actions can transform us. The world is alive--and possibly sentient--all around us. Our choices matter. We can change.
When I was fourteen, I ran away from a violent home, and I eventually helped my little brother, who was nine, to run away, too. Before we succeeded, however, we made one horrifying, aborted attempt, and I've written about it in my memoir The Truth Book. During that botched attempt, he dropped his little plant. The container broke open on the road, and soil spilled, and I told him to leave it behind, there was no time.
And then I forgot about it. For years. But as Nola says in Hell or High Water, "nothing that's buried can stay buried long."
On the new paperback edition of The Truth Book, which launches this week, the University of Nebraska Press honors this moment of realization with Annie Shahan's beautiful cover design:
Thank you, Annie Shahan. And thank you, Tom Swanson, Bison Books editor, for wanting this project to come back to life in a new form, and to the wonderful and amazing writer Dorothy Allison, for writing a foreword for this new edition. The book has always been dedicated to my brother. Now its cover shows this, and I am so grateful.
This Saturday, we'll be celebrating the launch of Island of Bones at Indigo Bridge Books from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. We'll have mojitos, food, and homemade flan from my grandmother's secret recipe. But we'll also be celebrating the transformation of The Truth Book into something new, something more lovely than it used to be.
Our ethics and actions can transform us, can make our lives magical. Our writing can make us have to change in painful, powerful, and beautiful ways. If you're in Lincoln, come celebrate.
In class, we move on then to Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, through which the strains of fairy tales echo, and to texts that followed, like The Yellow Wallpaper, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bluest Eye, The House on Mango Street, and A Gate at the Stairs (which we're also reading this week in ENGL 852, in preparation for Lorrie Moore's visit here). Gothic echoes of fairy tales--with their frank acknowledgment of the reality of cruelty, the divisive role of beauty, and the structures of power at even the most intimate levels--waft through them all.
As Marina Warner argues in her excellent critical study From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, all those seemingly absurd (yet undeniably enchanting) stories of talking animals, people turning into birds, and frogs turning into princes alert us to a deep truth: the possibility of transformation. Our ethics and our actions can transform us. The world is alive--and possibly sentient--all around us. Our choices matter. We can change.
When I was fourteen, I ran away from a violent home, and I eventually helped my little brother, who was nine, to run away, too. Before we succeeded, however, we made one horrifying, aborted attempt, and I've written about it in my memoir The Truth Book. During that botched attempt, he dropped his little plant. The container broke open on the road, and soil spilled, and I told him to leave it behind, there was no time.
And then I forgot about it. For years. But as Nola says in Hell or High Water, "nothing that's buried can stay buried long."
This realization was devastating to me. Yet I could not have moved forward without its clarity. It transformed me.I am thirty-three when I wake choking from a dream of the little plant. A small green seedling, the one thing he wanted to take with him. Alone in the brightness of my room, I see how simple it would have been to have helped him scoop it up, to have held it in our hands together as we rushed to the revving car. How you can be saying to someone, "You are the most important person in the world to me," and yet be ignoring the small thing closest to his heart. How you can halo yourself as the hero and never match up the shards that say you're not. How quickly it all happens and then there is no way back. (The Truth Book)
On the new paperback edition of The Truth Book, which launches this week, the University of Nebraska Press honors this moment of realization with Annie Shahan's beautiful cover design:
Thank you, Annie Shahan. And thank you, Tom Swanson, Bison Books editor, for wanting this project to come back to life in a new form, and to the wonderful and amazing writer Dorothy Allison, for writing a foreword for this new edition. The book has always been dedicated to my brother. Now its cover shows this, and I am so grateful.
This Saturday, we'll be celebrating the launch of Island of Bones at Indigo Bridge Books from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. We'll have mojitos, food, and homemade flan from my grandmother's secret recipe. But we'll also be celebrating the transformation of The Truth Book into something new, something more lovely than it used to be.
Our ethics and actions can transform us, can make our lives magical. Our writing can make us have to change in painful, powerful, and beautiful ways. If you're in Lincoln, come celebrate.
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Boston Bound!
I'm excited to be heading to Boston. Thank you, Pine Manor MFA program, for inviting me back! It'll be great to see so many familiar faces--and I'll get to see Dennis Lehane, a long-time hero of mine, read his work.
Here's a new review of Hell or High Water from Chick Lit Central. Very nice!
And here's a new piece, "From the Ivory Tower to the Gritty Gutter," that went live today on Writer Unboxed. (Q: How did an academically trained scholar of modernism learn to write a crime novel? A: Very, very slowly.)
Thank you, Bill Stibor, for interviewing me on NET Nebraska, Nebraska's NPR station, this morning! It was fun to do my first interview about Hell or High Water. Bill's questions were interesting and fun, and the time whizzed by.
Until I'm back on Wednesday, take care!
Here's a new review of Hell or High Water from Chick Lit Central. Very nice!
And here's a new piece, "From the Ivory Tower to the Gritty Gutter," that went live today on Writer Unboxed. (Q: How did an academically trained scholar of modernism learn to write a crime novel? A: Very, very slowly.)
Thank you, Bill Stibor, for interviewing me on NET Nebraska, Nebraska's NPR station, this morning! It was fun to do my first interview about Hell or High Water. Bill's questions were interesting and fun, and the time whizzed by.
Until I'm back on Wednesday, take care!
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When You Think the Manuscript's Ready
What I'm doing right this very instant is taking a break from what I hope is the final, final draft of the second Nola Céspedes novel, which is due June 30th to my editor at St. Martin's Press. I think it's done, but I want to sit with it for a while.
Here's what I do, a trick you might try. When I think I'm really done, I type out the whole email to the editor in a flush of "I'm finished!" relief, explaining what I've done and haven't done in response to his/her editorial suggestions. I attach the document file of the revised manuscript to the email.
Then I get up and go do something--doesn't matter what. Wash the dishes, whatever.
And don't you know that before five minutes have passed, little details are gnawing at me--you should have changed x, could have fixed y, you know you're being lazy with z.
Sigh. So then I come back and delete the attached document from the email, open the bloody thing up again, and make those changes that my better angels know I ought to make. Grrr.
So if you're ever wondering if a piece is really, truly done and ready to send out, you might try that. It always works for me. Saves me from chagrin later on, and saves my editor time and labor.
Here's hoping that this new novel, which I was calling BAD SHOOT but which we're now calling NEARER HOME (a title that may sound cozy but, as an allusion to Robert Frost's "Desert Places," is actually psychologically chilling), will be actually, really, finally done by the 30th. Wish me luck!
In other news, a big shout-out of thanks goes to blogger Michelle Jackson, who reviews Hell or High Water here. You cannot imagine the relief in an author's heart when a review begins, "I do not even know where to express my absolute love of this book." I'm so glad Michelle loved it, and I'm tickled that she thought I was a native New Orleanian. I like what she says, too, about the novel's heroine, Nola:
Gratitude. It means so much when readers love a book.
In international news, the ink is dry on the contract, so I'm happy to be able to announce that Gallimard will publish a French translation of Hell or High Water in its historic Série Noire line. This is a huge honor and thrill for me, since that's the imprint that published two of my biggest mystery-writing heroes, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The editor at Gallimard called Hell or High Water "tricky and insidious"--and really, for a crime author, what compliment could be higher?
Here's what I do, a trick you might try. When I think I'm really done, I type out the whole email to the editor in a flush of "I'm finished!" relief, explaining what I've done and haven't done in response to his/her editorial suggestions. I attach the document file of the revised manuscript to the email.
Then I get up and go do something--doesn't matter what. Wash the dishes, whatever.
And don't you know that before five minutes have passed, little details are gnawing at me--you should have changed x, could have fixed y, you know you're being lazy with z.
Sigh. So then I come back and delete the attached document from the email, open the bloody thing up again, and make those changes that my better angels know I ought to make. Grrr.
So if you're ever wondering if a piece is really, truly done and ready to send out, you might try that. It always works for me. Saves me from chagrin later on, and saves my editor time and labor.
Here's hoping that this new novel, which I was calling BAD SHOOT but which we're now calling NEARER HOME (a title that may sound cozy but, as an allusion to Robert Frost's "Desert Places," is actually psychologically chilling), will be actually, really, finally done by the 30th. Wish me luck!
In other news, a big shout-out of thanks goes to blogger Michelle Jackson, who reviews Hell or High Water here. You cannot imagine the relief in an author's heart when a review begins, "I do not even know where to express my absolute love of this book." I'm so glad Michelle loved it, and I'm tickled that she thought I was a native New Orleanian. I like what she says, too, about the novel's heroine, Nola:
She is wickedly smart and brave, yet puts herself in so many risky situations that you wonder what the hell is wrong with her. . . . The book is told from her voice, and what a voice it is.
Gratitude. It means so much when readers love a book.
In international news, the ink is dry on the contract, so I'm happy to be able to announce that Gallimard will publish a French translation of Hell or High Water in its historic Série Noire line. This is a huge honor and thrill for me, since that's the imprint that published two of my biggest mystery-writing heroes, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The editor at Gallimard called Hell or High Water "tricky and insidious"--and really, for a crime author, what compliment could be higher?
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Letter from Seville II: The Endless City
Many friends, both old friends at home and new friends here in Seville, have asked if we'll be traveling around Spain during our time here. We could; five weeks is a long time, and my teaching schedule would permit quick overnight trips to other cities, especially with the good rail system Spain has. We could go to Madrid, Córdoba, Barcelona... A few people who know me well have asked, too, if we plan to trek up to Galicia, to see the province where my grandfather was born, the place from where my family name comes.
But we decided, after much debate, to stay here in Seville. To dwell. To live here, as much as such a thing is possible. To walk to work, to walk to the market, to cook, to wander, to read on the patio, to relax into the pace of life--to relax, period. (And honestly, as an adoptee whose adopted family was itself difficult and fractured, I'm tired of "roots trips" that, while rewarding, are always painful, intense, and ambiguous, leading to more questions, more quandaries of identity and belonging. I've done enough of those for a while.)
So we decided to stay here. And rather than feeling restrictive, this dwelling--I'm happy to report, in our final week here--has felt liberatory, fascinating, delightful.
Which is due, I think, in no small part to the fact that Seville is an endless city.
I don't mean endless in the sense of size, of sheer measurable quantity; the city proper can be circumnavigated in a single long walk.
Rather, it's endless in terms of those layers I wrote about last time: the palimpsest of history, the Iberians, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors, the Reconquista--the way that, over the many centuries, tiny crooked streets no wider than your outstretched arms have been wedged in among the monasteries and palaces and churches and ordinary houses of ordinary working people. You round a corner, and suddenly there's a tiny store with handmade shoes, or silk bags, or fountain pens and ink, or the exquisite ceramics for which Seville (especially Triana) is known. Tiny tapas bars. Tiny coffee shops. A vast hospital for elderly and ailing priests, with a beautiful sunken fountain in the center of its courtyard. Seville is dense, layered, thicketed with surprises. Even after four weeks of walking, walking, walking, we keep noticing alleys we haven't yet walked down, and when we do, lo and behold: three ancient Roman columns.
Seville is also home to many lush public gardens, including one of world's great city parks, Parque Maria Luisa, which itself is full of endless surprises. Within its grounds are, among other things, two fine museums, rose gardens, the vast showpiece La Plaza de España, and a fountain complex modeled upon the Alhambra. And trees! Huge magnolia trees thick as banyans, towering much higher than magnolias we've seen in Louisiana. Palm trees. Pergolas covered with wisteria. Statues of famous local figures, including Maria Luisa herself, who donated
the grounds, which used to belong privately to the San Telmo palace, to
the city of Seville in the 1890s. Long allées of jacaranda trees, their electric blue blossoms scattered on the sandy soil beneath.
We walk or go running in the park every day, among the peacocks and pigeons and horse-drawn carriages and local Sevillanos out for their evening strolls. It's a beautiful thing to do. Later, we head out for tapas, wine, and cold Cruzcampo, to which words cannot do justice. Our nights often end late at the lit cathedral, watching the swallows dart and swoop through the darkness.
So our time here, all of it spent on foot, has not been dull. And of course I've had the pleasure of teaching, as well. My students are lovely! Their work is so intriguing and well done. (My favorite student title thus far: "THE CONCEPTION OF MARTÍN ZARZA MINO IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR OF THE BLANK PAGE MADE UP OF SWEET SWEET CARAMEL.") The work is wonderfully varied: they're writing cryptic poems, and stories with multiple first-person narrators, classic tales, and thoroughly modern realistic pieces about urban alienation. They're fearless! Moreover, given that English is a second language for all of them, they're impressively sophisticated in our discussions, tossing about terms like postmodern and metafiction as lightly as jacaranda blossoms.
They've been on strike since last week, protesting the jump in tuition that the government has announced. (Our class has been meeting anyway, at the students' request.) To study is a right, not a privilege, their banners declare.
The BBC reports that tuition here will go up by 25%.* Individual students, meanwhile, have told me that their own particular bills will double. At the same time, professors have been told they'll have to teach 30% more next year, after just having received their second recent pay cut. And unemployment here is already at 25%. It's a difficult, volatile situation. We've seen several demonstrations and marches out on our walks.
The final thing that's kept me busy is the editing of my second novel. My editor was kind enough to send her edits here to Spain, so I've been working steadily on those. My deadline is the end of June.
I'm lucky. I've always been lucky with editors, and my St. Martin's editor's engagement with this manuscript was thorough, thoughtful, and smart. I couldn't ask for a more attentive, invested reader. She makes great suggestions, suggestions that actually push the manuscript closer toward what it wants to be (which is not always the same thing as what I want it to be). And the HH, who's recently gone on a Raymond Chandler binge, is reading it now, too, and making great suggestions as well. Here's hoping it turns out to be an even better book than Hell or High Water. Revising it on our beautiful patio, I hope, will make a difference.
Alas, however endless Seville may be, it's coming too quickly to an end for us. A week from now, we'll be over the Atlantic, missing our new friends and my new students, our minds dappled with sol y sombra, and already trying to figure out ways to make our life at home more filled with the delicias we found here.
*Many thanks to Amelia Montes for the link to the story!
But we decided, after much debate, to stay here in Seville. To dwell. To live here, as much as such a thing is possible. To walk to work, to walk to the market, to cook, to wander, to read on the patio, to relax into the pace of life--to relax, period. (And honestly, as an adoptee whose adopted family was itself difficult and fractured, I'm tired of "roots trips" that, while rewarding, are always painful, intense, and ambiguous, leading to more questions, more quandaries of identity and belonging. I've done enough of those for a while.)
So we decided to stay here. And rather than feeling restrictive, this dwelling--I'm happy to report, in our final week here--has felt liberatory, fascinating, delightful.
Which is due, I think, in no small part to the fact that Seville is an endless city.
I don't mean endless in the sense of size, of sheer measurable quantity; the city proper can be circumnavigated in a single long walk.
Rather, it's endless in terms of those layers I wrote about last time: the palimpsest of history, the Iberians, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors, the Reconquista--the way that, over the many centuries, tiny crooked streets no wider than your outstretched arms have been wedged in among the monasteries and palaces and churches and ordinary houses of ordinary working people. You round a corner, and suddenly there's a tiny store with handmade shoes, or silk bags, or fountain pens and ink, or the exquisite ceramics for which Seville (especially Triana) is known. Tiny tapas bars. Tiny coffee shops. A vast hospital for elderly and ailing priests, with a beautiful sunken fountain in the center of its courtyard. Seville is dense, layered, thicketed with surprises. Even after four weeks of walking, walking, walking, we keep noticing alleys we haven't yet walked down, and when we do, lo and behold: three ancient Roman columns.
Seville is also home to many lush public gardens, including one of world's great city parks, Parque Maria Luisa, which itself is full of endless surprises. Within its grounds are, among other things, two fine museums, rose gardens, the vast showpiece La Plaza de España, and a fountain complex modeled upon the Alhambra. And trees! Huge magnolia trees thick as banyans, towering much higher than magnolias we've seen in Louisiana. Palm trees. Pergolas covered with wisteria. Statues of famous local figures, including Maria Luisa herself, who donated
the grounds, which used to belong privately to the San Telmo palace, to
the city of Seville in the 1890s. Long allées of jacaranda trees, their electric blue blossoms scattered on the sandy soil beneath. We walk or go running in the park every day, among the peacocks and pigeons and horse-drawn carriages and local Sevillanos out for their evening strolls. It's a beautiful thing to do. Later, we head out for tapas, wine, and cold Cruzcampo, to which words cannot do justice. Our nights often end late at the lit cathedral, watching the swallows dart and swoop through the darkness.
So our time here, all of it spent on foot, has not been dull. And of course I've had the pleasure of teaching, as well. My students are lovely! Their work is so intriguing and well done. (My favorite student title thus far: "THE CONCEPTION OF MARTÍN ZARZA MINO IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR OF THE BLANK PAGE MADE UP OF SWEET SWEET CARAMEL.") The work is wonderfully varied: they're writing cryptic poems, and stories with multiple first-person narrators, classic tales, and thoroughly modern realistic pieces about urban alienation. They're fearless! Moreover, given that English is a second language for all of them, they're impressively sophisticated in our discussions, tossing about terms like postmodern and metafiction as lightly as jacaranda blossoms.
They've been on strike since last week, protesting the jump in tuition that the government has announced. (Our class has been meeting anyway, at the students' request.) To study is a right, not a privilege, their banners declare.
The BBC reports that tuition here will go up by 25%.* Individual students, meanwhile, have told me that their own particular bills will double. At the same time, professors have been told they'll have to teach 30% more next year, after just having received their second recent pay cut. And unemployment here is already at 25%. It's a difficult, volatile situation. We've seen several demonstrations and marches out on our walks.The final thing that's kept me busy is the editing of my second novel. My editor was kind enough to send her edits here to Spain, so I've been working steadily on those. My deadline is the end of June.
I'm lucky. I've always been lucky with editors, and my St. Martin's editor's engagement with this manuscript was thorough, thoughtful, and smart. I couldn't ask for a more attentive, invested reader. She makes great suggestions, suggestions that actually push the manuscript closer toward what it wants to be (which is not always the same thing as what I want it to be). And the HH, who's recently gone on a Raymond Chandler binge, is reading it now, too, and making great suggestions as well. Here's hoping it turns out to be an even better book than Hell or High Water. Revising it on our beautiful patio, I hope, will make a difference.
Alas, however endless Seville may be, it's coming too quickly to an end for us. A week from now, we'll be over the Atlantic, missing our new friends and my new students, our minds dappled with sol y sombra, and already trying to figure out ways to make our life at home more filled with the delicias we found here.*Many thanks to Amelia Montes for the link to the story!
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Behind
This post goes out to everyone who has fallen helplessly, hopelessly behind on his/her professional, familial, social, physical-fitness, and/or other commitments.
You are not alone. I am with you.
I am behind.
I am trying to be all Zen about it, but honestly, that's only working about 63% of the time. The rest of the time I'm a little freaked out. What's more, behindness is starting to feel like a semi-permanent state of being. This is not an ontological development that pleases me.
[Here imagine a really elegant transition to the topic of writing, because I'm too brain-dead to craft you one.]
So. On writing when you are helplessly, hopelessly behind: personally, I'm not so great at it. If something is lying there undone--grading, prepping, laundry, packing, unpacking, thank-you letters to my aunts, forms to fill out for la foster daughter, the dishes (okay, well, not always the dishes)--I feel compelled to go do it. In order to write well, I feel like I need a certain amount of mental freedom, a cognitive blank slate, free for play, unburdened by those dozens of niggling responsibilities.
My only workaround, which I discovered after all kinds of trial and error, is to write when I wake up in the morning (in that foggy dream state where my head is full of weird, impossible places and deeply felt experiences I haven't actually had), when the fact that I'm an adult with a job and a family hasn't yet occurred to me. Which is why I've managed to write two novels now only by writing in the morning upon awakening. I kinda sorta just trick myself into the belief (aided by pajamas) that the world does not exist. I stay in a state of suspended animation until I get a pre-set amount of writing down on the page.
But like right now, at 4:43 p.m. on a Friday, when I'm fully cognizant of what needs to get done in the next 72 hours? Writing? Ha. Fat chance. Pretty near impossible. I mean, sure, I'll manage to do other things: things that demand less of the mind, less attentive wildness, less freedom, less playfulness. But write? No.
Just thought I'd tell you this, because sometimes I get intimidated by writers who are like, "Oh, yes, I set aside four hours a day to write in my study at my desk that overlooks Lake Superior, and I never vary." I think, Yeah, wow, I'd get a lot done, too. But in my own case, the fact is, whole days go by when I don't write. Days on end, truth be told.
Yeah, that's just how it goes.
But eventually there's time again, and mental space, and the words begin to emerge again, and they don't entirely suck, and then I get excited, and I'm off.
So take heart, writers who don't have an independent income or a butler, and/or writers who've fallen behind. I don't write every day or have a holiday house by the lake, but I've got two books coming out this year, and one (or two, with luck) more next year. You could do it, too.
--Uh-oh. On the other hand (Libras apparently are known for arguing with ourselves and seeing both sides, rendering us helplessly paralyzed when we have to make decisions--but that's another story), I've been publishing now in national literary journals for over twenty years, and I currently have only one book in print. Yep. A one-book writer. Not exactly a superstar.
What helpful lesson am I going to try to draw from this mixed bag of evidence? Hmm. Good question. (Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of this hat!)
I guess just this: It takes patience. It takes persistence. It takes showing up.
So keep showing up, in whatever form that takes for you. Keep coming back to your art.
Besides, to misquote Mary Oliver, what else have you got to do with your one wild and precious life?
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Grateful
It's a beautiful bright Friday here in Lincoln, Nebraska, the last day of our official UNL spring break, and I'm feeling grateful for a lot of things.
I'm grateful to all the people who are speaking up and speaking out about the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin and the problems of the "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida (and elsewhere). I'm grateful that the Toulouse shooter Mohamed Merah can't kill anyone else, and sad about the way it happened.
Peace on the families of the victims. Peace on the families of the killers. Peace.
• the long spates of uninterrupted time this week to work on my second novel, BAD SHOOT, which I'll be sending off to my editor at St. Martin's this coming Monday. I'm at about 250 pages now, which is short, but there's still time.
• the kind feedback from and good points raised by all the commenters on my short piece, "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own," and the help of Tracy Seeley and Lorraine López as I was writing. I'm glad people are continuing to find the piece useful and tweeting it out there.
• this really nice (and really early!) review of HELL OR HIGH WATER at LitStack. Many thanks to the insightful reviewer, Stephanie Ward.
• the new IndieBound page for HELL OR HIGH WATER, so if you want to get a copy from your local indie bookstore, you can.
I'm grateful to all the people who are speaking up and speaking out about the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin and the problems of the "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida (and elsewhere). I'm grateful that the Toulouse shooter Mohamed Merah can't kill anyone else, and sad about the way it happened.
Peace on the families of the victims. Peace on the families of the killers. Peace.
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Happy to be home
I'm so grateful for this beautiful profile by Mekita Rivas. Love it! Thank you, Mekita, for making me sound funnier and smarter and more productive than I actually am, and thank you, Las Comadres and Friends, for picking my novel! Because of the profile, HELL OR HIGH WATER saw a wee spike in pre-orders on Amazon, so that was cool, too.
AWP was a wonderful whirlwind, and I've been digging myself out from under the work that piled up while I was gone. I came home with two books I'm particularly excited about: The Train, a classic masterpiece of suspense by Georges Simenon, from Melville House, and Every Last Secret, a debut novel by Linda Rodriguez from St. Martin's.
I'm looking forward to spring break next week, when I'll be hunkered down, working hard on Nola Novel Number Two. I'll live in t-shirts and sweats all week, which will be awesome.
Tomorrow, a short piece I wrote, "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own," will appear on the #amwriting blog. I'm excited to be writing for them again, and this myth (long-time readers of the blog will know where I'm going with this) is something about which I'm passionate.
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Addendum: Here's the link to "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own"--with thanks to Joanna Neilson and Johanna Harkness for their comments!
AWP was a wonderful whirlwind, and I've been digging myself out from under the work that piled up while I was gone. I came home with two books I'm particularly excited about: The Train, a classic masterpiece of suspense by Georges Simenon, from Melville House, and Every Last Secret, a debut novel by Linda Rodriguez from St. Martin's.
I'm looking forward to spring break next week, when I'll be hunkered down, working hard on Nola Novel Number Two. I'll live in t-shirts and sweats all week, which will be awesome.
Tomorrow, a short piece I wrote, "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own," will appear on the #amwriting blog. I'm excited to be writing for them again, and this myth (long-time readers of the blog will know where I'm going with this) is something about which I'm passionate.
-----
Addendum: Here's the link to "The Dangerous Myth of a Room of One's Own"--with thanks to Joanna Neilson and Johanna Harkness for their comments!
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Two Quick Things & the Happiest of Holidays
Dear lovely readers, thank you for another lovely year. I can't tell you how excited I get when I look on the world map of readers of this blog and see that not only my long-time stalwarts like Massachusetts and California are tuning in, but people from Edinburgh and Dubai and Berlin and Dakar and Singapore and Oslo and Taiwan drop by as well. How amazing is that?! It's as exciting as having pen pals when I was a kid, and it kind of blows my mind. Welcome, everybody!
The two quick things are no less wonderful because I'm going to be brief. (Grey arrives in the wee hours of the morning, and I've got homey holiday things to do.)
First, I'm proud as punch to be able to brag about my long-time friend Dr. Edie Simms and her new college consulting firm. At any stage of the process--high school students choosing a college, college graduates applying to law school or grad school, or grad students trying to make it through the thesis- or dissertation-writing process--Edie provides warm, smart, highly informed advice.
We were colleagues together at Wabash College some years ago, and I always admired Edie's ability to help the students plan their programs and their lives. I was (am!) a lousy academic advisor (my heart's not in it), and I turned to Edie repeatedly for help. She was always sane, organized, upbeat, and efficient. She loves the work. If you know anyone who's wrestling with any of those stages of academia, I recommend her firm highly. Edie is generous, warm-spirited, and extremely knowledgeable. I really love how she gets genuinely invested in the success of other people. It's not a business strategy; it's truly her nature. She's ideal for this kind of work; her heart is in it.
Second, thank you to all the people who helped publicize my column over at #Amwriting! "The Memoir as Psychological Thriller" had many enthusiastic readers (and a great comment), so I'm grateful for your help. It explains my one biggest piece of hard-won advice about writing memoir.
I have a couple of cool things coming up on the blog here. I need your help choosing an author photo from the recent shoot, so I'm going to put the top 5 up and see what you think. Also, the fantastic Anita Mumm from the Nelson Literary Agency is going to answer my grad students' smart questions about how to choose an agent and what to expect when you do.
Soon! In the meantime, have very happy, warm, safe, hilarious holidays. Love to everyone!
The two quick things are no less wonderful because I'm going to be brief. (Grey arrives in the wee hours of the morning, and I've got homey holiday things to do.)
First, I'm proud as punch to be able to brag about my long-time friend Dr. Edie Simms and her new college consulting firm. At any stage of the process--high school students choosing a college, college graduates applying to law school or grad school, or grad students trying to make it through the thesis- or dissertation-writing process--Edie provides warm, smart, highly informed advice.
We were colleagues together at Wabash College some years ago, and I always admired Edie's ability to help the students plan their programs and their lives. I was (am!) a lousy academic advisor (my heart's not in it), and I turned to Edie repeatedly for help. She was always sane, organized, upbeat, and efficient. She loves the work. If you know anyone who's wrestling with any of those stages of academia, I recommend her firm highly. Edie is generous, warm-spirited, and extremely knowledgeable. I really love how she gets genuinely invested in the success of other people. It's not a business strategy; it's truly her nature. She's ideal for this kind of work; her heart is in it.
Second, thank you to all the people who helped publicize my column over at #Amwriting! "The Memoir as Psychological Thriller" had many enthusiastic readers (and a great comment), so I'm grateful for your help. It explains my one biggest piece of hard-won advice about writing memoir.
I have a couple of cool things coming up on the blog here. I need your help choosing an author photo from the recent shoot, so I'm going to put the top 5 up and see what you think. Also, the fantastic Anita Mumm from the Nelson Literary Agency is going to answer my grad students' smart questions about how to choose an agent and what to expect when you do.
Soon! In the meantime, have very happy, warm, safe, hilarious holidays. Love to everyone!
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Insight
I'm very excited about the opportunity to write a guest-blog for #Amwriting next week. This is only my second-ever guest blog post, and I've been sifting through all the stuff in my brain for a topic. The goal of this particular blog is to offer writing advice to writers. And you may not have noticed, but that's pretty well trodden ground.
The interesting challenge for me is that, having taught creative writing now for umpteen years, what wisdom I have is kind of glommed into a mishmash of stuff, all of which I share with my students over the course of a semester. Much of it's from other writers--Helena María Viramontes, Brad Watson, Alice Friman, Tayari Jones, Ted Conover, Sandra Cisneros, Nancy Leonard, Robert Olen Butler, etc., etc.--whose craft talks and workshops I've attended over the years. Some of it's from terrific books I've read.
Only a bit of it--a wee little wedge of the pie chart--comprises entirely original insights, discoveries I've genuinely made all by myself. (And even those weren't all by myself, for I'm enmeshed in a web of--but let's not get precious here. I've already pushed it with wee little wedge.) And even my top three personal discoveries--which I'll share here for free because I'm unsavvy and hopeless when it comes to giving things away--are pretty common. (1. Draft longhand. 2. Let the piece cool for as long as possible before rereading to revise. 3. Read aloud to listen for sound, rhythm, music. See? All solid advice, but nothing particularly surprising or fresh.)
So I'm glad and relieved to have identified something I can genuinely contribute. It's a solution to a common problem.
The problem is this: writers of memoir commonly struggle with how to organize all the stuff. Once we think, Okay, I'm going to write the story of my life, the overwhelming amount of material--our whole life! closely and finely observed!--comes rushing into our consciousness, and it's like facing a nightmare closet. Where to begin? How to order it all? And what about that object (anecdote) that we just can't let go of, even though we know it really doesn't work anymore?
My answer is ingeniously simple, and it came directly from my own hard earned experience as a writer. I'll share it one week from today on December 20th on #Amwriting. (Any graduate students reading this: you already know what I'm going to say. Because you've heard me say it in class.)
By the way, old hands at writing, if you're interested in guest-blogging for #Amwriting, you should go check out the call for bloggers. Guest bloggers for January through March are being scheduled as I type.
Now I have to pick an image for the blog post. It's required. Hmm...
The interesting challenge for me is that, having taught creative writing now for umpteen years, what wisdom I have is kind of glommed into a mishmash of stuff, all of which I share with my students over the course of a semester. Much of it's from other writers--Helena María Viramontes, Brad Watson, Alice Friman, Tayari Jones, Ted Conover, Sandra Cisneros, Nancy Leonard, Robert Olen Butler, etc., etc.--whose craft talks and workshops I've attended over the years. Some of it's from terrific books I've read.
Only a bit of it--a wee little wedge of the pie chart--comprises entirely original insights, discoveries I've genuinely made all by myself. (And even those weren't all by myself, for I'm enmeshed in a web of--but let's not get precious here. I've already pushed it with wee little wedge.) And even my top three personal discoveries--which I'll share here for free because I'm unsavvy and hopeless when it comes to giving things away--are pretty common. (1. Draft longhand. 2. Let the piece cool for as long as possible before rereading to revise. 3. Read aloud to listen for sound, rhythm, music. See? All solid advice, but nothing particularly surprising or fresh.)
So I'm glad and relieved to have identified something I can genuinely contribute. It's a solution to a common problem.
The problem is this: writers of memoir commonly struggle with how to organize all the stuff. Once we think, Okay, I'm going to write the story of my life, the overwhelming amount of material--our whole life! closely and finely observed!--comes rushing into our consciousness, and it's like facing a nightmare closet. Where to begin? How to order it all? And what about that object (anecdote) that we just can't let go of, even though we know it really doesn't work anymore?
My answer is ingeniously simple, and it came directly from my own hard earned experience as a writer. I'll share it one week from today on December 20th on #Amwriting. (Any graduate students reading this: you already know what I'm going to say. Because you've heard me say it in class.)
By the way, old hands at writing, if you're interested in guest-blogging for #Amwriting, you should go check out the call for bloggers. Guest bloggers for January through March are being scheduled as I type.
Now I have to pick an image for the blog post. It's required. Hmm...
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A Room of One's Own v. A Child with No Home
As long-time readers of this blog know, I've been mentoring a young girl through Big Brothers Big Sisters for over four years now, since she was thirteen. Amara is a lovely, bright person in an extremely difficult situation.
Big Brothers Big Sisters requires a commitment of two to four hours per week, so over the last 400ish hours, we've played basketball, read books, painted, gone for walks, and hung out talking in bookstores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Amara's come with me to readings on the UNL campus and shared Christmas-Eve dinner with our family. When she's been incarcerated at Boys Town and, most recently, the state youth detention center in Geneva, I've visited her there, and we've written long letters back and forth. She's very dear to my heart.
Yet long-time readers of the blog have also been witness to my own slow attainment of a private space in which to write, think, and read--a long-time dream that finally came to fruition last year.
Oh, readers, I was ecstatic. Some writers have whole apartments to themselves, or whole houses--or whole houses plus a separate studio, even. All I'd wanted was one small room. (And it is small: 7'4" by 9'2". Like a tiny dorm room.) When I got it, I painted it myself and furnished it. I framed (this feels so corny to tell you) the address label from an envelope that came from my agent and hung it on my study's door like a little sign. I liked the way it called me Ms. rather than Dr., and the tidy way the typist had centered my name and address on the label: it felt old-fashioned and sweet, like the word poetess, like the kind of writer I dreamed of being when I was a little girl.
I felt, as a writer, like I had arrived. I'd claimed my territory. I felt Virginia Woolf and Sandra Cisneros (brooding always from their perches above me) smiling down at last.
So when our college-graduate son needed to move back home for six months, it was hard. There was nowhere else in our apartment for him to stay, so he stayed in my study. He taped up his pictures on my walls. Sometimes when he was out, I would stand in the doorway and look at all his stuff and just feel sad. I love my son, and I'm glad we were able to help him when he needed it, but I was so happy to regain that space when he moved.
I love it. When I close that door, I have solitude, silence, and a little world that is mine.
But now Amara's situation has deteriorated. The relative who was supposed to pick her up from the detention center last week called to say he didn't want her, couldn't take her. Can you imagine being seventeen and learning that? Her options are bleak. The best-case scenario would be for her to be placed in a foster home, but few foster parents want a 17-year-old girl. She could end up being sent to a homeless shelter with adults.
Amara deserves a little world that is all hers, too. She deserves to feel wanted, and she deserves a stable life, a chance at a wonderful future.
So last Wednesday (oh, readers, I draw a shaky breath as I type), her caseworker came to our little apartment and did an inspection to see if it met the state's standards. She initiated background checks on the Handsome Husband and me. And we will become, if all goes well, a child-specific foster home for my "Little Sister," who will become the resident of that wee room--if she agrees and approves. She could be here with us within two weeks.
Readers, I am so nervous. I'm kind of a workaholic, and I was loving having so much time to devote to my work. I've been more productive as a writer in the past five years (while working here at UNL) that at any previous time in my life, and the little room only helped with that.
So I don't know if this is a good idea or not: for Amara (we are pretty dull, really, as has been observed by less readerly members of my extended family), for my husband and me (who were loving our nest, which didn't seem empty at all), for my writing. (For my writing. Does that seem petty and hopelessly selfish? To a non-writer, it surely would. I know that. I know. On the other hand, I also have writer-friends and academic-friends who would be aghast at the notion of bringing a teenager into their home--who are going to think we're just plain crazy for inviting the messy complications we'll surely face.)
Well, we'll see. The process is moving forward; it's now a matter for courts and caseworkers to decide.
Sometimes life seems to be calling you, to be saying, Here. Do this. Sometimes the right path seems so obvious, you'd be a fool to ignore it.
Readers, I am anything but certain. The only certain part is my commitment to Amara. The rest is all spinning and up in the air.
But this feels huge, and it's for sure on my mind right now, so I wanted to share it with you.
Big Brothers Big Sisters requires a commitment of two to four hours per week, so over the last 400ish hours, we've played basketball, read books, painted, gone for walks, and hung out talking in bookstores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Amara's come with me to readings on the UNL campus and shared Christmas-Eve dinner with our family. When she's been incarcerated at Boys Town and, most recently, the state youth detention center in Geneva, I've visited her there, and we've written long letters back and forth. She's very dear to my heart.
Yet long-time readers of the blog have also been witness to my own slow attainment of a private space in which to write, think, and read--a long-time dream that finally came to fruition last year.
Oh, readers, I was ecstatic. Some writers have whole apartments to themselves, or whole houses--or whole houses plus a separate studio, even. All I'd wanted was one small room. (And it is small: 7'4" by 9'2". Like a tiny dorm room.) When I got it, I painted it myself and furnished it. I framed (this feels so corny to tell you) the address label from an envelope that came from my agent and hung it on my study's door like a little sign. I liked the way it called me Ms. rather than Dr., and the tidy way the typist had centered my name and address on the label: it felt old-fashioned and sweet, like the word poetess, like the kind of writer I dreamed of being when I was a little girl.
I felt, as a writer, like I had arrived. I'd claimed my territory. I felt Virginia Woolf and Sandra Cisneros (brooding always from their perches above me) smiling down at last.
So when our college-graduate son needed to move back home for six months, it was hard. There was nowhere else in our apartment for him to stay, so he stayed in my study. He taped up his pictures on my walls. Sometimes when he was out, I would stand in the doorway and look at all his stuff and just feel sad. I love my son, and I'm glad we were able to help him when he needed it, but I was so happy to regain that space when he moved.
I love it. When I close that door, I have solitude, silence, and a little world that is mine.
But now Amara's situation has deteriorated. The relative who was supposed to pick her up from the detention center last week called to say he didn't want her, couldn't take her. Can you imagine being seventeen and learning that? Her options are bleak. The best-case scenario would be for her to be placed in a foster home, but few foster parents want a 17-year-old girl. She could end up being sent to a homeless shelter with adults.
Amara deserves a little world that is all hers, too. She deserves to feel wanted, and she deserves a stable life, a chance at a wonderful future.
So last Wednesday (oh, readers, I draw a shaky breath as I type), her caseworker came to our little apartment and did an inspection to see if it met the state's standards. She initiated background checks on the Handsome Husband and me. And we will become, if all goes well, a child-specific foster home for my "Little Sister," who will become the resident of that wee room--if she agrees and approves. She could be here with us within two weeks.
Readers, I am so nervous. I'm kind of a workaholic, and I was loving having so much time to devote to my work. I've been more productive as a writer in the past five years (while working here at UNL) that at any previous time in my life, and the little room only helped with that.
So I don't know if this is a good idea or not: for Amara (we are pretty dull, really, as has been observed by less readerly members of my extended family), for my husband and me (who were loving our nest, which didn't seem empty at all), for my writing. (For my writing. Does that seem petty and hopelessly selfish? To a non-writer, it surely would. I know that. I know. On the other hand, I also have writer-friends and academic-friends who would be aghast at the notion of bringing a teenager into their home--who are going to think we're just plain crazy for inviting the messy complications we'll surely face.)
Well, we'll see. The process is moving forward; it's now a matter for courts and caseworkers to decide.
Sometimes life seems to be calling you, to be saying, Here. Do this. Sometimes the right path seems so obvious, you'd be a fool to ignore it.
Readers, I am anything but certain. The only certain part is my commitment to Amara. The rest is all spinning and up in the air.
But this feels huge, and it's for sure on my mind right now, so I wanted to share it with you.
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