My littlest woman writer

Maia can make most of the ABCs but she doesn't really understand, yet, how to spell things.  She knows that letters make words which make stories, though.  And she can't wait until she figures that bit out.

That hasn't stopped her, though, from being a writer.  This morning, she wrote her first book.  It's about five pages with two illustrations (one a cat, the last a dog).  She had me staple the pages of her "textbook" together for her and then explained to me what each page said.

I don't really understand her explanation, though there was something in there about taking a test and then about cooking dinner with the puppy at the end of the book.

She's very proud of herself.  She should be.  A woman writer when she's still in the under five crowd.  Virginia Woolf would be so proud.

Black Holes

There are people who, when you're trying to write, are bad to be around.  They sort of suck your energy and confidence about writing into this pit of dark that makes you think you can't do it.  I realize that one gives them the energy to do so-- they can't do anything to you that you don't let them do.  But if that person is someone whose opinion you want to trust, it's very hard.

Writers need feedback.  I have these ideas, but I do need to know what others think of them. Am I going in the right direction, is the story interesting, should I add this detail, that element?  It's, I guess, a corollary to something I posted on a FB status not too long ago, about how it's much easier to believe the negative things people say about you, for some reason.

I am a glass half full person, most of the time.  And I will keep writing, no matter if I encounter a bunch of vampire-y "I don't like the story this way" types.  I do want feedback, and some of what I've gotten so far has been awesome.  But I can't/won't write the story that someone else wants, that someone else would write.  It is MY story, and succeed or fail, I have to write the one I have here.  It's not someone else's way of doing it.

I feel so different here than I did when writing my dissertation.  All of that was wrestling with the theory gods, sitting down daily to be smart.  This story is here in my core, I feel it there, and right now, I even know which character wants to talk.  It's her turn, and I know, sort of, where she's going.

It's kind of weird, but I like it.   Just gotta stay away from the Black Holes of creativity in our lives, even if we want them to suddenly turn in to supportive perfect writing partners; it's obviously not going to happen, so get over it, right?

Ampersand

&.

I like the ampersand. It's a very pretty piece of--well, it's not really punctuation, nor is it a letter. I must google it. OOh. It's a logogram. Cool. Learn something new every. single. day.

Anyway. A lot of fonts go curly and fancy on ampersands. I include it in my page title, although not in the url (I don't think you can in blogger). I remember using it a whole lot in an early draft of my dissertation and having my advisor ping about it. I know, I know. It's not formal and academese-y enough.

I use it a lot in poetry. ee cummings used it a lot, and perhaps that's one place his poetry has continued to influence mine. Since he was one of my first favorite poets (still is, in fact) I know his work has resonated on my brain since high school. So perhaps it's all his fault.

& then...

I hear a child messing with my other computer, the computer is pinging "help help help" at me. So my not-saying-anything-really blog post is now officially over.

&

Ars Poetica

When I was a senior in college, up at the lovely lovely Bellingham Washington campus of Western Washington U,* I took a "Critical Theory" course. It was summer, and the warmest it ever really got in Bellingham was the mid 80s. The sun was like the friendlier, more cheerful, less vengeful cousin of the one here in the South.

A group of us took this course together, taught by one of the profs in the department who, while he exuded professor-ly-ness, was also a really nice guy. (Not that those two things are mutually exclusive, but this one was particularly neat.)

We started with Plato, ranged through the years up to Showalter & Fish & Derrida. It was super interesting. A lot of writers write about their "Poetic Arts" and those writings become theoretical grounds for other artists. I think that a dominant trope still for most artists (at least the ones I come into contact with) is the Romantic idea of the artist as someone in a fluffy poet shirt who quaffs red wine and communicates directly with the Muses (or perhaps angelic women with too white face & rosy cheeks).

Anyway. The point of this is: what is my poetic art? I love to write. I love poetry, the confessional poetry is my favorite, probably. Anne Sexton, in particular. I wish I crafted my poetry more, created sonnets, formal verse. I usually don't, and I write too many poems about writing poetry. For my fictional art, I am really interested in a type of Magical Realism. I thought I was going to write Urban Fantasy, but this summer, I've been reminded of the roots of my favorite things, and what I want to do is a lot more like what Alice Hoffman and/or Charles De Lint do. This kind of dreamy reality where it's entirely possible for the dragonfly buzzing around you to turn into a fairy, but that fairy doesn't necessarily then want to "do you." (Which is kind of the "urban fantasy" place that scenario would often go....)

My short short fairy tales this summer were partly inspired by a book Alice Hoffman wrote, called The Story Sisters. In it, she frames chapters with a fairy tale version of the real characters' lives. I often write about myth and fairy tale in my poetry (see. there's a connection intended in these paragraphs) but I felt less like shaping these journeys into poems than I sometimes do.

In Bellingham, the campus was just lovely. Up on a hill, towers peeking through tall trees. There was a small road that went through part of the campus, but I think the only thing that drove down there (if I'm remembering correctly) was the city bus. In front of the bookstore. There was a steep slope, and at the bottom, a bank of trees. In the middle of that bank of wild looking trees was an old fashioned street lamp. It truly looked, for all intents & purposes, like a waystation to Narnia or some other faery land. I used to imagine seeing someone magically appear beside that lamp. Perhaps, someday, I will, and I'll find my fictional place nearby.

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*And it never snowed when I was there, and this picture isn't exactly the location I'm writing about-- it's quite nearby. You can see one of the lamps I'm talking about, though, and this is such a cool picture I had to put it on here. Such a nice campus. Looking at pictures of it just now reminds me and makes me super nostalgiac.

Blue Journal

I bought a new fancy journal today at B&N. I had about an hour there to linger with coffee and cinnamon scone (not the free ones!) This journal is very pretty and I tend to be a sucker for these empty books. I imagine, when I buy them, what I'll fill them with. It's like a gym membership--filled with all kinds of good intentions. Sometimes they get filled, sometimes they don't.

This one is really pretty & fits in my purse. It has a cobalt blue cover with an elastic band attached by a pretty five-pointed star. It is handmade in Nepal, and supposedly very Eco-friendly and created by a mostly female co-op. It was pricey enough that I believe it; I hope at least enough of that money I spent goes to those women workers so far away. I don't always believe the eco greenwashing propaganda of products like that-- perhaps some woman got about 5 cents on my purchase price. At least it's something, though. I hope.

I wrote in it; several pages all about loss & mourning & how I miss time spent like today in the bookstore, lurking, thinking. I like it, and I kind of intended to retype it here but I think I'll leave it in the print vs. e-journal version.

I'm trying to move away from the whiney complainy posts and the blogging about blogging that tends to happen when you think about the process too much (here I go again.) So... look forward to moments of scribbled notes from my new blue journal. My July New Year's resolution is to be more creative less "me me me." Hopefully, this can happen and creativity will flow out of the pretty cobalt covers.

Making the Leap

I've been thinking, lately, a lot about how "real" writers write. What I mean by real is writers who get published because frankly, I doubt many young kids with their noses pressed into books from the library dream about one day having a blog of their own. The aim has always been for the "literary sort" to be published.

I tried. Right after my BA, I sent out a round of poetry to small press journals. Most of them never replied, one nice magazine sent me back my self-addressed stamped manuscript with "sorry, not interested" scrawled across one page. No feedback otherwise. At the time, I took it as a sign that I must not be very good.

Then, I went to grad school. I went to an MA program where there was also an MFA track. I didn't know what MFAs were, at the time. I might have gotten one had I known, but I was already on the MA then PhD track & didn't see the need to switch. The MFA students were generally intense. They wrote, the workshopped. They fought, they had wild parties. I was married & less intense, and I also lived far enough away from where the MFA crowd congregated that they never really made it to my sometimes fairly wild parties. But I took away from that place the feeling that I was more a critic than a poet. I was jealous, but also focused on the teaching gig I was planning to have magically appear in exactly the place I needed it to appear. (Dreams. Ah. Innocence.)

So for years, I really did not write a single poem. Not anything worth calling that, really. A few lame scribbles. While I was pregnant with the kids I wrote the two poems that I'm most proud of in a long time about them, about a sonogram picture. And began thinking about, again, writing the novels which I have ideas about, even an outline for.

Here, in LA, I tentatively have written again. I went to one meeting of the student writer's group, got inspired by a couple of those poets & inspired by the theme to write a couple of good poems. Read a "how to" book called poemcrazy which I still quite like. When the new faculty member who joined us last year, who during her time b/w being hired and starting the Fall semester sat down and wrote her first book, which is now one of three accepted & well on the way to publication arrived, we talked a little bit about our shared interest in genre fiction. It was fun, and I went home one day last fall and wrote ten pages on a book I've actually got all mapped out.

But I haven't really written anything in forever. Class lectures, mostly. I wrote a few drunken poems a few weeks ago, mad at the world, mad at the difficulty in my life (Sean's problems, business, tiredness, life.) It's not that bad, really, but the poems seemed very mad & bitter. (Hey, I said I'd had a couple glasses of wine!) :)

In a few weeks now, I'll be done teaching the last semester I'll teach at the Uni where I work before I'm done for an indefinite period. There are multiple reasons-- the main two being first that my life-- especially the real estate part-- is way too complicated to add even a little bit of time for teaching. The other, less crucial one is that budget cuts are probably going to eliminate my position anyway.

So, I'm leaving the University for the first time in a few years. And I'm not planning to come back right away, either. What I do plan is writing. I want to write, I want to work towards publication. I have to plan to limit my time online, because it can really suck the day away and I don't have that much free time to waste anymore.

I have a business plan, too, and Andrew is very adamant that I work on that stuff. I will, but I will promise myself that I will make the leap to write my own creative work, too. I miss living in that space, that creative life. I will see what I can explore, and work, and write. I am really looking forward to that, and I really hope it pays off.

Writing Your Second Novel

A co-worker recently had her first book accepted for publication from a respectable publisher & has a three book deal. It's the type of fiction I really love to read, and that I have a couple of books "in the works" myself. (I have two which fit that genre, and a couple which are other genres but which I think will be cool, too.)

I am a little bit jealous, on the one hand, but I truly am also happy for her; it ultimately gives me hope. Hopefully the jealousy is the type that spurs me-- makes me get up off my butt and DO it. Like when someone runs past you, making you put in a little more effort, run a little bit faster to try to catch up. See-- people I actually know have managed the task; it's not just people from far far away with brilliant & genius gifts, awesomely disciplined writerly habits. She is a regular, funny, normal person who writes at a coffee shop and stresses over student behavior, just like me.

And dammit, that has to mean that I can do it too. (This is where it's not about the jealousy but more about a productive kind of hope.) If she could do it, with the English major analysis of the type of book & direct thought about how to create a hit, perhaps I do have it in me, too.

This summer, I did write 10 awesome pages on my first idea for a similar type of concept. I have GOT to figure out a way to make more time to write that stuff for myself. The kiddos are getting to a place where I can leave them to play and trust them to not tear down the house TOO much. And I wish I were like Toni Morrison, who wrote her first book, The Bluest Eye, with kids on her lap. Amazing.

I want to write! Dammit! It doesn't have to be the Bluest Eye-- it can be more like Charlaine Harris or something equally lowbrow. I'm good with that. Muse, please guide my fingers along the keyboards of my life. :)

So I decided to think of it like that old joke about working on your second million dollars, because the first one is too hard to get. So now, I'm working on my SECOND novel. And I will try, very hard, to set time aside over the holiday break to really work on it. I wrote the cool 10 pages I have in one afternoon. If I could do that much in the 20 or so days of break then I'd have a decent sized first novel in progress! So, that's my goal for the break. If I fall off the wagon, I'll probably just work on some academic stuff which is not nearly as interesting. :)

Pledging

I had all these big dreams about what was going to be accomplished this summer. Write that novel that's floating around in my head, write a few articles for publications so I am a good academic, clean the house better, exercise & lose 20 pounds. Propose a book based on Women Writers.

So far, I've done a few things-- updated the Women Writers page, gotten a new poetry editor, gotten a bunch of apps for the fiction editor that need to be looked at. That was a big project, but overall, I feel like summer is slipping through my fingers and all I'm doing is a big fat nothing. Yes, I've written and submitted a few poems. But I have so many things that I just don't get done during the semester when I am teaching. Mostly, I need to learn to budget the small hours of the day that I have to be creative rather than being mom. I have from approx. 8-approx 3:30. Yes, during that time I still have to be mom, a lot. I have to grocery shop, pick up the mess a bit, etc.

But I'll admit, I am a bit lazy, too. I feel like I'm still decompressing from the years of being stressed and anxious about writing the dissertation and finally being done with that. I couldn't do it last year because we were so busy with Andrew's father's cancer & death. And last summer was filled with that traveling, and then the mourning. And still, all the daily mundane domestic tasks.

So anyway. I'm whining about it a little bit as a way to attempt to motivate myself, put it on public record that I need to start writing something every day. A little bit of the novel, a poem, the articles. Something so that I don't come to August and say "well, that was too fast and I did read a few good books but otherwise...."

So feel free to hold me to that.