Monday coffee: in which I give thanks and introduce cows

Posted on November 19, 2012 by ina

Artists at All City Coffee 25

In the U.S. the holiday of Thanksgiving is approaching. It’s a kind of odd holiday: people’s kids are in school plays where they dress in Pilgrim gear and worry about starvation, and later that week we have a huge dinner at which we usually overeat. Sometimes we do this while watching sports games on the largest screen we can find. And the very next day, we start a frenzy of Christmas or Chanukah shopping (in my case, both. So glad Diwali is already past!) that looks like sharks converging on an unfortunate school of gift wrapped fish – so scary that it’s even called Black Friday.

And yet, Thanksgiving simultaneous manages to have meaning to almost everyone here, even hard boiled cynics, that goes beyond the physical. It’s almost like the indulgence in the very material parts of our being (buying, eating) gives our hearts some unimpeded time to move towards others, their concerns, their needs, their lives.

Art tends that way too this time of year; the rain starts here in California, and the call from the artist world is expressive, connective. I love the idea of collaborative individuality in Laura Hegfield’s Gratitude Quilt. For a really, um, unusual physical piece of gratitude artwork, one of my favorite art shows is featuring, this year, a Gratitude Cow (really!)* And for sheer gut-wrenching honesty, painter and poet Stuart Sheldon’s blog post, “Thank,” still does it for me as it does every year since he wrote it.

I don’t tend to express gratitude publicly, including through writing. I’m too worried about people starving, and difficult court cases, and the Middle East situation, and my friends’ healthcare concerns, &c. You can imagine the sort of thing. But I am grateful for a lot of things, and when I was talking them over with my six-year-old, I was surprised to find that my typical top-10 list (my family, my lovely friends, my eyesight, etc) came up with an addition: this blog. It’s a pleasure taking part in its writing but even more of a pleasure connecting with my blogging partner and with the people who read and comment on and about this blog.

So, thank you, friends, for making this blogging thing such a joy.

*If you’ve never run across the Cow Parade, well, you’re in for a treat!

Monday coffee: A month of living dangerously

Posted on November 5, 2012 by ina

For many creative writers who have writing lives on the internet, November is a month in which one walks softly and carries a big coffee cup. Why? Because November is when all the challenges come out of hiding, and it’s so hard for a writer to resist. To name just a few:

NanoWrimo for novelists
The November chapbook challenge for poets, courtesy of Robert Brewer and his blog, Poetic Asides
Picture Book Idea Month
NaBloPoMo for bloggers

And these are just a few of these events.

Each of these events has detractors. And they are often right to point out problems. Some argue that really good writing needs to happen in its own time and under its own steam. Others believe that the process of creation is more important than the goal (whether that goal is a number of poems written or the number words on a page), but that some of these events focus on goals and discourage mindfulness. Some people need to move on – to pass up the “game” feeling and do the serious, ugly work of revising. Still others have tried one of these events and found the month to be frustrating if one has more than one outside responsibility.

So why do any of these things? Last year, I did two of these events simultaneously.One of them was the November chapbook challenge. But the other? That was Nano.

I’ve always said I could never write a novel – I’m a short form gal – and I decided to put my money where my mouth isn’t. I decided to prove myself right by trying to write a novel while taking care of my kid (who has some special needs involving lots of doctors and therapists) and holding down a full time job. And I felt GREAT. I was sleep deprived, and overworked; I got carpal tunnel, and the resulting novel was and is truly lousy. And I still would not trade that month for anything.

What I learned was that, really, when all is said and done, I may not be a novelist, but I love writing. I love the words, I love the turn of phrase, I love the transfer of images from my head onto the page. That recognition – the recognition of one’s self as a writer? That’s priceless.

So will you share with us? You know you’re an artist (a writer, a painter, a sculptor, a director…) or you wouldn’t be here at this blog. Are you participating in any or all of these writing events? What does participating, or not participating, tell you about your own creative heart?

Friday surprise: Advice From a Good Midwestern Girl

Posted on November 2, 2012 by ina

If you take a gander at the picture of me on the “About Us” page, the first thing that does not come to mind is “Ah, a Good Midwestern Girl.” If you know me personally, the idea of me as a GMG probably makes you giggle uncontrollably. But I am, at heart, a nice Nebraskan woman. I cannot pass up a really good steak. My spell check is configured to automatically replace “towards” with “toward,” because I’ve given up on the idea that I’m ever going to type “toward” of my own volition. And I always make my own Thanksgiving stuffing – from scratch, thank you.

Which is why I was stunned by what I read in this interesting and in-depth article about what editors of lit magazines want (on The Review Review).

Lynne Barrett’s article is full of good advice for people hoping to find recognition and publication in literary journals. She mentions practical stuff like keeping good records of where you’ve sent work out and making sure you indicate when submissions are simultaneous. But most of this (rather substantial) article’s advice amounted to this:

BE POLITE.

That’s it: be polite. It’s really sad that grown up artists – writers, painters, actors – have to be told to use the same rules that govern polite society when they approach someone about displaying/publishing/supporting their work.

Being polite is in the interest of both the artist and the purveyor of artistic work. In the same way that it’s not just nice but practical to give your mechanic a plate of homemade cookies for New Years, it’s not just rude but stupid to send a nasty-gram to an editor who rejects a favorite story. That same editor might have loved your second-favorite story, but not if you’ve gone off the rails at her once. And an editor who will identify you to other editors as One Big Headache will not help you create a professional reputation.

Let’s look at a less obvious example. Most editors have a clear and transparent submission policy; the results of that policy are usually apparent in the publication itself. So it’s easy to find out if the journal in question does not publish genre fiction, or is primarily interested in travel writing, or only publishes poetry in the style of Mary Oliver. If you send in a submission, without checking the publication’s style or requirements, you are essentially indicating that what the editor/manager/publisher of the magazine wants is not important to you. Is that really the message that’s going to get your work accepted?

An analogy: I had an attractive friend who tried on-line dating. In her profile, she stated explicitly that she would not date men who didn’t share the basic tenets of her faith. She wasn’t looking for a high income level, movie star looks, anything like that. Just a decent person around her age who shared some of her basic life views. The number of dates she went on where the person eventually mentioned that they totally disagreed with her faith was astounding – we stopped counting. And what was worse: most of the people told her they’d looked at her picture and contacted her because she was “cute” ; they told her that they didn’t care what she’d written.

That’s not very polite, is it? And it’s equally impolite to send an editor whatever we feel like without stopping to find out if it’s something they’d spend their time reading. If we expect respectful treatment for our work, we need to treat those who might support it respectfully as well. I’m saddened by how often fellow artists haven’t looked at the art work carried by a gallery they’d like to show their work in or haven’t read a sample issue of the publicatin in which they hope their work will appear.

This may seem unfair; after all, buying sample magazines is expensive and tickets to indie film festivals add up. But there are work-arounds. Many publications provide PDFs of previously published stories; lots of indie film festivals archive of clips of prior years’ winners online. More importantly, not being polite also costs you: time unpublished, time dealing with boomeranging artworks that could be used as creative time, time, energy and money for resubmissions.

Almost all Barrett’s advice – from how to respond to an acceptance letter to what to do about simultaneous submissions – comes down to being a courteous person. Don’t do to an editor/gallery manager /producer-director what you wouldn’t want someone to do to you. It’s really that simple.

Monday-ish Coffee : Cast a Wide Net

Posted on October 23, 2012 by ina

I’ve been thinking about the results of That Poll on how our creativity and our loved ones interact. If you’re a numbers fiend, here are the poll results in order of how many votes each choice received:

Being part of a supportive writing community: 25% of the choices that people made included this choice
Being a writer is a lonely life; at the end of the day, your support system doesn’t do the writing – you do: 18%
My dear ones are supportive of my writing, so it’s never been an issue: 14%
Other: 13% (which included everything from meeting your friendly neighborhood librarian – a great idea! – to waiting to show your work in real life print )
Hermitting: 11%
Creating a supportive community: 10%
Putting a firewall between my writing life and my other life : 7%
Therapy : 2%

I found a lot to be heartened about here : for example, that many of us have supportive people to hang out with when our daily support system isn’t quite working for us.

I’m also impressed at the complexities we encompass: we can simultaneously love people and understand that they can’t be everything to us all the time; we can be solitary in creation but we nurture that process through interactions.

In short, we’re good at casting a wide net to help ourselves create, whether that net grabs us a “room of one’s own” or a support system to be part of.

One thing I didn’t poll on is the professional support that creative people sometimes need/choose to have: editors, agents, publishers, typists, translators, transcribers, teachers, writing groups. I’m going to let Andrea introduce her wonderful editor, but I wanted to mention the editing company because Write Helper is running the Burning The Midnight Oil Poetry Contest, a rare contest that provides cash prizes for the winners, plus a free critique for all entrants. So if you’re a poet casting your net for new places to place your work, the contest is open now through next week (Oct 31st) – throw your net out onto the waters, see what comes back to you !

[ina’s note: This was supposed to be Monday’s post, but we had a time dependent notification to put up yesterday. So, we’re having coffee a day late. Y’all don’t mind late coffee, I hope? We can even make it decaf if you like 🙂 ]

Briefly, Wednesday. And a kitten.

Posted on October 10, 2012 by ina

In Our Books is taking the day off. Well, not really, but Ina (that’s me) is in the depths of Ugly Data Analysis Hades (do not get me started) and Andrea is in the basic-services-for-living-aren’t-working-and-don’t-even-ask-about-internet-connectivity Ring of Hell that Dante would have written about if he’d known about it. So this is just a quick hello to our lovely fellow creatives and a reminder to add your input to our poll before we close it on Thursday night, and a promise that we’ll publish poll results on Friday. Oh, and a kitten.

See you all Friday!

A poll: how do you remain true?

Posted on October 7, 2012 by inourbooks

Hello, dear readers. A knotty problem today, waiting for your thoughts.

A blog I follow has a post about a problem that many writers I know (and many more that I’ve only read about in biographies) seem to run into (in Western cultures particularly – some day we’ll have to talk about why there’s so much variation in attitude between cultures). The author describes the problem like this:

You see, friends, my immediate family simply doesn’t understand me. They don’t know why I like to do what I do. They don’t have any interest in things that I love. They just barely fall short of making fun of me for doing what I am so passionate about..It’s all about being true to oneself, isn’t it? Rarely an easy thing to do, but made even more difficult when those immediately around you will not lovingly accept it.

The trope of the Misunderstood Writer has a long and venerable history. But behind the trope is a truth that many writers live and struggle with every day. It’s a little annoying when you’re confronted by a relative stranger at a party or a school meeting who comes out with: “You’re a writer. How do you pay the bills?” or “I don’t remember hearing your name – are you any good?” But it’s just plain hard when this vibe comes from someone you care about, or love and trust, or someone to whom you’ve devoted your own life.

I want to dispel a potential misunderstanding here: the author of the blog, Cooper Robbins*, is not a whiny wanna-be (“If I only had a supportive family, I’d be a best-seller, but no, I’m so beat by the end of the day I’d rather watch re-runs”); this is an author whose creative life includes a novel, a screenplay, and a fair amount of “&c,” on top of maintaining a home and taking care of young ones. Her post (and this post) aren’t about people who want to be writers but don’t write…this is about how we as writers keep writing in the face of resistance from those whose opinions we most value.

Camouflage, demonstrated by the Graceful Kelp Crab

Robbins does this in part by developing and participating in supportive writing communities – in a way, that’s what her blog is about. Some people (and I include myself here) have a sort of damn-the-torpedoes approach, which generally involves shutting certain people out of the creative part of one’s life. Other people hermit (to hermit: to isolate one’s self, creating a shell, and then decorating it with camouflaging materials, such as PTA meetings or banker’s three-piece suits, as needed).

So here’s my question. What do you do? What advice would you give to Cooper Robbins about how to cope with being surrounded by people who are either baffled or skeptics? NOTE: The poll should let you vote for as many choices as you want – if it doesn’t let you, tell me and I’ll go give it a strong talking to 🙂 [IOB: ina]

*unsurprisingly, this is a nom de plume – sometimes everyone needs a place to vent. I happen to have a venting blog too, and no, I don’t link it to my name and, no, I haven’t and won’t link it to this blog. Which probably says something, don’t you think?

Connections: a little time with Daniel Ari

Posted on October 3, 2012 by ina

Please welcome the co-winner of our first Poetry Prompt Contest, Daniel Ari. We first encountered Daniel’s vivid and unique poetry on (surprise, surprise) Robert Brewer’s blog, Poetic Asides. I couldn’t wait to get my little paws on Daniel’s chapbook, Monster Poems, and was so glad when I finally did. The stunning black-and-white, evocative illustrations (by Daniel’s talented spouse Lauren) and Daniel’s poetry have created a household favorite – something I read with my six-year-old time and time again, not because it’s a book for children, but because it’s a book that appeals to the Grimm imagination that lurks in all of us. So was I surprised his poem “this glamorous profession” was one of the stand-outs in the contest? No. Was I delighted to get to interview him – oh, yes! And I know you, as readers, will enjoy his words, as well ![IOB]

IOB [ina]: What was the hardest thing about writing the poem you submitted?

DA: It’s funny because I wrote this in response to a call for submissions of poetry found in the prose of Patrick Sokas, M.D. His daughter decided to create a poetry anthology of found poems, and she posted several essays of his as the finding field for poets. I had never heard of Dr. Sokas before, but it seems that he published articles in The Oakland Tribune, a local paper for me, though his articles were printed long before I moved to the area.

Anyway, that was the score. The hardest thing was staying open to moments of poetry within his prose. I read several essays without sensing the spark. Then I caught a haiku, which was accepted for the anthology. I like “this glamorous profession” more than the haiku, but it may have still been too prosaic for the doctor’s daughter.

Once I found the piece—which also resonated with a poetry prompt at the “Poetic Asides” blog at Writersdigest.com—I had to give myself permission to glean the poem with finer tools than cut and paste. I excised some words from the middle and split some of the dialogue so that the speakers changed. In sum, I took time to tinker this into a poem I enjoyed. That’s not hard for me, though. I like to write poems slowly.

IOB: Who is a poet you admire a great deal, and why?

DA: There are many. On the top of my mind right now is Marna Hauk. She deeply engages her experience of being human on earth. What she writes is astonishingly transcendent, but human—not disengaged at all. She has the insight to write to the heart of experience without getting bogged down in her own emotions. And beyond that, her life’s work is about getting to the healing medicine found in poetry. She is an educator who collaborates in pioneering this kind of poetry-as-world-medicine field.

And that makes me think of Natalie Goldberg, whose poems I have actually never read, but I think of her as one of the writers who has influenced me most. In the same field as Marna, Natalie Goldberg’s take on writing—poetry or prose—or making art of any kind—is about healing and revealing on the larger scale. I think her book “Writing Down the Bones” is required reading for any writer.[note from ina: me, too!]

IOB: Where can people find more of your work?

Monster Poems poster; rights reserved by poster artists

DA: I post poems weekly at IMUNURI. I post other creative things sporadically at Fights With Poems. I’m also placing poems hither and yon. For recent online publications, you can search for me at Poetic Asides, Defenestration Magazine, ShufPoetry, and (I’m very proud of this 2007 publication) M cSweeney’s Internet Tendency. In print, Issue 3 of 42 Magazine, issue one of The Wayfarer, and several recent issues of Conscious Dancer include my work.

IOB: Daniel, thank you so much for sharing your poetry and your time with us. We look forward to hearing about the new places where your poems appear and can be seen, read, heard, and experienced!

Monday coffee: Ted Kooser on repairing your poem

Posted on October 1, 2012 by ina

I just finished reading Ted Kooser‘s The Poetry Home Repair Manual. He’s one of my favorite poets (and not just because he’s from Nebraska), and every piece of advice he gives (with a couple of exceptions) is just right. And (those of you who write fiction), much of the book’s advice applies generally to creative writing.

This straight-forward instructional guide gives us insight into

This really IS a coffee grinder

how to choose and use a title
how to get rid of what Kooser calls the “warm up” (I call it scaffolding) – the stuff you needed to write to set up the poem, but that the reader doesn’t need to see (this is one example of something that’s really useful for fiction-writers)
how to keep from ruining a piece with “gush” or “sentiment”
your relationship with your readers
how to make sure you’re happy with the places that your work is published
when and how to use metaphor and simile and how to use them without jarring the reader out of the world you’re creating
the uses and limits of form

I was flattered to find out that some of this stuff I do by instinct (and amazed that there are formal ways to talk about it). I was appalled to find that a significant number of poems I’ve written that I love but that don’t work are victims of a really bad habit that, per Kooser, is something that underlies a lot of poetry that doesn’t work . And no, I’m not telling what that mistake is – it’s too embarrassing *blush*

But of course, being a “professional philosopher,” I can never leave something uncritiqued, and I’m going to point out those two places where I think he’s mistaken:

1) Kooser says that if you send something out four or five times, and it’s not accepted, there’s probably something wrong with the poem. He does qualify this by noting that you should make sure to send your work to appropriate places (I agree – otherwise it’s like not making sure the day care center you’ve chosen is for humans and not doggies).

But…there’s something about agents and editors: they’re all Homo sapiens. Like everyone else in our species, they let their tastes, dreams, and even their lives get in the way of appreciating good work. I sometimes amuse myself thinking of the number of ways 27 different slush pile readers probably kicked themselves when the first Harry Potter book sales figures were announced. An editor I know went through a crummy break-up, and during that time, woe betide the female poet who submitted to the journal he managed! I suggest: make it the best poem you can, and then assume that you’re looking at 7 to 14 rejections before it’s accepted . After the 7th, or 10th, or 14 rejection take a serious look at whether the piece really has what it takes, needs a serious rework, or just needs to be put aside for awhile. If you critique it after every rejection, it’s hard to get the piece back out the door – and who needs to add to writer’s block that way?

2) Kooser treats using form as good exercise but (for the most part) something that distracts from the poem. While I do agree with him that form needs to be organically connected with the poem (as I’ve said before), I think he gives forms (and formal poetry) less credit than they deserve – much of the world’s most beautiful poetry is written within some form, and that says something.

Critique over, so now I’ll tell you that The Poetry Home Repair Manual has taken place next to the only other writing book I keep on my desk (Nathalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones). Go out and buy a copy, and if you’re a broke writer (you know, like all of us) go out and make your local library buy a copy if they don’t have one already. Or if you’re local, come hit me up – I might even let it off my desk for you to borrow for a while.

Connections: chatting with Jay Sizemore

Posted on September 26, 2012 by ina

Jay Sizemore’s poem, “The value of things,” was one of the two winners of our first In Our Books prompt-based poetry contest. IOB took a few moments to chat with Jay about, well, poetry.

IOB: What was the hardest thing about writing the poem you submitted?

JS: I would say it is always a difficult task to write something about a topic larger than one’s self, and yet try and retain the feeling that the poem is coming from that place of genuine emotion. I try to do that with all my work. After I write it, I ask myself, “Is this real, or am I trying too hard to make something work?” Most of the time, I think it is a challenge hard to live up to, because when writers tackle difficult themes, sometimes you have to write outside the scope of your own experiences, and that tends to muddy the waters of the real. Often it is best to, as cliche as it is, “stick to what you know,” and let others attribute themes to your work. But it is fun to try large themes anyway, and as if you couldn’t tell by my piece, I have strong feelings about what the concept of ownership does to society.

IOB: Who is a poet you admire a great deal, and why?

JS: My favorite poet for a long time now has been Bob Hicok. When I was in college, a professor of mine, Dr. Tom Hunley, let me borrow Plus Shipping, because we were writing papers on poets from one of our text books, and I had loved his poem “Absence” so much, I wanted to read more. The paper also had to involve an interview with the poet, and surprisingly he answered my emails, and we actually talked back and forth for a while, when I was going through my borderline-stalker-obsessed-fan phase. Anyway, Hicok’s work has an uncanny sense of realism about it, which I was immediately drawn to. He has a powerful command of language, and image, almost every poem driving that sense of awe into your guts, or twisting words into a kind of hypnosis. It’s the kind of talent you just can’t fake. One can always aspire to reach that level of greatness, but it’s like singing in the shower and thinking you can win American Idol. It’s rare.

[ina notes: just read through Hicok’s Animal Soul on Jay’s recommendation. Really remarkable collection – vivid and vital imagery as well as the rhythm and flow of each work. Great stuff.]

IOB: Where can people find more of your work?

JS: There is very little of my work online anymore, as I have discovered most journals don’t like publishing things that have appeared on even a blog, so I took most of it down. There are several pieces left up on my old blog, The Ghosts of Silence, and I do plan on posting things there that have already been accepted elsewhere. Other than that, what little I have had published you can find at the respective journals, like Red River Review, Wild Goose Poetry, Emerge, Siren, and a few others. I also have gotten some things in a couple poetry anthologies put together from a fairly tight-knit group of poets who met online at Robert Brewer’s Poetic Asides blog: Beyond the Dark Room [disclosure: ina is one of the poets whose work appears in this anthology. All proceeds from this volume will go to Medicines Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders] and Prompted: An International Collection of Poetry. I have also had some short fiction accepted here and there, online in Schlock, and Scholars and Rogues, and in the anthologies No Rest for the Wicked and Fantastic Horror Vol. 4. Most of my fiction is genre-based, I feel I must warn you, but it is fun to write that stuff.

IOB: Jay, thanks so much for talking with us, and for entering our contest. We’ll be watching your future writing progress with considerable interest!

IOB will post our interview with our other winner, Daniel Ari, within a week. Stay tuned!

in our books

tales of two writers

Category Archives: ina says

Monday coffee: in which I give thanks and introduce cows

Monday coffee: A month of living dangerously

Monday-ish Coffee : Cast a Wide Net

Briefly, Wednesday. And a kitten.

A poll: how do you remain true?

Connections: a little time with Daniel Ari

Monday coffee: Ted Kooser on repairing your poem

Connections: chatting with Jay Sizemore

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