Writers Writing in Rooms in Winter. Sign me up.

A few months ago, while completing details related to teaching a three-day memoir workshop at the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway (where I'm at this weekend), I hesitated at the question, Would you like to attend a complimentary master class for faculty, with featured special guest poets Denise Duhamel and Yusef Komunyakaa? 

This would require arriving about five hours earlier than strictly necessary, and on the last full day I'd have to prep for the start of the spring MFA teaching semester, which would begin the morning after my return. Could I really spare three hours? Still, I knew my schedule that day would likely be flexible. Also, the thought of getting out of hectic northern NJ and settling in to a sprawling old world/completely remodeled hotel by the ocean seemed appealing. 

What clinched it was that it occurred to me that I had not sat in the student/writer participant chair for quite a long time. Had not written anything resembling a poem in even longer, but have always loved being in the room with poets, which pushes me to think differently; I usually emerge with something that I later revise into a prose poem, or a piece of flash creative nonfiction (which is how this one got started a few years ago). Or even if not, I leave that kind of room lighter.

Sign me up.

A few things conspired to make me late. (You know those dumb scenes in movies where someone's suitcase explodes, spewing contents all over? Picture this, between my back door and garage, at 7:30 a.m., then me going back in the house, into the attic, to fish out the only remaining suitcase, so old there's no rolling wheels or pull handle.) So when I slid into a chair, the several dozen other writer-teachers were discussing intricacies of one of Komunyakaa's poems and it took a bit to settle in and catch up. But then, for the next two-plus hours, my pen moved, my brain slowed down. I was able to look off into space, and think, muse, wonder. Write. Consider.

Then Komunyakaa -- a Pulitzer Prize recipient and eminent voice -- said a few things that stopped me in place, lit me up with that familiar sense, a combination of intuitive understanding and driving curiosity. 

Here's some of what he shared; I'm paraphrasing here, and of course can't even begin to convey the richness of his speaking voice, his quiet wit alternating with gravitas:

- A poem is a dialogue, a beckoning. It's all about the tone, the music of a phrase.

- Titles should never be a resolution stuck on top of a poem. Titles are an invitation. The poem is not equal to the title.

- I always and only revise a draft of a poem from the bottom up, because that's usually where it's needed. I often write right on past the natural ending because I'm trying to explain everything, and I had not left that door ajar, as you must. I may start out with 150 lines, but the final poem is 40 lines. But that original ending is not usually the real ending. It all comes down to the right confluence of images and connections.

- A prompt can take you anywhere.

The prompt he gave next was to write an ode in praise of oneself, and I wrote about my love/hate relationship with my legs. Like most workshop-generated rough writing, I loved and hated it! What it may one day be, who knows.

After a brown bag lunch, Denise Duhamel asked us to engage with an excerpt from I Remember, a book-length poem by Joe Brainard in which every line or small paragraph begins with "I remember..." and then to write for 15 minutes in the same way. Since an "I remember" list is one of my go-to writing prompts in memoir classes, I sat up straighter in my chair, and wrote, mostly about what I remember of the two years I spent living in Orange County, California in my 20's, riding horses and competing in shows.

Next up was to consider three poems which all end on the word "life", to take one of those ending lines and make it the start of something. I went with (from "A Moment" by Ruth Stone), "you do not want to repeat my life," and wrote of how, at various times in my life, I did or did not want to repeat parts of my own life, my sister's life, my mother's life. 

Too soon, it was time to pick up my folder with my roster of writer participants who would be sitting around my workshop table the next morning. But when I got to my hotel room, before I pulled out all my materials and shifted back into teaching mode to prepare, I pulled on layers of clothing, hat, scarf, and gloves, and struck out to walk the paved cart paths of the golf courses behind the hotel for a chilly but restorative hour (in 34 but "feels like 23" degrees). Walking, and thinking about images, endings, about not explaining so much, about remembering and what we don't remember, and how to write about it all. 

At the opening reception, Peter Murphy, who began the Poetry & Prose Getaway more than two decades ago, reminded the 200-plus in attendance, we are all -- teachers, mentors, workshop leaders, special guest -- just writers together after all, writers writing in rooms, stoking energy and words and more.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- June 1, 2018 Edition

> How much can you imagine winning in a writing contest? A New Jersey writing professor won the Sunday (London) Times EFG short story contest -- a cool £ 30,000 (around $40K).

> Have a hankering to transform your prose to a play? Nancy Davidoff Kelton, whose memoir Finding Mr. Rightstein, is heading to the stage, explains "five ways playwriting is similar to essay writing."

> In the category of hey-why-didn't-I-think-of-that, Andrea Askowitz has challenged herself to write 50 essays in 50 weeks. 

> Oh, the things I'm learning as a new author...Did you know there's a website where you can see a list of libraries around the world where your book is in circulation? Check out WorldCat.  

> At The Millions, novelist Tom McAllister asks, "Who Will Buy Your Book?" The answers are sobering (and sometimes, a little comical).

> I haven't looked into it deeply yet, but the new-to-me online reader/book social site GoRead, seems promising. And they promise to donate a book for every one bought there.

> A few weeks ago, The Quivering Pen (David Abrams' blog) ran my post, "My First (Disastrous) Writing Retreat)" as part of their My First Time column. The same day, Brevity's blog featured a post by Laura Rink, about her failed writing retreat. Both of us wrote about what we learned about ourselves as writers via the experience...which means, I suppose, they were a kind of success. (Great minds and all that, I guess.)

> Finally, feast your eyes and find out why "Finland is Home to the World's Most Radical Libraries"!

Guest Blogger Debra Borden on Switching from Fiction to Fact

When I began featuring guest bloggers, Debra Borden was one of the first I invited, after meeting at an event for writers in northern New Jersey. In addition to writing, Debra works as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York and New Jersey, helping clients in a variety of settings, including as a “Sous Therapist” in their homes. Cook YourMarriage Happy, the first in her planned Cook Yourself Happy® series, is her third book, following the novels A Little Bit Married and Lucky Me.

Please welcome Debra Borden.

The ultimate moment of joy and validation in my life came on a morning in January 2006. I know this is where I’m supposed to say that was the day I gave birth to my first or second child.  Of course, those were momentous events, but I never felt as validated giving birth as I did getting published. I’m sorry but it’s true.

When the doctor said, ‘you have a little girl’ and three years later, ‘a boy’, I held those babies close and then asked my husband to get me a cheese Danish. When the call came from my agent announcing that my first novel had sold, I sank to my knees and cried. And cried some more. For about an hour.

When the second novel was published, I finally began to believe that I was a writer. And I was sure that fiction was my game. But with the confidence came not more fiction, but instead light-hearted essays --spilling out as if I was born to write humorous truths. In retrospect, the essays weren’t all that different from my novels, which were both told in first person and made liberal use of my personal history—events and feelings, miscues and fantasies. A type of faction.

At the time, I didn’t realize that the essays might also be transitional. But as an LCSW I know something about the word compulsion. I’ve used it to describe clinical features as well as what writing is to me; with a nod to Descartes, I write, therefore I am.

So, it’s not so surprising that I transitioned from fiction to memoir and self-help. I often say that my work as a former school social worker informed my fiction. After all, when doing an evaluation or assessment, I was exploring family dynamics, human development, cultural norms, and home situations: essentially, a job that’s an inadvertent master class in character development and plot. Later, when working with challenging adult clients and I stumbled upon an amazing experiential therapy through cooking, naturally I was compelled to write about it, this time in article, essay, and self-help forms

But when writing novels, I was used to writing in stream-of-consciousness, a method I encourage. My mandate is to get the story down while it’s coming. If I stop too long to edit or correct I fall into the black hole of perfecting the language and I end up with five sentences, all with perfect grammar but no music at all. It seems to me a story or essay is a little word symphony with cadence and melody that needs to be played first. Create now, edit later. 

Except, this often didn’t work for me with nonfiction. Yes, I still wanted it to have a snappy beat and the right key, but for me, nonfiction is more linear, more formatted and defined (sometimes even governed by AP Style). I needed to attend to research, too. And when I began to shape what I had in mind into a book idea, I realized I could best present my material in forms that repeat in some chapters, with similar instructions.

My publisher also was lobbying for some visual and organizational ideas that rankled: boxes and bullet points. Yikes, bullet points? What fresh hell is this?  In keeping with the music metaphor, I was discovering that the kind of book I was attempting was not a medley of hits, but a series of singles. Which is not to say it can’t be entertaining, anecdotal, or creative. I learned to ‘write within the lines’, and I certainly hope every page, chapter, and even bullet point is still delightful.

When I write fiction, I do outline, but it’s loose. I scope out the general arc of the story before I begin with several blank spaces for my characters to weigh in or solutions to unfold. Much of my outline happens in my head when I’m doing other things, like chopping vegetables or not sleeping. But when I tried to write a self-help book in my usual way, I lost structure and forward motion and it caused everyone fits, including me. No sooner would I finish one section and start another that I realized I had to go back and insert or delete from the first.

I was also finding it difficult to bring the uniformity to the chapters that my original publisher envisioned.   While the steps to treating The Stale Marriage and The Sexually-Out-Of-Sync Marriage may be similar, the behaviors they mirror, the recipes I choose, and the reflective processes differ. I’m also a bit creative with fonts and indentations and spacing. And by creative I of course mean incompetent. Six copy editors later (one a famous and expensive New York Times bestselling author) I’ve learned my lesson. And maybe how to write nonfiction in a way that doesn’t require my team to need a sabbatical on a remote island to destress. Yes, I exaggerate.

 Writing Cook Your Marriage Happy, the first in my planned Cook Yourself Happy series was at times frustrating, annoying, daunting and of course, immensely gratifying. I’m so grateful to be able to write and to my readers. But also, to learn. I often say I wrote fictional characters I’d like to emulate, characters that grow and evolve. Going from fiction to fact has also been an evolution for me, although a year ago ‘evolution’ was not the word I would have used. This is why the next volume in the series is called, Cook Your Stressed-Out Self Happy.

Connect with Debra at her website, or email her.

Taking the Book on the Road (or: Good Thing I Like to Drive)

Before the craziness of publication arrives (Starting with Goodbye says hello to the world on Tuesday, May 1), I wanted to let my blog readers know that the first two months of my book tour schedule have been posted (with time, location, links, and other details)  at my website.

Except for a handful of locations -- Rockville Centre, NY (5/3), Amherst, MA (5/10), Millbrook, NY (5/19), and Kingston, NY (6/3) -- I'm be sticking close to my New Jersey roots for much of May and June. After that, who knows where I may pop up this summer...so much is still *in the works*, so stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, here's a quick peek. If you come to an event, please do say hello and let me know that we're connected through the blog!

Come Write, or Talk Writing with Me in April -- in Southern New Jersey or Central Massachusetts

I have two opportunities coming up in mid-April that will let me work with writers directly -- one in Southern New Jersey, another in Central Massachusetts. I thought I'd let you know about them in case you live in those areas and might like a day to gather with other writers. Both are open to the general public (and are paid events with advance registration).

On Saturday, April 14, you'll find me at Writing in the Pines, leading a full-day memoir writing workshop in Galloway, NJ (on the campus of Stockton University, not far from Atlantic City). 

"The Gift of Incomplete Memory" is meant to help those who are writing memoir (or personal essay, family history, or other creative nonfiction works), and must excavate memories that are often hazy, incomplete, and full of question marks. We'll alternate between exercises and prompts that will help generate new work, discussions, published examples, and helpful feedback. (Not a memoir writer? The same day, offerings include full-day workshops in poetry writing and the craft of revision.)

Writing in the Pines is organized by Peter Murphy Writing, which runs successful writing retreats at the Jersey Shore and in upstate New York, New Hampshire, Wales, Scotland, and Spain. While I haven't taught in this part of my home state before, I've heard such wonderful reports about any of the writer events they run, both from teachers and participating writers, I am excited to be part of their team for this one.

You can learn more about Writing in the Pines here.  

The next day, Sunday, April 15, I'll be at Writers Day, on the campus of Bay Path University in East Longmeadow, MA, which lies just outside Springfield, MA, a few miles over the border from Connecticut. 

My presentation, titled "Publishing: The Long and Short of It," will focus on writers' making decisions about what how, when, and why to publish their work, from personal blogs to major websites, literary journals, anthologies, chapbooks, newspaper/magazines, and books. Print or online? Short pieces or full manuscripts? Publish as you go, or wait until completing a full book manuscript? We'll tackle these questions and more, as we discuss how writers can manage the publication side of their writing lives with satisfaction (and as little frustration as possible!), while continuing to work toward long range goals, and produce new work.

The rest of the line-up for Writers' Day includes authors Suzanne Strempek Shea, Jonathan Green, Karol Jackowski, and Sophfronia Scott. One terrific aspect of this event is that you don't need to choose, as presentations are run consecutively, not concurrently, and you can sign up for one, some, or all.

I'm excited about this event because it will bring me to the BPU campus one extra time. (I teach in this university's all-online MFA program, and so typically only get to spend time on the beautiful campus at graduation in May.) I've already heard from some New England writer friends who are planning to attend, making it a sweeter proposition to drive from the bottom of the Garden State up to the Bay State in one swoop! 

You can learn more about Bay Path Writers' Day here.  

And of course, I'm happy to answer questions about either event (or find the answer for you) if you contact me directly.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- February 9, 2018 Edition

> Do you hedge and cower in your writing, using a lot of qualifier words and unnecessary amplifiers? Jessi Rita Hoffman has some notes for you, via Jane Friedman's site.

> On Tiferet Talks (podcast for Tiferet Journal), Gayle Brandeis, author of the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis, chats with one of my former mentors, Leslea Newman, author of the poetry book, I Carry My Mother, and many other significant works, including A Letter to Harvey Milk and October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard.

> Many writers who have put up posts and articles on Huffington Post since its inception have hoped the site would wake up and end its non-paying policy; instead, HuffPo will simply stop publishing any outside contributors.

> Anyone else love dissecting short works by looking at their opening and/or closing lines in isolation? In this post, the editors at Brevity are luring readers in with the first lines of essays published in their newest issue.

> The NBCC (National Book Critics Circle) has announced its 2017 Award Finalists in advance of the March 17 presentations.

>In the category of Print-This-Out-and-Give-It-To-a-Non-Writer-Friend, Leslie Pietrzyk notes all the ways to help a writer.

> Finally, this one's just for my New Jersey/NYC/Eastern Pennsylvania writer friends: looking for a relaxing place and atmosphere to disappear for a day and write? Check out next Saturday's Cedar Ridge Writers Series mid-winter retreat.

Have a great weekend!

Guest Blogger Stephanie Urdang on the Differences between Writing Her Own Memoir, and Writing Someone Else’s Memoir

Occasionally a writer I meet at a conference (or online) confides that it’s hard to find other writers where they live. I have no idea what that might be like: the part of northern New Jersey where I live might be dubbed Writerville. Stephanie Urdang lives here too, though she was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Her memoir, Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa will be published this month. She is also the author of two books on Africa, including And Still They Dance: Women, War, and the Struggle for Change in Mozambique. Stephanie is currently working on a book with a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide (forthcoming in spring 2019).

Please welcome Stephanie Urdang

It took me about ten years – but who’s counting – to complete my memoir, Mapping My Way Home. It is taking me about one year to write a book with a survivor of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, who was eleven at the time.

            The first book is my story, my history, my memories. It charts the events on the international stage -- in which I was a participant or close observer -- that contributed to the end of apartheid. In the process of writing it, sub-themes raised their heads and demanded space as leit-motifs: the sense of home, the nagging of nostalgia, the concept of exile, all interlinked.

            The second book is Gustave Mukurarinda’s harrowing but courageous story. It is his story, his history, his memories. I am writing it in close collaboration, in the mode of creative nonfiction. We are co-authors.   I am the writer. But he is the storyteller.

            My memoir was my first sortie into creative nonfiction. It was a learning curve. I had to tap into a more literary style of writing, freeing myself to explore more evocative and lyrical ways to bring a scene to life, to describe a context. I had to rein in my tendency toward streams of consciousness that sent my narrative veering off course; I had to subdue, no exorcise, an inner voice that would exclaim “Who the f*#k I am to write about my life!”.  I had to learn to scale the inevitable writer’s blocks that told me I was incapable of doing justice to this project.  And I had to allow myself to relish, in the moment, the highs when my writing was flowing and it felt right.

Writing my own memoir provided basic tools for writing the Rwanda book, which is still in draft.  But writing a memoir in collaboration is a very different undertaking, although some of what I had practiced in my own memoir could be applied: forgoing my first-instinct journalistic style and adopt a more literary style;  thinking more intentionally about craft;  taking a critical scene remembered in just a few snippets, and fleshing it out, completing with dialogue; transforming an often fabulous but too lengthy anecdote or scene and trimming it to size so that it doesn’t dominate.

            Writing in collaboration is another learning curve entirely. From it I can tease out a few lessons that for me were “musts”.

The need for trust. Without mutual trust and respect the collaboration will founder. In our case, trust began some ten years ago. I had established a small US-based NGO, Rwanda Gift for Life, that partnered with African Rights, in Kigali. The project supported women who had been raped during the genocide and were living with AIDS. Gustave was on the staff of African Rights and acted as my interpreter when I visited Rwanda. We spent many days together. Later, he stayed at my New Jersey home for a few weeks on his way to Canada where he now lives. Once we began working together, I could appreciate that more than friendship was needed. Without a deep sense of mutual trust, a writing project such as ours could not move forward. There are times when this trust is tested. When he doesn’t approve of the way I am casting a scene, when he thinks the narrative is veering in the wrong direction, we are able to discuss, and where necessary, come to a compromise. We move on, knowing that the next glitch will be met with the same mutual respect, the same trust.

            Need for clarity about scope.  There should be as few surprises as possible. We made our expectations clear from the beginning, including the audience, the writing process, the deadlines. Before I began to record his story, we talked about the nature of creative nonfiction, how my intent was to produce a narrative that reads like fiction. We agreed the book would target a young adult readership, while also appealing to adults. Based on this understanding, and our lengthy interviews, I drafted three sample chapters. Gustave liked how I was conveying his story, how I was portraying his voice. Only after this did we feel confident moving forward. We agreed on the publisher’s terms and both signed the contract. We could begin in earnest.

            Accept that this is not the writer’s story.  Even with the best of intentions, it’s too easy to get carried away, and begin to think that the book is the writer’s alone, given the thought and hard work that goes into drafting it. I had to be careful not to imprint myself onto the story, and to stay true to Gustave’s voice. Ultimately every word is to be approved by him, it is his story, his family’s story, not mine.

            Accept criticism without defensiveness.  There were times when, as a westerner, even though I grew up in South Africa, even though I have written widely and for decades on Africa, I discovered that I was not as sensitive to Rwandan culture as I would have presumed. I made assumptions, or used language that caused him discomfort. I tended to pride myself that I wouldn’t fall into such traps. I did. He pointed them out politely when he deserved to be annoyed.

For example, cows are central to Rwandan culture. They are revered. I described Gustave’s father’s herd as containing Jerseys, Friesians, and “skinny African” cows. I recalled seeing cows that were, well, skinny. But this is no benign, neutral term. It was an insult. It reflects western bias. I apologized when he pointed it out. I was able to laugh at myself; he was able to laugh at me. Another similar lesson: I created dialogue between his brother and mother that was inappropriate to Rwandan culture where children were expected to be polite and respectful of adults and not assume to join in adult conversation unless invited. When he points out the error of my ways, all I feel is relief. It allows me to feel safer in my role as writer of his story, knowing that I will be challenged when I don’t get it right. This too reflects trust.

            Figuring out structure.   Structure can be a real challenge for memoir writers.  There is a life-time of material to draw on, so much that seems vital, but in the end really isn’t, that getting the flow and arc can be daunting. There is a deep emotional connection. But writing someone else’s story means the writer comes to the project from a distance and can discern the narrative’s scaffolding earlier on.  In my case, this process began soon after Gustave’s stories poured out during our many hours of skype interviews and I became energized by the twists and turns of this action-packed narrative. The story pulls me along without me being stuck trying to see the wood for the trees.  And so I am less encumbered to push the story forward, even as sometimes it brings me to tears.

            I have come to see, that when a memoir is written in collaboration, the story teller is the one to give birth. The writer is the midwife.  

           

Note: If you too are local to Writerville, you can catch Stephanie at Watchung Booksellers (Montclair) onThursday evening, Nov. 30, at 7 pm, and further afield, and at Powerhouse (Brooklyn), on Wednesday, Nov. 29 at 7 pm.

Stephanie would be delighted to answer any reader questions left in the comments over the next week or so. She’d also love to give one of my blog readers a signed copy of her book. Enter by leaving a comment by Sunday, Dec. 3. [Must have a U.S. postal shipping address.]

Connect with Stephanie at her website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Guest Blogger Martha Moffett on Writing Submissions and the Race to the Bottom: The Rejection Club

Some writers that I like very much I’m just not able to stay in steady contact with, but I’m always happy when we cross paths. Like Martha Moffett, a New Jersey writer I like to talk to anytime we’re in the same room. Martha was born at the end of a dirt road in St. Clair County, Alabama, worked in book and magazine publishing in New York City, and has written for Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, and British Heritage. She’s also worked as a librarian, and is now a freelance editor and ghostwriter. Her novels include The Common Garden and Dead Rock Singer. She’s also the recipient of fellowships from the Florida State Council on the Arts individual fellowships, and Yaddo.

Please welcome Martha Moffett

My plan, this past summer, was to work on one story and get it polished and ready for rejection by Alaska Quarterly, One Story, and Glimmer Train, some of my favorite journals. 

That’s an inside joke for “The Rejection Club,” four writers who decided to send out work at a fast clip and to keep score and compare notes.  The winner (loser) with the most rejections was assigned to treat the rest of us to a bottle of wine in our favorite pub at the end of a year.

I had traditionally sent out one story to one journal and waited for a response. Sometimes it was months in coming. Sometimes it never came. We had two thoughts about the general wisdom of this: If they don’t respond promptly, they aren’t interested. Or, if they keep your work a long time, they are seriously considering it. We weren’t convinced of either but knew that at this rate, months became years and the work waited patiently in my computer. My three writer friends followed more or less the same routine.

But after Kim Liao’s article “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year” circulated on the Internet in June of 2016, we rethought our position. In addition to increasing our submissions, I said, “Let’s make it a competition. Who can get the most rejections fastest?”

That same summer, it was on my calendar to take a workshop with Lisa Romeo at The Writers’ Circle called Submission Strategy. Lisa’s spreadsheet was a revelation to me. I began to keep better records of what I sent, where I sent it, the date, the outcome—rejections, yes, but as Lisa also said, record any feedback you get.

The four of us had a backlog of unpublished work. We’d met in a workshop where one of us was finishing a novel set in New York City and Italy; another was working on a crime novel; the third member’s novel was about an American family and how it changed over two generations; and I was bringing my chapters of a novella to workshop to be picked over for the problems of consistency, tone, and point of view. In addition, we all had stories, essays, short-shorts, and other bits and pieces in reserve.

We proceeded to build our attack. We met and exchanged literary journals, to improve our knowledge of what they printed and what the editors liked. I came home with an armload of Ploughshares, which I had never read despite its reputation, and I passed out copies of Chattahoochee Review, where I’d been lucky in the past. I had a lot of back issues of One Story for the taking. I picked up Gulf Coast, New Letters, and Bellingham Review.

We also exchanged lists of journals looking for submissions or running contests. One member subscribes to Literistic, a good source. I subscribe to Practicing Writing, Erika Dreifus’s daily blog, for the Monday list, and her monthly newsletter The Practicing Writer.  We also consulted Publishing . . . and other Forms of Insanity. And of course, Poets & Writers is available to all of us, magazine or online, a great guide and vetted by P&W—no rip-offs there.

We started our first round of submissions, and soon our emails were reading like this:

I got two rejections in a week. I’m surging ahead!

Do you know how many editors have “loved” this story but rejected it anyway?

Five agents have decided not to represent my novel.

I’m getting rejections from journals I don’t even remember submitting to!

Your submission was read with interest.” (But WAS it?)

We sometimes got the same standard rejection letter from different journals. And we discovered favorite tropes:

“Although your story was not selected, it does not mean it was without merit.”

And our current favorite:

          

“We were blown away by the quality of this year’s contest submissions . . . “

But we learned a lot. First, to take any word of encouragement as an invitation: “We liked your long story but there was no room for it in this issue.” Or, better, “Try us again.” A personal note from an editor in an email that showed she’d read and thought about our work, or a scribbled note in pencil on a standard postal rejection was to us fit for framing.

We got better at matching our work to certain journals. We now send out work in batches, not one solitary story bearing our only hopes for publication. Our common effort has lessened the pain of rejection—and has given us many laughs. We’re ready to start a new wave of stories flying in all directions, electronically and by snail mail.

In her article, Kim Liao writes that early on, a friend once told her, “Shoot for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances too.”

We in The Rejection Club know it’s going to work.

In fact, it has already worked! A few days ago, I received news that I had won the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for The Novella, sponsored by Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society and selected by the author Stewart O'Nan. I know my writing friends will soon follow with their acceptances.  And that bottle of wine is waiting.

You can connect with Martha at her website  or her blog. 

Images: Martha M-courtesy of author; Rejected - Flickr/CreativeCommons-JudithE.Bell; Accepted-Flickr/CreativeCommons-MarkMorganTrinidad.

Guest Blogger Nicole Rollender on Necro-poetry and Memory

Since joining a Facebook page where local writers gather, I’ve discovered many more Garden State writers, including Nicole Rollender. A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, she is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won poetry prizes from Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal, Princemere Journal and Ruminate Magazine, and her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, and West Branch. Nicole is associate editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal, and holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University.

Please welcome Nicole Rollender.

Have you heard of micro-chimerism, where a mother holds her children’s cells in her body – in her brain, hand, foot, even floating around, for her whole life? It’s an amazing concept, that our bodies are part of other bodies. That’s how I look at poetry – my words becoming part of other people’s memories, part of their bodies. In this way, I know why poetry is important and essential.

From a young age, poetry stirred something inside me – I felt excited, alive, tingling and connected while reading and writing poetry. I was obsessed with its technicalities: enjambment (line breaks), slant and internal rhyme, caesuras (internal line pauses). I devoured every poetry book I could find, looking at how poems were made, how I could poach that technique, that angle, and make it my own. How I could make my own poems sing and become a plank a reader can walk across (echoing James K. Baxter who says the poem is “a plank laid over the lion’s den”). I wanted to make poems to help other people feel less alone. I wanted to become part of other human beings.

Matthew Zapruder calls the poem a machine. The poem’s also a room, a house, a country, a world, a space of encounter as tiny or large as the poet or you, the reader, want it to be. Poems are meant to be read and passed on, and when you read a poem it’s easy to imagine the poet is speaking to you or for you, or writing you a letter from far away. Poems can also bring us news from a vantage point in the past or future, or from another continent. And, you don’t have to know exactly what the poet meant when writing the poem – the poem’s meaning is what you need in your life at that moment.

Aren’t we all afraid to die? Poems can help us come to terms with death. Heavy stuff, right? Many poets, including Robert Lowell, say  their initial encounters with poetry  occurred when facing a human or animal death for the first time. The poem was a way to make sense of the experience. “Necro-poetry” is also about elegy, memorializing others. We can go to a poem when we want to remember or celebrate someone who has passed.

Max Ritvo was a 25-year-old poet who died of cancer a year ago. Much of his work documented his battle with Ewing’s sarcoma, which he contracted at 16. He extended his cancer narrative into a larger compelling collection of work about the body.. He lived his life with such a visceral intimacy: a bowl of blueberries was holy; he’d breathe air in a church, feeling in instant communion with those who’d worshipped there before him.

In his staggering poem, “Afternoon,” he writes, “When I was about to die / my body lit up / like when I leave my house / without my wallet. What am I missing? I ask, patting my chest pocket.” He also writes: “I’m missing everything living that won’t come with me/ into this sunny afternoon.” This poem is filled with a sadness and longing for connection with what Ritvo won’t be able to connect with, what he’s going to leave behind.

In a New Republic interview, Ritvo said this about what good poetry does to you: “When your memories, things you’ve never disclosed to anyone, start appearing in your mind as you read the poem. When you discover that a poem links up to a chain of images from your own life like a song links up to its music video.”  In this way, Ritvo wrote his own elegies.

In Jim Harrison’s short poem, “Sister,” he writes an elegy for his deceased sibling: “You were buried at nineteen/ in wood with Daddy. I’ve spent a lifetime / trying to learn the language of the dead.” Those hard-hitting lines are followed and juxtaposed by this gorgeous line: “The musical chatter of the tiny yellow finches / in the front yard comes closest.” We can hear that gaggle of loud finches; we can hear his sister’s voice. We know we don’t mourn our dead alone.

I’m fascinated again and again by memory’s power to let us mingle again and again with the dead, but also how it teaches us how quickly our lives move away from the current moment.

I live with a strong sense of mortality that often informs my work, and  I often contend with heavier topics like death, the spirit realm, God, saints and the afterlife. Of course, I experience joy in my life, and that permeates my work. I also have a strong sense that what I have (and who and my own life) can just as easily be taken away, so when celebration does enter my work it’s with a sense of caution (it casts its own shadow). My poems live as artifact: They’re my attempt to create something beautiful from the imperfect and temporal world we inhabit. 

My poem, “The Return,” (it first appeared in Word Riot) was influenced in part by the concerns in Ritvo’s  work. My uncle does a lot of family genealogy and just a few years ago told me my great-grandmother’s name – I hadn’t known it -- was Florentine Bia, a woman who fled Russia in the early 1900s. I wanted to memorialize her, but also share the same air. I wanted us both to be alive in the same poem:

The Return
for Florentine Bia

I’ve imagined my great-grandmother in love,
her hands deep in a pig’s meat she rolled

into sausages. Blood’s aldehydic stench. Large clocks
laughing all over the house. Massive dark beds. Her long dress

licking the top of her foot. She remembered the geese
her mother strangled, the sound a whine just before

the final breath, the first time they made love. I didn’t exist.
I wonder if she felt her own death, her hands limp

on the bed after, the wind pulled out of her,
if when she finally spoke, look at the starlight,

look, her voice meeting that light would carry forward
to this day, when I say aloud, Florentine, Florentine,

we are both alive in this poem, my hands deep in tomato hearts,
the man I’ve chosen to love somewhere in the garden,

his words still vibrating: What you do is wake
the dead. You don’t let them sleep.

Sadness and joy  come and go, but weaving their imagery together  does create something indelible that doesn’t fade or  lose its sharp prick – that I will never know my great-grandmother, that my gardens will bloom, fade and die each year. In this poem, I’m celebrating small miracles of joy in the quotidian. This necklace of memories is what makes me nostalgic for a time and a self and others’ lives I can never return to – each day closer to the end of this life, and closer to the next. Frankly, I’m still afraid of death: The thought of leaving my children makes me shudder. I’d need to be dragged into the next world.

I’ll leave you with Audre Lorde’s point that there are no new ideas. We’re all living the same shared experiences. However, she says, there are new ways of making these ideas felt “of examining what our ideas really mean (feel like) on Sunday morning at 7 a.m., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth; while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while tasting our new possibilities and strengths.”

There’s courage in writing and reading poetry – in building that plank  and also crossing it.

You can connect with Nicole via Twitter and Facebook.

Writer Gatherings: Planning Way Ahead and Afar, and also Right Here in Good Ole New Jersey

This week, I'm spending time wrestling a few proposal/ applications to events I hope to participate in next spring, summer, and fall. Typing "2018" so many times has me thinking about how quickly time moves, and sending these missives off (to conferences, book festivals, and the like) to far-flung locations also reminds me that much sooner, and much closer, I've got a few things percolating right here in my home state.

So, this one's for my New Jersey (and nearby) writing friends, a quick note about two upcoming events that might be of interest: staying still...and getting things in motion.

When it comes to getting things in motion, I'm talking about moving your work out into the world. Summoning up the courage and pressing SEND, to take all that fine writing and yank it out from your computer and on its way. To see what happens when you submit your writing. When you venture closer toward the great big world of getting published, whether for you that means an essay or short story in a journal or on a website you like, an article in the local paper, or your book manuscript on a shelf. Some days, it's all about faking confidence and saying what the hell. But first, you need tools, resources, tips, and tricks.

This weekend, I'll be presenting a two-hour program, "Ready, Set, Submit" with The Writers Circle in their Summit location. It's part lesson, part practice, and all brass tacks. If you're here at the blog often, you already know that I'm a no-B.S. person: I'll give it to you straight--and equip you with what you need to build and maintain a submission strategy.

This one's coming up quickly, but we still have a few slots left. Join me Sunday afternoon, October 8. Get all the details here.

Next up for Jersey writers: staying still on the page...well at least long enough to bring to your creative nonfiction work a strong sense of place, of where your story takes place, of setting and context surrounding where it all happens. 

Along with the new Cedar Ridge Writers Series, I'll be working with about 12 writers at -- where else? -- a stunning location for this event: Cedar Ridge Farms in gorgeous Somerset County. There, our senses will be stimulated as we work inside a spacious renovated farmhouse, outside among glorious fields and gardens, all the while thinking about and writing the physical world into memoir, essay, and other forms of CNF.

It's a full day to explore an aspect of craft and story that goes way beyond description, in the company of a small group of like-minded writers.

The one-day intensive/workshop takes place on November 4. Get all the details here.

Questions? Email me!

Hope to see you at one of these...or something else in the future. I love meeting my blog readers in person!

Guest Blogger Pam Lobley on How She Wrote a Parenting Book Without Really Meaning To

I met fellow New Jersey writer Pam Lobley when we were paired together on a panel at a book festival this past summer. Pam has been a humor columnist for The Bergen Record, one of the state’s largest newspapers, and for three years she wrote the “Now That’s Funny” column for (now defunct) New Jersey Newsroom. She has also written for the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Today.com, Huffington Post, BlogHer, Sammichespsychmeds.com, Carolina Parent and others.

Please welcome Pam Lobley

It was a rainy day in March. I was sifting through a stack of signup sheets for summer activities for my kids. My two boys were eight and ten at the time, and I usually planned plenty of summer activities to keep them busy. But we were already so frantic and over-scheduled that I couldn’t imagine signing them up for anything. 

I asked my friend Jane what her kids were going to do. Jane, obviously feeling just as overwhelmed, snapped, “Nothing! We’re having a summer from the 1950s.”

Wow! That sounded like just what we needed, too. An old-fashioned summer with no plans at all. We did it, I wrote a book about it (of course), and then I began to shop the book around.

To me the most interesting aspect of my memoir was the juxtaposition between the  “ideal” 1950s image of a relaxed summer for both kids and parents, and our current frantic, stressed-out family lifestyle of summer days packed with tightly organized classes and programs, and me in the car all day ferrying kids to and fro. I read quite a bit about 1950s family life and laced the book with insights from my research. I even had some very funny quotes from 1950’s magazine ads:

 In this friendly, freedom-loving land of ours … Beer Belongs – Enjoy It!

                                                    1955 United State Brewers Foundation

Learning about 1950s family life–the bad and the good–gave me a huge dose of perspective on my own outlook, and in the book, I wrote about how it changed me, and the ways it seemed my kids had also benefited. My working title was “A Summer from the 1950s.”

I got an agent who loved the idea but after a rewrite, the feedback from publishers was that the title sounded like the story of my grandmother’s summer, which appealed to no one. We needed a new title, and I knew it had to resonate with stressed-out modern moms. After weeks of thinking it through, Why Can't We Just Play? What I Did When I Realized My Kids Were Way Too Busy was born.

The book sold to a publisher whose focus is creating books that help families be happy. This thrilled me because that’s exactly what I felt I was doing – writing a memoir that would help other moms be happier by adopting a less frenetic family summer.

But now the agent and the publisher began to see my story as a parenting book. Maybe this was obvious to everyone else,  but came as a surprise to me. I thought parenting books were books by people who were bona fide parenting experts. I was not a therapist or teacher or doctor - just a mom who had a certain type of experience, and wanted to pass it on.

What they understood is that just because a book is on the parenting shelf at the bookstore, it doesn’t have to be advice from an expert; it can also be adventures in parenting: stories, personal insights, lessons learned. Why Can’t We Just Play? fits that description exactly. In addition, it portrays a strong viewpoint,  namely that kids simply need more time to play without instruction, guidance, organization, or adult expectations. Free play is vital for good childhood development, and it is getting increasingly squeezed out of kids’ lives. That viewpoint gave us a strong marketing angle.  

Treating my book as a parenting book rather than a memoir also made it much easier to market after it was published. When I do a podcast or write a column, I can talk about a variety of childhood issues: overscheduling, down time, recess, screen time, signs of stress in kids, or the ways that free play teaches kids independence. I have many different angles to discuss – all of which can lead back to the book but stand on their own as interesting topics apart from my personal experience. An author constantly needs to find new ways to talk about their book as they try to sell it, so this is very beneficial.

As I shifted my vision of my book from memoir to parenting, I learned a bunch of things, including these:

- There must be a  “take-away”. Non-fiction books need a concise and readily accessible message. During rewrites, I had to hone in on what the reader would take away from my book.

- The title needs to be crystal clear in expressing the book’s message; being overly clever wouldn’t work. My original title, “A Summer from the 1950s” did nothing to give a potential reader the idea of my book.

- Trust the agent and  publisher. They understand  which aspects  will appeal the most to readers. All my favorite things -- the funny quotes, the historical insights, my sense of humor – they knew that these were the least interesting things to readers. When I talk to readers myself now, I see that they mostly relate to my feeling of overwhelm, and are interested in my struggle to slow down and give my kids more time to play. All of which I am very happy about; it’s just not how I originally viewed my memoir. I mean … my parenting book.

Because of my experience, I have gained a keen new appreciation for non-fiction books. Which is a good thing because my kids are older now, and I have a lot more material. Naturally, I’m working on my next parenting book. Hopefully I’ll get the title right the first time.

Learn more by visiting Pam’s website, or connecting on Twitter or Facebook.