Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- June 2, 2017 Edition

> In case you missed it, do read Susan Shapiro's smart, incisive rebuttal, "Taking It Personally: A Feminist Defense Of The First-Person Essay", at Forward, written in response to Jia Tolentino's piece on the New Yorker's website that declared "The Personal Essay Boom is Over."

> I'm not, like so many of my writing friends and colleagues, in Iceland for the biannual NonFiction Now! Conference, so am periodically checking out the Twitter stream #nfnow17. 

> And I also wasn't at Book Expo in New York City this week, so followed some of the action via #BookExpo and #BEA17. Publisher's Weekly has extensive coverage, too. (Oh, and a NYC tabloid says anti-Trump books were in evidence. True fact!)

> Leslie Pietrzyk has some advice for recent MFA grads, re: keeping in touch with your professors. 

> This past week, I was sad to learn of the passing of Brain Doyle, a remarkable essayist whose work I've long admired. Here is Brevity's round-up/tribute of some of his most memorable passages in their pages. If you've never read his work, go find it! (Start with "Being Brians" because it's fun and unusual.)

> Likewise, we lost Frank Deford, one of the best narrative sports writers, an NPR Morning Edition commentator, and author of a memoir about his daughter's shortened life (from cystic fibrosis)--Alex: The Life of a Child, 1983--at a time when that kind of book was an anomaly. He was one of my early writing idols (I started out writing about sports--ice hockey and equestrian.)

> Recently, as I edited a memoir manuscript for a publisher client that was mostly about the mid- to late-1960s in Haight-Ashbury (as in, it contained plenty of S, D & RnR!), I did a bunch of fact-checking. You can just imagine what my Google and Facebook ad stream looked like after that. I should have been using Incognito mode!

> Finally, do you too have a super duper, always admirable writing process like Hallie Cantor?

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons--FaceMePls

Being Ethel to a BFF's Lucy Yields one Personal Essay after Another

When you've had a very close friend since you were five, and you're both now over 50, and you're married to men who have been each other's best friends since kindergarten, and when you are, like me, a writer of personal nonfiction, well—that BFF finds her way into your writing. A lot.

Since I'm not always sure she (and sometimes her husband) would be eager to be on the page with their real names in everything I write, sometimes she's Lenore. Anne. Laurie. Her husband is occasionally Jeff. It isn't important that anyone know which name is accurate. Except us.

"Us" for a long time were thought of, affectionately—and sometimes exasperatedly—by our four parents, relatives, neighbors, and teachers, as "Lucy and Ethel." When we were younger, the Lucy-and-Ethel moniker was just funny, and fun.

But recently, I had occasion—involving of all things, a snooty vendor with an overdue bill—to reflect back and realized that our Lucy-and-Ethel panoply was something that went far beyond comedy; it helped make me strong and confident, even now.

That's what I wrote in an essay for Purple Clover recently in an essay titled, "The Lucy and Ethel Years." Here are two excerpts:

"I played Ethel to Laurie's Lucy for years. For every harebrained scheme she devised—and there were dozens, maybe hundreds—I countered with calm, sensible reasons why we couldn't do any such thing. It was wrong. Slightly dishonest. Sneaky. Dangerous. Maybe a little bit illegal. For five minutes, I'd try to talk her out of whatever foolish thing she was proposing.

Then, I'd jump in and together we'd hatch the plan...

....When I think about the crazy, gutsy and dumb things the two of us did, it brings up more than fond memories; the Lucy-and-Ethel years taught me to read people, to figure out what to say or ask (or hide) at crucial moments, to understand who to snow, who to avoid, and with whom I could be honest. It also taught me that having someone by your side that you trust completely, and who feels the same about you, makes life's problems and challenges utterly doable."

 You can read the rest of it here.

Image: Wikipedia

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- October 28, 2016 Edition

> The New York Times' excellent teaching blog, Lessons Plans, offers a long, resource-filled, smart piece about using the many personal essays that appear all week long in the newspaper, to teach (and learn) how to write better personal nonfiction. Hint: there's a lot more on offer than the Modern Love and Lives columns. (hat top: Creative Nonfiction)

> Tomorrow night, October 29, four nonfiction literary journals are holding a National Nonfiction Simulcast, with reading in three cities (Pittsburgh and Lancaster, PA, and Sacramento, CA). Anyone anywhere can join in online.

> Here's a list of 30 literary journals that pay writers (via AuthorsPublish).

> Some crazy legislation in California is making it difficult for bookstores to sell author-signed books.

> Another take, from Kristen Langley Mahler, on how "collecting" 100 rejections strengthens a writer's submission game.

>Did you know there's a website that compiles information about chapbook publishers, chapbook reviews, and other chap-related goodies? (hat tip: Trish Hopkinson)

> I'm often asked for  places to find new writing prompts. Try The Writing Reader.

> Finally, if you buy books and don't read them (yet), there's a word for you. (Please don't tell it to my husband.)

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-BrittKnee

Happy Best American Essay Brithday

When my birthday arrives in about 10 days, my card may say, "Your gift was delivered on  September 13."

Here's why (and I beg of you, imagine this in deep narrator voice-over like at the Oscars): This is Lisa's second nomination, and first…

Let me not bury the lede any further: I received word that an essay of mine, published in 2015, was selected for the Notable Essays list included in Best American Essays 2016. How simple and calm that sentence sounds. So unlike how I sounded when I got the news.

No, that was more like this (imagine this in hysterical barn owl voice at 140 decibels): What?! NO WAY. Wow. Whoa. OMG! Wait, REALLY?

BAE doesn't notify those on the Notables list. I learned it from a Facebook writer friend who'd scoured the Notables pages (using Look Inside) as soon as Amazon put BAE '16 up for pre-order.

As you probably know, BAE is an annual anthology that republishes about two dozen essays that exemplify fine writing craft. Tucked in the back is the Notables list, a few hundred pieces culled from thousands of nominations. When I think about all the essays published in all the print journals and all the online literary journals, and all the mainstream magazines and websites, across a full 12 months, the odds of being selected are small. The honor is huge.

Often, a media venue will let a writer know that it is nominating one's work, as happened several years ago when Under the Sun nominated an essay of mine from 2013 (no booming narrator voice that time around).

But this time, I was not aware that the good folks at Blue Lyra Review, notably nonfiction editor Adrienne Ross Scanlan, had thought highly enough of my essay, "Not Quite Meet Cute" (which appeared in their Spring 2015 issue), to place it in nomination. So the news last week was extra surprising, extra sweet. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Adrienne and BLR.

If you like this sort of stuff, the backstory on that essay includes the usual forces and vicissitudes that accompany this wacky thing called essay writing.

It's such a personal piece that after the crappy first draft in 2007, I put it away, worried my husband wouldn't like the world knowing how he behaved when we first met, or how I'd behaved before we met. Then there was the inevitable cycle: revise, rewrite, put-it-away-this-is-crap, forget-about-it-for-another-year, revise, this-is-less-crappy-but-it's-still-crap, revise, rinse, repeat.

Finally, it entered the gee-this-maybe-is-not-so-bad stage, followed by revise, submit, rejection, submit, submit, submit. Once it found a nice home at BLR, the only next step I considered was that I might include it in a future essay collection of my own (yes, I'm delusional that way), but essentially, I figured that was the end of that story.

The BAE listing comes with not a dime of monetary compensation, and of course, the Notable pieces themselves are not printed in the book. That booming narrator voice isn't concluding with….and her first win. A Notable is more than a nomination, less than a win, but it's something rather nice, and I'm excited. It means the judging committee and editors think it has merit.

And I’m thinking that, in the everyday trenches of revise, rewrite, put-it-away-this-is-crap, forget-about-it-for-another-year, revise, this-is-less-crappy-but-it's-still-crap, revise, rinse, repeat, gee-this-maybe-is-not-bad, submit, rejection, submit, submit, submit – that's going to help.

Though I guess this means my husband figures he's off the hook for a birthday gift.

When a Targeted Submission Fails: Rinse, Revise, Repeat

Not everything we write lands where we hope. I occasionally write essays for themed calls for submissions, especially for anthologies, and have had some success (10 thus far). But when the resulting essay is declined, there are decisions to make. Like every writer, sometimes I am tempted to forget about it. But not often. Because when I work hard on something, I like to salvage those efforts.

I try to remember what I advise my students: that the gift inside rejection (for something I wrote and submitted exclusively), is that I now have new material. Even if it requires a little (or maybe more than a little) revision, I have something to submit elsewhere.

Last July, I submitted an essay to a planned anthology to mark the 10^th anniversary of the mega-memoir, Eat, Pray Love in 2016. I learned in November that mine—along with some 1950 other submissions—was not accepted for what eventually became the book Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It.

I let many months go by, mostly because I was busy with teaching and other projects, but eventually realized that if I were going to place that essay, it had to be in 2016.

Fortunately, the original call had a word limit that coincided with what many mainstream online destinations look for in personal essay length. So I examined the content, and zeroed in on an angle that I hoped would help it sell: although Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EPL, was in her thirties when she rebooted her life, my own story of connection with the book was rooted in midlife, so I enhanced that aspect of the essay. When I sent it on its way, I aimed at venues with readerships in that age range and that seemed likely to include EPL fans. I emphasized in my pitch that the globally successful book was celebrating its 10^th anniversary.

That piece, eventually titled, "Happy 10^th Birthday Eat, Pray, Love: A Big Shout-Out to the Book that Inspired My Three Big Midlife Changes," was published in late August on Purple Clover, a popular site geared to midlife women. The site's tagline is: still crazy after all these years. It seems like a good fit for the piece, the paycheck is welcome, and I love knowing that my original efforts paid off, though in a different manner.

Later this fall, a similar story will play out when a much longer, more literary nonfiction narrative I originally wrote for Creative Nonfiction Magazine's 2015 call for works about the weather will be published by Harpur Palate, another journal where I'm happy to see my work appear. Lately, I've been seeing a number of well-written nonfiction pieces about weather popping up in many quality venues, and I've been secretly wondering if those traveled the same road, too.

Do you have pieces that you intended for one place that wound up in another? I'd love to hear your experiences.

Image - Fingers: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Katerha

The Short Answer when Writing a Long Essay

Occasionally, when I'm working on what is revealing itself to be a long and involved piece of nonfiction narrative on a complicated topic, I worry I may never finish it. I get lost in revisions and rewrites, buffeted by new thinking or memories, and wonder if all the tangents and digressions and bits of backstory really matter. Sometimes the meandering route to a long piece includes questioning why I am even writing it in the first place.

What helps at a time like that (besides dark chocolate, wine, and whining), is to move away from the developing piece, and to purposely write a much shorter version of the story, to pare away and get at the center, the heart of the piece. To figure out what's driving it in the first place.

Usually, I'll write a micro essay, sometimes in a very different form (second person, a list essay), or a poem. And sometimes I like what I've done in the abbreviated form enough that I work on it a little bit more, shine it up, and send it out.

That's what happened last fall with a 690 word essay, "Gray," which eventually garnered an honorable mention in the Our Past Loves 2015 contest. It's a small capsule, culled from the still-accumulating pages (and pages and pages) of what will someday be a long look at my teenage relationship with a boy of another race.

Here's a short excerpt from "Gray":

…I want to say Brant's color did not matter, but it did. I was drawn to different, trained on years of family travel where my father emphasized befriending people of different cultures, seizing local experiences, seeing not exactly past color, class, and religion, but rather seeing and not pretending not to see. Coming of age in hotels and exotic locales, my early experience of attraction was not just to to the opposite sex, but to opposites. Brown boys. Jewish. Poor. Black boys.

            Home, though, I was expected to date white, Catholic, Italian, middle- or upper-class boys…

If you'd like to read the rest, hop over to the Our Past Loves site, and scroll down.

Meanwhile, I'm curious, does anyone else ever take detours like this? Write the mini-version?

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - grepsy

Unfinished: When it comes to personal stories, aren't they all?

A couple of years ago, I nodded in agreement with a slightly-older-than-me writer friend who declared that at this age we've earned the right to no longer care what anyone thinks of us based on the personal stories we tell or what we choose to write about in our essays and memoir.

What's the point of holding back? she said.

None, I agreed.

But really, I was still holding back plenty, an automatic behavior learned from Mom, Catholic school, judge-y friends and relatives, society's ideals of what it means to be a good wife, mother, person. While I'd written frankly about postpartum depression, marital rockiness, and all the ways I've failed to eat properly or be a supportive daughter to ailing parents, there was still a lot I was keeping from the page.

Then I had a rare slow week this past summer, with no pressing deadlines, no clients with unmet needs, no students to tend. That's when a submission call for an anthology caught my attention, and I challenged myself: to write exactly what I wanted to, without holding back, without worrying who might think what.

The anthology (now published) is titled Unfinished Chapters. The original call for essays listed many possible topics, including an unfinished relationship from the past. And boy, did I have one of those, dating from my late teens/early 20s that was not only unfinished, but unwise—and unlike me.

Could I tell it without explaining or trying to excuse my youthful, selfish choices, and without trying to make the other party seem more awful or less culpable? He shouldn't have, I shouldn't have: one of those relationships that taught me valuable but difficult lessons, amid a few sweet memories. Unfinished relationship? Yes, death will do that.

Almost reflexively, I began to write in the second person, which provided just the right amount of distance and intimacy, cover and bullhorn.

After writing and submitting that essay, and before I knew its fate, something clicked for me, and I wrote three other essay drafts that same week, also about situations I might not ordinarily have gotten around to. Two are under consideration at various venues, one needs more work. Meanwhile, I have my writer friend (who prefers to remain unnamed), and Unfinished Chapters to thank for that nudge.

My essay, "The Horsey Set," begins this way:

"You knew. You knew I was 19. You knew you were 32 and married and the father of two children. You knew I was attracted. I wonder if you knew my attraction (which I didn't even understand at the time) was fueled so much by your position (your celebrity almost) in that rarefied air we both breathed, in that world we both pranced through – you with ease, me with longing – that dazzling playground scented with horses and money and blue ribbons, with Hamptons houses and equestrian estates and show horses that cost more than my father's house. Did you know that?

            When you flirted with me in the horse show office, when you accidentally brushed against me in the stabling tent, when you waved at me from the rail, when you winked at me from under your hat brim on the sidelines of the polo field, did you know that I thought it was about me? Did you know every time I saw you across a field, across a barn aisle, across the table at a fundraiser, that I wondered if you were there because I was there and not because you were always there? That I didn't understand it was about you and what you could do, get away with, possess, mark?..."

Unfinished Chapters, edited by Christina Hamlett, is available now, in print (you remember print, right?), and now also via Kindle.

UPDATE: In January 2016, this essay was also published online at The Manifest Station.

I'd be happy to send one copy to a blog reader, chosen at random from comments—just leave one below by midnight on Sunday, November 15. (You must have a US postal address, and a way for me to track back to your email to let you know if you've been selected)

Image of horses: Flickr/Creative Commons - Five Furlongs

Why Am I (still, again) Writing About Postpartum Depression? Because 21 Years Later, It Lingers

Twenty-one years ago at this time, my first child was 10 months old, and I remember thinking, it's got to end soon…but it didn't: "It" being postpartum depression. 

I've written before about how PPD disrupted my early mothering, but today I have an essay at Brain, Child which addresses an aspect of PPD I've become significantly more interested in as my two sons have grown—the effects of PPD on a mother as time passes.

For me, and I suspect for many others, PPD didn't just disappear and leave no scars behind. 

Here's an excerpt:

"Because here’s the truth about what comes after severe PPD goes away: the deepest, darkest clouds may wash away in a few months, or a year, or in my case, about 22 months. Your therapist may wean you off the anti-depressants which saved your sanity (and probably your marriage). You may have more good mornings, and eventually only the kind of mornings when you wake up and you are no longer already crying. You may not any longer be overcome, hourly, with feelings of guilt, shame, hopelessness, and fear. All this may happen, and you may begin to enjoy your child (or children), sink into your role as their mother, relish your little family—but. That will never feel like your right or your natural state, and you may, at any given stressful mothering moment, think you certainly are going to drift away, back down that hole. The truth about having survived severe PPD is that it is incipient. It lingers. There is a legacy. Its shadow, the fact of its presence in your history, never goes away.

And you are a different person for it. You are a different mother."

To read the full essay, please hop over to the Brain, Child blog. 

If you're a frequent visitor here, you know that I don't do much advocacy in the pieces I publish, but this one is important -- to me and maybe to a lot of other women. I believe it will resonate for many mothers who don’t feel comfortable talking about PPD's after-effects. I'd love to start a conversation about that, and I hope you'll pass the essay link along to anyone you know who may be affected by PPD. Wouldn't it be great if it also sparked some discussion among those who study maternal mental health?

As always, thanks for your support. 

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - miyukiutada

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- October 2, 2015 Edition

> The New York Times reported last week that print book sales are up, e-book sales are down, as readers "return" to the physical book. Huh.

> A photographer got bored, and went in search of the best writers in his state to shoot (on film). Luckily, he lives in Maine, otherwise known as Writertown, USA.

> Here's a fascinating interview (at Jane Friedman's excellent blog) with Richard Nash, publisher of Soft Skull Press, that ranges from traditional publishing to unusual ways authors and readers can connect, to...well, just about everything. (It's originally from 2014, but appeared then in the subscription-only web magazine Scratch; and it's all still--maybe more--relevant today.)

> If you like this kind of link round-up, check out Literary Links at the Masters Reviews blog.

> By now, it may be that every living personal essay writer (and reader and editor) saw, and possibly shuddered about this piece in Salon: "The First-Person Industrial Complex" which explores the price of revealing (sometimes squirm-worthy) private lives in public.

> There's a new interview at Literary Mama with my friend Candy Schulman, on the craft of essay writing. Candy's guest post here (from 2010!), explaining how the mind of a personal essay writer works, is still heavily trafficked.

> This week, Your Blog Connection featured yours truly, talking about how I try to make this blog helpful to other writers. 

> And if you want to add more online resources to your list, try this list of 120 "most helpful websites" for writers.

> Finally, at the Princeton Alumni Review, my boss at Montclair State University (where I sometimes teach a creative nonfiction course), offers a thoughtful and funny take on words that are frequently mistaken for one another, in "Diction Slips."

Have a great weekend!

Reminder - If you live in the New York City metro area, consider this Sunday's (10/4) first Manhattan show for This Is My Brave: 12 writers, poets, and singer-songwriters on the subject of living with mental illness. I've got a ticket giveaway going on at my post from earlier in the week with the founder. Click here (or scroll down one post) for details. Closes at 5:00 EASTERN time tonight, 10/2.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - Lenore-M

The Essays We Must Write, Must Let Languish, Must Rewrite

By now, I haven't ridden horses on a regular basis for more than 20 years. But the 20 years before were spent riding every day, competing, and writing about horses. The people in that equestrian life were so important to me, then. Which is why, when one of my "horse friends" disappeared, the departure was deeply unsettling, haunting me for many years, for decades.

I first tried writing about that fracture nearly 10 years ago, then put away the crappy draft for a long time. At various times, I'd rework that draft, bury it, forget about it, start fresh, decide to skip it, pull it out, start all over, drop it again. All that time, there was a certain urgency missing. 

But something about the story clicked for me last fall so I revised and sent it out. One editor's personal rejection note helped me understand a flaw in the piece, so I took another whack at it. Then I asked a trusted writer friend to read it. Her single piece of very intelligent advice (about structure) nudged me toward the final revision.

This week, the lovely site, Full Grown People, published my essay. Here's a little excerpt from "Must Love Horses, Must Love Dogs":

"When I moved back and settled in an apartment near her house, I returned to our old stable and trainer, but Nancy never visited me there, though I spent chunks of days at the barn where she’d moved her horses.

One chilled spring night she and I met a plane at the nearest major airport, where a flight attendant passed us a sealed medical bucket, a tube of high-priced semen from a champion dressage horse inside. We drove an hour back to Nancy’s stable, freezing because we blasted the air conditioning to keep the sperm active, and when we arrived, I held her mare’s tail aside as Nancy inserted the baster-like syringe. Eleven months later, we slept on horse blankets tossed over hay bales, taking turns to check on that mare every twenty minutes, and I was the one who first spotted the steaming foal in the straw.

Perhaps experiences like this seduced me into thinking we might stay bound, for a long time, forever..."

You can read the full story here.  (And if you're so inclined, it would be wonderful if you could leave a comment and/or click on like over at the FGP page! Thanks.)

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons, AnemoneProjectors

The Odd Timing of an Essay about Good Timing

Earlier this week, I talked here about why I hadn't written a Mother's Day essay this year. What I didn't say is that I had written something about my mother late last year, which was published, coincidentally, just before Mother's Day, in a new collection. I didn't think of it as a Mother's Day essay, and I still don't.

The timing, however, is interesting, as the piece is titled "All in Good Timing," and pivots on something my mother taught me that's applicable to so many areas of life—the kitchen, workplace, family life, even the bedroom: Timing is everything (though she never said it quite that way).

She taught me that strategically timing requests, demands, suggestions, and advice, will skyrocket your chances of success. In the essay, Mom's own impeccable timing is on display, as well as her timing advice for me.

 Here's an excerpt from the middle of the piece, which appears in Only Trollops Shave Above the Knee: The Crazy, Brilliant, and Unforgettable Lessons We've Learned From Our Mothers.

"…What she had to teach me about timing had more to do with timing what we can control.

Besotted with horses practically before I could talk, my pleas for a pony, from age 10 to 13, only made my father smirk (Are you crazy? Where would we put a pony? Do you think I'm made of money?). But Mom was on my side (and knew we could afford it). She told me, with a wink, to drop it, for a while.  

Then I signed up for a summer acting camp that my father had found and supposedly vetted, one that cost a bundle and was such a bust, I left, along with dozens of kids, on the first day. The parents would all wind up in small claims court in September; but I arrived home in early July downtrodden, a vacant summer sprawling ahead.

That first night home, while eating out, I asked for a dog. Both said no, but when my father went to the men's room, Mom leaned in.

"Now," she said. "Ask for a horse now. The timing is just right."

One horse turned into five, into 10 years on the horse show circuit, into blue ribbons, into my parents both beaming from the bleachers. 

When I was 24 and my on-again, off-again boyfriend…"

I'll leave it there. Suffice to say, Mom's advice worked that time too (he's now a husband of 27 years).

The Mother's Day Essay I Didn't Write

Unlike many writers, I did not write an essay timed for Mother's Day, though I read many. Some were achingly beautiful, others funny, or sad, or interesting in novel ways. I'm glad to have read them, but surprisingly not upset that I didn't have one among them. 

I thought I understood the reason for this; that I was busy doing other things, things I was happy to be doing. (Isn't this just the flip side to my belief that If you are going to write, you are going to NOT do something else?)

Lately, my calendar awareness has shifted to teaching markers. When is the class proposal due? When must the syllabus be turned in? When is the first day of class? Spring break? End of the semester? Which is fine. The work energizes me at the same time it leaves me scrambling for the mental energy for personal writing projects keyed to the calendar. It was understandable that I hardly noticed the closing window to write and submit a Mother's Day essay. I simply needed to get more accustomed to balancing teaching (and editing and coaching) with writing. 

Yet many writers with much heavier teaching loads than mine still managed to write that Mother's Day essay, and come to think of it, I did write other essays that were time-sensitive in the not-so-distant past, as well as many other pieces too. So the teaching calendar can't be to blame.

Finally, on Mother's Day, as I was posting a photo on Facebook, of my mother and I on my wedding day, I discovered the real reason I didn't write a Mother's Day essay.

Mother's Day, I noticed, was only a week before what would be the third anniversary of my mother's death. I had skipped writing a Mother's Day essay for…three years.

What makes us write? What makes us not write? The answers are complex and complicated, even, or maybe especially, when we think they are simple.

Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - Dave Bleasdale

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- November 7, 2014 Edition

If you're new here, this is the deal: on (many) Fridays, I dish up links I've stored lately. The post is named after the way I like to feed my family at the end of the week--by getting all those leftovers out of the fridge. Enjoy!

> Not an outliner, planner, or particularly organized writer? Patrick Madden too is "Against Getting It All Down."

> Tired of arguing about the Oxford comma or single spaces after periods? Consider the single quotation mark. Or, please don't.

> When a former This American Life producer starts producing podcasts, better find your earbuds. I've heard Serial is seriously good.

> Nonfiction writers must not miss this Review Review roundtable with editors from Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Hippocampus, and River Teeth.

> Then, broaden your range with The Write Life's list of 19 places to send personal essays (and most pay).

> Definitions and examples of every literary device you probably recognize but cannot name.

> Have you discovered the "My First Time" guest posts at The Quivering Pen? This recent installment, by Wendy J. Fox, covering self-imposed deadlines, post-MFA life, and perseverance, rang some bells for me.

> I love this "color thesaurus" at Ingrid Sundberg's blog -- Pantone meets Roget's meets paint chips. 

> Hasn't every writer -- and maybe poets in particular -- who has ever submitted anything anywhere gotten the no-more-I-quit blues?

> But if you're not so jaded, and lucky enough to get an offer of publication, then check out these tips for working with a small independent press.

> Finally, have you seen, and tired of, all the possible turns of phrase for the new social network Ello? No? Here you go. And, are your Tweets are Reader's Digest-ible? You may get paid a whopping $25 thanks to this guy.

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr Creative Commons/National Museum of American History

Guest Blogger Patrice Gopo on a Writing Conference, a College Roommate, an Unplanned Weekend Away

My work as a writing coach and online Boot Camp wrangler brings me so much pleasure, especially when writers such as Patrice Gopo make their way to my inbox, telephone, and writing life. We spent a chunk of time this past winter working through several of Patrice's already-good essay drafts. Aside from her creative skills, and intuitive sense of where personal stories lie, I was impressed by two things I don’t always see in combination: Patrice had plenty of ideas that hinge on personal experience but immediately reveal a universal connection and she has the patience to develop them one at a time, slowly. It didn’t surprise me when, after deep revisions and a willingness to experiment with form and structure, she placed a segmented essay about race, culture, and marriage in Rock and Sling online.

            The child of Jamaican immigrants, Patrice was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Other essays have appeared in Literary Mama, Relief, Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place, and one was heard on Charlotte, North Carolina’s NPR Station WFAE.  She lives with her husband, and their two daughters in North Carolina.

Please welcome Patrice Gopo  

                       I very nearly didn't attend this year’s Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference.

            Back in March, while flipping through the then-current issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine, I saw an ad for the Memorial Day weekend conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I recognized the address--mere blocks from my college roommate’s front door.  

            You should go. It’s so close to you, I typed below the link I emailed her. Like me, she's a novice writer, and I thought she might enjoy the event. That evening my phone rang. Sherae wasted no time:  “And you should come too, Patrice.”

            Me, attend? Of course, the conference sounded great with a list of notable speakers including Dinty W. Moore and Lee Gutkind, sessions devoted to publishing, a day of craft talks, and the opportunity to participate in a writing workshop. But a writing conference was not part of my plan in 2014, for many reasons including my new baby, obligations I had at home in Charlotte, and on and on and on.

            “You should come,” she said again, with an urgency that began to thaw all my important reasons for declining.  The baby? Well she was newish, not new. The obligations? Right away, my husband volunteered to take care of everything demanding my attention. In the span of a day, I went from hoping my good friend would attend so I could vicariously glean something from her to registering myself for the conference. Within the next week or so, I had booked my ticket to Pittsburgh, Sherae had also registered, and we were discussing our 3000 words (or less) manuscripts to submit for the Sunday writing workshop.

            At this point I should mention that if you want a conference with slick pre-printed name badges, multiple tracks, branded conference bags, and free pens, you might look elsewhere. However, if you long for an intimate and relaxed setting with about 75 or so people on a university campus, strong craft talks, great opportunities to mingle with participants and speakers, and an environment that welcomes all levels of writers, then might I suggest the Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference.

            The first day tackled the world of modern publishing, while the schedule devoted the second day to discussion of CNF craft. Each day was drenched in memorable lines and ideas. Some of my favorite thoughts—paraphrased—along with my personal take-away, included these

From Lee Gutkind’s “What is Creative Nonfiction?” session: The brain is wired for story. Story goes way beyond my story but goes into other people’s stories. Strong creative nonfiction explores the intersection of both public and personal stories.

My Personal Application: I default to writing personal stories. I need to think of how those stories connect with larger public stories.

From Dinty W. Moore’s “Writing it Short” session: Why jump first into a book? Nothing ever works out the first few times. You could spend 20 years of your life attempting a couple of books that may or may not work. Or, you could spend a few years of your life attempting a few essays. Essays are an excellent way to perfect the craft.

My Personal Application: I can stop lying about the book I tell people I'm “working on" in order to appear to be a legitimate writer. I enjoy writing essays, and they provide me with a great opportunity to improve. So why not press into that, continue to take steps to become better, and see how life unfolds?

From Jane Bernstein’s “Memoir” session: You are writing to discover.

My Personal Application: It’s okay (perhaps even good) if I don’t know the direction an essay is headed when I scrawl the beginning words of a first draft.

            The final day brought my writing workshop led by Dinty W. Moore, editor of

Brevity, the online journal of brief CNF. I came to the conference proud that I had pushed my essay as far as I could without additional input. However, I knew something was missing, something I couldn’t quite identify.  Six other workshop participants and I gathered around a large table in search of insight and a nudge of direction.

            The workshop did not disappoint. Dinty divided the group’s essays into several piles. Each pile of essays struggled with similar problems such as scene, point-of-view, or—in my case—theme. I appreciated Dinty’s approach; each pile enabled us to see different examples of the same problem. Dinty pointed out that my essay, along with several others, suffered because it lacked, as he put it, “the invisible magnetic river.” My essay still had yet to sort out its point.

            In my piece, I used shopping malls as an extended metaphor. Dinty glanced at me as he flipped through my marked up essay and said, “Too much about malls. Not enough Patrice. I don't think you need so much about malls to make your metaphorical points. Unless you want to submit this to a magazine about malls.”

            Um, no.

            Thankfully, Dinty and the other workshop participants provided me with some great ideas about how to sculpt my piece including areas I need to expand and places where I need to chisel away. Cutting often makes me sad since I end up losing some of my favorite parts; convinced Dinty had overlooked some of my gorgeous, sweeping prose, I asked his opinion about a few sections—sections about malls if you must know—I had clenched my fists around.

            “Kill your darlings,” he replied with a not quite ruthless expression.

            I knew he would say that. I also knew he was right.

            One final thought I've had is how attending the conference with a friend made the event that much more enjoyable and useful. Sherae and I spent our evenings debriefing and processing the day's events. As a result of our conversations, I know I gained even greater perspective and insight into the various talks.

            Returning home after three days immersed with other writers who shared my passion for the genre, I had renewed energy for edits to my manuscript and the creation of new work. While at first I'd had a list of reasons why I shouldn’t attend, I’m thankful for voices—and good friends—who suggested otherwise.