Author Interview Interrupted: Essay Writer Sonya Huber's Q-and-A at Cleaver Magazine

Many (many) years ago, I wrote a syndicated interview column for two dozen equestrian publications. Every month I chose someone prominent in the horse show world--a champion rider, a judge, a course designer, a top trainer, a farrier expert in keeping equine athletes' feet in top shape. Because I was on the circuit too (competing, but hardly prominent!), I simply took my target out for coffee, pulled out my Sony tape recorder, asked my prepared, carefully-researched questions, then new questions that occurred to me in the course of the conversation. Back in my hotel room, I typed it up, got copies made, and mailed them out. 

Sometimes, I miss those days. I almost always chose interviewees who I was interested in talking to, someone from whom I could learn. Now, I do Q-and-A interviews here on the blog (the coffee is enjoyed separately, as most are via email) and love bringing their words--of wisdom, caution, encouragement--to my readers. Sometimes, I'm so impressed and/or inspired by what that writer had to share, I'm caught between wanting it on my blog an wanting a wider audience, so that their insights reach more writers.

That's why my most recent interview--with the memoir and essay writer Sonya Huber--first meant for my blog--is now up at the wonderful Cleaver Magazine. (Though I'm an editor there, my narrow lane is nonfiction craft essays, so like everyone else, I had to pitch this. Fortunately, Cleaver said yes.)

I wanted to interview Sonya because I so loved reading her new, curiously-titled book, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and other Essays from a Nervous System. Here's a small sample from the interview:

SH:  I needed to find larger meaning and research to understand my own experience. So I was driven by self-interest to find those universals. I’m pretty much a ranter inside my own head. Every single essay—or many of them—start in rant mode. That’s great for a paragraph, or for fuel to begin writing, but then I would come back to those paragraphs and see how dull they were to read.

On revision I knew I had to unfold those strong emotions to make them real for the reader. I have learned to do that mainly by reading essays by other writers; doing a lot of that gets the “essay mode” inside one’s head. Every time I’m at a dead end of frustration with a personal experience, the essayist voice—which is developed through that repetition and training—asks, “But what else might that mean?” and then takes the topic at hand from a 46 degree angle.

You can read the whole thing over at Cleaver. 

Recognizing When Life (not writing) Could be the Start of a Beautiful....Essay

The actual dress, made to twirl.

If I weren't already a natural born advance planner (or an annoyingly, meticulously, obsessively detail-oriented nag, as my kids and husband might say, eyes rolling), my former career in public relations would have transformed me anyway.

Like many magazines, I often run a few months ahead of schedule. So since I'll be presenting a one-day event on writing short nonfiction prose in May, and a submissions class over the summer, I'm gathering examples for both. Some are my own work because that way I can answer student/writer questions, and by sharing my writing / revision / submission / rejection / acceptance process, I believe I can be helpful to others.

This past Monday, my 250-word work of flash nonfiction, "A Dress for the Wedding," appeared on the River Teeth website, in their Beautiful Things column. I think I'm correct in saying this is a somewhat coveted spot for many creative nonfiction writers, and I'm extremely proud about this particular publication.

Here's how that happened.

In many ways I went about this as I did when working to break into Brevity Magazine with this piece. (I went on to describe that writing/submission process here.).

One of the keys was not trying to slice a small chunk out of an already written long piece. Flash, I've come to understand, needs its own place to, perhaps ironically, expand and breathe, to open up space between sentences, even as it carves away.

The other thing I learned is that, for me anyway, short pieces are more often suggested by something I experience or remember independent of the act of writing. In other words, life is probably the more generous well for these short flashes, not editing.

The dress piece began with notes scratched in the tiny notebook I keep in my purse—while in the ladies' room at the wedding. Having gotten drenched in a downpour walking back from the church to the car, I ducked in the restroom as soon as we got to the reception venue to try to salvage my hairstyle.

It was while looking in the mirror, and twisting to get a glance at the back, when a few things happened. I realized (1) The blowout is a total loss, and (2) This dress was exactly the right choice. Then (3) A cascade of images: turning around in the dressing room at the store…showing my husband the dress choices in our bedroom…all my rules about dressing as a fat middle-aged woman…then: (4) Wait – there's an essay in this…somewhere.

I jotted a few notes. When Frank and I danced an hour later, and I found myself twirling, I had the rest of the piece. So it was back to the ladies' room, a few more notes, and then—I forgot about it.

Forgot on purpose. I wanted it to marinate. Then I returned to it, wrote a draft, read a bunch of past B.T. essays, and revised.

You can read the very short piece here.

This was my second submission to River Teeth's Beautiful Things; the first, from 2015, was rejected. When I went back to read it again, I realized it didn't stand up so well on its own, and it wound up being absorbed into my memoir manuscript, where it probably originally belonged.

Figuring out how to write for very limited word counts, what to write for which short-form venues we aspire to be published in, and where to send off what we write, are arts that are always evolving. I'm still learning. And though the "rejected" column in my submission tracking spreadsheet is routinely, robustly full, occasionally I do get it right.

And then of course, I annoyingly, meticulously, obsessively record all the details. For any future reference.

Wake Up and Smell the Essay (Or, let the darned thing rest and see what happens...)

I have no scientific proof, but I'm fairly confident that every childhood home had a particular smell, a combination of odors both pleasant and not so nice. Vanilla Yankee Candle maybe. Fireplace. Cigars. Perhaps garlic simmering in olive oil. Clay. Or lemon furniture polish. A ripe litter box. That smell we don't know is there until we live elsewhere and home becomes a place we visit—and notice.

I do know that science does confirm smell is the sense most likely to elicit memories.

But I can't say I ever wanted about the olfactory signature of my childhood home. Yet, that's what I did in "Smoke and Silk, Top Note and Finish," which found a nice home in the Fall 2016 issue of The Tishman Review.

The essay examines the role and meaning of the smell that clung to my late mother's material possessions, especially the fine fabrics my mother hoarded, and what that smell suggested to me about my mother and her marriage. All that is wrapped inside a narrative about some time my sister and I spent in her Las Vegas house a month after she died.

That week with my sister was all I thought I was going to write about when I first started the essay. But I've learned our writing has a mind of its own. Work on something long enough—or, better yet, DON’T work on it for a while—and sooner or later, the real story emerges.

Fortunately, I let each of the half-dozen messy successive early drafts of "Smoke and Silk" sit untouched for many months at a time over four years. Each time I returned to it, I saw something "new" that I had overlooked before. Each time, I got closer to what I think it was trying to be about. I listened to the drafts. Perhaps, had I worked on it more, or let it rest some more, or both, I'd have discovered even more. But at some point it felt finished. (As finished as any piece of writing ever is; which is to say, it felt ready to submit, if not precisely, ever done.) 

The longer I write, the more I understand the power of doing nothing (on the page) in between drafts; the more I trust that, while seeming to do nothing, I am doing something.

You can order a print copy of The Tishman Review (Fall 2016) here; get a Kindle version here; download the pdf version here. (My piece begins on page 85.)

I've Run Out of Other Cheeks and There's No Room Left on the High Road.

In the nine years this blog has been going, I've tried to keep it upbeat, tried not to complain (too much or too often), or waste time or yours with petty grievances. Not today.

So there's a writer/editor who put out a call for submissions for an anthology about 18 months ago. (Let me say first, and as my readers, you likely already know: I have VERY thick skin, and roll with rejections every day.) I thought carefully about the stated theme of the anthology, and I submitted a pitch for an essay very much on-topic that also addressed an aspect of the subject matter that wasn't likely to be over-represented.

You never know with these things. I've been on the YES end of a cold anthology essay pitch many times, and I've also been on the NO end many times. You pitch (or submit), and you hope. You know it's a crapshoot. If it's a NO, you (or at least I) regroup and decide: whether to pitch the editor something else; to write the original essay anyway and find another market for it; or figure I tried, maybe this anthology is just not for me. And you walk away a little disappointed, but not particularly bruised. It's the way things go.

But in the meantime, you wait for a response, and you hope. If you're me, you start notes for the proposed essay anyway. Maybe you begin writing a brain dump draft. Because, why not?

This writer/editor's negative reply came back in less than two hours, and included all of the following:

1. The idea was "obviously outside the range of what I want." (It wasn't outside the topic at all, though it would address a little-discussed but important aspect. Okay, she didn't want to go outside that box, got it. But then shouldn't the original guidelines have noted that all ideas had to be on-the-nose? Or was she just lying about the reason for rejection, because she went on to inform me that...)

2. Even if she were inclined to like the idea, she would need someone other than ME to write it because I don't have enough "audience drawing power." (Guess she didn't like my social media numbers. Or I didn't fit into some idea of the kind of top drawer writers she wanted in the book. This seemed like the kind of opinion she ought to have kept to herself, especially as it wasn't a stated criteria. Yet if she wanted only top writers, who not solicit them directly instead of putting out a public call? Also, she's not exactly a household name herself, even in writing circles.)

3. That under no circumstances should I contact her again with another idea for this same anthology; I had my one shot already. (Wow. Didn't realize I was dealing with a royal personage who had granted me the honor of a one-time-only email audience.)

4. That under no circumstance should I give out her email address to other writers because she was already inundated with pitches. (Then why did she post it on a public website in the first place?)

It stung, it felt in part personal and mean-spirited, and in part wholly unprofessional. But I shook it off. That's what you do, right?

I also wrote the essay anyway, and it has since been published in a venue I like by an editor who treated me well. So I guess I "won" in some odd way. Still.

The anthology will be published soon, and via email, via Facebook private message, via Twitter private message, and via newsletter (which I'd sworn I'd opted out of), I've been asked to: sign up for an automated social media support campaign; write a book review; request a local bookshop to stock it; LIKE the book's Facebook page; support a giveaway; and otherwise support the book's release. (Gee, guess my reach is okay after all!).

I know the right response is no response, that the right thing to do is to do nothing, to say nothing. And so that's what I will do to "support" the book. Nothing. I will also not ever reveal this person's identity, or the name of the book.

I have been in this "business" for 30-plus years, and some days I get so freaking God awful tired of that damned high road.

That is all.

Images: All Flickr/CreativeCommons. High Road - Tim Roach/aka atoach; Red Flag-TerryJohnston.

When an Essay Idea Simmers...and Then Moves to the Front Burner

For about two years, I knew I wanted to write something about the day my family and I tried to take my aging mother to see a play in New York City, and things didn't go as expected. I knew it was about: Mom, thwarted plans, a bit of sadness or regret….and, well, something else I couldn't quite name.

So the idea/itch resided where so many similar ones do – in my notebook, in the farthest back of my brain, maybe a little bit inside my heart and—in limbo. So many of the essays and short memoir pieces I write start there. Some spend more time there than others. Some end there too.

Unless, or until, something happens.

In this case, it was a theme call I noticed for a planned essay anthology, about "the theater" that jolted me into action. Suddenly I realized, while my story was about all of those things I mentioned above, what it was truly about was my mother's relationship to the act of going to Broadway plays, what that meant for me, and her bittersweet quest to see just one more.

While the piece I eventually wrote wasn't accepted for that anthology, "Jersey Nights on Broadway," found a lovely home this past winter at a wonderful site that features quirky, sad, funny, unusual, and everyday true stories about New York City.

If you've ever stopped to consider how something a parent began for you at a young age has threaded through both of your lives, you might like to read it over at Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Here's a tiny excerpt: 

…When my mother aged, and even after she lost my father after 59 years of marriage, and her visits dwindled, and she found it hard to walk too far, she still asked, "What's good on Broadway?" Around 2009, on a springtime visit, she wanted to see Jersey Boys, and told me to buy good seats for us all – Frank, me, and our sons, then about 16 and 12….

 What do you do with your embryonic story ideas while they take their time growing into something?

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

A Reading and Writing Gift, Courtesy of Contests Not Won and Journals Finally Opened

You don't enter a lot of writing contests, because you're frugal (okay, cheap) and entry fees deplete your meager annual marketing budget, and because you're not competitive by nature. (Perhaps you are convinced you used up your competitive mojo inside the horse show arena years ago, and that once winning a television and later a bicycle was the limit of your blind luck.)

When you do enter a writing contest, you're usually enticed by a theme you're already interested in writing something about (or have already started), or by the allure of publication in a journal or by a press you like. You try not to even consider the prize money (see above, re: not competitive/all luck expired).

Results from the recent Rose Metal Press CNF Chapbook Contest

Still, over the years (okay, decades), you've managed to rack up a few finishes in the tops three, and in competitions that whittle the field down first, occasionally been on finalist lists (most recently, in the Rose Metal Press Creative Nonfiction Chapbook contest). You've always tried, when awaiting contest results, to think of it as no more or less meaningful than a regular submission (okay, you lie to myself).

One of the "consolation prizes" of not winning a contest with an entry fee run by a print journal is often a complimentary subscription. So, you get rejected one way or another (alas, even a finalist finish is still a rejection...), and then at some point later on, an issue of the journal lands in your mailbox with a thud.

Do you read it immediately, eager to delve into the stories and poems and essays by writers who weren't as unlucky as you? Or do you let it sit on your desk or coffee table for days or weeks or months, avoiding the words of others who were luckier (okay, more skilled) than you?

You do both. Depending on mood, available reading time, the phase of the moon, the artwork on the journal cover. 

Then, on a blistering cold winter Sunday, when you really should be working upstairs in your home office, instead you build a roaring fire in the living room (okay, your husband builds it for you; it's Valentine's Day after all and he wants you to be comfy so he can sneak off to watch sports on TV), make yourself a big mug of coffee, cuddle under a quilt, and see what there is to read on the coffee table.

There is the winter issue of The Missouri Review. You open it, scan the table of contents for nonfiction pieces, find two, and read them, at first grudgingly, then with building interest, then hungrily. They are both so good. 

First, the one that intricately and seamlessly (and incongruously, but ingeniously) combines mistakes made in bird watching and the fallibility of eye witness testimony in criminal cases. 

Then, the one about the lousy family dog that keeps eating the children's pets, which seems like it would be a lousy idea for a piece of narrative nonfiction, but paragraph by paragraph convinces you once again that any subject, in the hands of a skilled and honest and witty writer, can become an excellent essay.

You finish your coffee, put the kettle on for tea, grab some cookies, stoke the fire and add more wood. Your husband is still in the family room watching a rerun of his beloved Giants winning the 2008 Super Bowl, but you interrupt, and wave your teenage son over and read them a terrifically funny line from the essay about the horrid dog, and the three of you laugh together.

Then you take your tea back to the living room and read the one about the bad dog all over again, and notice things, so many things. Then you read the one about birding and witnessing again and notice more things. And even though these are not the exact pieces that won the contest you entered many months ago, and instead of feeling as if these other writers are luckier than you, you simply are grateful for the chance to have read them.

And then you find one of those writers on Twitter, and tell her how much you enjoyed the one about her awful dog, and soon, the two of you are tweeting back and forth, and later she says that your praise of her writing has made her week. And suddently your day is made too.

Soon, you feel as if you didn't get a consolation prize at all (okay, maybe a little.) But you eventually go back upstairs to your office and for a brief moment you wish you had a horrible, no good, very bad dog to write about, but then you smile and pull out something you've been working on. And it all starts again. 

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- February 5, 2016 Edition

I've been away from the blog for a bit due to a hectic, rather sad month, so thought I'd get back with an extra long list of links this week. Enjoy!

> Lit Hub asked a bunch of authors who also teach, to share some of the books on their MFA syllabus reading lists.

> I intend to read Paul Lisicky's new memoir The Narrow Door, which has been getting a ton of well-deserved attention, and lest I put it off too long, this beautifully written essay of his is a good reminder to keep the book near the top of the TBR pile.

> In separate Behind The Prose podcasts, essayist Sharisee Tracey discusses how she landed bylines all over the place, and Salon editor Kim Brooks talks about how she selects and edits essays for the website's Life section.

> Nieman Storyboard asked five discriminating writer-readers to weigh in on five well-loved nonfiction pieces, to answer the question, "Why's This So Good?"

> Jane Friedman offers a comprehensive guide to query letters for nonfiction books.

> So, writer-parents, what would you say if your child came home with a handout suggesting that "said" and "asked" were too boring for most dialogue writing? (The sound you hear is fingers on a chalkboard, no?)

> Used bookstores - yay or nay? Do we love shopping in them, but aren't thrilled that they produce no income for authors? Either way, they're making a "comeback," according to The Washington Post.  (I put comeback in quotes because speaking for myself and I believe, many other readers, I've always been able to find one just about anywhere.)

> HippoCamp16: A Conference for Nonfiction Writers, scheduled for August in Lancaster, PA, is offering one fully-paid scholarship.

> Four conference scholarships are up for grabs for (undergraduate or graduate) writing students, to the River Teeth Nonfiction Conference in June, in Ashland, Ohio.

> Department of brag (about my blog): Once again, I'm very pleased to be listed at The Write Life's "100 Best Websites for Writers 2016" (#80), and in the Feedspot's "Top 100 Writing Blogs for Authors" (#86). And, the NOT-brag part: take a look at some of the other great resources listed at one or both places.

> Department of brag (about someone else): My former student Vincent J. Fitzgerald was recently published in Longridge Review, and he's also joined the team of readers for Compose Journal, grappling with the creative nonfiction submissions queue. At Compose, we're just beginning to read (in all genres) for the Fall 2016 issue.

> Finally, Ploughshares has some fun predicting "The Next 11 Literary Scandals."

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons - Boston Public Library

The Sound of One Essay Writing Itself

I'm so pleased that my year ended with the publication of an essay that surprised me a bit. Since I wrote it, I've wondered: Where do essays come from?

I've pondered the question before and will again, and the answer is: from many sources. Some I will into existence (when I've accepted an unsought assignment), others emerge from the deleted sentences or passages of another piece of work. Sometimes I have an idea that asserts itself and I must pay attention; sometimes a memory trigger brings me a new idea, unbidden but clear.

I'm convinced, too, that a very few pieces wait, fully formed, lodged deep in my brain, until the right moment. I know only that there's a niggling in the back of my brain about….something…that has to do with….something. Then, a moment of recognition, a swift gravity plunge, from the brain's dusty attic, through my fingers to keyboard to computer screen.

I tell people that good work doesn't really materialize that way. That waiting for The Muse to visit, sprinkling writer fairy dust, is silly. Write, revise, rewrite—that's the ticket. That when someone says a piece "just wrote itself," they're exaggerating, lying, or forgetting the thinking, drafting, revising process.

But not always. These things occasionally do happen—rarely.

I'd thought before of writing something about my elder son's struggles as a small boy with audio issues—more than the three paragraphs I gave it in a long essay eight years ago. But it was a vague, quiet idea, always out-shouted by noisier, more insistent ones. Eventually I "forgot" about it.

Last summer, I saw that Synaethesia Magazine was planning a themed issue on Sound. I made note of it (on my office white board, where I write, and then sometimes erase, possible submission goals). Then I "forgot" about it. Except that I did look at that board every day, wondering, do I have anything to say about sound? My brain was quiet.

Until one morning, something (I can't remember what) clicked: sound…audio…my son… I sat at the keyboard and in about 20 minutes had the essay, written instinctively in second person. Where did it come from? My fingers were only a conduit, connecting nearly subconscious thought with memory, with the screen. (In itself unusual, because I typically start new essays in longhand.)

To check my theory that the piece "wrote itself" (see: exaggerating, lying, forgetting, above), yesterday I looked at my electronic files (I date and number drafts), and the paper file (I print out a lot, and keep my hand-scribbled notes). Only two drafts: the original, and one with very minor revisions.

Here's an excerpt from "Sound and Fury, Signifying"

…You begin to listen. What does a goose's honk sound like from a two-foot high perspective anyway? Why is the neighbor's fishpond pump glugging like that today, when yesterday it glugged a bit more softly, less rhythmically? What drives human beings to seek out (or just endure, when we have the choice) the frightening booms of fireworks, crashing decibels of hard rock concerts, the annoying din of crowded parties in small rooms.

            There are no answers. There is listening therapy, exercises, practice, role-playing,

de-sensitization, speech therapy, exposure therapy, more.

            There is your small child, your little boy, your son, your adolescent, your teenager, your young man, your college student, and he is coping, modifying his behavior, learning to understand his limits, his boundaries, his tolerance….

I hope you'll click over to Synaesthesia Magazine to read the whole piece (as essays go, it's on the short side), and also page through this visually beautiful journal to see what others have to say and show about sound.

With a year of writing looming ahead, I wish I knew for sure that I'd get to watch myself write another "gift from The Muse" essay, but of course I don't. And yet…

Where Essays Begin: Sudden news, old friend, odd lyrics, far away

Sometimes an essay or piece of memoir begins in my head as a scrap of something that will not quiet--a phrase, a bit of remembered conversation, a line of lyrics. Like this one, a 1960s tidbit.

My boyfriend's back and you're gonna be in trouble.

That line circled my brain a few years ago, insisting that I write…something—in response to news I heard about my first real boyfriend. How the lyric connected to our story, or to my reaction to his news, was a mystery.

Still.

There it was, an earworm, a prod, that wonderful awful feeling as I'm drifting off to sleep or when just waking up, that says, Hey, you! Get out of bed, start writing.

Only, as I began to write, I heard the lyric differently, altered.

Your boyfriend's back and you're gonna be sorry.

Over the next few months, the piece took shape, fell apart. I put it away, pulled it out again. Pushed it aside again. Let it marinate. Let myself figure out what I had to say. Fiddled with it again. Forgot it for months. Tried again. 

Draft number four.

Then a few things happened.

First, I asked a half dozen readers for input; not my usual writer friends, but students in the MFA course I was teaching last fall. As a way of sharing in the psychic pain of their first graduate workshop experience, I invited them to comment on my draft.

Draft number five.

Next, I realized it wasn't only about an old boyfriend, but about how he helped me understand things—some then, more later—about romance, love, sex, kindness, passionate hobbies, and eventually, even a little about mothering teenage sons.

Draft number six.

Then, when the piece, eventually titled, "Your Boyfriend's Back," was accepted for the Spring 2015 issue of Front Porch Journal, smart editors had some thoughtful questions and intelligent revision suggestions.

Final piece (draft number seven).

Here's a very short excerpt of the longish piece:

...I tried to think about what Joe would look like now, and compared that to the tiny, poorly focused photograph in the magazine of him on a bike, wearing a helmet. Perhaps it wasn’t my Joe. But I didn't think M____ was such a common surname. And the age was right. The Joe I remembered had not been athletic. Yes, his arms always felt strong around me, and even then, he’d ridden his bicycle for miles, but a triathlete? But then, I hadn't seen Joe in decades. So much can change...

I'd love it if you would visit the journal and read the full piece.

Now, like all writers I suppose, in my head, I am circling another scrap of …something.

Image, top: Flickr/Creative Commons - Lee Haywood