Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- February 3, 2017 Edition

>Rejection notes are never fun. But the Baltimore Review has found a way to at least make them helpful. Witness the ending of one I recently received: "...I hope that you enjoyed writing on this theme and that you will soon be able to place the work in another publication. See long lists of other publication possibilities at... " followed by links to four places to find submission opportunities --  New Pages, Creative Writing Opportunities Listserve, Poets & Writers, and The Review Review. 

>If you're trying to establish a write-every-day habit, you might try 750words.

>Not new, but useful/entertaining: authors whose significant other doesn't read their books. 

>Since last fall, I've been editing the craft essays about nonfiction writing for Cleaver Magazine, and I'm so pleased with the latest two pieces: Vivian Wagner with how poetry writing is changing her nonfiction, and Megan Culhane Galbraith on the way playing with dolls (!) is helping unlock her memoir writing.

>Finally, two fun items: if you're also a middle-of-the-night scribbler, enjoy Sarah Broussard Weaver's post at the Brevity blog. But if days are a problem, try Colin Nissan's cry for help Daily Shouts piece at the New Yorker, "I Work From Home."

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-ScanDog

Back to the Summit: In Conversation About Making a Writing Life

In January of this year, along with two dozen others, I participated in the Storytellers Summit, a limited time, online interview series presented by Julia Roberts, coach and creativity expert at Decoding Creativity. 

While the window for listening to all the 30-minute interviews has since closed, I'm pleased to bring you a link to my interview,  about "The Writing Life," which focused primarily on creating a workable, satisfying writing life amid the conflicting demands and time constraints of an already full life. (Warning -- I say this a lot: If you are going to write, you are going to not do something else.)

Along the way, Julia and I also touched on freelance writing, craft, revision, writing what you know, and productivity. If you have an opportunity to listen, I hope that you hear at least one thing that will help you. (And if you're interested in other interviews, the full Summit is available for purchase.)

Audio interview music by BenSound. Image: Flickr/Creative Commons - Il Microfono.

Writer Seeking Silence and Quiet. Or, I'll Make My Own.

Shhh. That's better.

Silence. Quiet. 

I love both.

Sometimes I am in control. On a solo car trip, when I'm not in the mood for music or NPR, or a book on CD, I like only the sound of the wheels on pavement, a rhythmic backdrop. In my home office, on a day when everyone else is elsewhere, I like quiet, punctuated only by the sounds of the house settling, the wind whispering by, an occasional car, the newspaper landing on the porch steps, the hum of the refrigerator.

My mother played the radio all day while she performed her household chores. I like to cook and do laundry and straighten up (mind you I didn't say "clean"), in a soft relative quietude.

Sometimes when I'm not in control, the universe is kind to me and the aural and visual "noise" is dialed back to a slightly less bothersome level than usual (I consider flashing television screens and blinking, beeping phones very noisy). When the televisions I encounter in public are muted; when cell phones and tablets and laptops can't find a signal so that texts and emails stop dinging and website loading is a fantasy, I'm typically pleased.

I love creating my own sense of (relative) quiet--maybe what I mean is psychic quiet?--by staying still in a noisy environment.  I love keeping my own silence when there's noise.

When there's sound all around (even happy sounds at an enjoyable gathering), I tend to lean back from it. At a wedding (or barbecue, pool party, holiday fest) when music is playing and people are talking, I'm quietly watching it all from my seat (to be clear, I'm not feeling left out, bored, or otherwise unhappy at these times; I simply like the view).

I'm not a shy person and I like to talk. I enjoy music and the sounds of others having a good time is wonderful. But take all, or any of it away, and I'm happy.

Perhaps I'm strange. Or is it because I am a writer? And I'm "writing" in my head much of the time? I think so, but of course many people who don't write also treasure quiet, for all kinds of reasons.

For me, quiet opens a pathway to writing, or at least to hearing the early scratchings of writing in my brain. I like what happens in my head when there's quiet outside my head, or when I create a cone of quiet around myself.

I crave the quiet. I seek it out, so those scratchings can come out to play.

Whether I record those scratchings (on little notebooks I have stashed everywhere at home and carry along when I'm out), or I simply attend to the words, thoughts, phrases, ideas, and observations swirling around, that I know are the kindling for future writing, is not really what matters.

Quiet is often negatively associated with feeling lonely, or the idea of being a loner. But both, in my mind, in relation to the quiet that comes along with those states, are not negative at all; especially if you think (as I do) of feeling "lonely" as simply the state of being alone, and the idea of being a "loner" as feeling settled and not upset by having only one's own company. In those contexts then, I want to be  a little lonely, and I'm not put out by being labeled a loner.

Last year, in a post at Catching Days, Dan Chaon says, "The real secret to a writer’s day is how much time you’re willing to be alone, how much you like being lonely, how much you crave it."

He also talks of his preference for staying awake far into the night. I do that too. Because I'm alone then, in control of the quiet. My writing keeps my company.

Old Habits, New Habits, Weight Loss and Writing

I often use my yo-yo weight gains/losses  as an example of what happens when old habits are invited back into one's life after a period of successfully developing new ones. In my adult life, I've lost (and gained back) considerable amounts of weight (60,80, 90 pounds) five separate times. I know how to lose it, and I do. I shop, cook, eat, exercise, dine out, and even begin thinking in ways that support the weight loss, and for a time, the maintenance of that loss. 

Then I get complacent, over-confident -- lazy. I let old habits back in, even in the face of successful new ones.

For writers struggling to develop and maintain good writing habits and reliable writing routines, this is a cautionary tale. For a while -- maybe you're in a class or graduate school program, or part of a writers group or other well-planned structure that comes with built-in accountability, deadlines and productivity milestones -- you stick to the writing routine. Pages proliferate. You get in a groove, maybe banish old procrastination habits, start new ones, understand and keep the few that already work. You're on a roll.

Then you get complacent, overconfident--lazy.  The old habits arrive, sometimes by surprise, sometimes not.

If I had the "answer" to this problem, I'd be rich -- and thin.

I only know this: new habits require diligence.  And, one other thing.  Those new habits -- writing related or weight related -- won't stick unless they are designed to take into account one's very unique, personal, individual life circumstances:  body rhythms, tastes, likes/dislikes, obligations, job/family, physical limitations, time availability, interests, etc.

Which is why I'm sending everyone I know --whether they are battling the scale or the blank screen (or running from either) -- over to Ruth Foley's blog.  Ruth's a poet, teacher and literary magazine editor (who earned an MFA at Stonecoast, as I did).  And, Ruth's lost 100 pounds. And, Ruth has posted 100 tips/stories/reasons about how she lost the weight and is keeping it off.

It's clear from reading her posts that Ruth understands about creating new habits in a way that honors her own body, mind, life, interests, inclinations, and family/home/work situation.  She explains the habits she adopted, adapted, created, tossed, embraced, tried out.  Her posts are a great combination of common sense, uncommon insight, practicality, innovation, motivation, and compassion. 

Ruth so clearly understands that it's in making small, big, sensible, simple, dramatic, major, minor, expected and unexpected changes, that humans develop the ability to create what they want. To me, her posts (broken into 10 tips at a time) are a valuable resource not only for those interested in weight loss, but for anyone trying to create a workable approach to any daily practice -- such as writing.  (And of course, Ruth is a good writer, so...bonus!).

Start here with #1-10.  Or begin with the final ten and work your way back.  Or find them all in one place.

Ten Things Every Writing Routine Should Probably Have

Yesterday I discussed my beef with the standard advice that one must write every day (namely, that it just doesn't work for every writer!), and concluded with my opinion that a much more realistic goal is for each individual writer to establish a customized regular writing routine which works for that writer. 

I said there were 10 things I believe you should consider when establishing a regular writing routine.  Here are the 10 criteria I believe a successful writing routine ought to have:

1. Regularity & Duration.
For some, that will mean  a regularity of several days a week, if you have the ability to do so given your life situation, and a duration more than 15 minutes, but not more than a few hours, per session. For others, that may mean 10 writing sessions per month of a specific duration, but scheduled less predictably.  

2. Ease. 
A regular writing routine must not be a burden to maintain in the normal course of your life, or guess what? You won't keep to it, you won't write. When I say "ease" I don't mean make it so easy on yourself that there is no sense of urgency or commitment; I mean that if you make your writing schedule/routine so complicated and difficult, the odds of carrying it out are slim. Don't fight human nature.

3. Flexibility.
Yes, I think you ought to schedule in your writing time, just the way you do a doctor's appointment or the dog's walk. But a writing routine also needs to be realistic and flexible enough that when life's usual deviations erupt, the routine can be tweaked and  somehow maintained, not wither away.

4. Rigor.
Your routine must make a disciplined demand on you; in other words, you work (write) when the schedule says so. Sometimes that may be at an inconvenient time which may be the only time you can given life's circumstances; if you're a night person, that may mean accepting the rigor of needing to write in the morning because that's what your current life situation requires.

5. Enjoyment.
The time/place/action of the routine itself, AS WELL AS the work, should be enjoyable. You enjoy doing it, being there, carrying out the actual physical and mental acts of writing. Why bother if it's drudgery?  Remember, you write to enhance your life, right? (This brings up the need to deal with any "shoulds" in your head -- I should write more fiction, finish that essay, get back to that script...examine those shoulds and see if they match your real writing desires.)

6. Scene-Setters. 
A beverage of choice, the right background music, a non-cranky computer, lovely pens, comfortable chair, good light, the dog at your feet – whatever helps. And yet, let's not skip a writing session because your chair is lumpy, the CD is scratched, you're out of hot chocolate.

7. Solitude / Setting.
A physical place, and a specific time, when and where distractions are minimized; not always possible of course and some writers don't find this important at all. If you've learned to write in the stands of your kid's hockey game, terrific.

8. Writing goal(s) and wants.
Know why you are in that writing chair in the first place. This may take the form of something very specific – new chapters in a book manuscript, three essays on particular topics, the next draft of a short story; or it may be less exacting but still goal- and want-directed:  improving dialogue by trying some new techniques; fiddling with a new batch of poem ideas; turning a serious essay into a humorous one. In other words, think about what you want to happen, and what you are planning to have happen, when you next plan to write; this way, you won't be worrying over the prospect of an upcoming scheduled writing session and not knowing how you'll fill the time.

9. Measurement.
A way to know you were there, that you wrote and something came of it. This could be a simple tally mark on a wall calendar, or mentally or physically taking note of that session's page or word count, or just taking a few minutes to reflect on what you did (sketched out a new scene, revised a pesky passage).  I'm often surprised at writers who have no sense of tracking what they actually get done while at the keyboard/notebook. 

10. Accountability.
This is related to measurement, but introduces the element of being accountable to someone other than yourself.  The idea is to recruit someone, or develop/participate in some system, that forces you to say to the outside world, I'm a writer at work. This could be as easy as asking a writing buddy to expect a quick email from you on writing days: "Wrote today," or signing up for one of the many online systems that help users track progress on any task.

Did I forget anything?  What do you think also has to be part of a successful writing routine? 

The above is adapted from Week One of  *I Should Be Writing!* Boot Camp: Reclaim Your Writing Life).

What about the advice that writers must write every day? I say, no. And, maybe. And sometimes, yes.

There is so much cookie-cutter advice about writing, and in particular, about the importance of regular writing routines, that I often wonder how less experienced writers, newer writers, writers with day jobs, or writers have a more well-developed worry-meter than I, ever get through a day without being convinced they are doing everything all wrong.

Don't get me wrong: I am a big believer in an established writing routine, in writing regularly, in integrating writing into the rest of one's life so fully that being awake and writing more or less co-exist.

But to my mind the most detrimental piece of standard writing advice is the one that declares that in order to be a *real* writer (whatever that is), one must write every single day, often amended to include that one must write a set number of pages or words, or a set amount of time per day.

Look, there are times when I do just exactly this, namely when I have something due on a certain date and know I will need to steadily produce in measured increments so I will not go entirely crazy with anxiety over whether or not I will finish on time. 

But in general, I don't hold myself to an arbitrary write-every-single-day-or-else standard.  And neither do dozens of other writers I know, even those who have published many books, churn out essays by the boatload, poems by the hundreds.  Like them, depending on a number of factors – deadlines, research needs, other pressing projects or jobs (paid and not), family obligations, health -- there are periods when I do write every day and then there are times when I do not. There are even times when  – horrors! -- I don't write a blessed thing for a week. Or two. Or more. During that time, do I forget how to write?  Get kicked out of the Writing Club? Drop every writing idea I ever had?  Become someone who is not a *real* writer?

Of course not.

Typically during that time, I am still a real writer. How do I know? I know because I see myself doing other things that support and nurture me as a writer, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without even meaning to.  I read. I make lists of writing ideas. I connect with other writers. I read. I contemplate what has accumulated in my writer's notebook. I seek writing assignments and jobs. I read. I teach/mentor others. I study writing-related stuff – song lyrics, for example. I read. I edit manuscripts. I do research for things I plan to write, or am in the middle of writing.  Maybe I watch films, go to a museum, but mostly I read a lot.  Did I mention I read?

Maybe I'm in a not-writing phase because I'm mentally exhausted after finishing a big project. Maybe I'm physically worn out, battling a cold or aches and pain. Maybe someone in my family needs me, maybe even for days or weeks at a time, which cuts into, or possibly eliminates writing time. Life happens, and being present in life sometimes requires that we don't write (at least not in notebooks or on screen); in the words of one of my mentors, poet/memoirist/MFA professor Richard Hoffman:  "Life first, writing second."

The point is, I'm not a slave to some one-size-fits-all routine, and despite what you may have heard or assumed, neither are hundreds of other writers far more successful than I. And you don't have to be either. 

What you do need to do is find a routine that suits YOU.

If you are NOT writing at all but want to be, if you are the type to squirm out of routines, if you have an ambitious writing goal and/or firm deadline (real or self-imposed), if you have gobs of flexibility in your schedule -- do I think a commitment to daily writing is a good way to get and stay on track? YES. YES. Of course, YES.

Yet that may not be practical given your life situation. Further, I think that holding everyone to some arbitrary standard of needing to write every day only fosters anxiety and guilt. If you think you must write every day, but you cannot actually do so, then you will only end up feeling guilty the next time you actually do sit to write. Who needs that?  Who wants to begin a writing session feeling as if there is so much lost ground to make up, you are already losing?

Who needs to write every day?  Only someone who feels they can, who wants to, who needs to (for deadline or other reasons), and for whom that kind of schedule is workable, enjoyable, nurturing, and possible.  

Everyone else needs another routine instead, one that works for that writer alone. 

Does writing every day help?  Of course. Writing is a mental muscular activity and one does strengthen it by frequent use. So writing every day is good. But so is writing every other day. Or three days a week. Or for six days in a row and then four days off.  Or… It depends on your circumstances, goals, abilities, and especially time constraints and life situation.

Does that mean, hey, since you've got a tough schedule it's okay to write for 10 minutes on alternate Sunday mornings and call that a routine that fits, and assume you will properly develop as a writer?

No !

The idea is to develop an individualized writing routine that works for YOU – that supports YOUR life situation, YOUR writing goals, YOUR capabilities and skill level, YOUR desires.

Tomorrow, I will post what I consider to be the 10 most important criteria for creating a writing routine that works for you.

The above is adapted from Week One of *I Should Be Writing!* Boot Camp:Reclaim Your Writing Life.

Lies Writers Tell Themselves

I am not a morning person. I loathe getting up early, as in before 10 a.m. For a few years, when my husband and sons went camping for a week each summer, I'd work from noon to four, have lunch/dinner, relax, do chores and errands, see a friend, then work and read again from 10 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., turn in around 3:00 and awaken, refreshed, around 11.

Sadly, this is no way to conduct a responsible adult life when I’m not alone. Instead, I get up every weekday by 6:45. I eat breakfast with my younger child and deliver him to school before 8:00. Then I often go to a breakfast meeting I've willingly scheduled, I sit at my desk and open my computer. I work, I write, I edit, I talk to students or clients.

I pass for normal every morning and function mostly, I'm convinced, because of the lie I tell myself when the alarm first rings, which is this:  I'll just get my son to school, and then I'll come straight home and go right back to sleep. I tell myself this lie nearly every morning. Except for a morning or two each winter when the annual major cold arrives, the lie doesn't become the truth. I know this – that I am not going to come back home and go back to bed – but I persist in telling this to my semi-conscious self in order to make myself get up.

This came up the other day in a conversation with a writer who told me that if it weren't for the lies she told herself on a daily basis, she'd never have gotten her memoir completed (now signed by a small literary press; translation: it will be published though little money will likely ensue). Some of her sillier daily lies went something like this: The house will clean itself. My kids will fondly remember this time as the wonderful year they got to watch endless TV, eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, and their silly mother forgot to make them practice piano.

Her more serious daily lie goes like this:  Just go ahead and write whatever you want because no one is ever going to read it anyway.  She tells herself this lie, despite two traditionally published novels, dozens of essays, and a poetry chapbook.  The lie is necessary, she says, because it allows her to be daring on the page and to block out thoughts of what comes after the final draft – agent review, finding a publisher, critics, readers, marketing. Yes, she admits that it's a lie, that deep down, she's fairly confident what she writes will make its way to readers, but if she thought about her words existing anywhere out in the world while she's still at work on early drafts, she'd panic and possibly stop writing.

Driving home from our (yes morning!) coffee chat, I wondered if there were any lies I tell myself while I am writing. One that bounces around my brain when I'm in the first draft of a personal essay is: I'll never be able to finish this in a way that satisfies me. I believe I persist in this particular lie so that I won't skip over the necessary mental (and often emotional) steps involved in writing the all-important middle of the story. Even if I already have a great ending in mind, I am still convinced I'll never get there, and that's a good thing. It means I won't just skate over the middle, never going deep enough.  If I never really believe the end is in sight, I'll spend more time getting that middle right.

Another lie I tell myself is: I have no business writing this; I don't have the skills or experience to tackle it. Why this lie? Because if I feel too confident, if I don't have a simmering case of being a bit of a fraud, then I tend to write too quickly, with less care, and less respect for the particular piece. So I tell myself, You can't write that, and in some counterintuitive way, this keeps me going. Maybe I want to prove myself wrong. Or perhaps a part of me recognizes that one always has to write that very first….book review, scholarly article, prose poem, short story, lyrical essay, something… and so the fear is necessary. Then, while I am scolding myself that I shouldn't be writing the thing I'm currently writing, I can remind myself that in the past I've written many things I had no experience with the first time around either.

I suppose there are other lies I tell myself too, but I can't think of them now. It's 8:15 a.m. and I'm thinking of going back to bed.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out -- Links for Writers, July 8, 2011 Edition

► If funding develops, Chicago will become home one day to a planned American Writers Museum.

► Attention memoir writers and personal essayists who are sincerely concerned about how what we write will affect other people – Rights of Others is a blog you'll want to bookmark.

► Shelf Awareness, the excellent daily enewsletter for those in the book trade, now publishes a not-so-frequent, but equally wonderful one for readers, chock full of reviews and other news.

► I wonder why more out-of-work, experience investigative journalists have not applied for these grants, which are still available.

► Promoting a book of poetry can test even the most creative sort. That's why I love this idea: For a week or so, you can call the author, Heather Christie, and she reads you a poem. Maybe she was trying to avoid the (reality or perception?) that "no one cares about your (bookstore) reading"?

► Whether you are a closet science geek, or need new places to find ideas about science-related topics for your writing, you'll be interested in Scientific American's new venture, grouping some 60 science blogs in one place. I took a very brief, casual tour around and read some truly interesting stuff.

►There are so many places, ways and reasons to teach writing outside of academia, and I am always interested in the people who do so, like this woman.

► I love, love this comingling of poetry, prose, brevity and developing a daily writing practice. Think about joining me - dive into the river and write a "small stone" every day that remains in July.

► In 21 days, you could transform some aspect of your life, by breaking an old habit or creating a new one, according to loopchange (and science); so I'm thinking, for those struggling to establish a daily writing habit – might noting your intention on this new social site, cheering others on in their new habit goals, and reaping members' encouragement, get you going?

►Finally, just for fun, what if a women's magazine wrote headlines and articles that truly reflected real lives?

Have a great weekend.

Stuff My (Writing) Students Say, Part I

Will it always take me this long?

For someone who didn’t think she would ever teach writing, I am continually amazed how much I actually love doing so. Sometimes I am stopped in my tracks by something a writer in a class asks or observes. I thought I’d share some of these gems with my blog readers, along with my take on the issue.

One writer, commenting on the draft-revision-rewrite project she just completed, asked:
“Will it always take me this long?”

Yes. And, no.

Yes, because even though the more you write and consciously work on your craft, the better a writer you will become, the flip side is that the more demanding you will become of yourself as a writer. So completing a well-crafted piece will take you longer, but maybe not in actual time at the keyboard (although I doubt it). You will be aware of the need and value of pre-writing, and spend more time doing it. Before you actually put the first word on paper or screen, you will know that you probably need to spend time, both consciously and purposely, and unconsciously and randomly, with the idea “marinating”.

Once you begin writing, you will then also understand a lot more about the power and importance of successive drafts, revision and rewriting; so you will spend more time than before on those parts of the writing process. You will build in time for letting a piece rest between drafts or rewrites. You will come to expect more of yourself and be less easily satisfied with the words you put together. You will think about things which perhaps before you didn't consider, perhaps characterization, dialogue, structure, tone, rhythm. Which means you will agonize and sometimes second guess yourself (and perhaps “waste” some time that way).

You will know that reading is critical and you will build time in, to read the books or shorter pieces you believe are essential to your current piece of work. You will know that excellent pieces of writing don’t simply happen, are never first drafts (and might be 4th, 14th or 40th drafts), and even when you are tempted to rush something through, you will not allow yourself to do so any longer (except in extreme cases of unreasonable deadlines and/or cash flow crises; and then you will be upset with yourself afterward).

All of that takes time. Sometimes a long time.

But then again, no, it won’t always take you so long.

The more you write and consciously work on your craft, the better a writer you will become, and so you will develop a far more nuanced understanding of your own particular creative process. You’ll know, for example, if you tend to be more successful (and less stressed) when you allot more time for say, pre-writing, or at the first draft edit stage, or in deciding on structure. When necessary, you’ll know at which points in the process you can move faster (and maybe that the speed energizes your work).

You will know a lot more about what you are doing, based on feedback from instructors and/or editors, an agent, publisher or readers. You will have taken the time to educate yourself, read more widely, perhaps taken the submission plunge (and emerged unscathed, or maybe only a little bit scarred) and so now you probably know what category of writers you wish to emulate and what you need to do to get there, and you no longer waste (as much) time wandering off in unsatisfying literary directions.

As you move along as a writer, you also do learn a few shortcuts, or perhaps I should say, you figure out what works for you consistently, on the page, and see how those skills, techniques and craft methods can play out to your advantage across various pieces, genres, or forms. You will develop an understanding of what kinds of material you are personally capable of “churning out” when need by, and what you simply must slow down about, no matter what.

Finally, writing will have become so habitualized that you will be able to increase your “inventory” at a steadier pace. If you are very lucky, instead of one day agonizing over how long something took to write, you will instead lament that it was such a great experience writing it, you wish it hadn’t ended so soon.

Except of course on days when you type “the end” or hit send and think, “Thank goodness! I never, ever want to work on that piece ever again.” Until you reread it later, or an editor sends it back with “suggestions,” and you find yourself – yes – spending even more time on it.