Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Labor Day Weekend Edition

Like when you just don't know what to eat and open up the fridge door and stare, or maybe decide it's time to clear out the fridge and start pulling out this and that --here are plenty of picks for your weekend enjoyment. If the three-day weekend is more of a lounge than I think it will be, I'll get more up as it meanders along. Or maybe not. Meanwhile, read, think, wonder, discuss. Report back if you like.

The Salon des Refuses is a compilation and criticism special edition by two Canadian lit journals: only the previously-rejected story need apply. It's in response to 2007 Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, which some thought passed over too many worthy stories (and authors). OK, I get it. And I applaud anyone brave enough to launch any new print vehicle in 2008. Still: doesn't every story in a literary journal or anthology – unless you are Alice Munro – end up being rejected at least a time or two before it's published? And isn't it the job – like it or not-- of every anthology editor to whittle down the possible contenders? Guess the folks behind the Salon just didn't like what (and who) Jane Urquhart chose. And decided to do something about it.

With thoughts of school everywhere, I'm wishing my friend Harriet Brown, who edited the funny and rueful Mr. Wrong, as well as the forthcoming Feed Me: Writers Dish about Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image, much good luck in her new job teaching in the magazine journalism program at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication, where I got my undergraduate degree. [Yes, I have an essay in Feed Me, but I'd send good wishes to Harriet anyway!]

I'm addicted to Publisher's Lunch/Lunch Daily, for a bunch of reasons. First, it's free, which its parent, Publisher's Marketplace, though wildly informative, is definitely not. Second, anything that reminds me, on a regular basis, that there are books deals out there for writers and book ideas of every possible kind, that publishers are still hiring despite the "print is dead" rhetoric, and that agents are busy every single day nabbing contracts for completely unknown writers – well, that's the sort of encouragement I can use. Go here to sign up.

Speaking of free, you can sign up for the BookPage twice-monthly e-newsletters here.

High-paying, quality markets for personal essays and creative narrative nonfiction are around, though not as plentiful as we'd like. The Sun is an exception. It's good looking, well-edited, long-established, a monthly, and enjoys a good literary rep. And now there's this update from the submissions guidelines posted on the magazine's site:

"We pay from $300 to $3,000 for essays and interviews, $300 to $2,000 for fiction, and $100 to $500 for poetry, the amount being determined by length and quality. We may pay less for very short works. We also give contributors a complimentary one-year subscription to The Sun. We purchase one-time rights. All other rights revert to the author upon publication."

Hmm. Respectable compensation, fair rights terms, and a literary magazine that looks like a consumer magazine: in other words, I can keep it on my coffee table and visitors who never thought they cared about literary journals, may -- and do -- page through without intimidation, and without ads, too. The monthly e-newsletter, is free.

Okay, then there's this, and I’m not sure whether to be jumping in the aisles or putting on the "too good to be true" look I use when one of my kids tries to tell me something that ordinarily should be expensive, difficult and time-consuming is actually free, easy or quick.

Field Report is a new website promising a $20,000 payment each month to the author of a personal essay, judged the best by site visitors, who are fellow writer-contributors. I'm skeptical, mostly because (except for a few Google Adsense ads - and they pay next to nothing), there's no hint where the contest funds coming from. Who knows, maybe there's a noble-minded nonfiction lover behind the site. (Sure, they exist!).

The blurb on Mediabistro notes that one West Coast journalist said the San Francisco-based site has an "odd new business model." I'm hoping the emphasis in that quote isn't on "odd." Really, I hope it flies. I do. And I'd love to hear from anyone who knows more about it.

Have a great weekend.

Ten Days Without Writing

Awful. That's how it feels to spend a week and a half without writing. Let me clarify: it feels awful to spend 10 days without writing when you fully intended to write, but for unavoidable reasons, you are away from writing. No first drafts. No revisions. No scribbling in my writing journal where I jot ideas to develop, make notes, try out really rough drafts, scribble phrases and words I like, and generally play around with the ingredients of a writing life.

I guess it's not exactly correct to say I was completely away from writing. I did work through changes to an essay with an editor (it's destined for a website and I'll post a link when it's live). Then there is the research report I've been pulling together for a photography client who is working on a coffee-table book proposal. Oh, and I've been hip-deep in blogland with another client expanding her media industry website, composing test blog posts and a blog development plan. And I needed to put together some self-marketing materials for a website I'm partnering with on a project later in the fall.

But.

Those activities are not what I think about when I think about writing. When I talk about writing, I'm talking about drafting, writing, rewriting, revising, rewriting, editing, revising, and the ongoing thinking process, that zone, when I'm more or less living in the piece. And, even before I get to all of that, I'm talking about prewriting, when my mind roils with ideas and themes and choices about points of view and tense and voice and tone….and even though my writing mind was churning during the past week and a half, since I knew I would have no time at all to actually write, mentally something seemed to clamp down, loud and hard. The draft from that shutting door, even if only for a short time, was chilling, desolate, scary.

Not all that often, but say a few times a year, my day jobs or my children or my husband or relatives and any or all of my other commitments, including my own health, will conspire to demand my attention. Often all at once. Not for small issues, but big ones, ones that simply cannot be put off. The kids schools will begin on time whether or not I get to write that new essay. Injured body parts must be rested and doctor appointments made (after being put off long enough) even if that means I miss a contest deadline. Sometimes, as a freelancer, my "sort of writing" obligations must be met, regardless of my own optimistic chapter-a-month memoir plan.

Having put most everything I could in my personal life on hold for the two years of an MFA program, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise to me that, six weeks out from graduation, so many issues have been usurping themselves, culminating in the Ten Days Without Writing.

It makes sense. It's just life. It doesn't mean anything other than a little bump in the writing road.

But I can hate it. And I do.

Q & A: Questions and Anthology Answers with Christina Fugate

As an occasional contributor to anthologies (and perhaps a future anthology editor), I always welcome the chance to talk to those who have put together a popular collection.

Christina Fugate edited The Mothering Heights Manual for Motherhood: Volume 1 , released in May and recently held the number one spot in the mothering category at Amazon. Christina is a filmmaker, columnist, blogger and (need I say this?) a mother. I picked her brain just before she pulled the computer plug for a few weeks to enjoy some California summertime with her husband and children.

LR: Any topics or themes in the essay submissions which surprised you?
Christina: The use of the word perfection, over 96 times.

LR: Anything which you expected to see, but didn't?
Christina: I was surprised more moms didn't write about working at jobs outside of the home and how one juggles (or not) family life and personal needs.

LR: How many submissions did you receive?
Christina: I received over 100 submissions; 28 essays are featured, and I also invited submissions from several poets.

LR: When you decided which essays to include, what were the main criteria?
Christina: I looked for a unique voice and point-of-view in the essay. Sometimes that was in a form of a story, list or anecdotes. Some of the decisions were not mine but those of the previous publisher I was originally working with on the book. Once I took over the project, I did not have time to re-edit the manuscript and make the Mother’s Day deadline.

LR: Tell me about the title and subtitle.

Christina: The "manual" idea came from the fact that my husband has car manuals all around our house. One day, I thought to myself, I need a manual to tell me what to do with parenting. The subtitle came from the question posed for the essay contest and my continual griping about doing laundry and cooking.

LR: You turned around the print anthology pretty quickly. And you also ran, concurrently, an online essay contest.
Christina: This was a lot of work and a natural diet. (I dropped poundage which is now back on.) I would never advise someone to host a contest, collect the entries, edit and publish a book in five months.

LR: I love the book's trailer. What's on tap for promotion in the coming weeks?
Christina: I am taking most of August off to re-group. This has been an exciting but stressful time. I had an intervention from my husband who has insisted I put my laptop away and spend time offline relaxing. But I am doing some private book events and a reading at Joseph Beth Booksellers in my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky on August 23.

LR: How can contributors to anthologies help to promote the book and themselves?
Christina: They need to toot their horn more! Send a copy of the book to their local newspapers and radio. It is so hard to get published, but an anthology can open a lot of doors.

LR: Tell us about your next project.
Christina: I am finishing up Transforming Matter, a film I have been working on for four years. It tells the story of poet Donna Hilbert and her struggle to find love and happiness after the sudden death of her husband.

A Nice Little Book. Emphasis on Little.

When is a nonfiction book more like a single long-form magazine article between harder covers?

Lee Israel's memoir, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, detailing her escapades forging letters from and between the literary and artistic elite – Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, Lillian Hellman -- according to the New York Times, runs just 18,000 words (think a longish New Yorker piece).

A Publisher's Weekly review notes, "…at 128 small pages, the book is thin to the point of anorexia…" PW's and other reviews also, however, all praise Isreal's writing. Read an excerpt (or what amounts to about five percent of the book) and see for yourself.

Conventional wisdom has it that even a shortish memoir should run more in the neighborhood of 45,000 words. Yet I've read and admired many memoirs that are slim – A Three Dog Life (Abigail Thomas) and About Alice (Calvin Trillin) come most quickly to mind. A new one, Comfort, by Ann Hood, is another unhefty volume; like the other few examples, the trade off for size is how expansive it is in emotion and sensibility. And it's not that I believe a book's size has much to do with its intrinsic value or that a long, thick tome must automatically be good.

But I do find it interesting such books seem like a good publishing move at a time when consumers are reluctant to pay a few bucks for a magazine on the newsstand and the economy in general suggests less discretionary dollars to go around. Then again, maybe it makes perfect sense – a slimmed down memoir to go along with what we are told is the reading public's thinning attention span for words on actual paper.

And hey, when it’s a book about clever treachery, more or less "victimless" crimes going (more or less) unpunished, second chances, confession, redemption, and a bit of literary CSI-inspired how-she-done-it, why wouldn't it sell?

I’m sure I'll read it at some point. Probably before my Manhattan Midtown Direct train pulls into Penn Station from suburban NJ. And that's not a bad thing.

The Anti-Frey-and-Seltzer Memoir Diet

I haven't read New York Times culture writer and business columnist David Carr's new memoir, The Night of the Gun yet (early reviews are good), and I haven't even gotten to the based-on-the-book piece he did in the Times magazine either. But what's caught my attention, and has been creating interest among those who watch developments in the creative nonfiction and memoir world is this: The longtime journalist treated his subject (himself) and the events described (his descent into and bootstrap rise out of drug addiction) as if he were writing for the eyes of his Times editors. You know the kind, who insist on fact checking and corroboration, who care if the words on the page are accurate, true and verifiable.

Carr is so unambiguous on where he stands on the unfortunate truth-bending trend in what he himself calls "junkie memoirs," he dug deep into his own past, notebook and video camera in hand, interviewing former associates, and checking records, and even hired a former journalism colleague to help search public records and interview those who knew Carr during the drug-addled years. He's not the first among journalists, or even among memoirists, who've researched themselves with rigor. But it's rare enough.

So, is this a positive sign for memoirs? Or does it portend a time when the personal memories of ethical nonfiction writers will be discounted unless they can be indisputably fact-checked and verified? Would that help or hinder the reader? Will it make much difference to the book buying public? Is this the antidote to the Frey-and-Seltzer blight? Or would any memoir written by a current NYTimes columnist automatically pass the truth-in-nonfiction test anyway?

One Lit Journal Editor and the Mathemathics of Submissions

In an interview, the editor of a really fine lit mag, Hayden's Ferry Review, Beth Staples, who's been pretty busy lately promoting the journal, says a few things which caught my attention.

First, she came to the editor job straight from an MFA program, albeit with experience working as a graduate assistant at HFR while in grad school. Still, I'm inspired. Jobs for MFA graduates, lit jobs, do exist.

I also found her explanation of the math of submissions of interest. Of the 1,300 prose submissions they receive for each issue, about 90 percent are fiction, which makes a nonfiction writer like me quite happy – instead of competing with approximately 1,170 other submissions for a spot, if I were to submit a piece of creative nonfiction, I'd only be up against about 130 others! Well, one needs every advantage and any scrap of encouragement is useful.

And finally, speaking about how much nonfiction they do publish, I was both surprised and pleased to read:

"One thing I’ll mention is that we don’t get many nonfiction submissions. For our “Works of Witness” issue (#39), that theme really lent itself to nonfiction, and we published 4 or 5 essays. In our last issue (#42) the editors didn’t choose any nonfiction because they simply didn’t feel strongly about anything we got. We’d definitely like to see more essay submissions."

Did I mention that I do most of my submissions on what I call Send Out Saturdays? One Saturday morning a month, I spend a few hours on the marketing-submission process.

I'll be busy tomorrow.

"So, How Does It Feel?"

"So, how does it feel?"

Every time in my life when I have been asked this question, I have never known what to say except perhaps, "I'm not sure yet. Check back in a few days/weeks/months."

People asked it after I got married, after my horse qualified for a major national event, after I gave birth the first time, after I had my first publication…..and just recently, after I finished an MFA program.

How does it feel?

How about disconcerting? Relieved. Sad. A little bewildering. Proud. Worried. Unmoored. And, inevitably, not much different.

The degree is an accomplishment, yes. But I still feel like a struggling writer, meaning not one who struggles to write, but who struggles daily with trying to write better, to write something of value, to write to a higher standard than yesterday. That struggle, I know, will -- and should – go on, regardless of any courses, degrees, publications or paychecks. So that part feels rather the same.

Yet, as I sit at my desk each morning, at least one thing does feel different.

I'm a deadline person. Deadlines are my friends. Give me a deadline and I am a productive person. Things get done. Ideas turn into copy and drafts become editable manuscripts. Deadlines mean I am in action. [OK, for those who know me, I admit yes, I am a pretty disciplined person anyway, deadlines or not. But a deadline helps, always.] And so, with the absence of academic deadlines, coupled with it being the middle of summer (translation: kids are home, and bored) I'm a bit adrift.

Which is not to say I don't have deadlines -- from magazine, newspaper and book editors for whom I'd doing freelance articles and essays. I do (thank God, I do). But a deadline for the "real world," for some insane reason, doesn't seem to have the power of a deadline for "school" – to others and sometimes, to me. Used to be, I'd close the office door, tell everyone – kids, husband, friends, relatives, the PTA -- "I have a grad school deadline," and that was that. Don't bother Mom/Lisa, she's got a school deadline, they'd say, and quietly go away. Now, not so easy.

I always meet all those real-world deadlines, just as I did with MFA deadlines, and I'm often early (I do want to keep working), always trying to impress an editor. But somehow those deadlines just don't feel quite the same.

So for those who want to know "how does it feel" to be done -- with an all-consuming two-year MFA program which took over much of my life -- that's the answer.

The same, and different.

But, you might want to check back in a few months or weeks or days.

Learning About Rejection from Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch died early today.

He was the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who found unusual fame last fall when his Last Lecture speech set the Internet afire. The resulting book, co-written by Jeffrey Zaslow, has been a NYT bestseller for months. I know nothing about computer science and thankfully pancreatic cancer has not touched my family or anyone close. But I'm always interested in elegantly articulated final thoughts by folks who know they are dying and continue to make a contribution by speaking about the process, and about their lives.

(Before I talk about his speech and book, I want to note that Pausch was a stellar contributor already, a star in the computer science community, cofounding the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU, inventing free software that makes it fun for kids (especially girls) to learn computer programming, and pioneering a number of other groundbreaking projects I am way too tech-challenged to even describe. So even if he never gave a last lecture, the world would still have lost a vital contributor.)
Pausch's Last Lecture was spirited, creative and informal. As a parent, a 40-something adult, and as someone who has always said I want to know when my time is winding down, I found it riveting and – well, there's no other way to say it: fun. But as a writer I also came away with something extra.

I listened to the unabridged audio version of the book a few weeks ago during the seven-plus hour drive to the final residency of my MFA program. At one point, Pausch talks about times when he did NOT accomplish a goal – a very few times, as this was a man (and formerly a child and teen) who rarely had an unrequited achievement.

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want," Pausch said.

On the drive, I was thinking about the presentation I would give during the residency which focused on changing writers' thinking about the submission process, so that it can feed a writer's creative work instead of being seen as a dreaded necessary evil.

When a writer doesn't get what he/she wants in the submission process, it's usually called rejection. And although at least one very successful writer I know refuses to use that word – instead saying she "offers" her work, and an editor either accepts or "declines" – the bottom line is that, when you submit, you want a yes and when the answer is no, that's not getting what you want.
In the portion of my presentation that dealt with rejection, I decided to use Pausch's line, to remind writers that not getting what we want -- getting a decline, a no, a rejection – could instead be thought of as getting (gaining?) experience. Who doesn't want more experience?

It's a stretch, maybe. But even before I heard Pausch's line, I had decided – in an attempt to create a healthy mental environment for myself when I began submitting work again after a lengthy hiatus -- that instead of dreading rejections, I would welcome them. Huh?

The math supports me on this. Even well-published folks say they still get rejections, and that for every published piece, several rejections usually precede the acceptance. It only takes one acceptance to be published. So the way I figure, the sooner I get the rejections out of the way, the sooner an acceptance may be headed my way. (Gotta kiss the frogs first, right?)

Now instead of seeing a rejection as a red light or a STOP sign, I try to think of it as a green light, as in: You are now free to submit this piece to another, perhaps more welcoming publication/editor. I now keep a special place for rejections – both in my office and in my mind. I don't wish them to disappear, I don't hate to look at them, and I don't wish they'd never come my way. We all need more experience. Who would reject experience?

When Randy Pausch got a terminal diagnosis – which he outlasted by several months – it certainly was not what he wanted.


But look what he did with the experience.

Guest Blogger Gina Vozenilek on slush piles, sports, journal editing, and MFAs

Note from Lisa: When I very briefly met Gina Vozenilek last year, I was struck by what sounded like her very cool job because at the time I was looking for a home for an essay about my former life as a hunter/jumper horse show competitor. Later, it was a pleasure to have Gina edit my work, and I was pleased too to discover her writing and that we had each written about some of the same mothering dilemmas.

Please welcome Gina Vozenilek.

When Lisa asked me to post on her blog while she labors in the final throes of her MFA, I was simultaneously honored and jealous. I met Lisa briefly at the NonFictioNow conference in Iowa City in the fall of 2007 and know her through her words, which I first admired as an editor at Sport Literate Magazine. Her essay entitled “A Well-Jumped Fence,” which we published this spring in our “Winners and Losers” issue, really stood out from the pile. I thought I might muse a bit about it from an editorial perspective, assuming that if you are reading Lisa’s blog, more likely than not, you’ve got submissions in slush piles all over the place, too.

But first to the jealousy bit. I can’t help marveling at a mom finishing an MFA. Kudos! A mom finishing a sentence is pretty noteworthy in my book these days. I have four kids myself and usually feel entitled to someone’s congratulations if my family all has two clean socks and three squares a day. I dream of finding the time for my own literary art in a world dominated by cartoons and crayons. Being a freelance writer and editor seems to suck up every artistic minute I can squeeze from a day. I realized with a start just today as I sat at the public pool, chauffeur to the kids’ swim lessons, that if I started an MFA program now I would not be finished by my 40th birthday. [I’d be happy for some suggestions on good creative nonfiction programs in the Chicago area, or low-residency options anywhere.]

Lisa’s essay is about the forward movement of life, simultaneously away from old passions (in her case, equestrian competition) and grounded in them. Her work appealed to me as a mother. She evoked some feelings I have had myself: how I traded in a sporty stick shift for a minivan and drove away from my PhD program in English at Iowa. “I love that my sons want to know about this part of my pre-Mom, pre-wife life,” Lisa writes of her horse memories. Similarly, I need my children to know that there was a “before” to their mother.

But as an editor, just the resonance of Lisa’s theme alone would not be enough to recommend her essay for publication. I don’t suppose writers get lucky merely by hitting on editors’ favorite ideas. It was the art of her writing that did it for me. She executed her theme and packaged those memories, without sap, in a solid wood tack box, the artifact of the life she left behind:

“ …in addition to equestrian equipment, the tack box held a former me—someone who could judge distances, calculate strides, and evaluate footing, while holding the reins to a 1,200-pound horse, galloping fast toward a four-foot fence; a mediocre though competent rider, but an excellent horseperson, someone who aspired and achieved …the tack box, kept all those years, serving no obvious or useful purpose, is really about passion, and about once-in-a-lifetime.”

Many times as an editor I read things that are well written at the sentence level but poorly realized on the larger scale, or vice versa. Editing for a publication topically interested in sports presents a further layer of complication. It’s an unusual niche; perhaps the writer is a sportsperson first and a writer second. So my eye is trained on the superb writer who has a story to tell through the vehicle of sport. I don’t care a jot myself for horses, but the tack box Lisa uses as a motif throughout her work proved to be a treasure chest of literary nonfiction.

As a postscript, I’d also like to say that Sport Literate’s fall football issue and contest is in production, the winning essay having been selected by Creative Nonfiction’s Lee Gutkind. But we are taking submissions for our spring general issue, and I welcome you to give us a read and send us your essays and poetry.

Rocks, Rough Drafts and Reminders

I'll be back to reality (all too) soon, but meanwhile, I get a few more days on Maine's coast, where today I watched my game husband and two sure-footed adventurous sons hike out over a football field sized area of shoreline rocks. While they (stupidly took their lives in their hands, I mean) explored,

I sat on a smooth and surprisingly warm flat rock for a half-hour, pulled out my always-with-me mini-notebook and what else -- wrote…because how could one not? The waves crashing a hundred yards away, family members all in good moods (even – especially the teenager), the sun, the lack of to-do lists...It was a lovely moment – feeling like a writer in the middle of a week of family togetherness (the two don't always go so easily in hand). Especially sweet when you figure in that looming in the back of my mind was the fact that in a few days, when I get back home, the post-MFA future awaits -- without any fixed plans, reassuring deadlines, contracts which mention money, checks-in-the-mail, editor demands, or interviews.

So I sat on that rock, its warmth underneath me somehow reassuring, and roughed out a few new segments to go with a larger piece of work that is still evolving. I sat on that rock and I knew that whatever lies ahead, back in New Jersey, back in my needs-to-be-decluttered/purged/stripped office (and post-MFA mind), I have at least one writing project that will keep me engaged for a few months (years?). Maybe that's enough.

Later, I nipped in to one of those awful/wonderful little beach town shops and with the help of my younger son (obviously not the moody teenager), selected a few more infinity circles for my necklace (silver rings imprinted w/inspirational words): commitment, family, remember, and...live.

'Cause amidst family and other commitments, and in between everything I want to remember to write about, one must...LIVE.

I'm actually not that good about doing this last thing. It often gets left off the to-do list. And I need the reminder.

As one of my former MFA faculty members once said, in advising me how to get through an extremely rough patch in my personal life, while navigating semester requirements: "Living first, writing second."