Grab-bag: Friday Literary Links

A list of things to (not) do while you're querying agents including not placing a voodoo hex on agents who reject you. To that I'd like to add that engaging the supernatural -- be it negatively or positively -- in pursuit of publication is probably something you want to avoid.

But before you query an agent you should probably know what it is an agent does -- a really nice informative essay by author Steven Harper Piziks on the things his agent has done for him that he would have never done himself. 

And while we're on the topic of agents, Jessica Faust has a great post on the Bookends blog about how writers (even those hoping to score a deal with a small academic press) need to think of agents not as contract negotiators but as career builders.  I know a lot of writers who wouldn't even think of attempting to get an agent after they've gotten a small press contract on their own, so this post was rather enlightening -- think of what an agent could do for that manuscript while it's still malleable. 

Writing a novel way too big an investment for you? Don't worry, the Hint Fiction Contest has been "reloaded."

Is hint fiction too short? Novels too long? Novellas too dead?  Wait!--they're not dead; they've just moved to Canada.

But if you're in workshop you rarely have the luxury of choosing your form; short stories are the gold standard.  So you write a short story and take it to workshop.  No one wants to go to workshop for therapy -- or at least I sure as hell don't -- but perhaps some people need it. "I have learned that sometimes the problem with a story is a personal problem, not a writerly problem." Damn. Yeah, I follow. It's a nice essay I just wish it spoke more to how she deals with it as a workshop instructor and not just how she deals with it in her own writing.

And for your gratuitous hot-men-reading-books pleasure I give you Hot Men Reading Books.  (found via)

iPad raffle! Booya!

No, I don't have one.  And no I'm not hosting the raffle -- I'll be hosting a much lower tech (ahem, paper--you know that print thing) contest/sweepstakes next week -- One Story magazine is!

A $10 raffle for the iPad and you don't have to be at their swanky gala to win. (see more at their website)

Holy poop, man. Holy poop.

Man ... it's easy to forget that your mother's your Facebook friend.  Thankfully I wrote "Holy poop!" and not "Holy shit!" like I had originally wanted to ... although the change from shit to poop was meant more for grins than for censorship.  Then again it's not like my mother's never heard me say shit before; it's just that saying shit in private and/or when something heavy contacts your toe in an unkind manner, is different from exclaiming it on the internet. 

The reason for my exclamation?  Kalamazoo Central High School is among the six high schools in the nation fighting for your votes to get President Obama to come give their commencement speech this summer.  Voting lasts until Midnight on April 29 (I think).  You can watch and read all six school's brief essays and videos online and rate each one.  Vote here!

Retire in Style

a recent conversation ...
 
city girl: ps I started a retirement fund because my office doesn't offer one
I have $20 in it
woohoo

me: woo! ... I'm beating you to retirement: I have $35 in a 401k

city girl: LOL!!!
I don't have a 401K, I have a Roth IRA which I just set up

me: I opened it when I was subbing ... and haven't put money into it since
then the market ate half of it ...

city girl: eep!

me: and now i'm back up in the $30 range
... so, combined, we have a $55 retirement

city girl: we are going to retire in style, clearly

me: We can ... I don't know, go out to eat someplace mid-range

city girl: LOL

Cat and the iPad

This is not my cat. This is a cat with very expensive taste. And to think, I entertain mine for hours just by putting a toy inside an otherwise empty brown paper bag. And leaving the cover of the piano keyboard open.

Potpourri - Life (en Random) heavy with Links and Pictures

Project Runway Season 7 Finale was last night.  Seth Aaron, Emilio and Mila faced off at New York Fashion week.  My opinion of the verdict: the right designer won.  I adored the dark coat with the puff sleeves; that, and a couple of the dresses from his collection were the only things of all three collections that I would even think about wearing.

An insanely embarrassing typo by Penguin in a cook book that made it to print before said typo was noticed. A "$3300 a letter" mistake.

When the band Pearl Jam first hit the scene I ... well, I was too young to care.  Now, I'm retro-actively appreciative.  Now their recent release "Just Breathe" is among my most played songs of the week.

Say happy earth day! to the noisiest chip bag ever. Those plant fibers are crinkly! I don't compost at home -- I'm in an apartment and even if I did buy an apartment composter I have no place to use said compost -- but I figure even if I throw out a fully biodegradable bag it has to be better than the normal chip bag.  So I'm now only buying Sun Chips; I'll buy other chips when they too switch to better bags. When you touch it, the crinkly noise is so loud it's scary! But friendly-scary. And the Sun Chips themselves taste as good as ever.

Laura Donnelly pre-releases her book of poetry Nocturne - Schumann's Letters, forthcoming in June 2010 from the lovely Finishing Line Press, and is available for pre-publication sales until April 30th. Information for online purchase or mail order is available here: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm. After April 30 I believe it will be available from Amazon.com.

Bugs have returned to the north.  I'm not thrilled.  There was a bug in my sink yesterday and today the fruit flies have returned to my fruit.  I hope Rosie is hungry because her secondary purpose in our relationship is to terrorize, kill and/or eat all insect life that enters my apartment.  Her primary purpose being to entertain the first cat.

I'm reading All-Star Superman vol 1-2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.  How can you not be sucked into a graphic novel/comic book when you open the cover and the first few pages are these big, dramatic, richly colored, romanticized images.  Big sigh.  I'm just starting my summer crash course on the graphic novel and the history of comic book and I'm already hooked! Suggestions welcome for what I should read next -- As are suggestions about places where one can read older comics when that was not a part of one's childhood -- my parents were all about buying me books, but those comic things? Not so much.

The topmost secret on Post Secret this week is heartbreaking.  So often people obscure the faces of those whose images appear on the post secrets.  I can't even imagine what it is to put yourself out there like this.

The Muppets are up for two Webbys!  But why didn't this get a "viral" webby nod?

I've dedicated myself to taking and posting more photos with my Nikon D80.  I'd like to say that the awesome photography of Margosita and Allison inspired me, but that would only be half true.  The other half is that the battery in my pocket-sized digital camera ran down. I have searched high and low for the batter charger but there's no sign of it.  I blame the cats for it's inexplicable relocation.

At the top of the blog under the header, you'll notice a new heading: BEST OF.  I'm creating a Best of the Blog listing under this tab.  It's got some stuff up there -- cats, AWP posts and "Tales of Woe: My Idiot Neighbors" -- but it's still under construction.  I'm adding stuff as I think about it.  If you have any suggestions of posts you found helpful or funny that I should put in there I'd be more than happy to take them.  

Today, a guy rode through my parking lot on a unicycle.  When I saw this in downtown Ann Arbor I wasn't that surprised, but in Kalamazoo?  Sadly, I did not get a picture.

And finally, since this is titled potpourri: how to make potpourri.  Though in this day and age I have no idea why you'd ever want to make potpourri.  I just get lavender sachets for my closet.  Mmmm, lavender.  Every time I find out of these guys in my closer (I frequently kick them since one lives on the floor under neath the hanging clothes and one in the shelf area safe from kicking) it reminds me of France, and of the smell of opening my luggage when I returned from France.  What the hell kind of 17 year-old was I?  No one else gave a damn that we were driving through miles and miles of lavender fields in bloom but my little romantic heart went pitter-pat at the sight.

Return of the Cone Kitty

I had to put my cat back in a cone. It's so sad to re-cone the cat, especially when it's her own fricking fault.

This cat (Ash) is, at best, uber-clean; at worst, she's an obsessive licker. She cleans everything and everyone -- a list of which includes my computer, the other cat, my desk, pillows and the one or two stuffed animals in my apartment. So, when she got a half-inch long cut on her belly -- probably from playing rough with the other cat -- I wasn't all that surprised to see that she had licked the area clean of fur. I was exasperated, but not really surprised.

The scratch was in the right place to make it look like she'd gotten spayed ... again.

But it's been about a month now and the bald patch is smaller in size but it's not completely grown back in. She'll lick it until her skin is visibly irritated. So on Sunday I went and purchases a second e-collar (I recycled the first thinking I'd never need it again -- ha!).

And now I have cone-kitty part deux.

This time the cone is semi-translucent instead of opaque. I thought, at the time of purchase, that this would make the cat's sense better. That she would have a better idea of what was around her. Now, seeing it on the cat, I think the translucent cone is just a mean illusion.

About once a day I grow soft-hearted and take the cone off her for a bit.  I try to watch her during that time to make sure she's not cleaning her bald patch but I'm probably just lengthening the process.

Summer Workshops with One Story

From One Story magazine:

This summer, One Story will be offering an intimate 6-day writers workshop to help answer the question our editors get asked most often by emerging writers: Should I get a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) degree? The workshop will be held July 25 - 30, 2010, at The Old American Can Factory, the curated arts space that houses our offices in Brooklyn, New York.

The week will include morning workshops, afternoon craft lectures, and evening panels with writers, editors, agents, and MFA directors. All events are designed to give students the practical advice they need to either apply for an MFA or launch their career outside of academia.

We are crafting a unique experience, both practical and creative, for writers who hope for a career in fiction writing. Students will leave with:

• A workshopped portfolio they can use as their writing sample
• Advice from MFA directors about what they look for in an applicant
• A full understanding of the range of MFA and non-MFA options
• Insight about what an MFA can offer a writer
• A breakdown of the financial implications of an MFA
• A community of writers at the same stage of their career
• Access to One Story editors and authors
• A look at the wider publishing world from literary agents, editors, and writers

Applications are being accepted between now and May 31, 2010. To learn more, click here.

Best (Funny) Lines

I'm reading old (pre-WWII) sci-fi short fiction for a project. In the story I just read, they've just been marooned on Antarctica. And what follows is the best line of the entire story.

"Come!" he said cheerfully. "Let's build an Eskimo snow house. We can live on penguins for days. And who knows what may rescue us?"

Even in context it seems out of context.

"Creatures of the Light" by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, first published in ASF, February 1930

Don't be so "serious"

Laura Miller addresses why writers shouldn't strive to be "serious," and makes other helpful noises from one reader to all those writers out there.

In another essay, I found out that the phrase "Writing is rewriting" is apparently an "old saying." While I agree with the sentiment, I can't say I've ever heard the phrase before, new, old or otherwise. Otherwise, this essay is full of good stuff to think about when editing. I know I mentioned recently that the "literary types" are horrible at teaching novel writing (they're more of if you build it, they will come which is fine when you're Kevin Costner, but when you're me? Not so much).  So I've been hunting down novel writing instruction from the genre people, which is better but not as good as what you'll find at the bottom of the article on editing.  Screenwriters.  I should have already known that screenwriters-turned-novelists are the gold standard for teaching structure in long-form storytelling.  Because they are.  And the only teacher I've ever had who was willing to tackle teaching novel writing was a screenwriter-turned-novelist.

But before the writer gets to that, she stars off the essay by listing all the things she was "before she was a writer," which makes me sad and frustrated. Lately I've been thinking about my own "before I was a writer" list of jobs and, honestly, I'd rather just get to the damn writing part. I'm coming up on some "free time" between semesters. I could spend it visiting friends and family, or I could get the damnwriting done.

I recently had an acquaintance who took a week off of work and in ten days she kicked out a 50,000 word first draft of the novel she's been toying with for months. It's ... well, it's many things, including crazy, but it's also inspiring.

I too have notes and notes and notes drafted for two different popular novel projects. Two weeks, fourteen days, 70,000 words between the end of April and the middle part of May.  I'd be crazy to do it. I'd be crazy not to do it. Better to do the damnwriting than keep adding bizarre jobs to my "before I was a writer" list.

Flash Fiction Panel Discussion

I was going to recap this discussion, but why bother when you can go here and listen to the audio yourself?

What I think I liked best about this panel was that they didn't attempt to define what flash fiction is or how it's different from a prose poem.  Basically they all said we write flash fiction, but hey, if an editor wants to publish it as a poem, we got no problem with that.  Brilliant.

New! With 20% MORE! AWP Recap!

Panel on the Future of Lit Mags: Innovate!  It's not a matter of print vs. digital (both have places and purposes to serve) it's a matter of how inventive, intriguing and innovative you can make your magazine. And, sometimes, it's about tricking your readers into reading.

Panels that invoked the term "Magical Realism": Three

(Panel 1) "Magical Realism," as a term, is passé.

(Panel 2) Someone quoted Marquez (at least they thought it was Marquez): "What you gringos call 'magical realism,' is our everyday life."  (I couldn't find an actual attribution of this but this quote from a NewYorker profile,  "The world Gabo writes about, the one they call magical realism, is actually real; it's the one we live in," Mirtha Buelvas, a social psychologist in Barranquilla, said to me.)  Either way, it did a lot to further my understanding of how magical realism functions in literature and how one should go about writing it (assuming you're okay with being passé):  To write it you have to believe in a world where it can happen.

(Panel 3) "Magical Realism" is the term we use to sneak fantasy writers into the MFA programs; the writers want to write fantasy but to get them them past the hard-nosed  realists in the department we force the students into the Spanish-language tradition which they rarely know about and often have little interest in engaging.

The third panel listed above had several charming stories including one guy who thought he was writing literary fiction -- "just fiction" he called it -- and so he wrote two books and they got shelved in fiction then he wrote the third and his agent said we're gonna sell this as a thriller.  He didn't think it was particularly thrilling, but his agent said more people would read it if it was a thriller so he said okay.  The book did really well, it got nominated for some genre award and so they reissued his first two books as thrillers.  Lesson: There doesn't have to be a difference between a literary and a genre text.

And, bless those guys' hearts, almost everyone of them said that when a student comes up to them and says I want to write [blank] genre, these guys go out and read the seminal works and other big works in that genre.  If they don't know, they teach themselves so that when a student writes about Orcs they know whether the student is writing well or indulging in Orc clichés.

How to get real-world literary experience while still a student: Go local.  Get involved.  Be reliable.  Work for free.  And overdress.

Bonus Materials:
AWP Bingo Card -- Fabulous.  I got a lot of hits but sadly, no bingo.  As always, amusing.  Fabulous (creepy) pictures from BookFox.

AWP Panels and General Thoughts

I've been trying to get my feet back under me since I returned from the conference.  It's been a slow process. 

I spent a lot of my time at bookfair talking to people who approached the Third Coast table, but I also went to seven or eight panels and a couple of readings.  Panel talks were on the teaching the literary fantastic, the future of the literary magazine, something on flash fiction, how to get real world experience while still a grad student, folklore & modern writing, and "genre" in the MFA and beyond.  One other panel that bombed (name & content withheld out of courtesy).  Oh, and I attempted to go to the panel on novelists teaching novel writing -- I'll explain that "attempt" today or tomorrow.

If anyone made it to the one that was supposedly about vampires and zombie literature (aka Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley) -- "Byronic Vampires and Melancholy Green Men: Harnessing Genre for Literary Use" -- let me know how it was.  I thought about going but considering the first line of the panel description was "Perhaps no word can be more anathema to literature than genre" made me NOT want to go -- because, fuck you, there is genre literature out there.  "Realism" does not literature make.  So when lunch with a friend ran long, I wasn't particularly heart broken to miss the panel.

One thing I noticed this year was an epidemic of panel-leaving.  People in the audience walked out of panels after fifteen, twenty, forty-five minutes.  Seriously, how rude is that?

Now, I sat down by one poor girl who left during the panel's introduction speech because, when they started speaking, she realized she stepped into the wrong room -- I understand that. And I'm not talking about people who cut out during the post-panel Q&A, which I have more sympathy for (not all of us have strong bladders and the line for the women's room is crazy long in the 15 minutes between scheduled panels).

But people who leave after ten or fifteen minutes after a panel has begun?  At that point you know you're not in the "wrong" room.  You know all panel run 60 minutes + 15 min for Q&A.  You know that if you sit in the front of the room everyone will see you walk out.  So what the fuck gives?

I don't know if this year's panel-leaving was worse than last year's or if I just noticed it more, but I found it incredibly rude. 

Presumably, if you know that you have to cut out of a panel early then you'll sit in the back by the door and grab a seat on the aisle so that people won't have to move to let you out, not halfway up and in the middle.  So I'm guessing that (a) they got bored and decided to leave, (b) it turned out that the panel wasn't discussing what they thought it would and instead of seeing if they could garner some sort of knowledge from the topic they decided to leave, (c) they walked out in protest [I'm doubtful of this considering the "controversial" topics had fewer people leave], or (d) there was an epidemic of diarrhea at the conference which I was lucky enough to avoid but gave quite a few people the runs at inopportune moments.

My take: no one's making you go to panels -- no one's making you attend the conference, period.  So when you choose to attend a panel that bombs, you suffer through the pain and offer it up to the gods of literary knowledge.  Apparently more writers need Catholic grandmothers who make them sit through insanely long Mass on a tiny, hard, wooden pew.  Comparatively a boring panel is paradise: the seats are padded and no one tells you you're going to hell.

Returned

Spent the past few days hanging out with this guy: the two story tall (blue) grizzly bear that stands outside the Denver Convention Center peering into the lobby


I'm back safely and the conference went well -- except for Saturday morning when my trick-coffee-cup-lid splattered my pant leg with coffee droplets as I walked to the convention center.

I met a lot of really cool people and I'm still excited to have had a chance to talk to all of you. More (substantial) updates will follow as the week progresses. And believe me, I have a few good ones to tell.

Ad of the Week

Stay Away!

I have to be very careful and stay away from this site. The artist has done beautiful trading card style artwork of the major characters from the epic Robert Jordan series The Wheel of Time.

I have to stay away because every time I go there I want to read the series. Which is very bad because ... well ... time drain and brain drain if nothing else.

I got through about six of these Robert Jordan novels while I was a teenager. They run about 600-1,000 pages each. And then I was caught up with the publication cycle. So by the time I took up book seven-ish (maybe it was eight), enough time had passed that I no longer remembered the extended-extended cast of characters. Trust me: extended-extended cast. The characters that the artist has drawn as trading cards are the "main" characters and you can see how many of those their are.

Sure, Matt, Perrin, Rand, Egwene, Elayne, even Siuan -- I gotcha, I remember who you are. But everyone else? All those backwater characters that show up once every four hundred pages? I can't recall if you're some cast-off Child of the Sun or some bit of evil that seeped through, or if you're the other-other rogue male with the whatever power. And I get the sense that you're evil-ish but I'll be damned if I can recall if you've made a deal with the Black Aes Sedai or if you're a Seanchan spy.
What was the worst were scenes where your point of view character was someone you'd been introduced to before but in the new scene you never got their name just some facts that would have clued you in if it hadn't been 400 pages and eight months since you read the previous scene.

Robert Jordan has passed away (he was really too young) but the series is still going. Someone is working to finish based on his drafts and outlines. But the series has 12 books now (number 12 is almost 1,100 pages) and a prequel and I'm still not seeing the phrase stunning conclusion written anywhere on the jacket copy.

Actually I just found an article on how Jordan had drafted his "twelfth" book before his untimely death but when the new writer began working on it he broke it into three "short" books. 1,100 pages is the shorter version?

So there will be 15 of these book -- 16 with the prequel -- I've read about seven of them. Having invested in almost half of the series makes me think maybe I should see it out to its end. But to do the end any justice I would have to start at the beginning (again) or be hopelessly confused.

Instead, I'm going to devote time this summer to reading Lord of the Rings -- I've read the Hobbit but never the Lord of the Rings. As a teenager I had no patience for Tolkien's style of writing; I was very pissed off about the dwarves taking their precious time knocking one by one, hanging up their cape of this color and their hat of that color and then, oh look!, another dwarf to repeat the process for the eighth time. So, needless to say, I had to learn some patience to make it out of chapter one. I'm looking to tackle at least one of those books and at least one of the Foundations Trilogy this year.

AWP Bookfair Update and other Updates

AWP Update:

Meet ME! courtesy of Third Coast's Bookfair table at the AWP Conference Denver!

(If you could care less about ME! I will also fill you in on facts about Third Coast Magazine and submission tips.)

Thursday 4:30 to close.
Friday 8:30-10:15 AM -- (bring me coffee if you expect coherency, I am not a morning person)
Friday 2:45-4:30

And possibly some other times though I should make the most of my "free" time to roam the bookfair general. Must find some time to ambush Fairy Tale Review (the only magazine I have prepared questions for) and speak awkwardly with any other magazine with an interesting looking table.

Twitter hashtag = #AWP10

Thankgoodness for this or I would have forgotten all about bringing sunglasses!

Other updates:
The cats are wearing collars and pissed about it. Normally my cats go naked, strutting about in all their god given kitty glory. When we must travel Ash gets an ID collar but I normally don't bother with Rosie b/c she has an ID chip between her shoulder blades. Well, events had it that someone misplaced Ash's first collar (hmm) and then I bought a second one (ha!), before eventually discovering where the first had been relocated to (double ha!). Now that I own two collars I have saddled both cats with ID-tag-cuteness. There has been much scratching, and sulking and jingling of tiny bells. All this so they may spend a week at my father's house while I am conferencing.

Other updates:
Red Rose tea, so much better than Tetley. I guess you do get what you pay for and that extra two bucks is soooooo worth it.

Other updates:
Hugo Award nominees were posted April 4.

Call for submissions

Me: running around getting ready

Meanwhile:

THE NORTHVILLE REVIEW IS NOW READING SUBMISSIONS FOR OUR JULY ISSUE. THEME: CELEBRITY!
Celebrities are many things to many people. They can be fascinating in their lack of inhibition, and intriguing in their reserve. They inspire, they disgust, they amuse, they annoy. Sometimes, their antics bring us together when many other things pull us apart. The Northville Review wants to explore all of these dimensions in our July issue. In order to do so, we need your work! (Read more)

I'm rather looking forward to this not-as-serious-as-usual big summer issue. I love the stupidity of people when it comes to celebrity. And I think more stories should be written to ham up that celebrity-awkwardness.

Spring Cleaning

Yesterday I spent an entire afternoon accomplishing household things. I swept, I vacuumed, I retrieved cat toys from under the washing machine, I took apart the vacuum and cleaned the canister filters, I did dishes, I shined my sink and made a southern woman I've never met very proud of me. I even did my taxes.

Why leave taxes until April when you think you're going to get a refund? Because I hate going through the process. Once I have a real job and am no longer a grad student I will gladly pay someone to do my taxes for me. Even with all the simple DIY (but pay for it) programs out there I still hate filing.

Then I went and burned mozzarella to the bottom of my oven, which makes a lovely smell, btw.

And then my mother joined Facebook. It was a momentous weekend.

2010 AWP Conference: the preparation

Later this week is the 2010 AWP Conference. I will be there. Come by the Third Coast Magazine table at bookfair if you really, really want to meet me. And if you do meet me, ask for my business card -- they're so cute!

Check out these tips for surviving the AWP Conference. (found via)

How to enjoy the AWP Denver by the Documenting AWP blog. The blog is previewing and highlighting panels. And, from my preliminary list of what panels I want to attend (find the full listing at awpwriter.org), I think I'm going to be attending a lot of panels with this guy. Hey, I made my list before I read yours, so --honestly-- not stalking you, dude.

If you're looking for thoughts on what it was like last year to help you get a feel for what you might be in for this time, there's my thoughts, and more of my thoughts, and the fact that everyone will get sick, and there's this blog of Emerson College grad students which gives a wide range of feelings and reactions from different students. Recap from One Story magazine (which probably appeals to New Yorkers more than other mere mortals).

I got the you-need-to-sign-up-for-the-shuttle-to/from-airport email from AWP which annoys me if only because I didn't have to do/plan for that in Chicago. The beautiful thing about Chicago is that taking the Blue Line from O'Hare to the Loop is uber-fast. For $2.25 you streak past eight lanes of cars that are creeping along the highway. You streak past all the grid streets and then drop underground. You get out and walk a few blocks to your hotel. No big.

I didn't fly in to the AWP last year; I took the train, which also deposits you just a few blocks west of the Loop. In my mind anything less than 15 blocks should not be cause for paying cab fare, so I walked. Then again I know my way around the Loop. Not having that sort of public transportation infrastructure bugs me when I visit. Oh well, I guess the world really doesn't revolve around me and my desires.

Water Bottle Boycott

I saw the book The Story of Stuff at the book store the other day when I was in to buy CHANGELESS (which is fun to read so far). But they have videos too!

I have to say that I get really disgusted when I watch people wandering around the grocery store with a tray of bottled water in the bottom of their cart. I believe the exact phrase that when through my mind last week was holy shit! You're planning to consume out of a disposable bottle? If you MUST buy your water then why not get it in the giant jugs and tubs (most of which you can refill) and then put it into reusable bottles?

each year making the plastic water bottles consumed in the US takes enough gas to fuel a million cars.

What freaks me out about this whole thing is that we're not just using oil in our cars ... we're using it in almost all plastics. I nearly had a panic attack walking down the main aisle of Target the other day when I realized precisely how much oil product I was surrounded by. Rows and rows and shelves and shelves of plastic containers.

And yes, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm willing to search out and even pay more for items that are made of, at least in part, recycled materials.

On Process: Rejection

In my mini-series on process I decided to skip the "submission" step since I've blogged about that often enough of late and skip right on over to rejection.

For the longest time I've been collecting my rejection letters and pinning them to my bulletin board. At first I did this because my bulletin board was blank and I was hanging them up as a sign of progress and effort. A look! see, I am doing something! I'm working and trying and this is proof, damn it! sort of thing. Then I continued to do it because I read the thing from Stephen King that he pinned all his rejection letters to his wall until the thumb tack fell out and then he put a spike in the wall and kept adding letters until the spike fell out and then he got published. I wasn't big on the idea of pounding a spike into the wall but a fuzzy-happy part of my brain thought I wouldn't have to wait that long.

The push pin ain't cuttin it any more; I'm at the spike stage.

And I really don't want to invest in a spike, so all my letters and half-sheet and quarter-sheet notes are sitting in a pile beside the trash can. It was a tidy pile but the cats knocked it over. These are just the paper ones. I don't keep the email rejections because it's beyond pointless to waste trees like that.

Now I'm wondering if it's even worth keeping the stack on the floor. I don't need to keep them to prove I'm working toward my goal, I think the whole grad school thing is proof enough for the moment.

The bulletin board looks so much better without this wad of paper cluttering it up. Up there now are my two rejections with handwritten notes from the editors. (Hayden's Ferry Review and Hunger Mountain you are my favorites!) Attached above the board is my one and only acceptance letter -- I think getting the letter was better than getting the magazine with the poem in it. If those are positive energy pieces, are the rejection notes negative energy pieces? Shouldn't I be sweeping negative energy out of my life? Or have I just read way too much Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron?

So the real question I have for you comes down to what do you do with rejection? Since rejection comes to all writers sooner or later (most sooner) I assume that you know how to deal with it mentally; what do you do with it physically?

I have a friend who wallpapers her half-bath with her rejection letters. She's arranging them in a rather intriguing pattern. It's very much a bathroom that a writer can appreciate. Or perhaps it's commentary.