The Forgetful Kimchi Hypothesis

Last week, I gathered up some hope from the rubble, and took to heart a suggestion from a magazine that I "send again" by embarking on the final edits of a short story I'd left unfinished for months. It only took me one evening of work to come to the hypothesis that good stories are kimchi.

Kimchi is a spicy Korean food which, while different from sauerkraut in taste, is not so different in production: at its heart, Kimchi is just fermented cabbage. I know, who doesn't see decaying cabbage and think, now there's a metaphor for fiction writing, right? But I hold to my hypothesis: stories are kimchi.

Making kimchi involves chopping and combining raw ingredients including the all important napa cabbage. You combine it with other stuff. Then you wait. You don't touch the kimchi. You don't poke at it or check in on it daily. Traditionally, you put the kimchi in an earthenware jar and bury it in the backyard for months, if not a year, depending on the recipe and the seasonal temperature. The burying is to help provide consistency in temperature, although such jars often are stored above ground in courtyards. Most recipes you'll find on the internet suggest that refrigeration is probably the way to go, yet in Korea "you will still see rows of kimchi jars on top of the flat roofs of apartment buildings in the big cities." [source]

Is my hypothesis that writing is nothing more than a slow fermentation process? That's too simplistic a comparison for what I have in mind.

The drafting of a piece fiction does not need to be slow. The current editing project is a short story I dashed off in an evening because of a looming 8:00 AM workshop deadline. But following that quick trot, gathering ingredients, preparing, chopping, mixing, I received thoughtful feedback, and then I stuck it all in an earthenware jar and buried it in the backyard for about eight months.

The story didn't need months to complete its drafting, but for me to go from the piece's writer to its editor I needed that time. It wasn't about the story, it was about me processing the feedback I'd been given and -- more importantly -- it was about me forgetting the process of writing it.

Forgetting is the most important part. When I take an idea from concept to plot to details to words on a page, I am wrapped up in all of it. I know what I meant to write even if it's not what I actually wrote. At the time of creation, I read what I've written and I anticipate my own next moves. I'm unsurprised. I'm unenthusiastic. I'm too in touch with the process of creation. So I have to take the time to forget everything save the vaguest sense of what the story was about.

Eight months after writing the short story, I hauled the jar back inside and revised. I got more feedback. I was much, much closer to being happy with the story. I'd resolved some of my own craft short comings. I'd figured out which parts of the story were too light, and which too weighty. Then I put it back in an earthenware jar and buried it in the backyard for eighteen months. Eighteen.

This is not to say that I did not write during that year and a half. I just wrote other things. I filled other earthenware jars until my folder of Word Docs looked like a Korean courtyard. And on the eighteenth month when I opened this particular jar, I'd forgotten everything about drafting the piece. Finally I could read it as a reader would, as an editor would. Things which the creator in me thought were "necessary" to describe the world were readily apparent as flotsam to be skimmed off. The story found a new opening place. The first five pages were cut and the information therein condensed into a paragraph. The dispersal of information regarding the character's motivation was restructured. The main speculative element was previously nebulous to the reader -- as the writer I'd understood how it worked just fine -- so its description was reworked, condensed. Would you like some kimchi? It's ready.

I understand writing quickly. I think that deadline driven writing is superb, but then again, deadlines are my main source of inspiration. My advice -- if we must boil this down to advice -- is to write fast and edit slow. Give yourself time to forget so that you can meet your story again as a stranger. Play that game TV couples like to engage in, the let's-put-the-past-behind-us-and-pretend-this-is-the-first-time-we-ever-met game. You know the one, where they smile bittersweet smiles at each other and attempt to pick each other up for the first time in spite of their insider information.

Of course, no advice should be treated as sacrosanct. All writers write differently. Yet I am always astounded by those who begin rewriting a piece almost as soon as they've drafted it, those who can go from workshop to second draft within a week, if not a day. Not astounded because they're "doing it wrong" but that they're able to do so all. My memory is by no means a steel trap, but it needs a stretch of time before it can forget a story well enough to allow me to read it afresh, read it like a reader and not like its creator.

---

More thoughts from other people: "Do You Practice Creative Contemplation?" an interesting essay on patience and listening, and while it poo-poos on NaNoWriMo, the mother of all deadlines, I believe that a NaNoWriMo draft, taken with a kimchi recipe approach, is potentially quite serviceable, so I'll cut the essayist a break.

Pick Yourself Up and Start Again

This essay (article, post, whatever you may call it) is going to be about writer's hope, direction, perhaps even the implementation of  some self-discipline. It's about embarking on a new project -- or more precisely, embarking on the finishing of a project, the project itself isn't exactly new just the stirring desire to finish -- with positive, patient persistence. (For hopefulness about writing, read on...)

How I'm going to convey that feeling isn't something I've planned out. Perhaps this is indicative of the fact that I've not much planned my project -- all I have is a feeling to spur me on. But I try to think of these posts as short essays (blog posts are always better when they draw some sort of conclusion that echos the opening, no?), and as I try to implore my writing students, essays are nothing more lofty than an attempt to communicate your personal thinking on some subject, the term "essay" coming from the French essayer (v), to try. Or essai (n) a try.

An essay is an attempt at expression. It may meander, it may be cut and edited, but it shouldn't be overly rigid in construction and planning, otherwise how can you make great discoveries of self and thought while you essay? Save your structure and fact and organization for editing, well after you've essayed your way to some truths.

And so I am trying.

At this precise moment, I'm trying to stay positive, not sick to my stomach as I watch the pest control guy spray just part of the nearby apartment building. Just part? I understand how that's cost effective, but not how that's get-rid-of-the-pest effective. Ug. Another great reason to keep cats: they find the pests before you do and, usually, eat it before you're the wiser.

But the man with a can of pressurized chemical spray isn't the only thing which should be dragging on my sense of direction and hope, yet isn't. For starters, the Attack of the Back has devastated my past week.

The non-compliance of my body to respond to my commands in a useful manner meant that on this past Saturday it took me twenty minutes to go from reclining to standing, unassisted. And then once I was standing it was less than twenty minutes before Attack of the Back protested so loudly that I was forced back into the previous, reclined posture. I am currently on the mend. Mend-ish. I may actually have to give in and go see a chiropractor. You know, get over that aversion/advice I was previously given that once you start going to a chiropractor you can't ever stop. Because hey, isn't that also true for dentists? And because hey, these Attacks of the Back are painful and they don't look like they're ever gonna stop coming to visit me either.

So I'm upright again. Sorta. I had big 2013 dreams of punching out a lot of words starting on January 1 and not stopping until ... okay, just not stopping. But the reality is that the punching out hasn't started. Half-way through the month and I'm still working to get my feet under me (figuratively) from the whirlwind end of 2012 and (literally) from the Attack of the Back. Newyness aside, there's no reason that my self-discipline and goals have to be pegged to calendar start and end points. So sally forth! I say. And tallyho! Cowabunga! And other similar cries which indicate a rush of activity!

No, no, that's not what I want.

If there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that I am prone to manic writing. Followed by furloughs of no writing. Some of which is deadline driven -- oh baby, there ain't nothing like the sound of a deadline whooshing past to get me on task! -- but some of it is an intensity issue. Frenzied activity in general is easy  to get on board with. It's Day One of the exercise routine/diet where you're super good, followed by week two when you can't even remember that you're on a routine/diet because you just can't take the super good intensity anymore. You're like, dude, chill out with this craziness and get me a cupcake. I need moderation and discipline. Not a celery stick and ice cream pendulum. Not the frenzy that follows the cry of tallyho, but the deliberate fox-stalking which precedes it.

Instead, a gentle push to get me started:

Today I received a lovely, personal letter from a magazine which I respect telling me that my story was well written and interesting, and then telling me all the reasons why it wasn't going to be published by them. What a great big happy-sad feeling that produces. I adore the fact that they took the time to talk to me about the story. I'm pleased with their compliments. But I'm sad to have failed in the endeavor of getting them to publish the story.

"Bittersweet" doesn't really begin to describe the conflicting emotions this particular letter invokes. "Bittersweet" describes previous such letters I've received -- letters which I usually don't blog about because I don't usually feel the desire to make such things public. This time I'm far too happy and far too sad, simultaneously, to reconcile the two into any nameable emotion.

It is however a spur. A gentle push to get me started. Along with all the things the letter said, I take away this: they're eager to see what I send them next. So on to the next. A brilliant nudge to get me to complete edits on a short story I've let languish for eighteen months. And get it done now. Using the short goal to achieve a sense of action and purpose, to garner momentum, enough to pick myself up and start again.

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Note: I couldn't find a way to work it into the above essay, though I did try, but I wanted to point out another lovely post on writer's hope, direction, and discipline that I read today. Rebecca Enzor's "Give Them a Chance to Say Yes" inspired by a beautiful tweet by Amalia Dillin. Her direction is more focused on submissions than creation, but still terribly hopeful. Autumn MacArthur's blog is also great for these sort of inner-looking hopeful-writer-rants which I love.
Top photo credit: "by Stik" By Feral78 via Flickr.

Perseverance, part one

There are many forms of perseverance needed in the writing game.  And one of them is to keep submitting our work to new editors.

I, apparently, have an unusually thick skin when it comes to submissions and rejections.  But here's what I know: C.L. Moore submitted her first short story, "Shambleau" -- the first short story she had ever written -- to Weird Tales in 1933.  It was her favorite magazine.  They accepted it, and subsequently published almost all of her early fiction.  Moore, in a candid essay in the back of a 1960s edition of her collected early stories, said that if the Weird Tales editor hadn't accepted her story on the first try, she probably would have stopped writing.

I'm not C.L. Moore.  You're not C.L. Moore.

And I don't say that meanly -- Moore's work is intriguing but there's a reason she occupies an important space in the history of science fiction and not in the literary importance of the genre.

I say I am no C.L. Moore because I have sent out one story.  And it was rejected.  And I did not stop there.  I sent it out again.  And again.  And again.  And, on at least two occasions, I'd given up on a story or poem and then had an editor contract the work.  I am no C.L. Moore because if the editor doesn't accept the story on the first try, I don't stop trying.

And that is why I encourage everyone reading this and hoping to make it as a writer to not be C.L. Moore.

Last summer, I was encouraged to make 100 submissions.  Be they short fiction or novel queries, I was to complete 100 of them.  It was suggested that 100 was a reasonable goal; that if you set your sights for 100 it was a high enough number that you would be in the mental game for the long haul while also likely to achieve some sort of publication before reaching the 100th submission.

The next day I was asked to give a goal for the upcoming year, so I said 100 submissions in a year! Meaning: I want to be published by this time next year!


That's when I made this little chart on the outside of a file folder and tacked it to the wall over my desk.  100 Submissions by July 15, 2011 it says.  The white area is a 10 x 10 grid to which I affix a star (or a hello kitty sticker) every time I send a story out on submission.

Below is a manila envelope for the rejection slips.  Seems practical.  Don't be depressed by rejection slips.  It's like being depressed by dog poop.  You own the dog.  You enjoy the dog.  You have this bond, this friendship.  It will, at some point, poop.  You can't be a practical person and a dog owner if you are depressed by poop.  Likewise, you can't be a practical person and a writer if you are depressed by rejection slips.

If you haven't already noticed, it's June and my chart has a lot of white spaces on it yet.  There are only 15 stars (save you the trouble of counting).  But I'm proud of those 15.  And there will be more before July 15.  Progress is progress -- progress is perseverance -- and I love my chart.  I also love the square that I colored in yellow in the top row.  Yellow background means the submission got published.

This chart hits several motivating factors for me: it's prominently placed so that I see it every day, it's colorful, fun, and it is interactive.  If not sparkly star stickers, what motivates you to keep going?

World without a plot

Have you ever been in this situation?  I find myself in possession of a world I've been building for three or four years.  It started when I saw a documentary on Stonehenge.  This group of archeologists wasn't concentrating on the lithic henge they could see, but rather the henge they couldn't see.

They believed that 25-30 miles east of what we now know as Stonehenge, there was once a wood henge comparable in size and pattern, but instead of planting giant stones in the ground to form posts and lintels, they cut, shaped, and planted lumber there.  Concentric circles of giant tree trunks.  They speculated that for a procession moving on foot along the river, it would take roughly a day's walk to get from one henge to the other.

I don't remember all the particulars the documentary brought up -- I wrote them in a notebook somewhere -- but I remember it implied a life henge and a death henge.  That the procession could be a funeral march, or a ritual.  I started to wonder about the different events that could make a society obsessed with death to the extent that they built Stonehenge.  Albeit, the ancient Egyptians were so obsessed with death that they went to much greater lengths but that thought didn't cross my mind at the time.  And then I had it, a world shaped by one cataclysmic event: a race of immortals who lost their immortality, and that of their descendants, through their own actions.

So I went merrily about building this world.  I gave it a form of government, a couple of cities, some natural resources, a three- to five-thousand year history that could have should have filled volumes.  I gave one government sway over most of the continent.  Gave them a few grumpy enemies on their borders who were too small to act on their anger.  I drew a map.  Gave them a system of magic that was more about throw-backs to ancient misunderstood power than magician-based.  I already had their death-worship religion and therefore the mindset with which they live their lives.  Hell, there were even thieves guilds in the alleys and a pirate society living on the seas!

But there was absolutely no plot.

There were no character desires in conflict with other character desires causing a series of ever more harrowing attempts to achieve said desires.

Oh, at first I thought I had a plot.  I didn't.  But that didn't stop me from writing 15,000 words of scenes and explanations and character sketches.  It took me those 15,000 words to give up and back off because even uneducated-in-the-way-of-the-story me could see that this was a really weak storyline.  Partly because I couldn't figure out who the hell the antagonist was or what he was trying to do and why.  I just had four really amusing characters running around in the woods -- I even titled the Word doc I saved it in "Jaunt in the Woods" -- meeting terribly amusing dandies/pickpockets/minstrels and dragons.

Holy crap, I'd forgotten about the dragon!

And there was a girl dragon who ended up with a crush on the young protagonist.

The protagonist could, of course, speak to dragons.  A fact which would become terribly important in the climatic end sequence of events if only I could figure out what the end sequence of events was.

Maybe my problem was that I'd folded ever second-world fantasy cliche into one story.  But it's not like I wrote a novel full of cliches and then couldn't sell it -- I couldn't even find a plot (cliche or otherwise) to let me write the novel!

Since this world's initial creation, I've kept expanding it.  I made a south continent in addition to the first.  I've fleshed out different cultures of people (sort of).  I've created more characters that live in this world but that don't necessarily interact with one another.  I have the origin story for the high priestess of wood henge -- why we should care about her I don't know, but I could tell you about the village she grew up in.  And yet, no plot.

I thought about writing short stories set in this world, but they never end up feeling like short stories according to my critique partners, but  like prologues or epilogues to a much longer tale.

It is the lost world in my mind.  A world with no plot.  I refuse to abandon it, but neither do I know how to make it blossom.

Has this ever happened to you?

Wash, rinse, repeat: how novels are born

This morning, theLiz was telling me that she got a brill idea while in the shower.  She practically wrote the whole opening chapter and figured out how to reframe the novel/story so that it would be less work to develop and write!  Ah! Ray-of-light-shining-down-on-the-hilltop moment!

"Why," she said, "do I always get great ideas in the shower?"

"It's the only time you're not multitasking and overworked," I said.  "Wash, rinse, repeat, doesn't require higher brain function, so your subconscious shows up and says by the way, I've found a solution for that problem you were working on, I just didn't want to bother you while you were busy earlier."

She's not the only writerly friend of mine who does some of her best plotting in the shower.  Me? I'm not a shower-plotter.  In the shower I rehearse lectures I'm thinking of giving in the classes I teach.  Or I rehash conversations that I wish had gone differently -- the real life kind not the fictional ones.

My best accidental writing zone is the time before bed.  It has the same conditions as the shower: you're not busy, not working on anything else, you're not able to do another task with those spare minutes because you're supposed to be falling asleep (or all ready asleep).  That's when I start writing scenes in my head and planning out conversations (the fictional kind this time),  It's also the time when I'm most likely to lose my utterly brilliant ideas.

I'll repeat a scene or line again and again, telling myself I WILL remember this in the morning, and then I don't.  Whammie.

My solution?  No, I refuse to get out of bed and write it down -- warm, comfortable, possibly with a cat asleep on my leg. not. getting. up.  No, I refuse to put a pen and paper beside my bed b/c that will mean turning on a light -- gah! harsh light! oh and I upset the cat, damn.  My solution: iPod touch.

Hello, my name is Eileen, and I sleep with my iPod touch.

Now when these ideas strike I grab the ipod, open the notepad application, type until my thumbs/wrists hurt and the auto-spell has fucked up half my words but I'm too sleepy to care, and then email it to myself.  The next morning, coffee in hand, I open my email to -- huh? whaz dat? it's ... oh. OH! Story!!!!!

And all is well with the world.

Where or when is your epiphany place/time?

Photo credit: Rock&Ice

Dear Deadlines: I lovehate you.

I lovehate you, deadlines.  Rly, orly, lovehate you.

When I have oodles of time, I laze about on my ass.  I do all the things that are both precious to me and easy, like read novels upon novels.  I catch up on Top Chef.  I contact old friends and read every remotely interesting blog/article I find on the internet.  I enjoy these activities, yet I have little to show for them in terms of accomplishments.  (Although some could argue that gleaned knowledge and an increased usable vocabulary are accomplishments, they aren't things that bring much with them in the way of substantial reward.)

When I have deadlines, I sweat.  I stress.  I stay up too late, get up too early. Feel crazy tired and drink copious amounts of caffeine (the bean and the carbonated types) so that when I finally give up and carve out time for a nap I can't fall asleep for all the heart-palpitating stimulants swimming in my system.  I sit in the same chair for 12 hours a day.  I make microwave meals from boxes in my freezer that I'd forgotten I'd had because there's no time to go buy proper fresh food.

But damn do I love how much I get done when I have a fast approaching deadline to light a fire under my ass.

Yesterday I wrote somewhere between 3000 and 4000 words in order to get short story revisions done.  Lately I've been patting myself on the back for every 500 words written, so this feat was entirely the result of major MFA thesis deadlines creeping in.

Knowing how I am about deadlines -- that far off ones hold no pressure for me -- I've created a situation where I have work due every week.  Either a new short story or a short story revision.  And I have someone other than that good-intentions fairy of mine to hold me responsible / make me feel guilty for not getting it done.

And it's the revisions that are harder for me.  I lovehate them too.  I love some of the things that accidentally turn up when you're revising.  You've gotten feedback and formed an image of how to build a better mousetrap -- now all you have to do is build it!  And then little things pop up as you edit that smooth and connect things that you (and your feedback givers) had not even thought of.  It's the things popping up and clicking into place part I love.  It's also something I love about the writing the first draft.

I hate ripping the seams out of something you've already sewn only to resew it better.  It's why I say the seams give my quilts character.  (they're far from perfect)  But my quilts are just for me, and if I want anyone else to pay attention to my stories, then I have to pick up the stitch ripper, as much as I might hate it.  Revision's a bitch.  And I hate it, hate it, hate it.  I'd string it out over as long a time as I possibly could.  Unless I had a deadline to make me do what I lovehate.

And I lovehate you, deadlines, I really, really, lovehate you.*

Image by Nenyaki.
*You ever reference a movie without realizing it, then sit there thinking was that in a movie? what movie? and then you repeat the line again and again until finally hear the frustration/tears in voice and then suddenly you can see Meg Ryan in a poofy sleeved 80s cocktail dress?  Happens to me all the time.

Getting my mind around getting it done

I am a slow writer.  At least, I think I am.

I can write quickly if I must.  I usually write 20 page research papers in under 36 hours.  Okay, sometimes I go over deadline and it's 72 hours.  Someone once told me that a good formula was an hour a page plus one to proof read at the end.  Though that formula wasn't true when I was in college, it has been for the master's program.

But for fiction?  I churned out a story, 3000 words, start to finish in about seven hours one night at Odyssey last summer.  It had some problems, but it also had a beginning, middle, and end.  Then I let my subconcious tackle the edits and problems of that story for six months, finally sitting down to redraft.  I've been redrafting for the past 30 days.

I'll get stuck.  I'll take a bunch of notes.  I'll find something else to do (most likely not writing). Then the perfect phrasing or situation to get me unstuck bubbles up in my mind the next day.

It's taking forever.

And I'm looking for ways to make it happen quicker.  There has to be something better than a sentence or single idea bubbling up per day.  Come on, lots of bubbles.  Let's think carbonation here.

It's not just the revisions (although they're worse than anything else).  I've been putting off first drafts as well.  So I started reading Eat That Frog! a self-help book about time management.  Although, as theLiz told me, reading a book about how to not procrastinate sounds like a great form of procrastination.

Just read this interview with Julie Duffy of StoryADay.  It is indeed a month long write-a-story-each-day challenge.  Sounds intense.  Sounds like the pulp writers of yesteryear (but hold that though, it's tomorrow's post).  Sounds like something I'd really like to do.  Sounds like my sloooooooowness would either get kicked out or get me kicked out.  Hmm.

Duffy's advice:

Finish. Finish every story. Even if it's dragging and you hate it, learning how to work through that and get to to the good bit is all part of the craft. Just starting stories will never get you anywhere. Learning how to craft your ideas into finished stories is what it's all about.

I need to get over the starting and get on to the doing and the sticking.  Sticking with the doing.

Bestselling author Jenny Crusie writes:

There is a time before I begin a book that I panic. I can’t remember how I did it before, the first fifteen books must have been flukes, I don’t know everything that’s going to happen in the story, I don’t understand the characters, I’m a fake, the book is going to be a disaster, and my career is over. The fact that I do this before every book is not a comfort.

Then she found god collaging.

Hmm. Thanks -- tempting -- but no.  I'm already waist-deep in unfinished arts-n-crafts projects, I really don't need another excuse to buy and/or collect more of that stuff.  Although the whole panic notion does put me in mind of this absolutely spot on cartoon.

Is it really as simple as Ann Aguirre makes it out to be?  Find a group of people who want to write five thousand words a day and then you all write five thousand words a day?  She makes caveats that finding the right group of people is important -- and lordy do I know that: those groups where we all slacked off and secretly rejoiced that we'd failed together instead of failed alone, yeah, those groups weren't very helpful.  But she's big on there being no magic in the system.  There's no magic time, no magic aura, the stars do not align.  She just goes.  Does.  Is.

I guess I just need to go. Do. Be.  Get off my stupid starting block and keep going without tripping on it.  Of course, Aguirre's method is for the first draft, not the revisions.

Does your style slant toward slow or fast?  Slow and steady or (worse) slow and sporadic?

What processes and advice have worked for you?

Where I'm At

- News: President Obama chose Kalamazoo Central High School as the one US high school where he'll give a commencement address this year.  http://www.whitehouse.gov/commencement  They won a video-essay contest.
- Speak Coffee journal giveaway: still open!

This is so where I'm at right now.  YA writer Natalie Whipple blogs that should she never get another idea for a novel/story she would have more than enough to keep her writing for the rest of her life (agreed).  She's restarting/rewriting a project (so am I), and it turns out she's a big fan of rewrites (I sure hope I am).

I start today on a novel that I've officially started twice before.  This time, however, I have an outline and a much better idea of who my characters are.  I hope to finish said novel draft within the month of May.  Which is crazy, but no more crazy than author Kiersten White completed her first novel.

On Kiersten's blog (Kiersten Writes) she posts on her "method" ... basically there is no method other than obsession. Getting the novel done  means becoming completely obsessed with the material.  I'm completely with her on this one (minus the writing while the kid is napping part).  My one completed novel manuscript (it's drivel but it's completed) came out of a January of obsession -- I remember nothing of that month but writing, coffee and overcast skies.  And wearing the same sweatshirt most days. Hmm.

But I'm worried about being able to complete a draft of this project. The first time I attempted it I had a fun idea but I didn't know where it was going or who my characters were, so it died at 20,000 words of manuscript. That's 20,000 words of place description and funny snips of dialog that had no place in the narrative and very little actual story.

The second time I attacked it I still didn't really know where I was going -- I'm a self declared pantser -- and I tried to edit the old scenes and then write the new ones.  I got bogged down by rereading the first attempt scenes.  I ended up spending my time editing not writing.  And then I got depressed at how poor my old writing was and further depressed by my lack of forward progress.

This time I don't intend to look at anything but my synopsis and outline as I write the new draft.

I know!  A synopsis!  An outline!  The self-declared pantser has an outline.  Have I gone over to the dark side and become a plotter?  I don't yet know.  Ask me in three weeks.

I used to love attempting the type of controlled chaos that Linda Grimes talks about on her blog Visiting Reality.  (BTW, I love her blog when she starts tell stories, like how she was accidentally recruited to run guns for the IRA).

Now is the perfect time to start (and finish) a manic novel writing dash because I'm free. Spring semester has ended and I don't teach in the summer nor am I taking class this month.  Sure, I'm playing big-bad-editor for the literary journal, and I'm getting ready for a six week stint in New England, and trying to recover my apartment from the tidal wave of chaos that washed in during finals ... but I'm free(ish).

My new mindset is wholly encompassed by this flow chart. I'm printing it out and taping it to the window behind my desk. No seriously, I'm taping it to the window. And if my neighbors start doing something stupid but entertaining I will have to lean to the side to watch around the flow chart taped to my window.

It's time to get the damnwriting done.  What's your method?  How do you get it done?

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.

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.

On Process: Writing

I'm on deadline. Again. This one is an editing/revision deadline. Earlier in the month I went crazy over a workshop deadline because I didn't have a story finished and nothing I'd started wanted to let me finish it ... so I started over from scratch.

My writing process is usually quite organic. When I'm on a deadline it becomes a matter of manic work and some grocery store preparation. I lug home a brown bag full of "study food" which, for me, spells comfort and concentration. Gummy bears, sunflower seeds, coffee (of course), chocolate covered raisins, apples and peanut butter**, and liters and liters of Diet Dr. Pepper.

Everything else I can negotiate on -- location, atmosphere, the cleanliness of the kitchen, the flavor of the coffee, even which snack foods are purchased -- but the Diet Dr. Pepper is nonnegotiable.

What is your writing process? Is it an activity or a place, or is it a collection of goods?

**Ten points to the person who posts the name of the TV show whose characters work hard fueled by apples and peanut butter. (My dad got this right away so it's not that obscure, but I will hint that the show is off the air now.)