How Do You Do It?

"I don't know how you keep track of it all." -- from a colleague in reference to my workload

I like being a chef with multiple burners heating multiple pots, simmering full of somethin' good.

I'm a concrete and a random worker, moving easily off one project onto another then to another, then back to the original. I'm also good at hanging in for the long haul. A writing workshop leader once told me I was an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs Inventory, which is a good profile for finishing a novel. Today's writer can't just be the lone warrior in the garret if she wants to be published. And while I'm not an extrovert who gains energy from others as much as I gain energy from being alone, I have just enough "I" to labor late over my writing tasks and starting early every morning.

Here are the six sections of my to-do list:

NEW NOVEL IN PROGRESS (REALLY, THE OLD ONE, PREQUEL TO ST. MICHAEL)
NOVEL CONTESTS, ST. MICHAEL (2ND NOVEL)
SHORT STORIES
NOVEL QUERIES
GRANTS
MARKETING

Each has at least two if not four bullets of tasks.

You have to find the joy in each demand. You have to love starting a new project like revising my old novel as a prequel or taking on a brand-new novella for NaNoWriMo. You have to love binding up a manuscript with huge rubber bands for the Bakeless Prize or Dana Awards, and you have to love scouring Poets & Writers for the latest information on literary magazines. Give your all to every bit of the process.

In "Why We Write: The Pressure of Young Promise" (latest issue of Poets and Writers) Laura Maylene Walter shares her long, arduous journey as writer without reward. If you slog and struggle daily toward your writer's brass ring, you must read this meditation and then see the inspirational Editor's Note.

Just this week, my former student and current friend, Teresa Smith Porter, felt her spirits flag. She's a successful photographer (My Friend Teresa Photography) who labors to get the best shot and make her clients shine. But it was one of those days when she was tapped out and struggling to see the horizon. Then she got the call. She had won 1st Place in the Wedding Photographic Society Competition, Photojournalism category. Then she got another call: to do a spread for a magazine. Now it was one of those weeks you dream of. She'd had weeks like this before, but in between for every artist is the labor, the unglamorous, exhausting, driving toil. Bleary-eyed and dehydrated, she has posted at 3:00 AM on Facebook out of the sheer joy of loving her work. Now that's my kind of crazy.

Do you love it? Writing. Do you? If you do, then make your list and keep your head down. Your spirits will lift, I swear by it.

The Mother of Invention

"Throughout everything, my parents Stephen and Katherine Fairchild have been my biggest cheerleaders..."

-- Acknowledgments, Teaching Julius Caesar: A Differentiated Approach

Growing up in California, I saw my mom prepare the earthquake kit. Underwear, graham crackers, five days' worth of water: this plastic tub stowed in the most stable part of the house had it all. The ever-present kit never got tapped, even when the Loma Prieta quake struck in '89 and houses in San Francisco buckled. But it didn't matter. It was good knowing we always had it there.

That day in October, my mom felt the family home twist and turn on its axis, then come to rest. She stood in the doorway gripping the frame, wondering how those eternal seconds might end. Meanwhile, my dad dashed out of Candlestick from the World Series, beginning what would be a three-hour journey through the streets of the city. An hour away in the South Bay, I huddled with my classmates beneath a table on the second story of the Stanford quad.

Later that night I somehow broke through the snarled phone lines to tell them I was fine, crowded in a friend's dorm with other homeless students, and to hear that they were fine, too.

Great parents are more than the granite foundation, because foundations can shift. Great parents are like the safety kit when foundations move.

Today when I pace across the floor, panicked my manuscript is a worthless endeavor, a voice of reassurance says, Everything's okay. When I think, I lack the skill to get this thing done, there's an internal nudge from a wise hand that knows better. When I question my writing obsession, afraid I've detoured down a narrow road too fast yet too late, I see that there's still sunshine, still breath in me, and still tomorrow, whatever I choose.

This hope is my back-up and my safeguard. It comes from years of encouragement and belief my parents provided. It's so fundamental that I never fully believe work I've done is worthless. What's the point of thinking that? The point is, I tried. The point is, I struggle to be a good person and a good writer. And I know I do enough and that I am enough. My mother taught me that. She handed me this mental kit, this internal shelter to seek, and I can't even name its price.

When you write acknowledgements for your book and give credit where credit is due, you are very blessed if you can mention your mother. If you can say, Thank you for teaching me the world is a safe place when you're there...and that I belong in it.

I know many people who succeed in spite of their mothers. I believe I succeed because my parental foundation was so sure.

A writer friend once asked me how I could be so empathetic when I hadn't suffered a horrible childhood like she had. I don't recall my answer. But I do know that having this internal safeguard and the space that gave me to create makes a difference. I believe my empathy for others stems from a great start in life. I couldn't write without empathy. I wouldn't have time to care if my life had to be spent making up for what my mom had not done.

Thanks to my mom, the mother of my inventions. Happy Mother's Day.

Writing Prompts: Please note that writing prompts should always be pursued in emotionally-safe environments with the supervision of someone who interested in encouraging good writing, self-awareness, and reflection. A wonderful resource is Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and With Others.

© Lyn Hawks. Writing prompts for one-time classroom use only and not for publication in any form elsewhere without permission of this author.

Note that these are mixed-age prompts this week.

-- You have just received an award or honor for great achievements. Write a thank you speech that acknowledges the people who "got you there."
-- If your mother was a plant, what kind would she be? If your mother was a building, what kind would she be? If your mother was the weather, what kind would she be? If your mother was a landscape, what part of the land would she be?
-- Thank the mother in your life--whomever she is--with a list of thank yous. List all the things this person (or people) has done for you.
-- Finish a paragraph that begins with this statement: She was the mother of my inventions.
-- Finish a paragraph with this statement: My mom is normal, right?
-- Finish this statement: When I'm a mom or dad, I will... or, As a mom or dad, I am...
-- Write your mother a letter.

Rescue Me…or My Reader.

“We explain to the reader exactly how to read the story. In doing so we smother any subtlety in the piece and insult the reader. We're so afraid that he or she will miss the point or that the story isn't good enough to make the point on it's own that we throw in the "here's the moral" section toward the end.”

-- Kimberly Culbertson, “Helicopter Authoring”


Today’s Word Count for the Novel: 267,392. 1430 words gone!

Page Count for the Novel: 944 (As I prepared a manuscript for submission and was asked for 1” margins, I got rid of 1.25 right/left margins on this manuscript, and funny how that helped! But all we really care about here is the word count.)

My friend, an actress and a writer, shared an observation that some artists indulge rescue fantasies. These fantasies depend on a dualistic view of the artist’s life: either you remain enslaved at your current workplace or someone magically “discovers” you as you slave at your art in anonymity eating your ramen and refried beans. There’s no in between. Your choices are work-work-work (which equals money but misery) or art-art-art (which equals joy but penury) but never the two shall meet. Either you sell out or you fail; it’s an Occam’s Razor equation.

I subscribe to the old-fashioned, Faulknerian school: If you can, keep your day job at the post office and apply seat of the pants to seat of the chair in the wee hours and late at night. Or, if you’re too unhip or just plain exhausted to stay up late, then get to workin’ on those nights while others gad about.

By the way, my friend and I tried to recall a term for “butt to chair” our fiction writing professor Ehud Havazelet mentioned back in 1987 and all I found on Google was “siedfleisch,” which I believe means “simmering meat” in German. Ehud, could you have meant that? One’s derriere must needs feel the heat if the writing is to go well. Otherwise the writing isn’t honest.

I can’t get discovered unless I put my work out there, and I can only put my work out there if I do it. The rescue fantasy plays out in reality every time we avoid the paper or the keyboard. We rescue ourselves from the hard work of self-discovery, one of the big reasons artists stray. Staring at yourself in the mirror and facing all the pain and ugliness art stirs up is a great reason to run away -- very far away. Never mind the fact that working by one’s lonesome and correcting all the flaws that crop up in that manuscript, why, that’s not much fun but sweaty, angsty, and destructive, about as alluring as scrubbing floors with vinegar: virtuous it may be, environmentally sound, but stinking to your own personal brand of hell.

Yet again: That rescuing agent or editor can’t appear till you build it.

Likewise the rescue of American kids nationwide, occurring right now as thousands of helicoptering parents release their children onto college campuses, it’s the same delusion, really. A helicopter parent believes that if forced to work alone, the child shall fail. Wouldn’t it all be better if a fairy godmama stuck around and handled registration, move-in, first day of class, you know, everything?

I like how Kimberly Culbertson, editor of Relief Journal, turns this cultural phenomena back on us writers who are guilty of treating our artistic works as babes incapable of survival. (You could argue that the rescue-fantasy artist doesn’t even grant her babe conception; she hovers over the ideas in her mind but births nothing. “See, I’m gonna write this book one day…”) Culbertson explains how authors hover over their works with heavy moralizing.

Telling the point (as if there were just one) prevents a reader from growing along with our manuscripts. I’ll take this concept a step further: I helicopter parent in my writing with

-- all kinds of editorial commentary, the tell-all mental meanderings of this or that character, which is no substitute for action;
-- painting parts of scenes the reader can fill in with his own imagination; and
-- crafting top-heavy symbolism threatening to tumble over and bruise the reader as she’s strolling through. Never mind the dangers of overwrought metaphors. (Hey, it’s Friday night and I’m tired.)

I could go on; I’m building a list of my helicoptering faults. On my desk is a quotation from Charles Baxter that reminds me of my protagonist’s interior monologue knowing WAY too much all the time:

“Nobody cares, in fiction, what a character thinks until a character acts on those ideas. You can think anything you want to and it won’t matter until your ideas begin to have certain dramatic consequences.”

Art doesn’t require superheroes flying in at the last second. In fact, it’s decidedly workaday, unglamorous, and slimy with perspiration. So is life. Kids and artistic works need to live it. Let them breathe, let them stretch, let them skin some knees. They’ll find their way.

Today's Writing Goal: Cut at least another 1,000 (aren’t I cocky) and move a huge scene later in the novel because right now it interrupts momentum like a boulder in the road. Writing Prompts: Please note that writing prompts should always be pursued in emotionally-safe environments with the supervision of someone who interested in encouraging good writing, self-awareness, and reflection. A wonderful resource is Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and With Others.


© Lyn Hawks. Writing prompts for one-time classroom use only and not for publication in any form elsewhere without permission of this author.

Elementary: Up On High

Have you ever flown in a plane or a helicopter? Have you ever stood on something that is several feet high? Then you know what it’s like to look down on people, places, animals, land, and things and see how much smaller they are. How did you feel when you were up there?

Pretend you are in a plane, a helicopter, or on top of the tallest building you have ever seen. Now imagine that you can fly anywhere to help someone or something. Write a short story after thinking about these questions:

-- Who or what will you help?
-- Why?
-- How will you help them?
-- Did it work? Why or why not?
-- What will happen next?

You can also imagine the opposite story: picture that you are the person on the ground. Who or what will come help you, and why? How do you feel about it?

Secondary and Adult: Up on High

Are you an introvert or an extrovert, meaning, do you tend to get your energy from being alone, or do you get your energy from being around people? Or are you a person who truly enjoys both states of being?

Write about a time when you or someone did what’s called “helicoptering”: hanging around, hovering, trying to help another person.

-- Express your feelings and the feelings you imagine the other person had.
-- How did the situation unfold?
-- What choices did people make? What were the consequences?
-- Would you experience that situation again if you could? Why or why not?

What a Relief

"I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.”

-- Sylvester Stallone


Today’s Word Count: 269,313 (675 words gone!)

Page Count: 1006 (Okay, so I didn’t make my goal of cutting 1500+ words. See my rationalization at the close of this post)

It’s August 17, 2008, and that means Relief Journal is publishing Volume 2.3. Guess who’s in there?

My short story, “Midrift,” thrice rejected, is now published, official and bound, for real. This stopgap story has given me so much hope. Now I join a long list of authors who made it past the marathon route of rejections to catch their breath with a “yes”! I like author and illustrator Debbie Ohi’s list of hope.

“Midrift” had an inauspicious start back in 2004 when my writing group challenged the first draft. Members asked whether I had the right to write this story. (I’m contemplating writing a “Right to Write” post to explore that controversy.) But I am grateful for their questions because the scrutiny made me edit relentlessly and drew me closer to my character and subject. I decided with the ire of a rejected writer I did have a right to write and must finish it.

Over the next few years the story was rejected by three other literary magazines. Each rejection sent me back to revision before I submitted again.

Then I submitted it to Relief. I received no response. Eight months later, I summoned the courage to try the journal, noting in my cover letter I’d read about a brief glitch in the online submission system and I wanted to make sure my work had been received.

Within two months Relief sent me a “You’re on the short list” e-mail, then a congratulations e-mail four months after that, and then I was editing galleys this past July.

This has been my experience – some time spent shouting into a void, and later, an echo back. Rejections have evolved from form letters to personal encouragements, perhaps because every rejection inspires rewrites and a requisite lapse of time to wrap my head around what the story’s really about.

The first draft of my story “3.0” received this message from editor Linda Swanson-Davies of Glimmer Train:

“Although your work did not make it all the way to the top 25 list, it did make it a long way through the January 08 Family Matters judging (top 5% of about 1,200 submissions!) and was indeed a finalist. It was an excellent read… Thanks again for letting us read your work—we will look forward to more in the future!”


And then there was The Missouri Review’s response to a new draft:

“Though the piece was short, it was still vivid and emotionally resonant. The premise was incredibly fresh -- a granddaughter re-imagining her grandmother's life, and through her contemplations learning about her own life. We'd like to see more from you based on the strengths of this piece. We wish you the best of luck publishing your work and hope you'll consider sending us more in the future.”

Now “3.0” awaits a response from a Writers’ Group of the Triad Sixth Biennal Greensboro Awards contest, and if it doesn’t win there, I’m off to a few other journals, including Zoetrope all-story.

I write these stopgap stories for several reasons, not the least of which is I have no other choice but to tell tales as they come to me. But I see other benefits such as the toughening of my writer’s mettle and the need for relief – read, communication with the outside world to know I’m heard, I’m heard! – whenever the novel and I lose momentum.

And my rationalization for not cutting the 1500+ words? In the latest pages I haven’t stumbled on a scene that feels like a boulder in the road; everything I’m editing now has headlong momentum. That may not be the best reason to leave scenes in, because “headlong” can translate to “hectic” and “frantic” writing when I’m striving for something else. I also have to weigh the fact that I stopped reading Ian McEwan’s Saturday the other day when the story got too steep for me. It took emotional effort to stay with it, not because the writing isn’t brilliant, but because I wasn’t ready. That reaction speaks about me much more than it does McEwan’s story. I need a day or two, and then I’ll continue the climb along with him.

Perhaps rejections and acceptances should be viewed this way: as gifts to the public and the writer who are ready when they’re ready and not before – and not when we think they should be.

Today's Writing Goal: I didn’t meet my last writing goal by 825 words. I’ll cut that by the next tally and continue to strive for greater connectivity among scenes. I’m currently backtracking through the places just edited, linking scenes better and beating the bushes for dead words. They keep tumbling out.

Writing Prompts: Please note that writing prompts should always be pursued in emotionally-safe environments with the supervision of someone who interested in encouraging good writing, self-awareness, and reflection. A wonderful resource is Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and With Others.

© Lyn Hawks. Writing prompts for one-time classroom use only and not for publication in any form elsewhere without permission of this author.

Elementary:

Have you ever tried to be someone’s friend but the person didn’t want to be yours? Have you ever been picked last for a team? Have you ever waited for someone and the person did not arrive? Think about a tough time when you felt rejected. It may hurt to remember it, but sometimes, we have to think about difficult times to understand how to get through them.

Tell the story of what happened, just as you remember. Include what you felt and what was said. Describe the place where it happened.

Now, tell another story. Choose between two options:

Tell the story again. Tell it the way you wish it happened. Share your feelings, what was said, where you were. OR

Tell the story of a time when you rejected someone else. Tell the story of what happened, just as you remember. Include what you felt and what was said. Describe the place where it happened.

Share your story with someone you trust and talk about how to feel better after a time of rejection. If you have rejected someone else, can you do something to make the situation better?
Secondary:

Use the elementary prompt or the following:

There is power in faith. It takes two forms – saying yes and saying no.

I Believe Manifesto

Write a manifesto listing ten things you believe. Do you believe in love with honesty? Do you believe in silent cell phones? Do you believe in organic produce? Whatever you believe, from the sublime to mundane, list it.

Then write the yin to this yang, the I Reject Manifesto. Write a list of ten things you reject.

Let one of the lines from either manifesto inspire the beginning of a piece of writing.