A Nice Love Letter

Tuesday morning I found out my essay, "The Same Sky," has been accepted at The Dos Passos Review and will be published in their Fall 2011 issue.

"Tree" Reviewed at THE NARRATIVE DRIVE

What a treat to come across this today.

Love in the Time of Rejection

For the record, I've had FOUR rejections since December 7th and NO acceptances. Three were for essays and one was for flash fiction.

Here's who I was trying to get a date with:
Edge, a Tahoe publication
The Pedastal, an online magazine
Catholic Digest
Apple Valley Review 

NINE other potential loves still have my number.

I'll just be waiting here by the phone -- oh, and trying to line up other dates.

Ray Bradbury and the Art of Parenting

Since I’m participating in this year’s Write 1 Sub 1 challenge – a writing commitment inspired by Ray Bradbury’s early career goal to write and submit a story every week, and where Write 1 Sub 1 writers write one piece and submit it either every week or every month for a year – I think it’s only fitting to re-visit something I wrote a few years ago, the second time I read Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing.

I think it was 2007, which means Dane and Aubrey were probably 6 and 5.

Here’s what I wrote:

I’m re-reading and re-loving Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing. I love the full sense Bradbury has of himself as a human being (and how he’s had it since birth – he says he remembers being circumcised at four days old!), and I love how this sense of himself as a human being has given him a full sense of himself as a writer.

He learned early on to embrace his passions, which he says he did at age 9 after a month of misery in the aftermath of destroying all of his Buck Rogers collection because his friends had ridiculed him. When he recognized he’d cut off and betrayed a huge part of himself in doing that, he decided those people weren’t his friends – they were actually his enemies – and went back to passionately collecting, daydreaming, and embracing his loves.

That all made me appreciate Ray Bradbury. I appreciate his insights for myself as a writer with lofty goals and an inexplicable desire to write. His words remind me to commit to whatever I want, regardless of the opposition, and to just do it over and over and over again because I love it and want to get better.

That’s obvious, though. I definitely should’ve gotten that from a book on writing.

However, it surprised me to realize that I also appreciate his perspective because I’m a parent.

Acknowledging that we should embrace our passions, regardless of outside opinion, makes me appreciate my children’s loves. Dane loves dinosaurs, Star Wars and Pokemon. He loves drawing them, dreaming about them, talking about them. Aubrey loves princesses, flowers, fairies, and anything pretty.

In the same ways I’m moved to write, my children are moved by their passions.

I think of Dane and his Pokemon fixation – how he’s only seen a movie of them once, but he collects books and sits and draws image after image after image and has a shoe box full of his miniature drawings – and I want him to keep going with those goofy little creatures that half his classmates think are stupid. (The other half loves them. I think Dane’s already decided: live and let live.)

And I think of Aubrey with her back porch fairy notes, weighted with tiny daisies and pebbles, and how she lives for the notes they (I) leave her on a misty night. How she curls her letters and numbers like they do, spending hours on her elbows, writing and clipping and designing, and telling them she likes to think of them feasting under foxgloves.

It’s easy to get annoyed by obsessions, or not respect the time and energy they take from the obsessor. It’s also not bad to introduce kids to new things so they diversity their learning, but there is time to acknowledge a groove, to feed a passion, to relish an obsession. That’s how you gain the role of expert – even if it’s self-appointed.

It's also how you learn to live your life with the confidence to pursue whatever you want.

Ray Bradbury’s book is called Zen in the Art of Writing, but it seems to me he could’ve just as easily called it Zen in the Art of Parenting.

Write 1 Sub 1 - early January progress report

Done:
Okay, I've submitted flash fiction  to The Coachella Review and The Pedastal Magazine.

To Do:
I also have a personal essay I plan to print and snail mail to THEMA, but first I have to add ink to my printer and buy some envelopes. Should happen by early next week.

I've also written a bunch, as resolved, but none of it is turning itself into anything -- no essay, no poem, no short story, no nothin. Yet. I'll probably end up eking something out on the last day of January. That's okay. I'll play the game.

FYI:
I'm still embracing rejections. I'll submit like crazy and collect rejections as if they're love letters.

Let The New Year Begin!

It's sunny, the kids and Mick are up skiing, and I've got my dog at my feet while I catch up on some writing. I'm missing some good snow and family time, sure, but, trust me, I'll make it up in the upcoming Saturdays. Today, though, I needed to be a writer again -- because the last three weeks (maybe three months!) haven't been so much about writing.

Last year, one of my goals was to publish something every month. I'm happy to report that this went swimmingly.  For the first six months. As I wrote and revised and submitted like crazy ("I'll collect rejections like love letters!") I met that goal initially:

January: "Pedaling into a new way of life" was published in The Christian Science Monitor.
February: "A Story of Love and Teeth" was a finalist in a career change essay competition.
March: "Bar After Bar" was flash fiction accepted at Drunken Boat and published in August.
April: "Cop A Feel" was an essay accepted at Mom Egg and Underwired. I let Underwired publish it.
May: "Romancing the Poem" was a poem published at Chronology.
June: "Tree" was a short essay accepted at The Writer's Workshop Review and published in September.

But then summer and ScienceWorks and road trip and a Fall job teaching 9 credits at RCC hit and nothing got published. Nothing! I still submitted, but not so feverishly. Oh, and in September and October I participated in three 48-hour legs of a four-leg Flash Fiction writing contest at NYC Midnight -- productive and fun -- but nothing published from it. (Yet.)

Ultimately I met only half my goal.

But I'm okay with that! I'm excited about what I accomplished and learned.

So this year, I'm newly excited to take on an official challenge with other writers: the Write 1 Sub 1 for 2011 challenge. Similar to last year's goal, where I submitted like crazy, this year I promise to write something once a month and submit every month. Totally do-able.

I'll keep you posted on that.

As for other writing, teaching, parenting, etc., goals I'll keep writing them in my journal and pressing on.

Happy New Year to you. What's your goal?

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Results for Challenge #2

I took third place in my group again! That means my points put me in the top 5 in my group, advancing me to the next round.

I wrote a 999-word short short with the following prompt:
*Romantic Comedy
*a B & B
*a snow shovel
 
There were 20 groups with 22 people in each group; the top 5 in each advance to form new groups now.

Tonight at midnight (well, 9pm here) I get my third prompt.

Click here to see my group's results. At that link, you'll have access to all groups and prompts and scores.

I have to admit, I'm so curious to see what it'll be like to participate in this contest when I have to write in another genre. (I've had comedy twice.) Who knows where my brain will go with Sci-Fi or Horror or Drama.

I just hope it goes somewhere!

A Second-Guesser Gets Philosophical

I keep thinking about the 987-word submission I made to the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge on Sunday.

I keep thinking of it because that's what writers do: a) they obsess about stuff they've sent out, and b) they second-guess the quality of what they sent out.

That said, I re-read my piece this morning and, honestly, I highly, highly doubt that it sustains itself well enough to be considered a "Comedy."

I also doubt that my one-line synopsis does anything very tantalizing.

This is where I get philosophical, though:

*In order to figure out what works, you have to be willing to do some stuff that doesn't work.

And

*You have to be willing to see what you did get out of the work you completed (or drafted).

In my case, I now have a better sense of some elements of comedy: exaggeration, deception, misunderstanding, contrast... very few of which I successfully used.

I also wrote an entire story (which might belong in another genre!) that I can now revise, polish and possibly submit somewhere. At the rate I'm writing this summer, I wouldn't have had that at all otherwise.

Final lesson?

*Play and Learn.

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition

Genre: A comedy.
Location: A dance club.
Object: A motorcycle.

Twenty-one other writers in my group had the same assignment: to write a story 1,000 words or less using the above guidelines.

There were nineteen other groups,about 450 writers total, each group with a different assignment. Genres ranged from Sci-Fi to Political Satire to Romance to Fantasy to Horror, etc. Locations and Objects ranged from a bakery and a ladder, to a well and a baby carriage, to a typing class and an eyedropper, etc.

We all had exactly 48 hours to write and complete our short stories. This was Round Number 1.

Stories will now be judged and given points within their groups. See How It Works for details.

I have no idea how my story will be judged. It's a little scary to claim you're being funny; there's always the chance you'll flop. And as for plot, characterization, and setting: let's just hope I at least showed up for the right assignment!

I can't post my story here, but if it goes live on their website, I'll provide the link. For now, I'll tell you the title and synopsis I submitted:

"Still Wet" - An unpopular local earns a new reputation.

Oh boy...

P.S. In writing this story, I re-discovered the infinite number of ways there are to write a terrible, no-good, lame-o story.

But it's really fun to write for an audience with an assignment and a deadline. And it's going to be exciting to be given feedback from judges, as well as to read all the other entries. Play and learn.

P.P.S. Leave a comment and tell me: What would you have done with my prompt?

Uh-Oh on the July Goal - Another Love Letter

The Nashville Review just kindly rejected "Write in the Attic," a short-short I submitted back in May. Now I have nine other submissions out there, including a few I have to admit may have been forgotten by their recipients, but I'm hoping one of them is accepted to help me meet my monthly publishing goal. (So far, I'm six for six as of June...)

I've still got another week to go to get creative with the July aim. I'll keep you posted.

In other news, I spent the morning uploading 215 photos. I'm looking forward to providing an update or two about Mimi's visit, back yard progress, a writing shed, the M's game, and general summertime bliss.

The Lame, The Lazy and the Lovely

Alright, I'll start with the lame:

Two love letters this week. One from Skirt! rejecting an essay I wrote for their F-Word issue (Feminist/Fashionista/etc.) about facial hair, and another from Brevity, rejecting "Write in the Attic," a short nonfiction piece I hoped they'd love.

For the record, my work has been rejected by both of these publications on more than one occasion. I'll keep submitting to them, though -- maybe someday I'll get it right. I'll also keep submitting those pieces to other publications, because I think they're really good, and maybe someone else might think I got it right.

On to the lazy:

This one's mortifying: I submitted a flash fiction piece to SmokeLong Quarterly this morning - and I forgot I'd taken out a word to replace it with something amazing later! So yes, I didn't proofread well enough - until after I sent it - to put the amazing word in! Yeah, I'm mortified. I'll be expecting an immediate rejection from SmokeLong - and won't be submitting to that mag for a while. (They limit one submission per quarter, I think.)

Time for the lovely:

I finally got the hard copy of (and payment for!) my essay in Underwired's April issue - and it's gorgeous. The layout, the ads, the font -- it's all spectacular and I'm so happy about that publication. I'm going to frame the cover for my home.

And a final note:

I read recently that I should have at least a dozen, if not two dozen, items "out there," submitted at any given time. I'm sitting at seven out there right now, so my goal today is to submit to another four (woops, five, bad math) publications by afternoon.

Then I have to squeeze in house cleaning, grocery shopping, and caring for a little guy at home (for the third day in a row!) who in all likelihood has Fifth Disease, which has been running rampant through our school. (This sounds scarier than it is. Look up Fifth Disease here.)

Sun Letter

The Sun rejected a poem I sent them. It's my third rejection from them in ten years. That's okay, it's just a love letter. And besides, I'll never forget how wonderful it felt the one time they accepted something - so I'll keep flirting.

Book Sense: A Conversation with Dane

Dane: Mom, how's your book coming along?

Me: Uh, super slow. I think I want to give up on it. It's going nowhere.

Dane: I know a book you could write that would be easy!

Me: Really? [raise eyebrow] What?

Dane: Just write a Dictionary!

Word.

UPDATE ON THE 2010 WRITING GOALS

Nine submissions -- for four essays and two poems -- are floating around cyberspace or drifting through snail mail as I write this. Nine!

It's April, and so far I've achieved my writing goal of one publication or acceptance per month for the year, and now I'm coming up on May.

May could be the month of love letters... or love letters. Who knows which will be which? I'll keep you posted.

In other news, Drunken Boat emailed me that the galleys will soon be ready for their issue that will include"Bar After Bar." Needless to say, I look forward to that!

*P.S. I'm home with Dane today. He's got symptoms similar to what Aubrey had last week. He's reading The Lightning Thief and will later watch a Discovery Channel video on dragons; I'm reading segmented/collage essays so I can try to give form to an essay topic I've been thinking about for years...