Because seven is a cooler number than eight.

Some people would have you believe there are no new stories to tell. Christopher Booker would have you believe there are only seven plots in all of existence (though he does allow for subplots under his comedy and tragedy headings, because (I can only assume) most people with a brain could tell you that “tragedy” is not, in and of itself, a plot). I admit I’ve never read his book, and I know better than to let TV Tropes suck me in while I’m trying to get anything done, so I’ll take a stab at those seven plots and say they’re something like this: Lord of the Rings, Oedipus (marrying your mom—is that comedy or tragedy?), Cinderella, Twilight (though I’ve never read it), Star Wars, Inception, and To the Lighthouse, though I still can’t tell you what happened in Inception, and something tells me Booker hasn’t read much Woolf if he thinks her plots would fall under a heading such as “The Monster.”

In grad school, we sometimes talked about someone (and, forgive me, I forget who, because I was almost completely uninterested in simplifying plot this far) who had said there were two: someone comes to town, someone leaves town (or, perhaps I’m mis-remembering because I just looked at Cory Doctorow’s page on Wikipedia; have you tried the random article feature? It’s as much of a time sink as TV Tropes).

Myself, I’m not sold on either of these ideas, though I do suppose that, if you want to paint with large brushstrokes, you could go so far as to say there’s only one plot: some things (or one thing) happen to some people (or one person). But that’s not really true either, because I recommend rejection regularly in the slush reading I do, and often on the grounds that there’s no plot.

This piece is anecdotal, I sometimes say, and after typing that yesterday in my notes, I wondered what I actually meant by it. What is an anecdote versus a story? Like pornography, I assume I know, but perhaps there’s taste involved, too. Like—I’m uninterested in reading fifteen pages of description of painting a mural, and so I will contend that nothing actually happened in your story; or—your character lost a limb in this story and I’m still not moved to any sort of emotional response, not even at the basest level of “well that was gross.” (Don’t even get me started on the turkey baster story.)

Perhaps plot is, as a term, ineffective. Plot good, anecdote bad. Plot interesting, no plot boring. This morning, I went to the doctor and they wanted to stick me with a needle. I said no. My car door wouldn’t shut in the parking lot, but then it did. I didn’t crash on the way home. Which of the seven plots is that? Is that someone comes to town or someone leaves town, considering I did both?

There’s a discussion begging to be had here in terms of the writer. There are certain writers about whom I could honestly say that I wouldn’t mind reading fifteen pages of painting description, because the description would really be a lightweight veil over something deeper and possibly sinister. But I’m feeling lazy this morning; I’d rather giggle as I struggle to fit all my books into one of those seven containers. And when it gets hard, I’ll just take the easy way out. I’ll say “things happen to people in this book.” Then I’ll go eat lunch.

Some people are one-book-at-a-time readers. It’s one and done for them, one and done. I don’t understand these people.

I like books to fit my mood. I like having books for all the many occasions that might arise. For instance, if I were to take a trip tomorrow, do I have a book that would (1) pack easily, (2) not earn me strange stares in public, and (3) engross me enough so that I don’t get bored in the backseat of the car, in the airport terminal. Then, there’s the book I read over meals or in the bathtub. This book is almost always a reread, something I can pick up and put down at a moment’s notice, something I could do without if I dropped it in the water and had to wait a few days to but a new copy. (True story: I dropped a first edition in the bathtub the other day; this was actually a poor bathtub choice.) Finally, there’s the book I think will impress my colleagues or my peers. Preferably, this book is also somewhat unknown so that I can recommend it to everyone I meet and it will be a new discovery for them.

This all may or may not be related to the fact that I am a huge fan of rereading books. I have certain books that I return to year after year, waiting for January 1 to come along so that I can get credit for it again on my yearly reading spreadsheet. I love rereading because I discover so much more on subsequent reads, and sometimes this discovery continues through six or seven reads. It’s not just “dense” books, either, those of so-called literary merit. Recently I noticed something about how JK Rowling handles foreshadowing, and I’ve probably read those books a dozen times.

Some people claim to be bored on rereads. They don’t like having the suspense removed by knowing what’s going to happen. But for me, if I wait a year or two between reads, I often can’t remember anything but vague impressions of the book. Even in grad school, I had to take notes on the books we read in class, because I’d forget it so fast and I didn’t want to be suspected of not doing my homework—and we only had a week to read those books. Of course, that meant I read them fast, and each night before bed I’d put down the school book and pick up something for pure pleasure, even if for only five minutes. So I suppose that could be it. Or, it could be that I just like the idea of opportunity costs factoring into my reading time and so try to pretend they don’t exist.

Now, if you’ll go excuse me, I’m going to go read one chapter each of those main six books I’m working on. I’d hate to lost track of what’s happening.

Three days ago, I finally started reading it.

I’m not very far yet—only through the first duo of introductions and stories, but this is largely because I spend most of my time with this book flipping through it. I glance through the introductions, looking for connections and observations, but then, when I start to read—really read—I let the book fall, let the pages close. Anthologies can be explored in any order, of course, but for this first read, I want to experience it in the way the editors thought best.

I met with a fellow faculty member yesterday to discuss a freelance writing course we may end up teaching together this summer, and our discussion eventually turned to the idea of mentorship. We talked about our experiences in our MFA programs (and before, in undergrad), talked about the ways the faculty helped us over stumbling blocks, the ways they saw and encouraged our strengths. We talked about times we hadn’t been challenged enough.

Good writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, though sometimes I think new writers think it does. I poll my first-year writing classes on the first day of class, asking them what they think makes a good writer, and without fail, no one mentions writing for audience or revision or seeking out help when you need it. Most of my students balk when I have them workshop their pieces in groups, wondering out loud whether it can really help to have a peer look the piece over.

Peer-to-peer relationships are different than the ones explored in Of a Monstrous Child, but they are important just the same. To have similar moments of uncertainty, to still be learning the same lessons, to still need help with the same things. But the further I go in my writing career—and the further I read in this book—the more I realize that how I’ve thought of my various writing relationships isn’t exactly true. I have mentors and I have peer readers, but I’m coming to see that the difference between the two types is simply time and credentials. It’s the attitude I approach the person with: looking for answer or looking for conversation, though I usually end up with the latter from both parties.

Over the summer, I posted here about the doubts I was gathering to myself after getting a particularly difficult rejection. I had been overconfident in the piece I sent out, to the point where even the kind personalized rejection hit me hard. I wondered if I was really good enough to keep writing or if I was just wasting my time. I was struggling without the structure of graduate school, without regular workshops or thesis meetings, without being able to sit down, face-to-face, with fellow writers and have a discussion about any and everything writing.

The editor, Roxane Gay, saw my post and offered to help me with revisions on the piece. She sent me a detailed email of the problems in the story as well as a marked up version of the story itself. It was exactly what I needed—not just the kindness and assistance, but the faith, the gesture of someone essentially saying that, yes, I could still do this.

I spent months on the edits, not only applying them to the piece in question, but also to my other work. I began to see the own moments of trouble in my stories, and also how to fix them. I didn’t always get it right, but for the first time since leaving my MFA program, I felt my writing progressing again. Then, on Friday, the piece was accepted for publication.

The people who have taught me over the years have left me with more than improvements to my own writing. Each semester I step into the classroom with my own group of writers to teach, and I look back at the ways I have been helped, at the things that did and didn’t work for me, at the challenges I faced and the critique I received, and it helps me become a better mentor in turn.

* Though I will use the term “mentor” throughout this post, I find it somewhat problematic. It implies a hierarchy that I’m no longer sure exists. I find that I learn from all writing and from all writers, be they better or worse than me (two other very problematic terms). Reading slush, for instance, often teaches me what I should avoid in my writing, just as reading work I admire offers me techniques to try. “Mentor” seems to me more of a one-way street of knowledge, but I’ve had peers give me fantastic feedback/ideas/advice and had mentor-like figures offer knowledge I rejected.

Probably my favorite book read this past year, though it's always hard to choose.

Here’s a quick recap of the book I read this past year, and those that I’m looking forward to reading this year. Only new reads listed (I’m a big rereader).

Top five favorite books of 2011 (in no particular order):

• Room, by Emma Donoghue
• My Happy Life, by Lydia Millet
• Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff
• Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
• You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon

Five most disappointing books of the year (not necessarily ones I disliked but rather ones that I expected more from)

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender (loved it, but the ending disappointed)
• People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (great premise, but short on character development)
• Cathedral, by Raymond Carter (I struggled to get through this one, honestly)
• The Next Queen of Heaven, by Gregory Maguire (just not that much to say about it, and overly quirky)
• Inheritance, by Christopher Paolini (too much introduced, not dealt with, cliched characters and situations, etc.)

Top books in each genre:

Literary Fiction: Room, by Emma Donoghue; My Happy Life, by Lydia Millet; Q Road, by Bonnie Jo Campbell; Suicide, by Edouard Leve
Poetry: Awake, by Dorianne Laux
Story Collection: You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon; How They Were Found, by Matt Bell
Nonfiction: Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff; Road Song, by Natalie Kusz
Young Adult Fiction: Speak and Wintergirls, both by Laurie Halse Anderson, the Gallagher Girls series, by Ally Carter
Middle Grade Fiction: Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow, by Nathan Bransford
Adult Fantasy: The Alloy of Law, by Brandon Sanderson

As I always seem to buy more books than I can read, I’ve already got quite a few to-reads on my 2012 list. Here are a few of those: The Mockingbirds, Before I Fall, Slammerkin, A People’s History of the United States, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, Of a Monstrous Child, 1Q84.

What were your favorite reads of 2011? What are you looking forward to reading in 2012?

I’ve painted it twice, though both times I was more of an accessory to the painting rather than the painter itself: once as part of a soccer team and once as a member of the marching band.

It’s rare for the same message to be left on The Rock two days running, and it’s become something of a campus tradition. Painting The Rock always makes the unofficial lists of the things you should do while at MSU, and there’s never a shortage of people willing to go, buy spray paint, then cover the rock with a new set of paint. (As an aside, there’s so much paint on that rock that no one knows how big it actually is.)

I teach a freshman writing course at MSU now, and I’ve focused my course on new media. I’m trying to get my students to understand that all forms of communication are valid and valuable, that Facebook posts and text messages should be just as thought out as formal texts, that it all matters. My students came in the first day not understanding themselves as creators of texts—that was what I did, what other writers did—and as they leave my class this week, this is the one lesson I want them to remember the most. It all counts.

Every few weeks, it seems, there’s another story in the news about some celebrity saying something stupid/offensive/hurtful/etc. on Twitter. Then there are apologies, the offending tweet is deleted and, quite often, said celebrity announces he or she is taking a break from Twitter. It’s as if they think Twitter caused their outbursts. Think, I tell my students. Think before you post something, because it does leave a mark.

For policing my own imprint on the social media world, I use something I call the Parents Test. Even on password protected sites like Facebook, I won’t post anything if it’s something I would be embarrassed for my mom or dad to see. They might not like it, but I’d be okay with them seeing it. With this rule, I’ve never deleted any Facebook or Twitter post, save for the occasional duplicate post and embarrassing grammar mistakes.

Leaving a mark is a goal I think most writers share. I’ve never liked the adage that we write because we have to, because we have stories inside that are just shouting to get out. No, we choose to write, and for me, at least, I want to leave a mark. But we aren’t the only ones. The students on MSU’s campus want to be heard, and I know they aren’t the only ones. A rock on the side of the road may not be the best medium for leaving that mark, but the tradition is preserved, passed on to each new group of students. Twitter and Facebook exist not so much because we care about the people but because we want to be heard. Telling your eight hundred online friends about the slightly runny scrambled eggs you had for breakfast persists not because we think people actually care but rather because we have something to say. Some people just aren’t sure how to say it yet, how to say something that will leave a true mark.

Back in July, my 3.5 year old Xbox died. Not wanting to shell out the money for a new one, I did what any normal person would do: I called customer support. I suppose we could label this mistake number one, though perhaps that was buying the Xbox in the first place.

“We’ll fix it for free,” they say. I double check. “Even though it’s out of warranty?” The guy practically interrupts me to assure that yes, it will be free. Well, except, of course, the money I have to spend for a box and packaging. (Hey, Microsoft, you should talk to Apple sometime about how they handle such situations. They send ME the box.)

Time passes, I’m finally contacted to ask, in more polite language than I’m using here, why the hell I’m trying to scam them by sending them an Xbox that isn’t in warranty. Oh, and that’ll be $150 they tell me.

Long story short (because trust me, you don’t want the long story), I’m out of luck. I have to buy a new one, which doesn’t work out of the box. So I haven’t to exchange it. The Xbox-approved method of transferring my saved games doesn’t work, I lose a ton of stuff (“We can’t imagine why that happened.”) and eight hours of my time (non-official support sites to the rescue!). By this point, I’m pretty pissed. I think I might have used the word damn once or twice. For me, that’s serious stuff.

You see, I used to work that job. Well, not at Xbox, but customer service. I spent a year in college answering phone calls at one of those companies that sell magazines. We had men calling in asking women representatives to read them the descriptions of smut magazines, and, once, the man asked my coworker to reread them all because he was “almost done.” My bad experience, while slightly less dirty, was certainly much more angry.

There were no supervisors in that day, and a woman called, understandably upset that her 12-year-old son had received his first issue of Playboy in the mail that day (he had ordered through mail and checked the box saying he was 18—which, if you think about it (or even perhaps if you don’t), is a really stupid way to handle the legal issue here). I told her that I would cancel the subscription, that she wouldn’t be charged, but that it might take six to eight weeks for the subscription to stop, because Playboy already had the mailing labels printed up, and we all know what a waste it would be if those went to, well, waste.

I’ve never been called so many names as I was that day. After I finally got off the phone, I went into the breakroom and cried for a full fifteen-minute break. I had done everything I could, and I had made no mistakes along the way. I’ve always remembered this, and I’ve always used this memory to keep me in check when calling customer service myself.

But today I lost it. I was accused of being ignorant (some of those “did you plug it in” type questions) and of being a liar (“I assure you our representative did not say that”). “When did customer service,” I asked, “become more about the company than the customer?”

It all comes back to money of course. I know this. I was reminded of this fact very sharply only yesterday when the BCS picked Michigan for a BCS bowl game. Money, money, with people falling somewhere beneath that. But until we stop with this us vs. them attitude, we won’t be going far. I kept slipping into yelling at the supervisor on the phone tonight when my anger is in fact directed at his company, and once he became sick of me, he lost any desire to help me. It was me versus him, and Microsoft won. Maybe that’s what customer service is really all about.

So naming things is good. But on the other hand, I think it can sometimes be problematic, if not simply bad.

A few days ago, I met a writer friend of mine in a coffee shop near campus. We had decided to dodge the stress of Black Friday by writing together instead. Only, we didn’t end up doing much writing. It was so nice to be able to talk writing with someone else, that was all we ended up doing. It came out that he, like me, has a soft spot for genre writing—or for certain genres anyway—and has been given grief over the years for such a leaning. We both talked about writing classes where we weren’t allowed to write genre, and we talked about what that means.

You see, we distinguish different types of writing because bookstores like us to do so. But so many pieces don’t fit squarely into one genre or another. I think most writers agree that you can have literary work with genre elements (say, elements of magical realism, which is itself a problematic label to some), but less often do we recognize genre work with literary elements, which is what my friend feels like he is writing.

I guess I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Matt Bell posted about it on Facebook the other day, too, wondering how we can apply the label of literary fiction to his work as well as to novels like The Help. The label here does us a disservice; it doesn’t actually tell us anything about a writer’s skills or a readers preferences.

My friend and I tried to define literary work, tossing parts of definitions back and forth for a few minutes before remembering that it’s a pointless discussion to have. “Character focused” some might say, but I’ve read genre work that focused on character development just as much as plot. It doesn’t help, not even to say that, like pornography, you know it when you see it, because, as Matt Bell pointed out, it depends on who is doing the looking.

What I miss about high school was, in many ways, the structure. Wake up, school, extra-curriculars, homework, bed—repeat for a total of five times. There were things we could do then that many of us have since lost: musical groups, sports practices, etc. For me, these things were band and, to a much larger extent, soccer. Our improvement in these activities was structured: time was scheduled for improvement. Now, we have to find that time ourselves, and we have become our own conductors and coaches.

What I don’t miss—what I think many people don’t miss—is the various personal and social aspects contained in the pre-college years. I don’t miss the social groups (though I found that they are just as present in college, and even graduate school, which makes me think we’ll never truly escape high school—or middle school). I don’t miss pressure put on you to be a certain something in others’ eyes, be it your friends or your classmates or your teachers or your friends or or or…

But back to the reunion. I decided a while back that I’m going. Mostly because I’m a writer, and I figure it will give me some good material.

I was glad to go to college and sort of set out on my own. I’d had a falling out with my group of friends about a year prior and was ready to leave the tiny (though I didn’t see it that way at the time) community that was Haslett, MI. But then, something strange happened: whenever I did run into people from my high school, they greeted me with more enthusiasm and more friendliness than they ever had when we had been actual classmates.

Someone told me this morning she thinks it is because of the bond of history, and I suppose it could be, but history to me has never been enough to forge a true connection. It’s why I don’t get all patriotic and join in the USA cheers that you hear so often these days at sporting events. I don’t mourn the loss of people I never knew, or of those who treated me with disrespect or disdain. And yet, something in the reunion tradition we have in our country (do they do this worldwide?) seems to suggest that I should, seems to say that our high school years were our glory years.

There are a lot of traditions in our time, in our culture, that I don’t understand and yet still participate in. The meanings behind many of our holidays are lost on me—not from ignorance but from difference of opinion—yet I still participate. I’m not always sure why. Perhaps much of stems from the comfort that can be found in repetition, or perhaps it’s because I’m more of a lemming than I like to think, but I’ll be going to my reunion. I’ll wait until the last possible minute to sign up, pretending indecision, but I’ll go. I’ll say I don’t want to go, and I’ll say it probably dozens of times, but I’ll go anyway. And I’ll come home that night in August and shrug and list all the things I could have done with that time instead, all while knowing I wouldn’t have made any other choice.

And then the entire process will start all over before the next reunion.

First, I think it should be mentioned that superstition and ritual are two very different things. It’s one thing to write at 6:30 every morning after having two pieces of toast (with grape jelly, of course), and something else entirely to, say, believe that your book will never sell if one of the chapters has 13 pages. In the first, I’m thinking that if said writer didn’t start writing until 7:15 one morning, all would still be right with the world (or if the grape jelly ran out and all that was left was strawberry preserves). In the second, I’m thinking that the odds are, in fact, against you even if your book has 12-page chapters, because hey, the number of people writing books far outweighs the number of those selling books.

Personally, I don’t have any writing-type quirks, either of the superstitious or ritual variety. I found that ritual kills my writing by giving me an excuse to say, “It’s 6:31, I guess that means I have to skip my writing today.” And superstition…well, I have enough other things to worry about. But I still think this merits an unofficial and highly unscientific Bark poll. Please click through and answer a quick four questions or leave your answers in the comments below. I’ll check in with the answers next week!

Okay. I’ll be honest for a second. There’s another reason I wasn’t sure I wanted to go: I think of myself as more advanced than these other writers. I’ve got an MFA, I’m published, and I’m well networked in the literary world. I’m presenting at AWP, for heaven’s sake!

I’m a little ashamed to admit these feelings—especially since I blog regularly about making the writing world more inclusive, about not turning one’s nose up at non-literary work. These two thoughts don’t really go together.

So yesterday I ordered myself a hot chocolate and took a seat at one of the tables, surrounded by other people who have writerly ambitions, and at first I just listened. One woman at the table said she has written a novel a year since she started NaNo—getting down the main bulk of words in November and then spending the rest of the year revising and rewriting. A man a few seats down from me had his idea all worked out—and he had pages and pages of a printed outline to prove it. Another woman shared her idea for a book and all I could think of was how her quick summary sounded like something I’d want to read.

And as we talked, I noticed one idea came up over and over again: It took people until late in their lives to realize that writing could be something legitimate.

This happened to me, too. I started college as a natural science major, switched to chemical engineering (my life’s ambition at that point was to design ice cream flavors), and then to microbiology. It was during my chemical engineering years that I first started with NaNo. I hated my homework so much that I wrote instead. Sure that first year I quit my month-long writing adventure after a week, but I finished the next year, and the year after—that third time actually with a series of events that resembled a plot. I spent so much of my time writing (the rest of the year I wrote role plays; I know, I was (am) a dork). But it never occurred to me that writing was something I could really do.

Obviously, I got there in the end, but as I sat at that table yesterday and listened to those around me, I couldn’t help but wonder where all those other people would be if they’d learned the same lesson earlier in their lives. Sure, probably most people still would be computer programmers, and housewives, and retail clerks, and nurses, but maybe not all.

I’ve always believed that, to a certain extent, writing can be taught. With enough practice, anyone can improve, and continue improving. It’s why I still love National Novel Writing Month even while knowing I would never use it to work on a project I’m serious about (so no, I’m not using it to finish my thesis manuscript). It’s why I teach writing, and revision. Heck, it’s why I went to grad school in the first place (and goodness did I learn a lot; for instance, before grad school, I hadn’t read a short story since high school).

In some ways I do feel better and than the other people I met yesterday, but I suppose that doesn’t mean I am—or will be—more successful. Or even that I deserve to be. Odds are good that I won’t hit 50k words this year. Odds are that at least some of them will. Odds are, if this were some real competition with stories being judged, that whatever I do turn out won’t be the tightest story, won’t have the best developed characters*. When midnight comes tonight, we’ll all be the same, staring at our blinking cursor on the page, wondering what comes next.

*Further proving my lack of dominance, I had to edit this post a minute after publishing it to fix some serious tense issues in the fourth paragraph.