In my training this week we’ve been talking about using workshops in our first-year writing courses. It’s old news, I suppose, that some people find the workshop to not be all that helpful, but I’ve always liked them. Well, perhaps not always, but definitely ever since I stopped thinking that the real purpose of a workshop is to make a better piece of writing. To me, good workshops should be teaching evaluation skills and preferences. A writer whose work is not up for evaluation should be getting pretty much the same amount of useful material from the workshop as should the writer being workshopped. Because, really, it’s not about your piece so much as it is about your (or our) tendencies.

Today we sat in on a presentation for a piece of online workshop software. You submit your work online and your professor or teacher assigns your piece to some (or all) of the class. Then the evaluators look at the piece of writing and critique it. But what makes this software different from an in-person workshop is the fact that the professor can set criteria. For instance, if your class were workshopping resumes, the professor might include check boxes asking if the writer had included contact information, if the jobs were presented in an appropriate order, etc. Then, the software runs some equations and shows the professor some stats that can reflect some information about the class as a whole. So if only 63% of your class has an obvious thesis statement in your five-paragraph essay assignment (we don’t still assign those, do we?), you know you might need to review. Read more »

The first question I ever asked the readers of Bark was in reference to lying and most specifically about what it means when a Confessional Poet lies in his/her poetry. It’s been several months since that first post and I’ve made considerable progress. Now I lie all the time. I make up people and I add in emotions and I’ve become a damn magician about creating a mood. Well good, my degree has been helpful already, I can lie like a rug.  And then a few weeks ago Leyna asked “Where do your ideas come from?” and I’ve been thinking about it ever since because the simple answer for me is that my poems are still true happenings in my life as well as the lives of my family and friends. It seems my narcissistic tendencies haven’t been cured.

Nowadays, poems come up like burps for me. Sure I ate that meal hours (or years) ago but I burp and taste  it all again. This summer’s writing has been pretty slim but what has been captured  are reflections on things that happened up to  five years ago. Five years ago, I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer but I knew something else. I knew I wanted wisdom the kind that came from experience and not good experience but the tragic shit like alcohol or drug use, but I didn’t have the balls to harm myself physically. Instead I understood my own ability to bounce back from emotional damage, to be hurting and laughing at the same time, to puke and rally. Read more »

This past week, I was offered and accepted a position teaching writing at Michigan State University. So obviously I’ve spent the past four days looking at syllabi and reading the course textbook. But mostly I’ve been thinking: what did my writing teachers do to both give me knowledge and inspire passion? What projects was I assigned that I enjoyed doing?

In tenth grade, our first assignment was to write a sort of writer’s autobiography, to assess our strengths and weaknesses as writers. Like an idiot, I included a line that basically said I was awesome. My teacher wrote one word next to my claim: “Really?” That was the first time I really realized that I had a lot to learn, because it was the first time my writing knowledge had been challenged. I still react this way, and now make sure that my readers don’t sugar coat their feedback. I just want it straight; my feelings are less important.

During my sixth year of college, I took a graduate-level English class at the invitation of the professor. Our final project was to create a graduate-level project on one of our books. That was pretty much our assignment. My professor, who knew I was applying to MFA programs, encouraged me to use my creative writing skills in the paper, and I ended up writing a creative research paper where I mimicked Carole Maso’s Ava, a lyric novel that plays with truth, has an unreliable narrator, and no paragraphs. (This is probably the reason I really enjoyed writing the imitation pieces in grad school—I got to play.)

I always loved these hybrid assignments, and I’ve been brainstorming ways to introduce them in my own class. How does social media relate to communication? How is truth malleable? How can creative writing enter the research-writing classroom? How can I introduce writing assignments that get the students to respond as if to a community of peers, from a real desire to contribute to the dialogue, rather than simply because they want to pass the class?

Strangely, looking back at the first of my two examples here (or perhaps because of it), the assignment I’ve probably responded the most negatively to over the years has been that of the writer’s autobiography. It has always felt pretentious to me, because it feels so limiting, as if I’m supposed to make an inventory of what I’ve done and what I’ve learned up to this point but which leaves no room for the fact that I don’t think I know much definitively, because the day I stop learning through my writing is probably the day I stop writing altogether.

So what assignments/teaching styles did you respond to? What did you appreciate in your various writing class, and what made you go crazy? Help a new professor out.

I recently started reading for another literary journal. I found a journal I respected, contacted the editor, and was welcomed in to the fold as a level two reader. Now, I’ve only been at this for a month now, but I’ve already seen a piece that I saw while at Willow Springs.

I said no to the piece while at Willow Spring (and it was, obviously, ultimately rejected), and when it popped up in my reading box again, I did add a note saying that I probably wasn’t the best reader since I’d seen it, and rejected it, before. However, what struck me about the piece was that, in the two-ish years since I’d seen it the first time, it was the same. If revisions had been done, they’d been superficial line-level edits.

On the one hand, this bothered me—though of course the writer had absolutely no way of knowing that the same person would look at it at two different journals, so this is perhaps a bit unfair. On the other hand, I have to sort of admire the writer’s faith in the piece, the determination to get it published as is, the belief this writer has in the piece.

That’s not me. I’m the writer who starts revisions after three-ish rejections, which is probably a bit silly, because every successful writer has experienced rejection. But me, I’m still not confident enough in my writing (mainly, my plotting) to keep pushing the same stories. Maybe it’s the time, the distance from the story that helps me, because when I look at it months later, I do see problems.

Maybe this is the mark of me as a novice reviser (I’m getting better!), but my semi-professional opinion as an editor was that this writer’s submission needed to be revised. I apparently need to spend less time worrying about revisions, and this writer needs to spend a bit more. And I know there’s no magic number, but you tell me: How do you know when it’s time to pull a piece from submissions and take it back to the revision stage?

I un-ironically adored this song in high school, which, not coincidentally, is when I spent a majority of my down-time ruminating on what “growing up” really meant, among other sophomoric philosophical pursuits.  Now, I enjoy Blink-182 ironically, but, although I was love-sick like a little teenage puppy recently, this post isn’t about emo-rejection popularized in such pop tunes; but rather, as I begin my third decade of life, I’d like to consider how I’ve developed an ability to better function in a male friendship by admitting and expressing my feelings.  This shouldn’t be such a big deal, but it is.  Why?

In my lifetime, a masculine American male has always had trouble showing affection for his fellow man.  Witness the hand-slap, fist-bump, pound it, man-hug–all designed to minimize body-contact between two men who care for each other.

I was no different.  And saying “I love you” to someone beside my mom, dad (only when he had terminal cancer), and girlfriend was not even a possibility.

Same-sex phone conversations seemed suspect.  ”Are you sure everything is okay?” my close high school friend once said after a few minutes of mildly awkward conversation.  I’d called J.P. at his expensive east coast liberal arts school from my expensive mid-west liberal arts school, with no agenda other than catching up.  ”Just wondering why you called,” he said later in the call, clearly confused. We had a good talk, but didn’t call each other “just to talk” for many years after. Read more »

Aren’t the many  ”On Somethings,” the most pretentious and least creative of non-fiction titles?  No matter.

I recently experienced romantic rejection.  No big drama: just a girl I liked, and been friends with for a while, and we went on dates and things seemed great, but then she dropped the, “I just see you as a friend,” bomb, and I was momentarily traumatized.

But it got me thinking, tongue firmly planted in cheek, on the similiarties between literary and romantic rejection.  And since there have not been nearly. Enough. Posts. On rejection. On this. blog yet. And in all seriousness, most are quite good.  Here are my top 5 ways romantic and literary rejection are similar:

1.  You have to expect to be rejected.  You’re not going on any dates unless you have the stones to get a girl’s number and send an innocent little text message, which will hopefully turn into electronic flirtation, and finally a real date with actual talking and such.  Needless to say, literary magazines are not going to type your email address into the send field and ask for a story of yours that they’d like to publish. Read more »

Last week, I got a rejection.

This isn’t anything all that exciting. It happens from time to time. In fact, I have yet to have my fiction published. I’ve gotten some personal rejections, even a request that I resubmit, but nothing.

I know this is how it goes. I worked on the other side of it, after all. I know that stories can be good, can hold interest, but just not quite have enough of that unnamed quality that tips the scale from good to published.

But, all the same, I had a type of breakdown. I had felt so confident about this piece; I was sure it was ready to go. Except they told me there wasn’t anything at stake in the story. (!)

I moped around at work (though, strictly speaking, that probably doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the rejection). I complained like nobody’s business. I’m sure I drove my family crazy with my “I suck” talk. Then I drank half a bottle of wine, and I forced myself to sit back down at the computer. Then I allowed myself to take a few days off, despite my goal to write 6 days each week. When I did finally start writing again, I didn’t touch the story that had so twisted my writing self esteem. Read more »

Back in 2006, I started setting reading goals for myself. I was a year into my new major (professional writing after time as a natural science major, a chemical engineering major, then a microbiology major) and looking for ways to get my creative mind back on track. That year, I set myself a goal of 50 books and 15,000 pages. I met both goals, and I’ve been doing it every since (tweaking the numbers every year of course). But lately I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t do more. Not particularly for any big reason—mostly because I like making lists and checking off goals (hence my Day Zero project, then my 100 Days of Writing experiment).

I started looking for other challenges, to see if any sounded appealing. What I found (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), is that my particular brand of goal-setting neuroses is nothing compared to some people. There’s a book a day challenge (seriously, people have done this), a challenge to read books you “should have read in high school,” a challenge to read a book by authors whose names begin with each letter of the alphabet, and tons of others (Goodreads has a whole section for this). Then there are the writing goals: NaNoWriMo (and its many offshoots), the Inkygirl word count challenge, and the entire #writegoal group on Twitter.

Some of it seems a bit much to me (though I suppose I’m not really one to talk), but I’m also interested in the idea of having goals to push you along. Especially when those goals are of such a nature that you are responsible to no one but yourself for completing them (or not completing them, or lying about completing them, etc.). Does anyone else use goals for motivation and/or accountability? Does setting a goal affect your outcome? I know for me I’d read just as much without my Excel spreadsheet tracking every book, but the Day Zero and 100 Days of Writing stuff I did (am doing) really helped to amp up my productivity—something I believe I was fully capable of without the pre-set challenge, but that helped make it more fun in the meantime.

Yesterday, while in the car on my way to my grandparents’ for Mother’s Day, as my mother and I were driving by old farmhouses, family-owned grocery stores, and rundown old buildings, I got to thinking about place. My mother comes from a small town, one with a lot of history, with community. And I realized that there are certain places that exude a sense of place. Small towns are obvious, of course, but the more I thought the more I realized that it’s more than that. It’s New York City, its Midwestern rural life, it’s the French Riviera. What it is not—to me—is a place like Haslett, Michigan, where I grew up.

Haslett is a wholly un-notable suburb. It’s small (it was described to me once as a zip code with a post office), but more than that, it’s overshadowed by East Lansing, Michigan State, Lansing—all of which are within about ten or fifteen minutes of where I grew up. But it’s not quite small enough, being pushed up against various other suburbs as it is. People don’t know each other’s business like they do in my mother’s hometown. I can walk into the local grocery store (or I could anyway—it shut down last month) without running into anyone I know. People are interested in local sports, but mostly only if they have kids involved with some team. In a word, it’s unremarkable, though it seemed like anything but while I was growing up. But now that I’ve left and come back—heck, even when I moved down the road to MSU—it began to look different, began to fade from view and memory.

I don’t write about place in my fiction. Often, I make a conscious attempt to avoid it. I’m uninterested in it. I say that I like the idea of my stories happening anywhere within a given culture (read: America, though I’ve got some ideas on how I can expand this particular horizon). But now I think it’s because I don’t really have a good idea of what it means to be from a certain place, from a strong community. Perhaps this is just an excuse, perhaps this is just a crutch I need to learn to do without, but I can’t help thinking that I’ll need to live in a strong place, to participate in a strong community before I’ll be able to overcome this particular difficulty of mine.

Or, I suppose, I could just make it all up, fiction-style, and write, write, write.

After poetry month, we have short story month, begun a few years back by Dan Wickett in order to call attention to this particular form of fiction. It’s grown since its inception, and this year quite a few writers and writerly organizations are getting on board. Matt Bell in particular is getting into the festivities this year, vowing to read and blog about one short story per day during the month of May. Check out all the posts here, and start thinking of what you can do to get into the spirit. Read a new story collection, pick up a new literary journal, discover a new writer, write your own stories.