Category Archives: Publication

End of Year

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in Alchemy of writing, art, Attention, confidence, continuing, creating, Guidance, heart, prompt writing, Publication, sponsors, Story, teachers, Uncategorized, Working

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

December 31st – and my year as Piedmont Laureate comes to a close. When I accepted the honor of serving as laureate for three counties, I felt uncertain whether or not I’d be able to keep up my writing this year. I’d heard from one emeritus that I shouldn’t expect to, that it might be best if I just focused on my laureateship and let the writing rest.

I believe in letting writing rest. I believe it’s beneficial to back away from it at times, and do other things. But I also believe that there is an ebb and flow to the work of writing, and that a writer knows when she should back away and when she shouldn’t. I was in a critical place where I shouldn’t back away. I needed to keep steadily working on the novel I was writing. I’d backed away from it enough. I’d stabbed at it and stabbed at it, like an unskilled spear fisherman, until finally I knew that what I needed to catch that glimmering plot just below the surface was a net, and that the net was simply work. I needed to show up and push through.

For the past year there have been two charts pinned to the wall above my desk. One is a timeline for the novel, spanning 1876 to 1896. It’s divided into three columns, one for each of two main characters and one for national events. The other chart pinned to my wall is the schedule I kept as Piedmont Laureate, divided into months. Scribbled into each month’s space were the events I was attending, and the readings and workshops I was giving. It’s been a busy year!

I’m proud of my work as Piedmont Laureate, and especially proud of the workshops I gave: “Costume Writing Parties” in which we used vintage clothing to explore character development, “Character Emotions” in which I presented thoughts and exercises on creating character emotions that live and breathe and don’t fall flat (sad!) on the page, “Postcards from the Edge of Fiction” in which we wrote using vintage postcards as prompts to explore story possibilities. I also held conversations with writers in each county: Our Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green on the importance of historical fiction, Lee Smith on the subject of mentoring, Nora Gaskin on the subjects of traditional and indy publishing and a panel discussion on The Effects of Social Media on Creativity with Anna Jean Mayhew, Ralph Hardy, Kim Church, Michelle Berger and Charles Fiore. It was lively and wonderful and we all came away thinking we should do this again. There’s so much to say. So much to explore.

And that’s the bottom line here I think. There is so much to explore. There’s so much to explore in talking with other writers, in meeting people, in writing with people, in traveling, and in my own (or your own) writing.

I am almost finished with this novel, almost ready to hand it off to readers and get some opinions. I may have completely failed at getting the story on the page, and honestly, that’s always a possibility for any writer, accomplished or not. We meet the story as dumb scribes. We know nothing until we go on the journey, and sometimes, after the journey is complete, we still know nothing except that we know we are changed. We have gone through something and the we feel differently for it.

Even if the writing fails in terms of publishing (and I have a few books and a lot of shorter work in my closet) it changes me. It shapes me. Writing shapes me as much as I shape it. I’m proud I kept on working on this novel during my laureateship. Accolades are important, but nothing, not even success, should get in the way of writing.

I send big love to all my supporters and friends I met along the way. I thank you for attending workshops and events. I thank the sponsors of the Piedmont Laureate program: City of Raleigh Arts Commission, Durham Arts Council, Orange County Arts Commission and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. One thing I learned this year is how hard people employed in arts organizations work for the good of artists. I don’t envy them their jobs. Herding artists must some times feel like herding cats. We are an independent bunch. Most of us have worked outside of the norm for a very long time. Recognition from organizations like these feels important. It feels good. For me it felt like a gift to be celebrated and trusted this way.

I want to close the year by inviting you to please come to one of my free workshops held at Flyleaf Books the second Saturday of each month, 10 to 12. Even people who do not identify as writers come to these workshops. They are, in the words of one attendant, “a buzz.” I’ve been holding these free workshops for 15 years. Fifteen years! Another milestone that passed this year. I started the workshops in Borders Bookstore, and when it closed I kept it going by moving around to libraries. When Flyleaf Books opened, we found a home and I am grateful for such a strong independent bookstore.

I’ve met so many people over the years, and heard so many stories. Sometimes I feel like a story goddess. I give a prompt and people give me a story. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to know that I helped to launch a story into the world – be it my own or yours.

I said it when I accepted the honor of serving as Piedmont Laureate, and I will say it until I die. Stories are how we meet each other. Stories are where we live. Stories are what makes us human, and what gives us our humanity, compassion and empathy, three qualities I believe we all need to cultivate as much as possible.

Measurements

30 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by in Advancing the story, art, Attention, character, communication, continuing, creating, frustration, heart, Process, Publication, Reading, slowing down, Story, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I live in a culture that loves measurements. Resumes, job descriptions, salaries, developments – America loves to count. When I cleaned houses for a living my work was measured not just room by room and task by task, but in bathtubs leaned over and showers leaned into. Rags dirtied and washed and folded and dirtied again. Sponges falling apart, their yellow bits washed down suburban drains. Work was measure in blown out, leaking rubber gloves, and shredding mop heads, and the nubs of feather dusters. In backaches and sore knees and Epsom Salt baths and Tylenol and hours spent on the heating pad, on the couch.

Now my work is measured in how many books I’ve published, in awards received or not, in Tweets and blog posts and movie deals (present or lacking). It’s measured by Oprah and the New York Times Bestseller List, and Youtube channels. These are big, public measurements and there’s not much a writer can do or not do to achieve them. These sorts of measurements are the work of the Gods and Goddesses, and Fate with a capital F. All I can do is show up and write.

I don’t take daily measurements of my writing. I don’t count words or even pages. The daily question I ask myself during each writing session is: Have I moved the story forward? Yes could mean a paragraph or three pages. No could mean ten or more pages, pages that do nothing for the story, pages that stall it out and go nowhere.

I work with writers and many of them study writing in a way that I do not and never have. They study trends. They know the industry standard of word count for a YA book, or a literary novel, or a sci-fi book, and they write to meet those standards.

But asking how long a novel must be is like asking how long a piece of string must be. The answer of course is that it depends on many things – mainly what is the string to be used for. A string to tie one’s shoes will be shorter than a string to tie up one’s tomatoes. A string to tie a 10″ box will be different from a string to tie a 2′ box. A string to wrap around a story will depend on the story, and if the story is dependent on the string, then that string better be cut to fit. And so it is with page count and word count.

The publishing world is a place where you can find a definitive answer to whatever question you ask, but I don’t believe it’s good to look for definitive answers. Nor do I believe the book world should be a place for industry standards. The book world, the world of story should be a place of exploration. But writers just starting out are scared of all the nebulousness. They yearn for information, anything to help get started and keep going. I’m not trying to keep information from anyone, and I understand the urge to search for answers. It’s frightening to me too when I face a story I don’t yet understand, and haven’t yet written.

In answer to my own question of measurement: Have I moved the story forward? there’s an easy answer. Has something happened that is significant? If not have I written something that contributes to the character’s development, or to setting? Am I building a believable fictional world? Does this section contribute or is it just there.

I know the answers to these questions when I ask them, which isn’t to say I know the solution. But it does mean I can recognize a problem and not write into it, not dig post holes and build a wall around it. Acknowledging that the story is stalling is the first step to moving it forward.

Readers want stories that move forward and so do editors. Editors dare not say so though, because they work in an industry, an industry that has gone awry with measurements and bean counting and shiny objects. Pay no attention. Do your work and do it well. The most important measurement of all is how you feel about it, and how your character feels about you. In the end, do you and your character respect each other? If so, you’ve done well, and you’ll be in a better place to defend your work against random suggestions having to do with fattening a book for market.

Hurricane

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in hurricanes, natural world, Publication, safety, slowing down, stress, Uncategorized, Working

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Hurricane Florence is bearing down on North Carolina. If you’re reading this you’re likely in the path of it, or at least of a part of it. We all know the drill – get food and water, gas up the car, tighten down the hatches, get ice. It sounds easy when listed like that, but it’s not. There are lines at the grocery stores and the shelves are empty, lines at the gas pump and people cutting in front of you, or bags over the pump handles, the freezer is void of bags of ice, your mind is constantly scanning for what else needs to be done.

Is the patio umbrella down? Should it be brought in? Do we need to take down the porch swing? Is there something I’ve forgotten? Something I’ve forgotten? Something I’ve forgotten? The echo goes on until it’s over. The question can never really be answered.

Twenty-two years ago Hurricane Fran hit NC and came inland. I lived in a cheap apartment in Chapel Hill in an area that was prone to flooding. My neighbors in one apartment moved out in a rush that very night, taking everything they had with them and not cleaning the apartment and digging up the irises they’d planted and taking the bulbs. I made sure I had plenty of food and cat food and candles. I put the legs of my furniture in plastic cups and hoped that if my apartment flooded it wouldn’t rise above the rims.

The hurricane came at night. Neither I nor my cat could sleep. I stood at a window (which was pretty stupid) and watched the trees whip around against the streetlights. Then the electricity went out and everything outside was dark and all I could hear was the wind. Around 2:00 a.m. there was a knock on my door. It was my neighbor Dawn. Water was coming into her apartment. We decided to vacate and see if we could stay in another friend’s place, up the hill from us. But first Dawn needed to move her car. Water was creeping into the lower parking lot. I called my friend and got the wrong number and woke someone up. I put my cat on the refrigerator and told her she could jump up there if need be (as if she needed my permission) and we walked up the hill with our flashlights to Tift’s place. Tift wasn’t home. We walked back and knocked on the second story apartment of another friend, and he said we could stay there through the night. Unbeknownst to Dawn and me there were fallen live wires all over the place during this walk. The wind had died down but it was still raining. We were lucky. It was pure dumb luck. The best kind. Sometimes I think the only kind.

The next day we returned to our apartments to assess the damage. Only a little water in Dawn’s. None in mine. My cat was fine and happy to be let out. The sky was clear. The air smelled like pine from so many snapped trees. The ground was covered in green needles and green leaves.

My first novel was published two weeks later. In the days preceding this event I was living without electricity. One day a neighbor came by to tell me there was a truck with free ice at University Mall. I got in my car and managed to snag a five-pound bag. I made rice and beans for a group of neighbors and gave candles to others. I got fired from a cleaning job because I’d mouthed off when my client complained about Duke Power taking three days to get their electricity back on. I’d said, “It’s an infrastructure. There are crews from other states up here helping us out. Maybe you haven’t noticed but there was a hurricane.”

There’s no moral to this story unless you want to read it as a cautionary tale not to mouth off to a client. But the real point is this – be patient with people. We’re all stressed out. Be patient with yourself too. After going out into the world of commerce, with varying degrees of success and failure, to get ice and gas and another cooler and butane canisters for the little one burner stove I bought after Fran, I forgot to put water in a pot in which I was steaming vegetables last night. I burned the pot. I berated myself for doing this. I don’t usually make such mistakes. “That was stupid,” I said to my husband.

“Yes,” he answered, “but you did a whole lot of smart stuff earlier.”

That was nice.

In the store where I bought the extra cooler, I thanked the clerk and said, “I’ll see you on the other side,” right when he said the same exact thing to me. We smiled and laughed.

Be safe. Be wise. Be patient. I’ll see you on the other side.

How Not to Write a Novel

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in Attention, Process, Publication, Working

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

The title says it all. I could just leave this space blank. The way to not write a novel is to not write. Or the way to not write a novel is to start and then stop writing. The way to not write a novel is to not dedicate yourself to it, to not develop the habit of writing, to expect it to be perfect first time around, beginning to end. If you get that far.

For me the way to not write a novel also includes talking about it. I don’t talk about my specific projects except to other writers, and even then I am selective. I tried once talking about a work-in-progess. I wanted to seem as though I was confident, and knew what I was doing with this novel, so I spoke about it publicly. I gave a brief summary that didn’t reveal very much. I mentioned the setting. I said the characters’ names. They didn’t like it. That’s all I can say. The story left me. It did not want to be paraded about. It wanted a private, intimate relationship with me. It wanted a partnership. It was not ready for relationship with anyone else. That’s what publication is for.

I know all this makes me sound like a nutcase. That’s okay. I am a bit of a nutcase. I believe in things we don’t know. I believe in working intuitively. It’s not always comfortable, and it doesn’t give me confidence, but that’s the point. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing it. It’s very hard to understand that for many writers, it’s a blind grope into a story. It’s stepping off a cliff. Sometimes we are caught by our characters, and sometimes we are allowed to crash to the bottom of story the canyon. But that’s the process. Always there’s a point of stepping out into the unknown, be it the stage of plotting a novel, if plotting’s your thing, or the stage of writing it for someone like me, who flies by the seat of her pants. Novels are unknown until they are written. And even then, throughout the process, they reveal themselves slowly, sometimes reluctantly. You have to keep showing up. You have to be committed.

 

It’s easy to not write a novel.

A Day in the Life of a Writer

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Fiction, Jealousy, Publication, Working

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , ,

It’s no secret that I once cleaned houses for a living. I held this job for 15 years, off and on. I kept quitting, and then, needing money, I pulled my rags and mops and gear out of the closet and started up again. I cleaned a lot of houses. Two story houses, fancy houses, houses with lots of glass, houses with lots of mirrors, houses with furniture that was a nightmare to dust, houses with pots and pans never cooked in – I could go on. While mopping and making beds and folding sheets and cleaning sinks and bathrooms, I thought about my writing, which I had left on my desk in order to come to work, in order to pay my rent and bills. Sometimes, often in fact, while engaged in some physical activity, an insight regarding some sticky point in my novel would come to me, and I’d strip off my yellow rubber gloves and scribble it down on a notepad I kept in the pocket of my jeans.

My clients knew I was a writer. Many of them had copies of my books. I dusted my own books. I was pretty sure this was not how it was supposed to be for a writer who’d been reviewed in the New York Times, but it’s how it was for me, so there was nothing to do but roll with it.

One day, on my knees scrubbing an upstairs toilet (I highly recommend knee pads), my client came bounding up the stairs with a Newsweek in his hand. “Nancy,” he said. “My cousin is publishing a book. Her first novel.”

“That’s great,” I answered.

“She’s in Newsweek,” he said.

“That’s pretty good making it in Newsweek with her first book.”

I silently congratulated myself on my equanimity. I’d been writing for years and here I was cleaning a toilet while being told about a debut novelist featured in Newsweek. There was no need to be jealous. Even though I didn’t know any other writers who were cleaning houses for a living, there was no need to get a funk about it. Sometimes not getting in a funk was seriously hard work, but on this day I was actually doing quite well with it. On this day, I was peaceful and calm as I plunged the toilet brush up and down and scrubbed around the rim.

During my first book tour, I’d been advised by a (probably) well-meaning poet to never tell anyone that I cleaned houses for a living, or that I hadn’t been to college. “But it’s the truth,” I said. He slowed his voice and said, as if speaking to a child, “What I am trying to tell you is that no one is interested.”

That hurt. I also happen to think it’s not true. People are interested. People like to hear about struggle. They like to feel that their dreams are attainable. And after having worked so hard to be known as a writer, was I supposed to live a fictional life? Was I supposed to lie? What would I say when people asked (and they did ask) what university I’d attended, and what university I taught at? I didn’t follow the poet’s advice. I can write fiction, but I can’t live fiction.

Still, there was a wound. It hurt to feel so far on the outside. It hurt that I still scrubbed other people’s toilets for a living, but as I scrubbed this one with my client standing over me, Newsweek in his hand, I gave myself a huge invisible pat on the back for being OK with this scenario.  Big break for my client’s cousin. Good for her. It’s not easy for any of us. I flushed and spritzed cleaner behind the toilet so I could clean that grimy place, intimately known to so few.

“She got a three-million-dollar advance,” my client said.

“What?”

“Yeah. Three million.”

“Three million?” I sputtered. “Geez.” I ran my rag behind the toilet. “You could have picked a better time to tell me this,” I said.

He laughed at that, but seriously, he could have picked a better time to tell me this.

But here’s the thing. No writing life is perfect. No creative life is how we imagine it before we begin. Once we’ve begun we find that out, and some of us still go on, and some don’t, and some rattle around in between doing it and not doing it. And that’s another place we all occupy. We do it and we don’t do it. We thrive and we struggle. We are published and we are not published. We write and we don’t write. It’s all of a whole cloth, or cleaning rag as the case may be.

My life as a housecleaner actually served me well. I didn’t know it at the time. Now I am supremely grateful for it.

 

 

Absence Makes the Writer Stronger

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Mimi Herman, Publication, Writing Advice

≈ 1 Comment

IMG_5922

It’s the last night of my Writeaways adventures in France and Italy, and after walking five or six miles throughout Rome, I’m ready to curl up in my armchair and rest my feet on my own footstool at home, pen in hand, and write.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder; it also makes a writer stronger. I’m returning home a better writer and teacher, more knowledgeable not only about the world, but also about how writing works. There’s something about getting away from the familiar that allows you to see everything you thought you knew more clearly – and there’s something about taking risks abroad that makes it possible to take risks in your own writing.

I saw that adventurousness in each of the writers who joined us at Chateau du Pin for our Writeaway in France, and at Villa Cini for our Writeaway in Italy. Some arrived with no idea of what they’d write about. Others found themselves on unfamiliar journeys through places and experiences they’d thought they knew well.

David and Liz.jpg

A Texas writer put away 20 chapters of a murder mystery he’d written to start again from a different angle. A writer from Florida discovered a depth of feeling in her writing that she didn’t know she had, a depth that fueled the delightful characters she’d created over the past year, and gave balance not only to her writing but to the way she saw herself. A writer from Singapore wrote a complete short story – her first since graduating college – and stayed up until 1 a.m. on our last night in Italy, submitting her story to some of the most respected literary journals around. Another, from Victoria, British Columbia, invented an older brother and created for him such a vivid picture of a family that I kept expecting to hear their dog scratching at the door of our villa to come inside (along with the cat who lived there, who seemed mysteriously able to enter the villa through locked doors and closed windows).

Aranciata-kitten on arancia copy

A Pennsylvania writer in France found herself recalling previously unreachable memories about her family as she worked on her memoir. A returning writer from Texas used writing and revision of a long poem to deal with a deep and longstanding pain—weaving imagery with a new understanding. A North Carolina writer finished the children’s book about Manfred (a very vain and valiant mouse) that she’d begun five years previously at her first Writeaway while another North Carolina writer began a children’s book about a cloud named Miranda and her friend Sirocco the osprey, a book which deftly wove scientific facts with fiction to make weather concepts accessible to children and the parents who might someday read her book.

Cointreau-Jean O'Neill copy

Our workshops each day were astonishing journeys, too. All the writers, both in France and in Italy, were able to help each other’s writing be—as we often say—“what it wants to be when it grows up.” We talked about imagery and plot, about “speed bumps” that wake the reader from “the fictional dream” described by John Gardner in his book The Art of Fiction, and about crafting characters and ideas that would remain with readers long after they finished reading. After each workshop, our writers delved again into their work, discovering anew what they wanted to say in this journey not only to the countries of our chateau and villa but to the countries created in their imaginations, each with its own customs and language.

Villa Cini Dinner-Gayle Goh

And me, I wrote too, and revised, not my usual practice when we hold our Writeaways. But I had a book of poetry to complete, and a deadline by which it needed to be finished. I found myself looking at my own poems, some written several years ago, to see what they “wanted to be when they grew up.”

The distance from home allowed me to become closer to my own writing, as it does. This is something I wish for all writers, the chance to leave the home where you live to discover the home you create.

Photographs by John Yewell, Gayle Goh and Jean O’Neill, with permission by the photographers.