Bounce Back Strong

Half-jokingly, I've been calling 2022 my year of rest and relaxation. I spent a lot of days last year unable to get out of bed until after 9, even when I woke hours earlier. I spent a lot of afternoons dozing on the couch to reruns of a show I know by heart. My inbox had somewhat fallen asleep, too; I submitted things now and then, got solicited for things occasionally, but for most days of most weeks, nothing came in or went out.

this blog post is not to be construed as an endorsement of this book or its author

Most of the big stuff I do as a writer is early in the year. A book prize I read for is mostly active in January; AWP is in March; and the time-consuming work I do for a residency committee is largely in April. Everyone will tell you that publishing is least active during the summer, and fall is so frantic that I have no interest in ever publishing a book then, or really in doing anything else notable as a writer. 

Last year, once AWP and the mini-tour I did for the Plan 9 book were over, I found myself idle, and I couldn't rustle up any motivation to break the inertia. In late summer I researched for the novel I'm trying to write. That occupied me for a little while, but it wasn't a reason to get out of bed. Nor did I/do I yet have a significant schedule or deadline for anything related to that book, so there was no rush. 

In all, I'd say that I did very little of significance for about seven months of 2022, nonconsecutively. 

I can't complain about this, per se. What most Americans wouldn't give for that kind of leisure - to have nothing pressing to do for half the year. My therapist wasn't worried. But I was. It seemed unnatural not to produce anything for such a long period of time, to find myself with no logical argument for spending the day upright instead of horizontal. And I felt vaguely, minimally unhappy. Not much, not to a clinical point, but like a narrow vein of obsidian in an otherwise buff-colored stone. Something was wrong. 

There's more for me to think and say about all this looking back than there was as it happened. I kept checking and couldn't find mental illness at the root of all this, but I'm still a bit suspicious, because the behavior ticks a few boxes for depression. A thing that occurred in late 2021 harmed and affected me a lot more than I realized at the time, and those effects reverberated in my disposition for most of the next year. (Curious, in fact, how it took exactly a year for the effects to start to fall away, one by one, in succession.) Some of how I justified my inactivity was rebellion against the capitalistic work structure, and some was that I was intensely resting after a period of intense physical activity (while I worked at the barn). Still more was that I watched movies almost every day, which counted as work for a film critic, even if the movies weren't attached to a particular project. 

My year of rest and relaxation was probably sustained by all these reasons in different quantities. It didn't feel good while it was going on, but like any not-so-good experience, now I know what that feels like, and can recognize it if it ever shows up again. Plus, the rest fueled me to bounce back strong. 

Which I think I can safely say is what's happening now. February has been bonkers, full of opportunities and heartbreak and frustration and celebration, but particularly the past week has given me the feeling that I've come back to life. My inbox is hopping. My list of responsibilities is extensive enough to be written out instead of remaining in my head. The interactions I'm having with fellow writers sparkle and hum. I have ideas for books again. The feeling of dark dormancy, the heavy nadir of motivation, has lifted. 

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty sure my work with X-R-A-Y is the biggest part of the change. My book publicity machine having to start churning has helped, too, because it's forced me to take some action instead of staring at the wall, but X-R-A-Y has given me a purpose, a set of daily activities, I simply didn't have for most of last year. In joining the team there, it feels like I reached up very slowly and weakly for a handhold, and what I seized conveyed me out into the sun from a room I didn't even realize was dark. 

Which brings me to the carnival-barking portion of this post. I'm teaching the very first class X-R-A-Y is offering, ever, and you can sign up for it right now, if you'd like. It's on a Sunday afternoon next month. Payment slides from $75 down to $25, and if you as a writer are stuck in the mud (kinda the way I was last year, in fact), this is a great way to get unstuck. Hence the name of the workshop. 

Also, if you are headed to AWP, I hope to see you kind of generally, but I also hope to see you at one of the two readings I'll be attending. The first one, on Wednesday, I'll be a reader; the second one, I'll be handing out promo stuff for X-R-A-Y and probably myself too. 

reading at this one

attending this one

See you there. XOXO

An Honest Post

There's a lot going on in my writing world - perhaps too much for me to organize my thoughts into one place. I feel like I haven't written an honest post here in a really long time. As the number of people who pay attention to my work grows, I find I'm holding my tongue more and more. I didn't think I'd ever want to do that, but that's where I am. Here's some honesty, though not about everything I have to say.

Weekly To-Do, 3/17/19-3/23/19

Last Sunday I took the entire day off. I did answer one email related to Barrelhouse, but otherwise, I did no work. I sat on the couch. I watched the Lorena Bobbitt docuseries and then about half of the first season of The OA. I vaped a little, midday, which I never do. (With good reason; my brain stayed foggy well into the evening.) It was a great idea; I felt tons fresher on Monday.

The rest of the week was a little less awesome than Monday. Coping mechanisms kicked in, because I'm stressed out about the near future, and I did a lot of coping instead of working.

On Tuesday I leave for Portland, setting into motion two and a half weeks of utter madness. I think I'm ready. I've done almost all the work ahead of time that I conceivably can do; I'm well-stocked with business cards; our taxes are done. Off we go.

Disclaimer: I'm including selected names of pubs and books because making this list would be ten times harder, and therefore not worth the effort, to anonymize them entirely. Any of the acceptances could fall through at any time. By naming them, I am not badmouthing the publications who rejected or didn't reply. This is data, not trash-talk or promotion.

Writing:
Camp review
Rice review
"After Gardens" edits

Reading:
A Dog Between Us
Choke Box 
Comfort

Pitching/Queries:
Dazed (2) (rejected)
Film journals x4 (responded x1)
CrimeReads
Buzzfeed
Millions (responded)

Followups:
Nylon
WSJ
ASAP
HFR
Advocate

Correspondence:
Barrelhouse
Locus
Various publicists
Eve
Jennifer

Other:
Barrelhouse stuff
[secret thing] for many hours
Assemble Wurth and Choundas interviews
Promote Wurth review

Weekly To-Do, 1/27/19 - 2/2/19

This week hopped and jumped like a Mark Twain frog. I did so much stuff! I got so much good news! I rolled in under the wire on some great opportunities, and I handled a few tasks I've been putting off for a good long while. My February workload looks okay so far, but I might just be looking at physical piles rather than considering the books I've loaded onto my e-reader. Ruh-roh.

Of course, part of February is going to be preparing for AWP in March. Please get in touch if you want to see me there; I'm actually starting to make lists of booths I want to stop by and people I want to meet in person. This sounds hideously self-important and I'm sorry. But it's the truth: if you want to meet up, let me know instead of relying on fortune.

Disclaimer: I'm including selected names of pubs and books because making this list would be ten times harder, and therefore not worth the effort, to anonymize them entirely. Any of the acceptances could fall through at any time. By naming them, I am not badmouthing the publications who rejected or didn't reply. This is data, not trash-talk or promotion.

Writing:
S. Allen review
GAITR review
Davis paired review
The Body Myth review
Blog post

Reading:
Labrador
Revenge of the Translator
The Silk Road
The Body Myth

Pitching/Queries:
Ramadan interview to V1B (accepted)
Ramadan interview to Fanzine (withdrawn)
ASFM to Slate, Nation
Two books to Daily Beast
AGNI (answered)
Two titles to Prairie Schooner (accepted!)

Followups:
WSJ (answered) (!)
Hyperallergic (rejected)
TWRP (answered)
TNR
Graywolf

Correspondence:
Locus business
Barrelhouse business
Sophia & her publicist
Will @DV (enthusiasm!)
Cole @TMR
Chad @BWDR
Michelle D.
Christina
Emma

Other:

Promote Books I Hate
Promote Horse Latitudes piece
Assemble & send newsletter
Promote Thirty-Seven review
Apply to Mineral School (finally)
[secret thing]
Barrelhouse editing & selection
Put together materials for workshop
Interview questions for Ramadan, Baker

Resolute, 2018 Edition

Every year, I post last year's New Year's resolutions with a short analysis of how well I think I succeeded at them, and then I post this year's. So, here are last year's (in greater detail here):

1. Hustle. Success, possibly too much. I got really damn busy as a writer, and I'm proud of it. I wouldn't have traded my overwhelm for being underworked, but I wish I could have figured out how to feel less stressed about all the work I took on. I did get it all done, and almost all of it was on time, so the stress...did me no good? Or was it the prod at my back? I don't know. The hustle worked, is the point; I think it's the main reason I am where I am as a writer at the beginning of 2019.

2. Keep to my own rhythms. Success. I slept more in the past eight months than I think I did in the prior three years. I'm still trying to sort out acceptance of this, feeling no shame about napping most days. It took years to accept that I need eight to nine hours of sleep per night instead of less, so I'm not expecting that acceptance of my own rhythms will be easy.

3. Fight fear. This resolution was a mistake. I don't need to fight fear; I need to let fear in, feel it, and move on. At that I did pretty well, but no better or worse than last year. I'm calling it a no-foul draw.

4. Plan better on a small scale. Success. I worked out a daily schedule for myself, and it kept me afloat when the looseness of freelancing threatened to drown me with excess time.

5. Give myself credit for hard work. Success. Matt helped me with this, telling me over and over how much I deserved credit for hard work. But something else that helped me was making to-do lists, but not throwing them away, and instead reviewing the finished items later. This had the effect of showing me, with hard evidence, the plentiful work that I'd done, instead of my mean ol' memory saying I didn't really do much.

6. Let go, let go, let go. Success, on balance, although I failed a lot. A very difficult, very necessary resolution for this year, much more so than I had imagined. I let go of my day job painfully, over a long period of time, but at present I have some peace about it - even if I still have bad dreams sometimes. I let go of expectations a bunch, and it made certain disappointments much easier. This resolution came to pass in exactly the right year, but it's a lesson I'll carry with me.

7. Take better care of my body and my home. Fail. I did better with flossing, but I am still the poorest housekeeper on this earth, and I exercised way less than in prior years.

8. Avoid travel. A draw. I didn't travel much, but a couple of trips were necessary, and I didn't die. This was sort of a dumb resolution, because I always want to avoid travel if possible. I think it came out of the unfortunate travels I had in the fall of '16 rather than anything real I needed to shift in my life.

This year I had a hard time thinking of resolutions. Not because I didn't feel there was anything about me that needed changing (we all need tune-ups), but because I'm deeply content. In such a state of mind, it's hard to think of what I want to change. Also, a lot of the stuff that ties me up in knots internally has been resolved by prior resolutions. Which is the point of resolutions, so it's nice that they're working, but it also leaves me with less to do in the future.

Anyway, I did come up with a few.

1. Rethink productive. There's always a little voice in my head that nags at me to be productive in a given day. Do laundry. Clear the coffee table. Organize your calendar. Marinate that pork roast. Read a book. Write something. It's hard to ignore this voice even if I've spent days on end being productive and want/need to spend a day resting. And it's part of how I failed to take a day off for multiple weeks at a clip this fall and winter. High productivity is nice, but burnout is not, and I'm quite nearsighted about the latter so I need to build in rest time.

I think there's got to be a way to redefine "be productive" for myself so that the voice stays quiet but I don't descend into sloth. I don't know what it is, but that's why it's a "rethink" resolution.

2. Lean into a hobby or two. When I did finally find the time to take a day off, I didn't know what to do with myself. Many of the things I would normally have done (hiking, museums) were not practicable, but some of the other things I might have done on past days off (reading, writing) had evolved into the stuff I needed time off from doing. An unexpected consequence of making avocation into vocation. That means I need to work out at least one hobby that I can do on my days off. Right now that hobby is phone games, which is a trashy hobby. I'd prefer to cross-stitch or do a puzzle.

3. Bring collage and horses into my life. Maybe collage is one of the hobbies I should pursue. I need to do it! I need to make it a regular part of my creative life. I've been thinking about it since September, and still haven't done it. I also need to bring horses more distinctly into my life in 2019. Being around them during Labor Day showed me how much happier and calmer I am when I spend time with them. I don't know how I'm going to do this, because incorporating horses into one's life is not necessarily an easy thing, but I must not keep putting it off.

4. Be smart about yes and no. I said yes to too many reviews in the spring and summer, but I didn't think I was in a position to say no to any of them. Now I'm starting to worry I said no too much in the winter, because my workload beyond March is so light I might have time to get back to writing my book (GASP). The timing of yes and no when it comes to reviewing is complicated because of lead times and editorial ghosting, but I can still try to be savvy about yes and no, rather than blundering into too much or too little work.

This is a hard thing to get right. Only trial and error will get me there, so I have to practice self-forgiveness if I mess it up. Which is also a good thing to work on in 2019.

5. Be aware of the networking vs. friendship, promotion vs. information percentage. Particularly in a year when I'm going to AWP, I'd like to be more cognizant about how loudly I'm self-promoting, and how much that sounds like annoying kazoo sounds as opposed to useful information offered to people who want to know how my writing is faring out in the world.

Similarly, I've made a lot of wonderful connections in the writing world this year. I'd like to call some of these people friends, but I'd be happy to slot others in the category of "networking contacts," meaning I don't have to comment on all their tweets. Some of these connections are about half and half, I think, friendship vs. networking (like, I'd probably hug them at AWP, but wouldn't be offended if I didn't get a birthday note from them). I think it's best not to be naive about these connections, though, and comprehend that even if I do like X Publicist as a human being, she probably likes me as a reviewer.

This resolution is advising general awareness, rather than naivete, of what I'm up to as a networker and self-promoter. I don't want to be slide into the mode of hustling all the time, but I also don't want to invest the softest parts of myself into what turn out to be professional relationships.

6. Teach. This might be more of a goal than a resolution, but I'd really like this to be the year I get a classroom full of minds to play with. It might come as a surprise to those of you I've told that I don't plan to teach, but I still don't plan to make teaching my primary job. One class per semester is about all I want.

7. Travel. Ha! Surprise reversal! I'm making this a resolution so that I will ENJOY the travel I do this year. Portland, Iceland, and possibly New York and Australia (!) are all on my list for next year. Plus a family trip with no destination in mind yet. So I damn well better change my attitude about hating travel, even if just for one year.


I don't know how we got to 2019, but here we are. Happy New Year, friends. I hope you stay here with me; I'd miss you if you decided to find another year to inhabit. 

From Me to You: A Little About Networking

Last week, as I prepared the exegesis post for "The Girl on the Bike", I wrote this:

I must disclose that I have a dear friend who's a semi-dormant editor at the Rumpus, and I ran "The Girl on the Bike" by her before I sent it in. I am certain that I got an acceptance because of the piece's quality, not because I got my friend to push something into publication as a favor. But the nature of the writing world, like most professional worlds, is that the more people you know, the more help you can get in order to succeed. I have a lot to say about this, as it pertains both to this piece in particular and to publishing in general, but I am lucky in who I know and I'm well aware of it and you can be mad at me if you want. I got lucky by paying for opportunities for myself, but I also got lucky by showing up, for free, for years, in all kinds of circumstances. I'm going on and on now but I will write a separate post about this someday.

I wrote this as a footnote, and then I took it out. I didn't want to distract from the issue at hand, which was talking about "Girl", and by the time I was typing the last sentence I realized that I had a lot more to say about the subject than I could put in a footnote.

One Writer's Experience at AWP

In March I attended the 2016 AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) conference in Los Angeles. It was interesting. I'm going to write about it as if you, the reader, are a writer who is considering going to AWP in a future year and you need help deciding whether or not to go.

Well, I'd go, unless you don't like crowds, in which case definitely don't go. It wasn't packed like a concert (no sardine syndrome), but it was packed like an amusement park (astonishing in the sheer number of people around you). I read that 12,000 people were at this particular AWP, and I fully believe it.

But yeah, I'd go. For these reasons:

Dignified and Sensible

Gaaaaah how did this happen it's been weeeeeeks.

I know how it happened: I haven't been able to gather up my thoughts enough to write something dignified and sensible. I've been taking notes for the last six weeks on my ideas, but none of them have been productive for this space. I've been writing some creative engagements with the experimental novels & other art I'm absorbing in one of my classes, but they are short and weird and I don't know what to make of them.

That's representative, I think. My energy of late has been scattered, and invested in the wrong places. I haven't been feeling it at work lately, which makes work a chore; I've been treating myself to laziness at home, which brings me pleasure but no satisfaction. I need to get down to business on three separate creative projects before the semester ends in about three weeks (!!!), but I failed to do this last weekend and I'm discouraged.

Personal is stuff going on that's distracting me, too.

Meanwhile, I'm still gathering up the fallen fruit from AWP. I met some amazing people - some of them far more impressive on paper than I knew when I hung out with them. I keep getting more and more books in the mail. A dear friend of mine, her literary star is rising like the sun at the moment, and I'm proud of her and frankly a little proud of me for not being jealous of her.

Here's a couple of things gifted to me by my best class this semester.

Something about this video gave me intense visual pleasure - aside from the intellectual pleasures of it - and reminded me of how much joy I took in film back when that was my main squeeze. Matt...did not love it, so if you don't, either, you won't hurt my feelings.

Oh, it has strobe effects, so epileptics beware.

The next one there's no need to watch from beginning to end. This fellow, Alvin Lucier, recorded himself speaking a brief monologue, and then played that recording into another recorder, and then played that into another recorder, and so on and so on until the sound of his voice became completely distorted. Eventually the recording is only the resonant ambience of the room rather than a recognizable voice. Skip through and see how it feels to you. It gave me food for thought for days. Really, I'm still thinking about it, and I don't expect to stop.

Fragmentary Disorder

WOW there is so much.

I went to AWP. I workshopped a story that I kind of hate and it was well-liked. I went to an insane reading featuring some of the most interesting women in the nation. I caught a cold and failed to finish reading three! THREE! of the books assigned for homework in the last month. (Three! Who even am I?) I was awkward to Kelly Link and I hugged the writer of one of the best essays I've ever read. I spent way too much money and I can't wait to get my next tattoo. I had an epiphany or three. My apartment is messy and I (finally) don't give a hoot. I found out that at least one L.A. rooftop hotel bar has weird little waterbeds and is just as douchetastic and horrible as you might imagine, unless you're there with a clutch of badass women. I am itchy and miserable about all the ordinary job/school/cooking things in my life, but I am so happy to be living the life I have.

Oh, and Star Wars. Yeah. Whee.

Art by Paul Fricke

I want to put together a genuine AWP breakdown post, for the sake of at least one friend who wanted to know how it went down, but this will not be that. This is more of an "I'm still planning to blog here, I swear, but my life is hilariously messy and I need to find the narrative thread buried under piles of tote bags and book swag" post.

This is easily the least troublesome cold I've ever had. 3/5 stars, would get again if I had to. But it's making me tired and cranky and bad at concentrating and socializing.

My solitary goal for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference, or AWP, was to get as many tote bags as humanly possible. I got seven over the three days. Win! I also got a pile of books, and the advice I got to wait until the last day to buy books was correct. None of the presses wanted to ship their stuff back home, if they were located elsewhere than in L.A., so there were fire sales and how. I did very well.

I also saw many extremely famous writers and met a couple of them. I learned that prose chapbooks are indeed a thing, more so than in years past, which is encouraging. I drank free wine.

I am ready to revise some sections of the secret project after feedback from two readers. I definitely want to clip out its imperfections, but I want to do that without "fixing" it to any mainstream specifications. I hope I'll be able to set aside some time for that this weekend.

In general, my life has slowed down after a freaking insane March couple of months 2016 so far. (So, again, if I had to catch a cold, now is the right time.) I am having that old sensation of wanting my time back, looking forward to summer and no school schedule and reading piles of books. At the same time, I'm panicking slightly because I'll actually be halfway done with my MA after this semester, and then what?

Then what?

I want to apply for a crazy long shot Bay Area thing (again), and I'd like to teach workshops. But beyond that - and this was shored up firmly by the experience of AWP - I just want to write books. I want my life to go into the next phase, the phase where I can write books and see them in print.

I don't know how to do that yet. I thought I'd know, or be at the halfway point of knowing, by now.

Anyway. Stay tuned! Much more about AWP and other writing things to come.