Category Archives: Writing

life is evidence

This notion of investigation offers an alternative to confession. Its goal isn’t sympathy or forgiveness. Life is not personal. Life is evidence. It’s fodder for argument. To put the “I” to work this way invites a different intimacy—not voyeuristic communion but collaborative inquiry, author and reader facing the same questions from inside their inevitably messy lives.

—Leslie Jamison

the best time for a writer to get real

For writers, the last sentences aren’t about reader responsibility at all — it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to stop worrying about what comes next, because nothing does. No more keeping the reader interested, no more wariness over giving the game away. This is the game. This is the best time for a writer to get real, to depict reality as they see it, without compromises, without fear. The reader has stuck with you — give them something true, something honest and unquestionably yours.

—Jonathan Russell Clark

I guess there is some code behind this writing business, and I don’t have it.

But I also think what happened to me in that program is what a lot of women experience, as well as many others who are just getting admitted into this arena of literature. My teachers understood my educational path but still expected me to know a lot more than I did, and they rejected my writing about the life experiences I had actually had. I remember one teacher not only refusing to workshop a story I wrote but announcing to the class that she was doing so. It was a very lightly fictionalized story about one of my cousins. The teacher told the class she found it “violent.” I felt humiliated and I did not understand—I was told to write what I knew, then when I did, that what I knew was not okay. And the fact was that there had been a great deal of violence in my life. One day a fellow student in that class turned in a poem about driving home to her very rich suburb in Connecticut, and wearing furs, and touring Europe for the summer. The teacher loved it. At that point I thought: I guess there is some code behind this writing business, and I don’t have it.

—Susanne Paola Antonetta

a lovely and appropriate medium

I’d argue that Twitter is a lovely and appropriate medium for voices that have traditionally been shouted down, shut out or ignored by the places that court the Franzens of the world. There’s a long history – maybe Franzen doesn’t know it? – of women using the materials at hand, whatever’s available to them to make art or make a case. I’d argue that feminist Twitter, women writers advocating for their work, one hundred and forty characters at a time, is a part of that history.

—Jennifer Weiner

allowed to fail

Sticking my neck out has been something I have learned to do. And I think it’s a good thing.

[…]

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it’s dead. But we’re allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that’s how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again. If I’m not free to fail, I will never start another book, I’ll never start a new thing.

—Madeleine L’Engle
in Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery
and Invention (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
via Brainpickings

2014 Failures (and Successes)

So… these were my writing-ish goals for 2014:

  • Finish the Dissertation. No, really. Stick a freaking spork in this thing. [hahaha. ok, so I got it to almost-done, and then I got distracted. see below.]
  • Move TC (the lit journal) to WordPress. [YES! YES, I DID THIS.]
  • Establish freelance editing business. [I made some moves in that direction at the beginning of the year, but then other things took precedence.]
  • Keep record of words written (so I don’t have to answer with a vague ‘maybe?’ to 500-words-a-day challenge question next year ;)). [Yeah, no. zzz.]
  • Bonus: Do something creative with my Tumblr. (deliberate vagueness!) [Also no.]

Ok, so what happened is I applied to teach a class and was hired, so I got distracted with that. (I knew this would happen, which is why I stuck with TAing for so long. But I really like this class–it’s feminism/info tech, so…) Getting it all organized, syllabus & stuff, in July/Aug, and then teaching it for the first time in the fall. Anyway, I’m teaching the same class this semester, so it should be easier. So back to the neverending dissertation I go… (blah. I’m so over it, tbh. which is how I’ve felt at the end of every degree, so… I think that’s a good thing?)

Usual TC contributions:

I’m getting good at doing “cheat” articles 😉 And I love co-writing in docs with Steph. The September article was so fun to write.

What else? Oh, I started those “some things I read this month” posts b/c I read more than just books. I like those, will continue. And I started making Pinterest-friendly images for our articles at TC b/c I noticed we were getting lots of traffic from there. TC’s traffic is wayyyy up since I moved everything to WordPress, so I’m pretty stoked about that. Also, I did like a comic thing for the March AB article and Steph and I started doing podcasts. Look at me, putting my drawings and voice on the interwebs. So yeah, I may have failed at most of my named goals for the year, but (THE) OPPOSITE was an excellent word-of-the-year choice. My track record of being better at just doing things than setting/meeting goals remains intact.

With that said, I have just one writing goal for 2015: FINISH THE DAMN DISSERTATION.

And my word for the year is: OPEN.

to wait for a story to feel ready to be written

[Andre] Dubus first sees “characters’ souls.” Faces appear next, and that “is all I need, for most of my ideas are situations, and many of them are questions.” Only when Dubus sees the first two scenes is a story “ready for me to receive it.” Then he writes.

…

Vertical writing … values depth over breadth. Stories are written when they are ready to be written; they are not forced into existence by planning or excessive drafting. … vertical writing seeks to dig into the page, to value the building of character and authenticity over the telegraphing of plot. … Vertical writing is no less work, but it is better work, work at the right time. It requires patience in the willingness to wait for a story to feel ready to be written, as well as the attention and focus necessary to inhabit the story once gestated.

—Nick Ripatrazone

small places

One of the things I like about Dillon is that it welcomes failures; in fact it embraces them. Growing up in small towns, I always felt there was something bullying about this love of failure, and that there was within it a not-so-hidden class resentment, a desire to keep everyone on the same level, even if that meant everything was mediocre. I do think that sentiment exists, but I also think there is a humanity to small places, an acknowledgement that people need space in their lives to enjoy what they have, for as long as it may last—a space outside of accomplishment. A space outside of self-improvement. A space to have emotions that might not be “productive.” A space to have emotions, period.

—Hannah Gerson

those things one has no someone to whom to say them

Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. Or rather writing is saying to the no one who may eventually be the reader those things one has no someone to whom to say them. Matters that are so subtle, so personal, so obscure that I ordinarily can’t imagine saying them to the people to whom I’m closest. Every once in a while I try to say them aloud and find that what turns to mush in my mouth or falls short of their ears can be written down for total strangers. Said to total strangers in the silence of writing that is recuperated and heard in the solitude of reading. Is it the shared solitude of writing, is it that separately we all reside in a place deeper than society, even the society of two? Is it that the tongue fails where the fingers succeed, in telling truths so lengthy and nuanced that they are almost impossible aloud?

—Rebecca Solnit
in The Faraway Nearby
(via Brainpickings)

omg.