Author: confidentwriter

The Writing Life

The Next Big Thing: Cora’s Kitchen

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Isla McKetta, author of the forthcoming Murmurs of the River, tagged me to interview myself in The Next Big Thing blog chain. Isla is a novelist and book reviewer with the most infectious smile. She is on the board of Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Not only is Isla a beloved friend, but she has consistently encouraged me to be true to my art. Be sure to check out her blog at the A Geography of Reading.

Now on to the ten questions about my new project:

What is your working title of your book (or story)?

Cora’s Kitchen

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The idea came from several conversations with a friend about our mothers. We used to tease about writing a book where the two of them became friends. The question of what that friendship would be like, given their differences in race, education and social class, became an obsession for me. And it only seemed natural to push the idea to the 1920’s since I’ve always been fascinated with that time period.

What genre does your book fall under?

Literary Fiction

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I’d love to see Viola Davis as Cora. Michael Early would be the perfect Langston Hughes. And Anne Hathaway would play the part of Eleanor.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

An African-American woman, who longs to be a writer, learns to embrace her dream through an unlikely friendship with Langston Hughes and a wealthy white woman.  

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Though I am seriously considering self-publishing, I would love to have an agent represent the book.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

It took me about a year and a half to write the first draft and about six weeks for a second full revision. It has spent the last year and a half marinating in a box. Now I’m back for another revision.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I’d compare Cora’s Kitchen to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows because it is also a collection of letters and journal entries. But Cora’s Kitchen could also be compared to The Help because it is tells the story of racism and sexism during a time when African American women didn’t have a voice.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

African American history is so marred in the violence of slavery, Jim Crow laws and the fight for civil rights that it’s difficult to remember that there was more to life than the struggle. African American people had dreams. They feel in love. They planned for the future. I wanted to write about a period in history where African Americans were alive with hope and creativity.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Cora’s Kitchen is epistolary novel that uses poetry and literature to ask the question: how does a woman claim herself in midst of her responsibilities and roles? Also, there are lots of writing tips within the book that were used by Langston Hughes himself.

NEXT UP ON THE NEXT BIG THING

Thanks for reading about Cora’s Kitchen. Check out the following writers next week to learn more about their upcoming projects.

Icess Fernandez Rojas is a fiction writer, blogger and journalist. She has a MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and lives in Shreveport, Louisiana. Icess is a social media goddess and the person to go to if you want something done. Her story, “Beginnings,” appeared in the inaugural issue of Minerva Rising.

Kim Green‘s debut novel, Hallucination, beautifully chronicles one woman’s journey after being diagnosed with Lupus (an autoimmune disorder). For the last four years, she is the leader of the UUCA Women Writers Group and was the chair person for their 2011 conference, Getting in Touch with the Source.  I’m so grateful to Kim for pulling me into the fold of her writing group and helping me to find a writing community in Atlanta.

Sandra Marchetti is a poet who recently won The Midwest Writing Center Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. She lives in the Chicago area and teaches writing at Elmhurst College. Sandra recently become the Poetry Editor at Minerva Rising and hit the ground running. I feel very lucky to have her as a part of our team.

 

The Writing Life

Getting Back to It

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I’ve been out of the loop of writing this blog. I don’t actually have any particular excuse for stopping. It’s sort of like exercising. One day of not working out becomes two days and the next thing you know you haven’t been to the gym in four months. And though I didn’t gain any weight, my writing became slightly sluggish. So I avoided blogging.

But there was this constant buzzing in my head asking me when I planned to get back to the blog. It’s the same annoying voice that bugs me about cleaning out my closet and organizing my cabinets. Try as I might to ignore her, she is persistent.

Then God stepped in and administered the divine two by four to get my attention.

The owner of a local antique shop asked me to teach a blogging class at her store.

I panicked. How could I teach a blogging class when I no longer blogged?

“Wait,” I thought, “I blog once a month on the Minerva Rising Blog.”

Of course, God doesn’t work that way. When He wants you to do something, He means for you to listen.

I get to the class and my only student is the friend who got me to start blogging in the first place. It seemed odd that she would be taking a class on blogging since she had a wonderful blog. Well, it turns out she hadn’t blogged in several months and was looking for guidance on how to get back on track with her blog.

Funny, huh?

So there I was face to face with my own predicament. Suddenly, I was forced to figure out how to get back on track myself.

None of this was by chance. God has really been dealing with me lately about finishing what I start and the blog is only the tip of the iceberg. He has also been nudging me about the novel that’s shoved in a box in the corner of my office. He’s been saying it’s time to revise it and get it out into the world.

To be frank, I’m scared. What if I don’t have what it takes to revise it yet another time? What if it isn’t any good? But I’m reminded of what the senior pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, Dave Ferguson, once said: “Work like it depends on you, but pray like it depends on God.”

So, I’m diving back into blogging as the Confident Writer with a new twist. I will now be blogging about the process of revising a novel. My weekly post will be about my individual progress on the novel as well as the process of revision. Occasionally, I might throw in a post on what I’m reading or what motivates me.

I hope you will come along for the ride as I get back to living the writing life.

 

 

 

 

 

The Writing Life

It Takes a Group to Raise a Writer

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Last night I attended my monthly writing group, but I didn’t enjoy it. To be honest, my head wasn’t in the game. I’m still recuperating from my trip to the west coast last weekend. All I really wanted to do was curl up in a chair with a book and a glass of wine. But I forged ahead because I had committed to being the group’s facilitator. So like it or not that meant I had to go.

Once we started talking about the writing, it was obvious the other writers were not interested in critiquing their pieces. They wanted affirmation that the writing worked as is. And though I continued to try to interject suggestions and comments about the work, there was palpable resistance to feedback.

Now maybe my issue is that my feelings were hurt because the other writers didn’t seem interested in my
advice. As obnoxious as it may sound, I pride myself on my experience as a writing teacher. I wanted to be able to share my understanding of their pieces and to ask the questions that came to my mind. But in retrospect, I’m convinced the real problem was the lack of a clear group objective.

If the writer simply wants to be heard and the group critiques the work, the writer is going to walk away with hurt feelings. If the writer has specific questions about what works and what doesn’t work, he or she has to be open to listening. I know it’s hard to hear what feels like criticism of our work. But knowing who we are writing for puts the feedback we receive into perspective. If we are writing for our own edification, it doesn’t matter what others think. If we are writing to communicate, we need to know where the holes are. That doesn’t mean other people get to write our stories for us. It means that we have to learn to look at our work more objectively. Call me a stickler, but I think it’s a waste of time when the writer defends what isn’t there.

I totally understand the urge we have to defend our work. It is like protecting our children. And on more than one occasion, I have been poised for battle.

Recently, I submitted the first twenty pages of my novel to my local writers club to be critiqued by a New York Times Best Selling Author. I mention her credentials because she referenced them several times in our 15-minute meeting and even more in the nine-page letter she wrote. The self-promotion annoyed me almost as much as the fact that she tore my twenty pages apart with her suggestions and chicken scratch. I wanted to defend my writing to her. I wanted to explain why she was wrong. After all, I had rewritten those pages a half-dozen times. I pooh-poohed her comments, telling myself that she didn’t understand what I was writing. I chalked the whole thing up as a waste of time and money. But after I had some time to cool off, I realized there must have been a part of me that needed an objective look at the work. Why else had I submitted to be critique in the first place? I read through her comments again. Some had value. Others did not. I got over my hurt feelings and started yet another rewrite.

Too often we view feedback as a correction, reminiscent of some elementary school teacher scolding us for making a mistake. My first grade teacher, Sister Ernesta, is one of the voices in my head that admonishes me for my writing. Not to mention the fact that I personally blame her for my horrible handwriting. Who hits a six-year-old on the hand with a pointer for tracing over her letters? But I digressed.

The point is feedback isn’t a correction. It’s an opportunity for a writer to understand how the reader experiences your words. It’s raw data on what works and what doesn’t work. And the beauty of a group of writers working together is that no one person has it all figured out. So you aren’t bound by anyone’s suggestion. There’s a synergy in the process that creates fertile ground for new ideas and insights.

Maybe I didn’t enjoy last night, because I more focused on being a facilitator than a writer. Not bringing my own work to the group made it easy for me to forget that the process of sharing establishes the trust and safety necessary to have honest conversation. Being elevated by the collective energy of our peers makes us better writers. It takes a group to raise a writer.

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The Writing Life

This is not Bobby’s World

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When my boys were little, they watched this cartoon called Bobby’s World . The show was about a four year old little boy named Bobby Generic, who had an overactive imagination. I’m pretty sure I liked the show more then either of my sons did. I loved how the mother used to say, “Don’t cha know.” But my absolute favorite memory is Bobby singing this song about why he loved his birthday. “It’s all about me, me, me,” he sang.

I think about that song a lot when I’m writing, especially when every sentence seems to start with “I”. It’s as if all I can see is me, me, me. And while it may be fun to engage in deep navel gazing, it makes for dull reading.

Virginia Wolfe wrote about this phenomenon in A Room of One’s Own.

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But after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, shadow shaped something like the letter “I.” One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of landscape behind it . . .. But—here I turned a page or two, looking for something or other—the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter “I” all is a shapeless as mist.

Though this particular passage refers to Wolfe’s opinion of men and their over inflated sense of self, it is also a cautionary warning to all writers to remember the landscape behind them, and to make room in their writing for the reader. It’s sort of like selling your house. If the potential buyer sees too much of your family in the house, they can’t picture themselves living there.

When the page is covered with “I”, the writer is like a four year-old screaming, look at me, look at me. And consequently, the reader either loses interest or struggles to make sense of it all.

Wolfe illuminates the problem with self conscious writing in the phrase “ . . . the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter “I” all is shapeless as mist.” Excessive use of “I” cast a haze over writing. It’s narcissistic and one-dimensional.

We write out of a desire for self expression, but if our writing becomes like Narcissus looking at his reflections in the pool of water, it loses it’s potential to effect the reader. The sense of self blocks the reader from his or her own insight and understanding of the work.

Goal Setting · Quotes

Planning Your Work, Working Your Plan

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Summer is officially over.  It’s time to buckle down.  But it may be hard to get back into a routine if your productivity dropped off significantly during the last few months.  All the things you meant to do but didn’t get to may be spinning around in your head. That’s why you need a PLAN to help you focus on exactly what you want to get accomplished.

If you think about it, that’s just what schools do when they use a syllabus or a study plan. They outline the subject so that the objectives of the class are broken up into bite-size task. That way the students know what has to be done and can plan their time.

Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to confess I cringe at the thought of writing a syllabus. I used to put off writing them until the last possible moment and would end up scrambling before my first class to get it together. However, the activity of drafting a syllabus always helped me to think through the structure of the course. I’d build on what worked in the past and improve what didn’t.  I’d also think about timing and workflow.

I had a similar experience with writing study plans.  When I was a M.F.A. student, we had to write a new study plan at the beginning of each semester. Back then I thought they were a pain in the ass, but in retrospect they helped me to break up the work into manageable pieces.  I knew just how much I needed to complete in a given week.  And at the end of the semester, I could see tangible evidence of my progress.

So here’s how to develop your PLAN:

  1. Look back at your previous list of goals and write a few sentences listing your   accomplishments since January.  When we can acknowledge our successes, we’re more motivated to work on new goals.
  2. List five things you’d like to accomplish before the end of the year.  Write a positive action-oriented sentence for each item.  Example: I will write three new short stories.
  3. Ask yourself, what tasks have to be completed each month to move you closer to your goal.  Write a monthly task list. Make sure each item is measurable.  Example: Read one novel. Send out 10 resumes.
  4. Pick one day at the end of the month to check your progress. If you’ve completed your task for the month, give yourself a day or two to relax. It will motivate you to keep working your PLAN.
  5. Create a reward list for the successful completion of your PLAN.

Remember —

If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.

Harvey MacKay

 

Books · Quotes

A Life Lesson from Edith Wharton

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I finally finished House of Mirth from my summer reading list. I wanted to abandon it several times, but it felt like cheating to not to read any of the classics off the list. I tried to read Lady Chatterly’s Lover several years ago on the beach in Aruba. Needless to say that was a bust.

Anyway, it took me over a month to get through it. I have to admit I didn’t love the book. I liked Age of Innocence much better, which isn’t hard to believe since it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. Nonetheless, I kept reading House of Mirth becauseWharton’s fictional world of wealthy New Yorkers reminded me of the contemporary struggles between upper and middle class. Unfortunately, in today’s world your socio-economic level can effect more than how you’re viewed in society or what party you’re invited to. It can mean losing your job while the CEO continues to be paid 231 times more than the average employee [“Are they worth it?” The Economist]. Wharton’s commentary on self-indulgence is as relevant today as it was in 1905.

But the most profound message from the book came from the following quote:

Miss Farrish could see no hope for her friend [Lily Bart, the protagonist] but in a life completely reorganized and detached from its old associations; whereas all Lily’s energies were centered on the determined effort to hold fast to those associations, to keep herself visibly identified with them, as long as the illusion could be maintained.

 

Lily Bart had been exiled from her familiar world of indulgent wealth, because many believed that she had an affair with a wealthy man. And though she didn’t enjoy interacting with the people who belonged to that world, she couldn’t let go. Her own identity was too closely tied to the perceptions of other people and the trappings of wealth. Letting go would have meant giving up who she thought she was. So she continued to strive for the life she thought she should have rather than the one that had the possibility of affording real happiness and love.

It reminds me of a picture I once saw on Facebook with two circles: one labeled “Your comfort zone” and the other labeled “Where the magic happens.” Lily’s behavior is much like our own when we are unwilling to a take a risk because it involves letting go of our perceptions of ourself. Sometimes detaching from “old associations” and reorganizing our lives is the very thing we need improve our circumstances. But instead, we use our energy to maintain the illusion of being satisfied with the status quo.

It happens to me more times than I care to admit. I resist some change because I’m afraid I might lose the comfort of the status quo. I spend way too much energy trying to maintain the illusion of who I think people think I am. the But defining one’s self by the perception of other is the very thing that drove Lily to her tragic end.

House of Mirth has stood the test of time because it speaks to the universal truth that It doesn’t matter what other people think. We each have to live our own lives.

 

 

Images · The Writing Life

Back to School Blues

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School is back in, which usually means it’s time to get back into a productive routine. But for the first time in eighteen years, I don’t have to take anyone to school. My daughter is a junior in high school and drives herself. So consequently, the beginning of the school year doesn’t mean I have to get organized. I don’t even have to get out of bed at any particular time. In fact, the only thing that woke me up this morning was my daughter yelling good-bye on her way out the door. And though I used to fantasize about how much I’d get done when my schedule was no longer defined by the school day, this week has been a total flop. I’ve accomplished less this week than any other week this summer. The first two days I crawled right back into bed after my daughter left and slept another two hours.

I thought maybe I had a bug or something. But today I decided it could be depression.

 

I’ve been a mother for twenty-three and a half years. Caring for my children has always structured my day, even when I worked full-time. I’d get up, take a shower, get dressed and then wake up the kids.  Once they were dressed, I’d give them breakfast. We’d be out the door before 7:30 so I could be at work by 8. I tried to make their mornings as relaxed as I could. I didn’t want my kids to have memories of me yelling “hurry up” all morning like I had of my own mother. But as they leisurely ate their cereal, I suppressed a tremendous sense of guilt. I worried that I wasn’t giving them enough time and that I was going to miss some big milestone while they were at day care. Things got easier once they started elementary school. My husband had a new job that made it possible for me to work part-time. I arrange my schedule so that I worked while the kids were in school. It was the best of both worlds. I didn’t have a lot time of writing back then. I believed I would be able to write more once I wasn’t bound by my kid’s school schedule. In many ways, that was true. But as recently as last year, I seemed to only hit my stride about the time I needed to leave to pick up my daughter from school. I looked forward to this school year so she could drive herself.

This past Monday morning, a group of parents, including dads dressed for work, waited with cameras for the school bus to pick up their children. I wanted to join them and celebrate the first day of school. But instead I took a few pictures of my daughter before she climbed in her car. As I watched her turn at the corner, the last thing I wanted to do was write.

I decided to give myself the rest of this week to settle into this part of motherhood. After all, she is my baby. But starting next Monday I’m back on track with a fresh set of writing goals for the 2012-2013 school year.

 

 

Inspirational Musing · Quotes

Stop and Listen

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Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he said. But Martha was distracted with all the preparations she had to make, so she came up to him and said, “Lord, don?t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best part; it will not be taken away from her.

Luke 10:38-42 (NET)

Whenever I hear this story, I tune it out. It reminds me of the mornings when I come downstairs to write only to find a disaster in my kitchen. It’s particularly annoying when I know I specifically instructed one of my children to take care of it the night before. And then there are the times when no one can remember whose week it is so the solutions is just to leave it. My personal favorite is the late night culinary experiments. More cakes get baked at my house between midnight and three a.m. than any other time.

I try to get around the mess by moving a few things to make my morning smoothie, but end up completely cleaning the kitchen. So by the time I finally get to my office to write, I’m fuming. Sometimes, I manage to get over it fairly quickly and can get my writing done. But more often than not, I’m too busy sulking about the fact that no one respects my writing time to get anything done.

So needless to say, I totally get Martha.

But I had an epiphany.

Martha was worried and distracted by many things and Jesus responded by saying only one thing is needed. He made a specific distinction between many things and one thing. I use to think the contemporary version of sitting at the feet of the Lord was to drop everything I was doing, and spend hours studying the Bible in-depth. But that never seemed possible to me because if I did that nothing would ever get done at my house. But fortunately our God is a practical God. He wasn’t suggesting we never do our work. He simply instructs us as to how to accomplish more with less distraction and worry. He says Mary has chosen the best part. She stopped and listened. She focused on one thing.

The Lord speaks in a quiet voice and if we are distracted and worried we won’t be able to hear Him. Maybe the lesson in the story of Martha and Mary is to not get caught up in our distractions, but to spend time with the Lord first so that he can direct our steps.

I tried it recently. I read my devotional and then I asked, “What would you have me do today?” When I got done with my prayer time, it was clear to me that I should spend the day sending off submissions.

The kitchen was a mess, but I ignored it and went straight to my office. I finished up the revision of my short story, sent off six different submissions and wrote out a revision plan for a chapter in my novel. By focusing on one thing at a time I  got much more accomplished. And was less worried and distracted and nicer person to be around.

Take some time today to stop and listen. Your day will go much smoother.