This Writer's Life

This week I read an essay by Christopher Noël titled “Keeping Open the Wounds of Possibility: The Marvelous, the Uncanny, and the Fantastic in Fiction.” It was an approachable, hands-on review of ideas from the Russian Formalists (especially defamiliarization) and Wolfgang Iser (especially the reader and author co-creating the text). But I liked it most for helping me clarify some of my…

**Triggering Content (child abuse) Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award (yes, people, I’m still catching up on early pandemic booklists), Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ novel The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois has given us an immensely rich novel, one that hooked me with the depth and drama of a Black family spanning the history of America. The structure is complex, opening most of the eleven…

You’ve got until September, so dust off that piece that’s seen too many rejections and get to work. In three months, give it another go and consider Gulf Coast. Founded in 1986, this is the literary journal of the University of Houston’s creative writing program. Phillip Lopate and Donald Barthelme founded the journal, which has expanded to two print issues as well as its online publications. The…

One of my textbooks this semester is Words Overflown by Stars, a collection of craft essays by Vermont College MFA faculty. This week I contemplated Ellen Lesser’s essay “The Girl I Was, the Woman I Have Become: Fiction’s Reminiscent Narrators.” Specifically, she reflects on “the point in time from which the story gets told” and the purpose of placing a narrator in the present, reflecting on the…

I'm still reading through the best books of 2021/2022, and my fav so far is The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. Masterful and riveting, these stories of war and diaspora will break your heart and bind it up again. Jamil Jan Kochai is an author to watch. #reading

I’m continuing to work my way through titles that made waves in 2021 and 2022, and this is my favorite so far. If you are in the market for masterful short stories, Jamil Jan Kochai’s collection will not disappoint. A National Book Award finalist, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak feels like it enfolds the entire world in its embrace, spanning the United States and Afghanistan, teen gamers and aging…

A lot of literary journals have closed until fall. This gives us months to dust off old stories and see if we can whisk them up into something tasty. When that happens, the online journal Blackbird is a great place to send stuff. #writing #publishing

Okay, so the bad news is that a lot of literary magazines have closed their doors until fall. The good news? You’ve got a few months to pull up that piece you’d given up on, dust it off, and see what you can make of it. If it fluffs up into something pretty tasty, Blackbird might be the literary magazine for you. Since 2001 (or 2002—different places on their website name different founding…

I don't know about you, but it's easy for me to get caught up in waves of self-doubt. When I'm stuck in cycles of negative self-talk, it can leave me feeling like a fraud. This is where Amy Tan recently helped me out with her MasterClass. #writing

I don’t know about you, but it’s easy to for me to get caught up in the old tidal wave of self-doubt. You know how it goes—I’m too old for this, I’ll never succeed at it, I’ll never publish (again), what am I thinking spending all my weekends writing when no one will read any of this crap, why can’t I just face reality and grow up like everybody else? All that negative self-talk left me feeling…

Magical realist and almost Biblical, Gayl Jones' novel Palmares is magnificent. Almeyda grows up enslaved in 1600s Brazil--until she arrives in Palmares, where everything changes. This is a story of magic, myth, and the hope of intergenerational healing.

Palmares is marvelous. Magical realist and at times even Biblical, Gayl Jones’ novel is set in a fictional Brazil at the end of the 17th century. It opens with the young first-person narrator Almeyda, observing Mexia, a mixed race woman. She serves as a model for a particular type of femininity: quiet, alluring, and outwardly obedient. This divide between inner and outer worlds—appearance versus…

If you're looking for a lit mag to place short fiction with a slant towards originality (or even weirdness) and a lot of interiority, may I suggest Guernica? They're open now, and there's no fee. Competition is a tough, so send your best! #publishing

As of May 2023, Guernica is currently open for no-fee submissions here (follow their link to create a free Submittable account). Founded in 2004, Guernica publishes poetry, essays, fiction, criticism, and journalism online. Unlike most magazines, it pays contributors rather than staff; in fact, its staff are entirely volunteers. Rather than a university affiliation, the magazine is partnered with…

After finishing George Saunders' masterpiece "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain," I wanted to see if I could distill what I'd learned about writing. So here it is. A revision checklist that's helping me write better than ever before. #writing #revising

This was the week I said goodbye to George Saunders and his book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I’ve learned so much from him that I worry it will be impossible to sum up, but I have to try. So here goes. My top lessons from Saunders over the semester so far: An initial complication must arrive quickly and, if it is in any way predictable, be dealt with quickly, so the story can find a new route…

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders advocates for complicated stories that "avoid being merely a one-dimensional position paper." So I tried this out myself, and one secret I learned? Complicate the hell out of your characters. #writing

This week I’m thinking about a point George Saunders made on the value of digressions in fiction. In his book on creative writing A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he wrote that stories must “self-complicate, and thus avoid being merely a one-dimensional position paper” (335). However, when writing the first draft of a story, I’ve found there are two kinds of digressions. There are the valuable…

Just finished reading The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka. A heist, a ghost story, a murder mystery, and an LGBTQ+ love story all rolled into one blood-soaked novel set during Sri Lanka's civil war. I couldn't put it down! #bookreview

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is, above all else, a murder mystery told from the perspective of the murder victim who cannot—for the life of him (pardon the pun)—recall how he wound up dead. Set in 1990 during Sri Lanka’s civil war, the mystery unfolds over seven “moons” or days as our ghostly narrator tries to solve the riddle before the clock runs out on his chance to enter “The Light.” If…

Submission Spotlight this month at The Trailer Park MFA: The Chicago Review. They've been around since 1946, are affiliated with the University of Chicago, and will definitely bump up your rep—but you won't earn a dime. Your call. #publishing #writerslife

Their door is open for fiction and poetry submissions until June 15 (nonfiction submissions are open year-round), so if you’re looking to publish a story, now’s the time! The Chicago Review accepts work through their Submittable page, where you can also set up a free Submittable account if you haven’t got one already. The downside? They charge a steeper-than-industry-standard submission fee of…

For the first time in 15 years, I've joined a #critique group. And it turns out a good critique community doesn't just help you revise better. It also helps you spot the insecurities that hold you back. Take back the wheel from your ego, and just #write

It had been over 15 years since I workshopped my writing, but this winter I got a shot with a new critique group. One of your first questions might be how I did that. The internet is thick with posts about finding a great critique group, and I can’t imagine I’d have much to add. As far as where to look, online options include Inked Voices, which also offers workshops and critique partners, and…

Internalized misogyny in "Normal People" was a tragedy that kept Marianne from love. In Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World," it's just the way it is. Far from problematized, misogyny in this novel is an immutable condition of relationships. #BookReview

SPOILERS! TRIGGER WARNING: abuse, sexual assault, misogyny, men’s violence against women, violent porn I fell in love with Sally Rooney’s fiction back in April 2019 when her second novel, Normal People, hit the shelves. I admired her astute psychological observations, rendered in prose that scraped away all pretense. Some readers felt it was an expert depiction of depression. I read the novel…

Last week researchers published some pretty exciting findings for artists. We can set ourselves up for a hot streak by exploring genres and styles, then mastering one. After chronic illness changed how I write, this is wonderful news. #WritingCommunity

Last week was an exciting one for artists interested in scientific studies of creativity. Researchers (Lu Liu, Nima Dehmamy, Jillian Chown, C. Lee Giles & Dashun Wang) published an article in Nature demonstrating that most artistic hot streaks are preceded by exploration as artists try out numerous forms and media. The researchers define exploration as a period of intense “experimentation [as…

Leaving a job because of a chronic illness diagnosis was one thing. Losing a job in the middle of a pandemic, which has made my chronic illness worse? That's a whole different ball game. Here are the first ten twists and turns of this roller coaster.

1. Denial This won’t affect me. I’m fine. 2. Numbness I guess this is happening. Sure. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore. Who cares? 3. Minimization Okay, so I’m losing job. I’ll be fine. I have a master’s degree, a teaching certificate, and years of experience. I’ll find a job in no time. It’s not a big deal. Everybody loses a job someday. I guess my number’s up. It’s fine. I’m…