Score on the publication front

Well, it turns out a little piece I wrote called “The Power of Pebbles” will appear in the forthcoming Cup of Comfort for a Better World. That news came Friday as I was having one crisis after another. My daughter forgot her math book and her scooter, which she needs to get around to her classes, broke. That all meant I had to make an extra trip home and meet a couple deadlines in a few short hours in order to get her scooter in for repairs by 2 p.m. Somewhere in all of that, I managed to find a minute to check my email and see that I ended up among the 49 finalists to have essays in the book. The entire list of contributors is at the Cup of Comfort blog. The book is due out in March of next year.

I have another book coming out soon I think. More Sweet Lemons, an anthology on Sicilian culture, should be out any month now. I think December was the last I heard, but it might be later. Three of my poems were accepted for publication in that book, which is near and dear to my heart because I am of Sicilian heritage.

I did send my first agent query. It’s a start. I’m on my way:)

Random line drops from the sky…er…Google

Sometimes phrases or questions or combinations of words just stand out. Today it was the following:

“Was it a simple variation of a savory cheese pie?”

I think it’s the whole “savory cheese pie” that stood out. I know it’s silly. It just sounds musical to me. Maybe it will find  into a poem or into some piece of fiction. Maybe, I’ve got the start of something. Maybe, it will just stand alone as a line that has dropped from the sky. Well, this one actually dropped from Google. I was randomly searching nothing and found this in a description. Yes, my post screams geek. It’s been raining all day and I just wanted something else besides precipitation to drop from the sky.

Off to dine with friends.

It’s going to be a long Monday

John Prine’s lovely little line is coursing through my head this Monday as I spent all day away from home. I woke up at 5:30 p.m., left the house at 7 p.m. and returned home at 9 p.m. In between, there was eight hours of work, just under two hours of dinner out and wait time until the 4-H meeting, which I attended for a half hour before running out to my regular Monday night board meeting that I cover for the newspaper.

So, it was a long Monday and there was no work on my novel, but writing was done. Writing is always done. Well, it’s time to move on and grade a few papers.

Another day another morning in the red room

Here I am again, in the early morning silence. The only sound that filters in is the rhythmic gentle thump of the clothes that twirl in the dryer. My golden retriever lies at my feet after having been fed and let outside. I’ve surfed some blogs and drink tea in the peace. I don’t care that dust has collected. I’m writing, even if it is only here in my blog for the time being.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m reading Tillie Olsen’s book Silences. In it she writes, “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children, usually had to work on a paid job as well, the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist. Nevertheless writing, the hope of it, was ‘the air I breathed, so long as I shall breathe at all.’ In that hope, there was conscious storing, snatched reading, beginnings of writing, and always “the secret rootlets of reconnaissance.”

This is how I write these days. This is how I get it done. I was proofing my graduate program’s alumni newsletter when one of the articles discussed writing while raising children. The author of the article, who is a fellow Spalding graduate who I don’t know personally, gave wonderful tips on how to manage parenting and a writing career. She referenced Silences. That’s when the light bulb went on. I knew I’d seen the title in my personal library, but I hadn’t yet set about reading the book, so I pulled it from my shelf and have begun. It’s the perfect book to be reading now that my novel is so near finished and I’m struggling to find time to get those last edits done. It’s the perfect book to let me know I must keep going, must keep scrapping for bits of time.

Well, I’d better go put my quiet time to good use while the red room is still quiet.

An evening in the red room

I’m sitting here in my red room, working amid the clutter of Pokemon cards and the sound of Pokemon streaming over the Internet. So, it’s not the ideal writing space, but I think of Stephen King and how he wrote in his book On Writing: A Memoir of Craft of writing with his son playing near him. That’s how I write. That’s how I get things done, and I love my red room. I love the energy and color and the fact that there are books stacked all around this room.

I taught my third class today and feel like I’ve finally gotten in the groove. What made me happiest was the fact that I used Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s poem “Daddy, We Called You” in class and streamed her Youtube reading of this poem into the classroom. My students loved it!! Mind you, these are students who are mostly majoring in health and business fields, but I could tell they were moved by her poem and by hearing her read it. I used her poem along side Mary Oliver’s poem “A Visitor” to get my students to think about comparing and contrasting in an analysis essay. It worked so well because both poems are so accessible and both are poems about fathers, which is a subject that’s likely to resonate with most people. I really felt this was the most engaging discussions we’ve had so far.

On the writing front, I’ve been reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences, which makes me more determined to move forward with my writing projects, no matter where I find myself doing it; at a doctor’s office, in a red room with Pokemon episodes playing endlessly on a computer, or in the few minutes I have between work and meetings.

Not too long ago I went to a writing lecture given during the Kerrytown Book Festival. The panel was made up of two writer couples. Their discussion focused on the writing life when both parties in a couple are writers. That’s not my situation, but I just wanted to hear writers talk about the writing life. I always find inspiration in it. At one point, there was the discussion on who gets ownership of certain life situations that might make good fictional or poetic subjects or situations. That got me thinking a bit later on how we make our stories different. It got me thinking that the same situation can be used in many different ways, but it’s the unique characters and situations around it that make it different. I think about this as I deal with cancer in my novel. Cancer is a common story in novels, but what makes mine unique is the characters that surround the story. They have unique experiences and approach that common circumstance in a very unique way. I guess what I’m getting at is that those stories need to be written because we all experience the same things in uniquely different ways and that’s where the unique story arises.

That’s it for now. The picture below has nothing to do with anything. I took it at this year’s Clinton Fall Festival, which I covered for the newspaper. It’s sort of my silly little tradition to go to the animal exhibit and photograph animals up close. Last year, I photographed a camel.

Mini post to say hi

I’m inspired to blog after seeing the movie Julie and Julia. There is so much to say and so little time I think. I’ve been teaching and as much as I prepare for each class, I always feel like I’ve not prepared enough. It’s not helping me in my novel aspirations, but I do love the classroom.

Now, I’m preparing for a gathering with friends. We’ll watch football and eat food that I don’t have to cook, because my husband does the cooking. All I’ll say is that all that French butter in Julie and Julia inspired him. It’s a wonder I’m able to lose what little weight I’m losing.

He can keep bringing it on, as far as I’m concerned. I burn things. He’s a gourmet chef. We complement each other. I’m too tired to cook anymore.

On the writing front, my book is coming back from my sister-in-law’s house, so I can give it a final fun through. I have more to say about writing and my recent writing escapades, but I’m tired and want to read something that’s not an English composition text. I’ll try not to stay away so long.

Long time not post

So, I’ve been busy. It’s September. School has started. We are adjusting to that first week of school and the first week of University of Michigan football. There is a plaque on our kitchen wall that my friend Deb found for me. It reads, “We interrupt this family for football.” That’s about how it goes. When U of M football starts, chaos starts.

Focusing on writing has been nearly impossible, but I’ve managed to eek a few words out. I’ve been writing everyday, just not writing the fiction and poetry I’d rather be working on, but I’m not complaining. I’m writing for a living. I’m also going to start teaching writing for a living in a couple weeks, which is another reason I haven’t been able to write all that much. I’m working up my syllabus, and that takes some time since I’ve only read syllabi before and never had to write them.

I’m sitting at my desk, instead of in the family room recliner. I feel more focused at my desk and I get to see my little Japanese maple with its branches dancing in the breeze.

My literary life is pretty quiet right now. That’s fine. I’m working on things. I’m working on organizing the literary portion of an arts festival that’s coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ll be reading poems at Art-A-Licious in Adrian and be introducing three other local authors who I know well because I’ve written feature articles on them for the newspaper. That’s exciting. They’ll be selling books. I have nothing to sell, but I decided to put a small booklet of poems together to give away. They are poems that already have appeared in Homefront magazine, a small regional publication we put out through the newspaper. I’m typically commissioned to write the poems based on whatever photograph the editor hands me, which is always a strange but fun exercise. She’s liked everything I’ve given her, so it works.  There have only been seven poems that I’ve written, but they made for a nice, yet slim, booklet. Whatever gets people reading poetry, right?

For reading, I’ve picked up the book Mindful Loving by Henry Grayson. It goes along with the transformation I’ve been making lately. I’ve cut meat out of my diet. I eat as many fresh fruits and veggies and I can get my hands on as well as grains and nuts. My dear partner Jay has been gracious enough to accomodate my meatlessness in the dishes that he prepares, and he’s done a wonderful job of coming up with healthy alternatives. I’ve added regular walks to my weekly routine. I’ve cut coffee out of my diet, and all caffeinated drinks, out of my diet. I only drink water and tea and an occasional juice made of fresh fruits and veggies. I’ve begun using the Emotional Freedom Technique, with the help of my friend Q. The day she introduced me to it, I felt a sudden sense of freedom. Henry Grayson’s book also talks about the Emotional Freedom Technique and more about letting go of the “ego” mind and letting joy in. I’ve never felt better in all my 41 years. I feel a cloud has lifted that I’ve been living under for so long. I don’t feel nearly as stressed or anxious as I used to. That probably had a lot to do with all the coffee I drank. I could go on and on about how much more balanced and great I feel and how I’m hoping my family will catch on to all of this. I can’t even do it justice here. There’s no real way to explain it, except that my friend Q located something in me that I had been holding onto for so long and releasing it just helped me feel free of it and made me realize I could free myself of all the things I’ve held onto for so long. I’ll go further into it in another post. I must sign off now and get to my writing projects.

Good things will happen today:)

Writing poetry with Maria Mazziotti Gillan

I’ve written about it here before, that I’ve studied the writings of Italian-American women, that I discovered there were a lot of writings by Italian-American women totally by accident. It was a case of bucking the old “you can’t judge a book by its cover” saying. In this case, it was the green cover that totally drew me to the book Paper Fish, which opened up for me a whole new world of Italian-American female voices. This is significant to me because I am as Italian-American as they come. My dad was born here in the United States, but his dad was born in (drum roll please) Trapani, Sicily. Does the name look familiar? That’s my name and Trapani is a province of Sicily. My dad’s mom was born here, but her parents were born in Italy. On my mother’s side the years removed from the “old country” are a little closer. She was born in (drum roll please) Trapani, Sicily, and came to the United States with her parents when she was 14 years old.

Well, I suppose I’ve gotten way off the point here, but in the 10 years that I’ve been reading these works by Italian-American women, I’ve not met a single one of the authors in person. I’ve connected with a couple on the internet, but that’s about it. Monday of this week, however, I met Maria Mazziotti Gillan as a participant in a free poetry workshop she was giving right here Michigan.

She was so inspiring, not only for the wonderful poetry that she writes, but for her warm and generous spirit and her obvious strength. As Chelsea District Library now former artist in residence M.L. Liebler said about her Monday night, she’s a working class poet who has worked incredibly hard at her craft. Perhaps that’s a little bit why her poems so easily draw me in as a reader. That’s not to say they are simple. They are deep and rich and emotional and full of real life. They are honest. They are authentic.

That’s what she taught the group of us who took her workshop Monday night. She taught us to get at our authenticity and she did it in such a short amount of time. I think we all moved to a place we’d never imagined we could get to, with a gentle nudge from Maria. The meeting was all too brief, but I’m so fortunate to have had the chance to write even one poem with her.

Here is a Youtube link to her reading a few poems as part of poetryvlog.com: Maria M. Gillan on poetryvlog. The imbed code wasn’t working to imbed the video in the post, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Here’s the copy of her latest book that she signed for me Monday night. All That Lies Between Us is an American Book Award winning collection, which I find ironic since few, if any, Italian-American women are ever included in the collections of “American” writing that publishers like Norton release, so I’m really excited to see her recognized in such a way.

The search is on

While my book is being read, proofed and the like by my dear sister Lee, I’ve begun the dreaded agent search. I guess it’s not so dreaded. After looking through Google for agents and “how-to” articles on writing the killer query, I found agentquery.com. I’m sure it’s a well-known site, but I figured I’d link to it regardless.

All options are on the table at this point. I’m going to hit the traditional route of agents and small publishers hard and see where that gets me with this thing. Anyone who feels compelled to tell me that I’m more likely to get struck by lightning twice than to find an agent or publisher should know that I’m well aware of this, but I’m also hard-headed and committed to following through on this. Believe me, if I could be anything in my life and make a more stable and comfortable living I would, but this is what I do. Writing is what I was meant to do and what makes me happiest–in a sadistic starving artist kind of way. It just took me a few years of toiling in the sciences in college to realize my confidence in admitting this to everyone, including my parents who paid for me to toil aimlessly in the sciences.

Back to my agent search. So, I went to agentquery.com. There they have a database of agents with details ranging from “Yes, I am an agent” to “I love quirky books with a hint of vampire lust and a strong female lead” (okay, I didn’t actually read that there. That’s a much more concrete composite description of anything I found there.) to lists of books specific agents have represented. What’s nice is I can narrow the list of thousands to about 540 by hitting the heading “literary fiction.” Abstractly speaking, I suppose that’s where my novel would fall. Ah, but it gets much more specifically abstract, if that makes any sense.

Yes, I mean the more the agents I looked at, the more confused I got as to where my book fit in. There were rarely ever specific details as to what an agent wanted. The word “quirky” came up a lot, but what exactly does quirky mean? I know my book doesn’t qualify as “quirky.” After reading hundreds of profiles, I came to the conclusion that my book might be described as a hyper realistic literary family saga.

My intention with the search, however, wasn’t necessarily to classify my book, but to get some idea of where to begin with my agent search. The most helpful part of the profiles were the links to agency websites and the lists of books represented that many of the agents had. It showed me that one agent’s “womens fiction” is another agent’s “chick lit” and that the best way to really get an idea of what an agent is looking for is to look at his or her book list. I knew this. I just found that the agent query site helped to make the process of finding this a bit easier.

That’s about it for now.

Thomas-Wilbur feels how I do after surfing hundreds of agent profiles

How words can heal

Today I’m sitting in the big recliner. For the better part of the last four days I’ve been brooding about this or that, feeling sorry for myself,  I guess. There are a few nasty things going on in my life, which will probably turn out okay. All that was topped off by a nasty letter about me someone sent to our newspaper, a letter that will be published this week in print and on the web. That’s the glamorous life of a writer for you. People are free to complain to your boss in a most public forum. That’s the nature of the biz, so I should be used to it by now. I just think this letter was the bright shining maraschino cherry on top of a big pile of poo poo (to keep it PG) disguised as chocolate fudge cake.

So, brooding was how I felt  until I read my blog friend Linda Cassidy Lewis’s recent post “My perfect day…and then some.” All of my troubles melted away as I followed her imaginative and detailed journey of what she would call a perfect day. I think anyone would call it a perfect day and reading it was like doing yoga for the mind, so I couldn’t help sharing it with anyone who happens on my blog. Here’s to having the perfect day–for real or imagined. Perhaps, I’ll take a page from my friend Linda’s book and try this writing exercise in a future post. Thanks Linda.

This was taken at Gunnison National Park in 2008. It kind of makes me feel how Linda’s post made me feel, so I figured it fit as a visual for this post.