Good news, everyone!
I have joined some fellow writers here in Cambridge to launch an online literary journal. My limited experience with reading the slush pile at Harvard Review makes me hopeful that I'll be able to pick out the pretty snowflakes from the not-quite-as-formed-yet snowflakes.
Right now we are preparing our first issue, which should hit e-newsstands at pdrjournal.org on April 20. Soon after, we'll open up the submission period for everyone. We'll be releasing sneak peeks soon, so I'll be sure to keep everyone informed.
For now, you should check us out on Facebook here.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Reflection, and a Look Ahead
I survived my first semester of teaching much wiser than when I started. I haven't gotten back my evaluations yet, but overall I think I at least gave my students access to the tools they will need for the rest of their time in undergrad. Will they actually use those tools? That part is out of my control.
I learned, mostly, that I need to assume that they know less than I think they know. I need to do a little bit more hand-holding. And I need to change up my readings a little more. I don't think I would do the same seminar again, even though I have most of the classes already planned out. But I do think I would try to put in a bit more variety of readings: poetry and feature news stories were left out. I didn't make them do their own research in terms of the reading as I should have. I should also include a few more writing assignments next time, instead of relying on discussion board responses and their four big papers.
So I learned from the experience, which was the point of teaching in the first place, so I call it a success. I'm taking a break from it this semester, mostly because my course isn't taught at in the spring, though I have been playing phone tag with someone from another school for an interview. With my time freed up I've been doing some temping, some freelancing, and some novel writing. Thankfully, my finances have held up thus far. The goal for the rest of 2011 is not to take a full-time desk job, to get as much differentiated experience as possible, and to finish the first draft of the novel.
To my fellow writing teachers: what was the most valuable experience you took away from your first semester?
To my fellow writers: what are your writing goals for 2011?
I learned, mostly, that I need to assume that they know less than I think they know. I need to do a little bit more hand-holding. And I need to change up my readings a little more. I don't think I would do the same seminar again, even though I have most of the classes already planned out. But I do think I would try to put in a bit more variety of readings: poetry and feature news stories were left out. I didn't make them do their own research in terms of the reading as I should have. I should also include a few more writing assignments next time, instead of relying on discussion board responses and their four big papers.
So I learned from the experience, which was the point of teaching in the first place, so I call it a success. I'm taking a break from it this semester, mostly because my course isn't taught at in the spring, though I have been playing phone tag with someone from another school for an interview. With my time freed up I've been doing some temping, some freelancing, and some novel writing. Thankfully, my finances have held up thus far. The goal for the rest of 2011 is not to take a full-time desk job, to get as much differentiated experience as possible, and to finish the first draft of the novel.
To my fellow writing teachers: what was the most valuable experience you took away from your first semester?
To my fellow writers: what are your writing goals for 2011?
Sunday, September 26, 2010
A Wild Ride Endured - So Far - Just Barely
On the ladder of academia, the bottom rung for a recent MFA-graduate with no publications is adjunct professor. First-semester adjunct professors at my school are given freshman writing comp classes, told to pick a theme, and cast out into the wild. Needless to say, I am hanging on to this bottom rung for dear life. Let me elaborate.
I am, all at once, an instructor in writing, literature, sociology, religion, film, journalism, poetry, and history. Only being very knowledgeable in one of these things, fairly knowledgeable in another, and not at all knowledgeable in most of the others, I feel like a four year-old who has been shoved into the deep end without water wings. I try to keep about two steps ahead of my students, but more often it's more like a half step.
The problem isn't that I can't teach them to write. The problem is that I must teach them to write about anything. So tonight, I am hunched over an ethno-historian's account of the predicament of Native American mythology, baffled and lost. The ideas are valid to our explorations, but so much of the article is just plain hard. This is the kind of article that, as a student, I would have read and tried to understand but ultimately would have left up to the wisdom of my professor. Now I am that professor, and I am not quite sure if I have the confidence of knowledge I used to attribute to my own.
At least I can fall back on my creativity and acting skills, which has gotten me through my first few weeks just fine. I just can't help but fall back into the trap of feeling like I don't know enough to be up there, especially tonight. It's all part of the journey - the climb up the ladder - but why does the first rung seem so far from the second? And will it be an easier climb once I go for the third? And will I maintain my sanity - and social life - in the meantime?
And can I even continue to climb the ladder if I'm not taking some time out for my own writing?
The ladder swings and I grasp, hoping to keep my grip for another week.
I am, all at once, an instructor in writing, literature, sociology, religion, film, journalism, poetry, and history. Only being very knowledgeable in one of these things, fairly knowledgeable in another, and not at all knowledgeable in most of the others, I feel like a four year-old who has been shoved into the deep end without water wings. I try to keep about two steps ahead of my students, but more often it's more like a half step.
The problem isn't that I can't teach them to write. The problem is that I must teach them to write about anything. So tonight, I am hunched over an ethno-historian's account of the predicament of Native American mythology, baffled and lost. The ideas are valid to our explorations, but so much of the article is just plain hard. This is the kind of article that, as a student, I would have read and tried to understand but ultimately would have left up to the wisdom of my professor. Now I am that professor, and I am not quite sure if I have the confidence of knowledge I used to attribute to my own.
At least I can fall back on my creativity and acting skills, which has gotten me through my first few weeks just fine. I just can't help but fall back into the trap of feeling like I don't know enough to be up there, especially tonight. It's all part of the journey - the climb up the ladder - but why does the first rung seem so far from the second? And will it be an easier climb once I go for the third? And will I maintain my sanity - and social life - in the meantime?
And can I even continue to climb the ladder if I'm not taking some time out for my own writing?
The ladder swings and I grasp, hoping to keep my grip for another week.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Seeing the English Language from the Outside In
I recently had the opportunity to write a couple of super short stories (about one page single-spaced each) to be used in a Master's thesis on English Language Learning. Compounded with the complications of writing such short stories (which I counted to be situations, not really complete stories), they were to include many non-count nouns. Non-count what? I asked.
Because I'm fairly certain I slept through most of English class in elementary school, I didn't remember what non-count nouns were. I had to look them up. Also known as mass nouns, they are nouns that can't be pluralized by simply adding an "s." And, as the name suggestions, you can't count them. Technically, we get around a lot of these nowadays: "coffee" is supposedly a non-count noun, but how many times have you said "I need to get a coffee" or "I nearly fell in the middle of the street trying to carry all these damned coffees"?
So I started as I start everything, with a blank page. I knew I had to be rather concise, and I also knew I couldn't be very stylistically fancy - I am a fan of dashes, semicolons, and. You know. Fragments. But these were students learning English for the first time, so style, sadly, was out. I had a list of non-count nouns to look at while writing. This helped, as I really didn't know what to write and had to base some of my narrative around what nouns I could use.
Three hours later, I had two mediocre scenes. I'm used to writing within parameters for the writing exercises I do every other week or so, but this kind of parameter was different. This time, I had to think about the English language in a way I never was required to before - it would be like having to think, Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now that's a great exercise for Yoga, but not for all your waking hours. It's hard. And it was the same with writing these stories. I could work in the non-count nouns, but then my plot was weak. I could strengthen the plot, and lose some of the required nouns. I could think about every breath in and every breath out, but I might forget to brush my teeth in the process.
Ultimately, I had to tell myself that these were only short, easy-to-understand scenes for use on a questionnaire, not to submit to The New Yorker. They weren't great. I probably wouldn't work with them again. But the act itself was an exercise for my writing mind, and it made me realize how much about our mother tongues we take for granted, especially as writers. Doing any of these kinds of assignments, I believe, can only strengthen style, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to buff up mine a bit.
Because I'm fairly certain I slept through most of English class in elementary school, I didn't remember what non-count nouns were. I had to look them up. Also known as mass nouns, they are nouns that can't be pluralized by simply adding an "s." And, as the name suggestions, you can't count them. Technically, we get around a lot of these nowadays: "coffee" is supposedly a non-count noun, but how many times have you said "I need to get a coffee" or "I nearly fell in the middle of the street trying to carry all these damned coffees"?
So I started as I start everything, with a blank page. I knew I had to be rather concise, and I also knew I couldn't be very stylistically fancy - I am a fan of dashes, semicolons, and. You know. Fragments. But these were students learning English for the first time, so style, sadly, was out. I had a list of non-count nouns to look at while writing. This helped, as I really didn't know what to write and had to base some of my narrative around what nouns I could use.
Three hours later, I had two mediocre scenes. I'm used to writing within parameters for the writing exercises I do every other week or so, but this kind of parameter was different. This time, I had to think about the English language in a way I never was required to before - it would be like having to think, Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now that's a great exercise for Yoga, but not for all your waking hours. It's hard. And it was the same with writing these stories. I could work in the non-count nouns, but then my plot was weak. I could strengthen the plot, and lose some of the required nouns. I could think about every breath in and every breath out, but I might forget to brush my teeth in the process.
Ultimately, I had to tell myself that these were only short, easy-to-understand scenes for use on a questionnaire, not to submit to The New Yorker. They weren't great. I probably wouldn't work with them again. But the act itself was an exercise for my writing mind, and it made me realize how much about our mother tongues we take for granted, especially as writers. Doing any of these kinds of assignments, I believe, can only strengthen style, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to buff up mine a bit.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
American Mythology
On the writing front lately, there has been good news and bad news. The good news is that I have been given a section of freshman writing comp to teach in the fall. The good news that went along with that was that the school gave me a blank lesson plan and said, "Go!" The bad news is that I've never done this before, so all of my extra effort lately has gone into building a syllabus.
I feel like I'm writing a research paper again, except I have to find enough research to write like ten research papers, on all sorts of different subjects. After only having a week to come up with a topic, I finally chose American Myth. At first I thought it would be interesting to go beyond Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed and dive deeper into indigenous myths and how they evolved over time. I thought I could throw in a fun reading on urban legends to keep their interest. And then I realized that just as America is a melting pot of people, we are too a melting pot of myth - just because the American Indians were the only ones native to the land the United States now occupies does not mean their tales are the only things we can deem "American."
Neil Gaiman's incredible novel American Gods is giving me almost every topic I wish to cover in the fall, like how America changed and shaped myths that were brought here with the people, how the modern world views ancient myths, and how the new "gods" of technology are replacing the old "gods" of some of the ancient religions (literally, in the novel, or if you want to think more figuratively, how technology is replacing traditions of oral storytelling). There's also the idea of the American Dream as a mythos in itself: what about these stories are still true, and how are we building a new mythology in our society today?
I look forward to talking a little bit more about my class as I form the syllabus a bit better, but for now I'm deciding which readings to assign and which books to order. My own writing has been limited to the few precious hours every other week with my writing group doing creative prompts and exercises. But I figure that something has to give after graduation (July 3rd!) and I can get into my own work again. It will always be a balancing act, I keep telling myself, between what makes money and what fills the soul. The result will be one of my greatest life accomplishments.
I feel like I'm writing a research paper again, except I have to find enough research to write like ten research papers, on all sorts of different subjects. After only having a week to come up with a topic, I finally chose American Myth. At first I thought it would be interesting to go beyond Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed and dive deeper into indigenous myths and how they evolved over time. I thought I could throw in a fun reading on urban legends to keep their interest. And then I realized that just as America is a melting pot of people, we are too a melting pot of myth - just because the American Indians were the only ones native to the land the United States now occupies does not mean their tales are the only things we can deem "American."
Neil Gaiman's incredible novel American Gods is giving me almost every topic I wish to cover in the fall, like how America changed and shaped myths that were brought here with the people, how the modern world views ancient myths, and how the new "gods" of technology are replacing the old "gods" of some of the ancient religions (literally, in the novel, or if you want to think more figuratively, how technology is replacing traditions of oral storytelling). There's also the idea of the American Dream as a mythos in itself: what about these stories are still true, and how are we building a new mythology in our society today?
I look forward to talking a little bit more about my class as I form the syllabus a bit better, but for now I'm deciding which readings to assign and which books to order. My own writing has been limited to the few precious hours every other week with my writing group doing creative prompts and exercises. But I figure that something has to give after graduation (July 3rd!) and I can get into my own work again. It will always be a balancing act, I keep telling myself, between what makes money and what fills the soul. The result will be one of my greatest life accomplishments.
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Cliche Trap
We're always trying so hard to avoid cliche in our writing, and lately I've been noticing how much I fall prey to their traps in my daily life. This has become mostly apparent in my workplace, where I talk about the weather and what everyone did the weekend before and how much we're all addicted to coffee and how we can't wait for Friday afternoons. While I'm sometimes sheepish that I'm not being very original in my exchanges, it's comfortable. Engaging in small talk makes me feel like one of the team.
So what happens when your characters really do talk about something that's considered "cliche"? What if you really do need your characters to have a water cooler moment where they all talk about the freakishly warm spring weather? How do we make these moments truly honest and something people can look at and feel comfortable with rather than find boring and predictable?
Like most writing, I think it comes down to character. I'm the kind of character who would have a hyper-aware conversation about the weather with my cube mate, then turn around and write a blog post about small talk. Maybe he's going to have a conversation with me about the weather before turning back to his computer and talking to himself for the next half-hour, possibly about the cage match on Pay-Per-View later that night. Maybe it will spark a story in my supervisor about a woman who gave her umbrella away on a rainy day, only to have it given back to her by a completely different person weeks later when she was struggling through a sudden downpour. I think we have to remember that even though on the outside a scene may look cliche, it's really not because it's being experienced differently by everyone who's involved. And by looking at those different perspectives, it becomes a singular event, less boring, and less predictable.
And maybe next time I find myself aware of such things, I can try and turn up my perception radar and ask myself, "What makes this a real scene in reality, and how could I re-create it on the page?"
So what happens when your characters really do talk about something that's considered "cliche"? What if you really do need your characters to have a water cooler moment where they all talk about the freakishly warm spring weather? How do we make these moments truly honest and something people can look at and feel comfortable with rather than find boring and predictable?
Like most writing, I think it comes down to character. I'm the kind of character who would have a hyper-aware conversation about the weather with my cube mate, then turn around and write a blog post about small talk. Maybe he's going to have a conversation with me about the weather before turning back to his computer and talking to himself for the next half-hour, possibly about the cage match on Pay-Per-View later that night. Maybe it will spark a story in my supervisor about a woman who gave her umbrella away on a rainy day, only to have it given back to her by a completely different person weeks later when she was struggling through a sudden downpour. I think we have to remember that even though on the outside a scene may look cliche, it's really not because it's being experienced differently by everyone who's involved. And by looking at those different perspectives, it becomes a singular event, less boring, and less predictable.
And maybe next time I find myself aware of such things, I can try and turn up my perception radar and ask myself, "What makes this a real scene in reality, and how could I re-create it on the page?"
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Nick Hinton and Delving into the Music Industry
Recently I had the pleasure to work with Nick Hinton, a talented singer, songwriter and composer, on some promotional materials for his website and upcoming releases for his CD, The Brave Unknown. Though I hadn't heard any of Nick's music before we started collaborating, I was instantly drawn to his soulful style and moving instrumentals. This is going to be his first full-length album release and hopefully will help him break into the U.S. from the U.K. Check out some of the songs on his website or his MySpace page.
This is my first freelance project in the music business and I've really enjoyed getting to know the vocabulary with which musicians talk about sound, rhythm, and structure of composition. Although I don't have very much experience in many fields, this project proved to be very rewarding in the process of research, and I look forward to honing my skills in writing about music for future projects.
This is my first freelance project in the music business and I've really enjoyed getting to know the vocabulary with which musicians talk about sound, rhythm, and structure of composition. Although I don't have very much experience in many fields, this project proved to be very rewarding in the process of research, and I look forward to honing my skills in writing about music for future projects.
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