Shameless Self Promotion: Part l

Readers!

About two months ago, I took a look at my inventory. The last essay I had published was in 2007, on literarymama.com. I had a poem published in Pearl magazine out of Berkeley in 2008; that magazine has since shut it doors.

This is a peril of the long form: not a lot of material to send out. This year, as I’ve been laboring to finish Strings, the novel I began in the MFA program, I decided that it was not in fact necessary to ONLY work on hammering out that beast. This was much like the understanding that one did not, in fact, have to be ONLY a fiction writer. Essays and poems were also fair game. I headed into the year with a couple of concrete goals:

1. Make some writing friends. Seriously, to devote your life to a craft but have no fairs or fun at which to mingle with others who do the same craft, is, well, not really sustainable. People are hard-wired to connect with other people, especially those with common interests. It is very difficult to get writers to come out of their houses. Funnily enough, I’ve found that when they do, they often want to be alone, hiking, running, or strolling with the dog. They are not big talkers. So I took a class. At the Emerson Center for the Arts. It’s a small class, but I truly like everyone in it. And, even better, it’s led me to goal number two.

2. Generate more fiction. Short fiction. A fancy way of saying, write something new. My research led me to see this unpleasant truth: I haven’t had a story in print since before 2005. I’ve labored; I’ve finished novels and had them make the rounds, but a novel in print is a very different thing from a story in print. Not easier. I didn’t say easier. I have a story that’s been  rejected over sixty times. I refuse to give up on it. Is this tenacity or just being stupid? Remains to be seen. I’ve workshopped one brand new story  in my class, and am about to do number two. Number two did not exist anywhere on Monday. It’s now Friday and the story is 75% out of the — what? I forgot what a mystery this is. I had an idea. My two hands. And a legal pad. Out it came.

3. Quit with the critical stuff. I’ve been watching myself, my go-to responses, the adjectives that pop up, the lens through which I view the world. I have a habit, a leaning, a predilection towards the negative. This shit is poison. I’ve seen the effect on my kids. I think of my kids as pretty untouched, as in, blank canvases. You wring your hands and start spouting worries and scary possibilities, and just watch them lean to the down, the unsure, the relative safety of finding what’s wrong with a situation, achievement, outfit, reflection, performance. I have to go over-the-top with a rush of positivity, spin every word to the right and good, the bubbly, the happy, the details that work, the moments that shine, the effort that paid off in order to get a smile, or even a silent, ruminative nod. And here’s the thing: due to the way I’m wired, this feels like over-the-top Pollyanna gobbledy goop, but it does not sound that way. It sounds like, well, a positive person. Someone who is not me. It feels like acting. Faking, even though what I’m saying is true. But the results! To walk away from an experience, exchange, effort, with the parts that I liked, what worked, and what I want more of in the forefront of my mind, that’s like having rock candy on your tongue.

In that vein, here is my shameless self promotion. Note I called it Part l. That’s optimism. My latest publication is at an online magazine devoted to all aspects of parenting: mamalode. FYI: They count the visitors. The more visits I get the more loved I feel.

http://mamalode.com/story/detail/mean-or-shy