For many years, the Flatiron Writers have had a tradition of celebrating St. Lucy’s Day, December 13th. St. Lucy is (one of several) patron saints of writers, perhaps because of the connection between writing and eyesight–poor Lucy had her eyes gouged out. None of us are practicing Catholics, so we have to kind of wing it. We celebrate by getting together at a nice restaurant for food and drink, and doing a gift exchange of paperback books. We thank Lucy for any writing successes we’ve experienced during the year, and toast her in the hopes that she’ll be even more generous in the coming year.
I’m pretty happy with Lucy’s delivery in 2008. Toby, Geneve and I saw our short story anthology published, Jen got accepted to the Hollins MFA program, Maggie was accepted to a prestigious residency, Toby and I attended Sewanee and Tin House, my short story "Tupelo Rose" was a finalist for the Thomas Wolfe prize, Toby had a story published in WNC Woman, and we recently welcomed a new member, Marjorie Klein, author of the novel, Test Pattern. We all continued to write, some of us more prolifically than others, and at the meetings when no one had brought anything to critique, we still had the privilege of each other’s company, to talk about books, politics and other fun things.
Although Baptists like me believe we have a direct line to God and Jesus and don’t need the intervention of a Saint, I’ve been thinking about what I would like Lucy to work on for me in 2009 if she’s so inclined. I’ve decided that what I really want is an ending (a happy one) to the story of my search for a literary agent and publisher for my novel. The search makes for a pretty exciting story, with lots of ups and downs and intrigue, spanning (so far) a two year period, during which I have amassed an impressive collection of rejection slips, revised the novel a bizillion times, and imposed on every friend and acquaintance I have who might know-someone-who-knows-someone who can help me get published. When I finally tell the story, it will be the longest blog post ever, but I can’t tell it until it has an ending.
If Lucy can’t finagle a happy ending for me, then I want my consolation prize to be this: I want to become a process person, one of those intriguing folks for whom the goal isn’t everything. I want to learn to appreciate the journey, the friendships I’ve made from my writing, the mental health benefits, the pure fun of creating, so that at the end of my life, even if I never publish anything significant, I can feel like a success. And I’d like to accomplish this without a lobotomy.
So, St. Lucy, virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and do your thing.
Happy writing for 2009, everybody!
Copyright 2008 by Heather Newton
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Stereotype or Verisimilitude?
When is something a stereotype, and when is it simply landscape?
Since returning from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference I’ve been digesting the feedback my work received there. In an early chapter of my novel, the reader learns (among other things) that my character, Bertie, lives in a single-wide trailer with azalea bushes growing in front of it, and reads Reader’s Digest to increase her word power. In the Sewanee workshop, one workshop leader commented that trailers, azaleas and Reader’s Digest were all southern stereotypes and that having all three was just too much. I’ve been pondering that comment, and here are some of my thoughts. I’d be interested to hear yours.
I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea Reader’s Digest was a stereotype, and a negative one at that. I actually made Bertie read Reader’s Digest to show that she was someone who tried to better herself, though without much success. I had fond childhood memories of reading the back issues of Reader’s Digest that filled the basket next to my grandfather’s recliner in Little Washington, North Carolina, not to mention the condensed books that lined the shelves. Mary Stewart’s Airs Above the Ground was my favorite condensed book, and sometimes still I go to the library and check out the uncondensed version to re-read. Thanks to the Sewanee workshop, I now know that Reader’s Digest falls in the category of publications for which smart people should have contempt. I took the reference to Reader’s Digest out of my novel, both because it invoked a stereotype, and because of an astute point a Sewanee friend made.
Here’s how I had used Reader’s Digest in my novel (it’s Bertie speaking): "There was a word in last month’s Reader’s Digest that I had no trouble adding to my word power: ‘reproof.’ Eugenia’s sharp tongue pinned it to my memory, her always reproofing me about the size of my trailer, me and James missing a week of church, or some past mistake I’ve said I’m sorry for a million times." (Yes, I do know that the real word is "reproving" but Bertie didn’t know that).
My friend pointed out that even though I as a writer was very interested in language and vocabulary, normal people (like my character) were not likely to be so interested. I thought that was a valid observation, so I took the reference out.
Next, trailers. The workshop comment made me think that maybe I had gotten it wrong. Maybe mobile homes weren’t really part of the landscape of western North Carolina and I had put Bertie in a trailer out of pure unoriginality, after watching too many Dukes of Hazzard reruns. To check, I took a day trip to the part of western North Carolina where my novel is set, and counted trailers. According to my unscientific census, about every tenth residence was a single-wide mobile home. So, on the one hand, trailers (and red mud and azalea bushes and screen doors that do in fact bang when you enter and exit) are simply part of the landscape of the American south. On the other, just because something is true doesn’t mean it isn’t also a stereotype. I suppose the tilt toward stereotype begins when you use the fact that a character lives in a trailer as short-hand to describe who he or she is. Joe Bob lives in a trailer, so he’s a beer-drinking, shiftless, ignorant redneck, and there’s nothing more to him than that.
Of course there is more to southern folk than that. On this same day trip, I visited relatives who live in a single-wide mobile home. The trailer sits on family property with a view any Yankee developer would kill for. On a hot August day we sat comfortably up on the ridge, with a breeze blowing through woods behind us and cool air rising from a creek (a "branch") below. Our aunt and uncle have two young granddaughters, aged five and seven, who immediately took my nine-year-old daughter to the creek to hunt "pennywinkles" (a freshwater snail). It was the seven-year-old’s birthday, and this little cousin was so generous she offered my daughter (whom she had never met before) one of her new Littlest Pet Shop bobble-heads to keep. If you have a daughter in elementary school you know what a sacrifice this represented. I checked my aunt’s plants. Not an azalea bush in sight, but she and my husband, another green-thumb, compared notes about an exotic tropical plant she had acquired that was thriving on the back deck. The entire porch rail of the trailer was lined with perfect heirloom tomatoes my uncle had managed to grow even in a severe drought, and of course he insisted we take some when we left. So, beyond the corrugated metal siding of this particular single-wide I found the deep connection to place, and the abiding generosity, that is the South.
I decided to keep the trailer in my novel, because it isn’t in there gratuitously. It represents Bertie’s disappointment at how things have gone for her in life, because when she moved into the trailer thirty years ago she thought it would be temporary. For various reasons it has turned out to be permanent.
And the azaleas? Azaleas are flora. I suppose some plants (magnolias, gardenias, kudzu perhaps) could be deemed stereotypical, but if you are writing about a place, and a particular plant predominates, it seems to me it’s appropriate to include it in the description of the landscape. There are cacti in the desert, cypress trees hung with Spanish moss near the coast, rhododendron (laurel) in the mountains. I decided to keep the azaleas.
By now you’re thinking "this gal just can’t take criticism" and you’re probably right. My hope, though, is that with a few more revisions, I will have written the novel well enough to flesh out my mobile-home-living, azalea-growing character so that my readers will know there’s oh so much more to her than that.
Copyright 2008 by Heather Newton
Since returning from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference I’ve been digesting the feedback my work received there. In an early chapter of my novel, the reader learns (among other things) that my character, Bertie, lives in a single-wide trailer with azalea bushes growing in front of it, and reads Reader’s Digest to increase her word power. In the Sewanee workshop, one workshop leader commented that trailers, azaleas and Reader’s Digest were all southern stereotypes and that having all three was just too much. I’ve been pondering that comment, and here are some of my thoughts. I’d be interested to hear yours.
I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea Reader’s Digest was a stereotype, and a negative one at that. I actually made Bertie read Reader’s Digest to show that she was someone who tried to better herself, though without much success. I had fond childhood memories of reading the back issues of Reader’s Digest that filled the basket next to my grandfather’s recliner in Little Washington, North Carolina, not to mention the condensed books that lined the shelves. Mary Stewart’s Airs Above the Ground was my favorite condensed book, and sometimes still I go to the library and check out the uncondensed version to re-read. Thanks to the Sewanee workshop, I now know that Reader’s Digest falls in the category of publications for which smart people should have contempt. I took the reference to Reader’s Digest out of my novel, both because it invoked a stereotype, and because of an astute point a Sewanee friend made.
Here’s how I had used Reader’s Digest in my novel (it’s Bertie speaking): "There was a word in last month’s Reader’s Digest that I had no trouble adding to my word power: ‘reproof.’ Eugenia’s sharp tongue pinned it to my memory, her always reproofing me about the size of my trailer, me and James missing a week of church, or some past mistake I’ve said I’m sorry for a million times." (Yes, I do know that the real word is "reproving" but Bertie didn’t know that).
My friend pointed out that even though I as a writer was very interested in language and vocabulary, normal people (like my character) were not likely to be so interested. I thought that was a valid observation, so I took the reference out.
Next, trailers. The workshop comment made me think that maybe I had gotten it wrong. Maybe mobile homes weren’t really part of the landscape of western North Carolina and I had put Bertie in a trailer out of pure unoriginality, after watching too many Dukes of Hazzard reruns. To check, I took a day trip to the part of western North Carolina where my novel is set, and counted trailers. According to my unscientific census, about every tenth residence was a single-wide mobile home. So, on the one hand, trailers (and red mud and azalea bushes and screen doors that do in fact bang when you enter and exit) are simply part of the landscape of the American south. On the other, just because something is true doesn’t mean it isn’t also a stereotype. I suppose the tilt toward stereotype begins when you use the fact that a character lives in a trailer as short-hand to describe who he or she is. Joe Bob lives in a trailer, so he’s a beer-drinking, shiftless, ignorant redneck, and there’s nothing more to him than that.
Of course there is more to southern folk than that. On this same day trip, I visited relatives who live in a single-wide mobile home. The trailer sits on family property with a view any Yankee developer would kill for. On a hot August day we sat comfortably up on the ridge, with a breeze blowing through woods behind us and cool air rising from a creek (a "branch") below. Our aunt and uncle have two young granddaughters, aged five and seven, who immediately took my nine-year-old daughter to the creek to hunt "pennywinkles" (a freshwater snail). It was the seven-year-old’s birthday, and this little cousin was so generous she offered my daughter (whom she had never met before) one of her new Littlest Pet Shop bobble-heads to keep. If you have a daughter in elementary school you know what a sacrifice this represented. I checked my aunt’s plants. Not an azalea bush in sight, but she and my husband, another green-thumb, compared notes about an exotic tropical plant she had acquired that was thriving on the back deck. The entire porch rail of the trailer was lined with perfect heirloom tomatoes my uncle had managed to grow even in a severe drought, and of course he insisted we take some when we left. So, beyond the corrugated metal siding of this particular single-wide I found the deep connection to place, and the abiding generosity, that is the South.
I decided to keep the trailer in my novel, because it isn’t in there gratuitously. It represents Bertie’s disappointment at how things have gone for her in life, because when she moved into the trailer thirty years ago she thought it would be temporary. For various reasons it has turned out to be permanent.
And the azaleas? Azaleas are flora. I suppose some plants (magnolias, gardenias, kudzu perhaps) could be deemed stereotypical, but if you are writing about a place, and a particular plant predominates, it seems to me it’s appropriate to include it in the description of the landscape. There are cacti in the desert, cypress trees hung with Spanish moss near the coast, rhododendron (laurel) in the mountains. I decided to keep the azaleas.
By now you’re thinking "this gal just can’t take criticism" and you’re probably right. My hope, though, is that with a few more revisions, I will have written the novel well enough to flesh out my mobile-home-living, azalea-growing character so that my readers will know there’s oh so much more to her than that.
Copyright 2008 by Heather Newton
What I Did For My Summer Vacation: The Sewanee Writers’ Conference
This July I spent twelve days at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Sewanee, Tennessee. It was fabulous. I got out of it everything I had hoped, and more.
Some people go to Sewanee every year and treat the conference as their summer vacation. Others, like me, approach it as a one-time experience. I had finished a novel. The things I wanted from the conference were 1) to get feedback from my faculty reader and others that would help me make the novel good, and 2) to meet agents.
Sewanee allows you to list your first, second and third choices of faculty reader, and tells you who your reader will be when you arrive. My first choice was Jill McCorkle (Ferris Beach, The Cheerleader, Carolina Moon), because she was one of my all-time favorite southern writers, and because she had used multiple points of view in her novels, which was something I was wrestling with. I was lucky enough to get her. As a bonus, my other workshop leader was Tony Earley (Here We Are in Paradise, Jim the Boy), another southern writer whose work I had admired for years. I and the other participants in the Earley-McCorkle workshop agreed that our workshop was the best. Jill and Tony’s styles complemented each other. Jill had a gift for seeing the big picture, while Tony honed in on specific craft issues. They were kind with their criticism and made sure the fifteen members of our workshop kept it constructive. The workshop was particularly helpful to me because I don’t have an MFA and sometimes feel a bit like a primitive artist.
I met with Jill for my individual critique at the campus coffee house. She was positive and encouraging, and the clarity she offered about what I needed to fix was invaluable. For the hour-plus that we talked, I got the benefit of her thinking out loud about how I should deal with multiple narrators, distinguishing characters from one another at the beginning of the novel, and making one weak-sister character more interesting. Most of the participants I talked to at Sewanee were as delighted as I was with their faculty one-on-one. I do think it’s important to be deliberate in choosing your faculty reader. You should read their books to determine who would be a good fit for you. If you write chick lit, it might not be wise to have a male faculty member who writes for a male audience. If you are a poet, you might do well to choose a poet who belongs to the same school of thought as you do (I don’t claim to understand how those crazy poets categorize themselves).
Sewanee invites literary agents to come and meet with participants. The system for getting a meeting with one of them is what we in the law call arbitrary and capricious, and what others might call a free-for-all. You have to be in the right place at the right time, and you have to be aggressive. The day the sign-up sheet for the first visiting agent went up, I wasn’t around and the list was full by the time I saw it. But as I was standing there staring at the full list, a woman who had signed up came and marked her name off, so I got to take her spot. I met with the agent, she told me I could send her my complete manuscript, and I was also able to pick her brain about ways to market the Flatiron short story anthology my writing group had published.
The day the sign up sheet for the second agent went up, I was in the right place but the list had been posted early and was full by the time I got there. I felt like the wolf in the little pig story who makes a date to pick apples with the pig, only to have the pig show up early and pick all the apples. A nice thing about Sewanee, though, is that agents and other guests make themselves available at social events. I approached agent number two at the reception that evening, and told her that I was stalking her (I really said that) because I hadn’t been able to get a meeting with her. She was extremely nice, gave me her email address and told me to contact her.
When agent number three arrived, by God, I was determined to get on the list. I asked the programs manager when she planned to post it, and camped out in the auditorium two feet away from the bulletin board all morning, waiting (I got to hear several good presentations while I was camping, so it wasn’t too painful!). Ten minutes before the list was to go up, all these people began to file into the room and line the wall where the list would be posted, some even leaning against the bulletin board itself. The programs manager posted the list. I rose from my seat, wove my arms over and under all the other arms jostling for a spot, and signed my name on the damn list. As far as I know I didn’t elbow anyone in the eye in the process. I had a good meeting with agent number three, who told me to send her the full manuscript.
Changing the agent sign-up process was the only suggestion I had for improvement when I completed my Sewanee exit survey.
The social life at Sewanee was great, even for an introvert like me (what?! An introverted writer?!). My suite-mate ("bathroom mate" as we called it) became a good friend, and we had a fun crowd in our dorm (St. Luke’s). I met dozens of friendly and talented people in my workshop, at meals and social events. The presence of the playwrights, who were not introverts, added to the entertainment. It was lovely to talk incessantly about writing to people whose eyes didn’t glaze over. A warning to anyone fresh out of rehab, the flow of alcohol at Sewanee was quite heavy and it might not be the best place for someone in early recovery.
The only downside to the conference for me was its length. Twelve days was a long time to be away from my husband and nine-year-old daughter. Cell phones didn’t work inside the stone buildings on campus, and it was hard to have intimate conversations with my spouse standing out on the grass in front of the dorm yelling into my phone. I missed my daughter terribly. One couple brought their nine-year-old daughter to Sewanee (with a babysitter). By the last few days, watching her give her mother a hug at breakfast nearly broke my heart.
In addition to the great contacts I made at Sewanee, I experienced one other benefit I hadn’t expected. My husband is a fine man but he doesn’t read fiction and has never been willing to read my work. He missed me a lot while I was gone, looked Sewanee up on the internet, and realized how serious I am about this writing thing. For the first time in our fourteen-year marriage, he is reading my work.
I would recommend the Sewanee Writers’ Conference to any serious writer. I do think I got more out of it by going with a completed manuscript than I would have if I had gone while my novel was in an early stage. If you have the credentials to attend as a scholar or a fellow (I didn’t), all the better. While Sewanee is not hierarchical the way some conferences are, being distinguished as a scholar or fellow would give you that much more access to faculty, editors and agents.
Here are the web addresses for some people I met at Sewanee who blogged about their experiences: http://www.amandamn.typepad.com/; http://www.perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/; http://www.donnatrussell.com/. The website for the Sewanee Writer’s Conference is http://www.sewaneewriters.org/.
Copyright 2008 by Heather Newton
Some people go to Sewanee every year and treat the conference as their summer vacation. Others, like me, approach it as a one-time experience. I had finished a novel. The things I wanted from the conference were 1) to get feedback from my faculty reader and others that would help me make the novel good, and 2) to meet agents.
Sewanee allows you to list your first, second and third choices of faculty reader, and tells you who your reader will be when you arrive. My first choice was Jill McCorkle (Ferris Beach, The Cheerleader, Carolina Moon), because she was one of my all-time favorite southern writers, and because she had used multiple points of view in her novels, which was something I was wrestling with. I was lucky enough to get her. As a bonus, my other workshop leader was Tony Earley (Here We Are in Paradise, Jim the Boy), another southern writer whose work I had admired for years. I and the other participants in the Earley-McCorkle workshop agreed that our workshop was the best. Jill and Tony’s styles complemented each other. Jill had a gift for seeing the big picture, while Tony honed in on specific craft issues. They were kind with their criticism and made sure the fifteen members of our workshop kept it constructive. The workshop was particularly helpful to me because I don’t have an MFA and sometimes feel a bit like a primitive artist.
I met with Jill for my individual critique at the campus coffee house. She was positive and encouraging, and the clarity she offered about what I needed to fix was invaluable. For the hour-plus that we talked, I got the benefit of her thinking out loud about how I should deal with multiple narrators, distinguishing characters from one another at the beginning of the novel, and making one weak-sister character more interesting. Most of the participants I talked to at Sewanee were as delighted as I was with their faculty one-on-one. I do think it’s important to be deliberate in choosing your faculty reader. You should read their books to determine who would be a good fit for you. If you write chick lit, it might not be wise to have a male faculty member who writes for a male audience. If you are a poet, you might do well to choose a poet who belongs to the same school of thought as you do (I don’t claim to understand how those crazy poets categorize themselves).
Sewanee invites literary agents to come and meet with participants. The system for getting a meeting with one of them is what we in the law call arbitrary and capricious, and what others might call a free-for-all. You have to be in the right place at the right time, and you have to be aggressive. The day the sign-up sheet for the first visiting agent went up, I wasn’t around and the list was full by the time I saw it. But as I was standing there staring at the full list, a woman who had signed up came and marked her name off, so I got to take her spot. I met with the agent, she told me I could send her my complete manuscript, and I was also able to pick her brain about ways to market the Flatiron short story anthology my writing group had published.
The day the sign up sheet for the second agent went up, I was in the right place but the list had been posted early and was full by the time I got there. I felt like the wolf in the little pig story who makes a date to pick apples with the pig, only to have the pig show up early and pick all the apples. A nice thing about Sewanee, though, is that agents and other guests make themselves available at social events. I approached agent number two at the reception that evening, and told her that I was stalking her (I really said that) because I hadn’t been able to get a meeting with her. She was extremely nice, gave me her email address and told me to contact her.
When agent number three arrived, by God, I was determined to get on the list. I asked the programs manager when she planned to post it, and camped out in the auditorium two feet away from the bulletin board all morning, waiting (I got to hear several good presentations while I was camping, so it wasn’t too painful!). Ten minutes before the list was to go up, all these people began to file into the room and line the wall where the list would be posted, some even leaning against the bulletin board itself. The programs manager posted the list. I rose from my seat, wove my arms over and under all the other arms jostling for a spot, and signed my name on the damn list. As far as I know I didn’t elbow anyone in the eye in the process. I had a good meeting with agent number three, who told me to send her the full manuscript.
Changing the agent sign-up process was the only suggestion I had for improvement when I completed my Sewanee exit survey.
The social life at Sewanee was great, even for an introvert like me (what?! An introverted writer?!). My suite-mate ("bathroom mate" as we called it) became a good friend, and we had a fun crowd in our dorm (St. Luke’s). I met dozens of friendly and talented people in my workshop, at meals and social events. The presence of the playwrights, who were not introverts, added to the entertainment. It was lovely to talk incessantly about writing to people whose eyes didn’t glaze over. A warning to anyone fresh out of rehab, the flow of alcohol at Sewanee was quite heavy and it might not be the best place for someone in early recovery.
The only downside to the conference for me was its length. Twelve days was a long time to be away from my husband and nine-year-old daughter. Cell phones didn’t work inside the stone buildings on campus, and it was hard to have intimate conversations with my spouse standing out on the grass in front of the dorm yelling into my phone. I missed my daughter terribly. One couple brought their nine-year-old daughter to Sewanee (with a babysitter). By the last few days, watching her give her mother a hug at breakfast nearly broke my heart.
In addition to the great contacts I made at Sewanee, I experienced one other benefit I hadn’t expected. My husband is a fine man but he doesn’t read fiction and has never been willing to read my work. He missed me a lot while I was gone, looked Sewanee up on the internet, and realized how serious I am about this writing thing. For the first time in our fourteen-year marriage, he is reading my work.
I would recommend the Sewanee Writers’ Conference to any serious writer. I do think I got more out of it by going with a completed manuscript than I would have if I had gone while my novel was in an early stage. If you have the credentials to attend as a scholar or a fellow (I didn’t), all the better. While Sewanee is not hierarchical the way some conferences are, being distinguished as a scholar or fellow would give you that much more access to faculty, editors and agents.
Here are the web addresses for some people I met at Sewanee who blogged about their experiences: http://www.amandamn.typepad.com/; http://www.perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/; http://www.donnatrussell.com/. The website for the Sewanee Writer’s Conference is http://www.sewaneewriters.org/.
Copyright 2008 by Heather Newton
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)