The Questions are Big, the Answers Small

The questions of art are big, but the answers are small:

•  For years I didn't want to write. I wasn't blocked; I just somehow wasn't up to it. Realized that I needed but did not have a comfortable chair to sit in, and that the writing table at home was too high off the floor and uncomfortable to work at. Got some used office furniture that is just right. The chair that fits me best is a child's chair. So what.
• I didn't have the time I needed to practice my art. I began to steal the time. It worked for a long, long time and let me write four books.
• Felt too stressed and sickish to do my art. Hayfever, depression, acid reflux, anxiety, joint pain, etc. Turned 45 and realized I was mortal. Problem solved.
• I too often let good ideas get away because I wanted to be polite or look attentive. Now I switch on the light, get up and write the ideas down. Ideas and strange notions flood me during poetry readings and workshops. Now I take along a notebook and pen. Looks like I'm taking notes. I am!
• My "neat gene," inherited from my mom, tortured me into deep-cleaning the refrigerator and dusting the fan blades when I should have been writing. Answer #1: Sports injury left me immovable and all I could do was write. I found cleaning did not matter. Answer #2: Got well. Budgeted for someone to clean the house once a month. Bonus: When she leaves, the house is clean top to bottom.
• I couldn't get solitude, not even a whole hour alone, because significant other, although a writer himself, didn't like that I shut my door to write. I mean, he took action against it. Applied to writers' colonies where I stayed for a couple of weeks at a time. Relief. Then chucked him. Voila, problem solved.

You Never Know...

When the money or spirit gets low I begin to lose my trust in the universe or whatever gave me the desire to write and some talent. I know it does not give these things and then fail to support you. But things bottomed out about a week ago: Unpleasant bills and notices arrived. My Internet was down for four days. Doctor visits left my arms tracked up like a junkie's. I was draggin' my wagon (and people would have said to me, "Why the long face?" had I bothered to raise my eyes from the pavement). And then in the space of a few days almost everything changed:

• More work -- four almost simultaneous requests -- came my way!
• Internet connection repaired!
  
• Awesome financial news!
• Good health report!
  
• Pushcart Prize nomination (my first, I heard about it yesterday) for a poem to appear in November in the annual Kansas City Voices
• Gift of bagful of pears direct from a tree!
  

O me of little faith!

"I Always Worked Until I Had Something Done"

"It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was started on a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.'

"So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written." - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Publishing Opportunities

Doubts about the value of my work tend to snake up on me in February, and last year I seized a whole day by the throat, 23 February, and sent piles of manuscripts to places likely to want them. My results were quite good. To help find places that might want my work, I visited websites such as these:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CRWROPPS-B/ - Updated Daily
My favorite. Moderated by poet Alison Joseph of SIU-Carbondale. Sample item: "CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Bone Bouquet seeks to publish the best new writing by female poets, from artists both established and emerging. We are especially. . ."

http://www.pw.org/classifieds - Updated Bimonthly
Sample item: "EKPHRASIS, a biannual journal, seeking poems, each based on a single work of art. Free or formal verse considered. No simultaneous submissions. Previously published OK if credited. . ."

www.litmags.org (Don't use their search boxes; they don't work. Click on "List All Mags" at the top, and go from there.) - New mags listed almost daily
Sample: "A Thousand Faces is the quarterly journal of superhuman fiction. Published four times a year simultaneously online and in print, A Thousand Faces is the next step in the evolution of the superhero genre. . ."

http://www.winningwriters.com (If you are into contests.) Register to look at the free-contest database. Be sure to click on the Month with the deadlines you want or it will show only January.
Sample: "Free contest offers decent-sized prizes and web publication for creative travel essays about living and working abroad. Enter online only. . ."

Good luck!

Be Kind to Your Mind

Last night I told myself the thing I'd drafted wasn't a poem: Real poems take long stressful craft sessions, and are serious, and this one entertained me so vastly I read it aloud several times laughing. Then I invented excuses for it: "It's kind of a theater piece," or "You could work on this so it'd be in couplets and then it'd be good," & c. Told myself everything in the world except, "Hey, you just drafted a 60-line poem -- that alone is pretty great; congratulations."

Making some kind of trivial mistake ("What'd I come in here to get? Can't remember") I have been catching myself calling myself "Stupid!" "What a dodo-brain," "Nobody else would be so incompetent," etc.

Have I sat myself down today and said, "You rock! You're doing a pretty good job with your life. You are so well-read, so together, and a creative artist! What discipline, what fire," and so on? I've got a good mind. Why am I not kind to it -- as kind and generous as it has been to me?

"Write or Die"

To draft a lot, and do it quickly, I recommend this entertaining app, "Write or Die," which will let you set your own time-period and word-count goals -- and send warnings and then a "punishment" if you aren't filling the page with writing! You may choose a "gentle" mode, a "normal" mode, and a "kamikaze" mode -- and in that last one, the "punishment" is that your document starts ERASING ITSELF -- absolutely terrifying!! Will drain the blood out of your face!

If you're one of the "I will write a novel in 30 days" people, this app could be very useful. Don't want to risk it? I recommend then watching the five-minute Write or Die YouTube video for a good-natured demonstration. Got a friend with writers' block? Pass this app on. If it makes people write, I'm for it.

How to Write When You Despair

From Tricia Grissom and her blog Coffee and Critique: "How to Write When You Despair of Being a Writer." We all have those times.

Are Writers Temperamental?

Anonymous writer had two readings set up. Decided not to do them, but rather than say "I don't want to do them," picked an asinine quarrel guaranteed to short-circuit both appearances and future ones.

Anonymous writer breaks out in red spots upon hearing that she should inquire about guest teaching gigs rather than waiting (11 years & counting) for universities to seek her out. She's bitter that they don't.

Anonymous writer feels she is slighted because she is fat and black. Another sure that the problem is that he is a white male. Another feels ignored because he is over 50. Others feel pegged -- as a Jew, an Asian, a lesbian, an academic, a newbie.

Anonymous writer is crushed by a rejection, never tries to publish again.

Lots of suffering generated by their choices of truths and realities!

Keep Up Your Confidence

Read this "How Successful Writers Keep Up Their Confidence." Wise words from a book editor. Link acquired through Tricia Grissom's writer's blog Coffee and Critique.