Why I'm Entering Contests Now

A few years back I was terrifically anti-writing-contest. My basic desire is to write well, not to compete.

But times have changed. Publication is no longer the top criterion and recommendation. Today, winning and trumpeting prizes is how one establishes or re-establishes credibility with strangers, editors, and those who hire. Before 2006, my last cash-bearing poetry prize came in 1987; the last for prose in 1994. Nice awards, but literature now is a culture of prizes -- it feels like a blizzard out there, as you well know -- and many good young writers are now in the mix, so that old awards could make me seem like a has-been on resumes or in author bios.

Considering how many prizes there are, and the things that win them, for the best writerly mental health the appellation "award-winning" is best seen as decorative, or, more precisely, cosmetic. One's work can be beautiful without it.

Newsweek: Interview with Kay Ryan

Tip: Check out the "What to Read Now" July 13 issue of Newsweek, including an interview with Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, ("the Quiet Poet Laureate") who didn't think she could be a poet because she couldn't cut a "dramatic swath" like Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell, with their mental health issues. Good read...

More Girls Than Guys

More women than men:
-take creative-writing courses and workshops.
-belong to writing groups or circles.
-belong to writers' organizations or guilds.
-enter writing contests.
-go to writers' colonies.
-serve as volunteers for writers' organizations.
-win low-level writing prizes and awards.
-teach and tutor English composition.
-buy books.
-become part-time writers for some publication.
-spend time on list-servs, bulletin boards, and blogs.

More men than women:
-publish books.
-give readings.
-head literary magazines.
-head literary organizations.
-become writers-in-residence or professors of writing.
-become full-time writers for some publication.
-have agents.
-win prestigious prizes and fellowships.
-win Pulitzer prizes.
-are well-paid for their writing.

Both men and women:
-talk a lot about the books, especially the novels and memoirs, that they're going to write.
-self-publish at about the same levels.

Just noticing.

Done Today

I've very little time lately between clients, work, and class prep to get to my own poems. But today I did. Finally I put a satisfactory closing line on a poem I wrote in 2006 (!) that has sat rotting unpublished because I couldn't capture that last line. Then I knocked off some changes (judicious trims) in a newer poem I've been hammering at for about four months, and now I think it's finished.

This didn't take but 45 minutes; however, I was focused. I feel good. Proud of myself.

Paging through the completed poems I saw that the best one was sent through 14 drafts; that the second-best went through 11 drafts, including one severe cutting job at draft #9, plus an extensive detailed workshop critique at draft #5. Who said writing isn't work?

Mental Health Quote for the Day

"Pain and suffering are inevitable, but misery is a choice." - a quadriplegic friend of a friend

This is You

The Instant Leper

Small mental-health tip: Never offer the information that you are a writer.

I have learned to tell strangers at bus stops or family parties that I am a webmaster, or, if I really want to hear them talk, I say I’m a teacher (not a professor). “Teacher” elicits all sorts of commentary and memories, plus the “Guess What I Teach” game. Everyone always guesses right: I’m an English teacher. I fail to see what is wrong with looking like one.

But when you tell a stranger, “I’m a writer,” you'll get frosted or flummoxed by one of these:

• “A writer, eh? Ya know, my life could be a book. Whoo-ee! I’ll tell it to you and you can write it.”
• “What do you write?” (Disappointment or disapproval will follow regardless of your answer)
• “Have you ever heard of this book called (Dune, Twilight, The Lovely Bones, Ball Four)?”
• “Have you published anywhere I might have read it?”
• “So you get to sit home all day and write.”
• “My daughter writes poetry. It helps so much with her depression.”

I once told a talented but unschooled writer (think Chuck Palahniuk), unemployed for two years, that Human Resources staffs were likely giving him the bum’s rush because he just had to say in his cover letter, “But what I really am is a writer.” Might as well say, “I’m a leper.”

Are We Feeling Better Yet?

Some contributing writers and the editors at the book launch today, 11/19, for the fabulous new anthology Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America (Penultimate Press), edited by Colleen McKee and Amanda Stiebel. Book will be on Amazon.com very soon; $19.95; click here to see and order directly from the publisher, St. Louis's only nonprofit press. The book -- 21 essays, three years in the making -- will make a great holiday gift for any woman finding herself in contact with the U.S. health care hydra. In the photo, left to right: Amanda Stiebel, Cathy Luh, Janet Edwards, Corrine McAfee, Denise Bogard, Colleen McKee, Catherine Rankovic. Penultimate Press, run by Winnie Sullivan, is a nonprofit organization. Taken at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Reading Yourself

Chuck Berry hates to listen to his own records. Certain movie stars hate watching their own movies. I once spent a year and a half avoiding the print version of an article I published. Finally I read it. It wasn't half bad. In fact it was good.

Have you re-read yourself lately? If you are down, it might cheer you up. A few nights ago I got caught up re-reading my own books. I thought, "Man, I said that really well! It holds up! How did I do that? Can I ever do it that well again?" and although I know I could, given the same situation, for a few minutes I doubted it.

I'd say that was my own weird thinking, except I once interviewed a sitar genius named Imrat Khan who said he thinks the same thing when he listens to his own recordings -- that he could never surpass what he's already done, that future work will somehow be lacking.

These are fears, and fears have no existence apart from their host. Maybe Chuck Berry, 82, focuses on the future, not the past. I do appreciate the past for things accomplished and lessons learned. But a focus on the future -- even if it's only a contest deadline or writers' gathering that's coming up -- is a definite plus for the mental health of artists.

Annie Dillard Helped

Annie Dillard (nee Meta Ann Doak) helped me today as I chose 6 unpublished poems to submit to an anthology that is no sure thing, that I suspect might never be finished or published. So I wanted to hold back a couple of poems just too good for it, thinking: I bet these could impress a bigger editor -- later. Then Dillard's words came to mind:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.

And I sent my 6 best poems and felt the rightness of it, the healthiness of having set them free, trusting that I will write even better ones. Thank you, Annie.

We're Feeling Much Better, Thanks

Just signed a contract for an essay to appear in Are We Feeling Better Yet?, an anthology of women's essays on the health care system, accepted by PenUltimate Press. The editors had asked, so I told them I had two writer friends -- Cathy Luh and Janet Edwards -- with appropriate and darned good essays in hand. Cathy and I were co-authors on Guilty Pleasures (Andrews McMeel, 2003) so this is our second joint appearance in print. Stick with me long enough and you'll be signing some kind of contract! Look for Are We Feeling Better Yet? in October 2008. Each contributor gets $75, which among writers counts as an economic stimulus package.

I like signing contracts -- frankly, I LOVE signing contracts or (for poetry) "consent forms" -- and hope to be signing one soon on the book Fame (book of interviews). I read contracts down to the last jot and tittle, and my main thing is, I want to keep the electronic rights.

Magnetic Poetry for the MTV Generation

John Ashbery's poems play with language. Rarely there's a line or two that's clear. But mostly not. It's rather like that "Magnetic Poetry" they sold a kit for. So knock me over with a feather when I heard, just recently, that "Ashbery is the most influential living poet" for the MTV generation. It's probably mostly because he's gay and has a good haircut. In fact I threw out my copy of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror thirty years ago today.

If, like me, you can hardly believe today's young are so gullible, look here in the NYTimes where Ashbery's poems were picked for "commercials" on "MTVu" -- MTV's special station for college campuses. Poetically, college-campus popularity is the last exit to Brooklyn. In the same way, the Boomers dug Richard Brautigan. Woot. To stay sane -- and write well -- don't trouble yourself with "most influential living poets."

Oh, Yes, Physical Health Too

Believe, I know what happens to long-distance writers, and suggest:

Hands/wrist/fingers/forearms hurt or tingly? You cannot fix this by yourself. Contact dr. and demand referral to a physical therapist. Yes, it costs money, but trust me, you cannot live without hands. (Try to worm out of the "nerve conduction test," aka the "nerve crucifixion test.") The physical therapist can show you how to prevent future injuries.

Gettin' flabby? Walk for 30 minutes a day. It's like keeping a journal: hateful for the first few days, then addictive. Now that I am older, a walk, like, gives me an actual buzz, man.

Backache? Get a back-support pillow, and/or a "kneeling chair." This latter will force your back muscles to hold you up and thus stay strong. Lots of backache? Give a chiropractor a chance. They do not cost as much as MDs and will not invade your body nor prescribe poisons for it.

Stressed? Go alone someplace strange or do something you've never done. Once I went to a solo drum concert. Another time walking in an unfamiliar field I found a teepee and hid inside. Once I forced myself to have tea at the Adams Mark Hotel. Once I went to a psychic fair & there I got a photograph of my aura (it's red).

Soothe eyestrain with "computer glasses," aka "single-vision lenses." The eye doc will know what you mean.

Depressed? This isn't for everyone, but a really stubborn case that does not respond to therapy may respond to piercing. No joke. I got through a horrible passage of my life by having my ears pierced with an 18-gauge needle at a heavy-metal tattoo and piercing parlor. I was the only customer wearing a Kasper suit and pumps and pantyhose. BTW, this is why kids get piercings; the more and grosser the piercings, the sadder their lives.

If writing is making you suffer, there's something that needs changing!