Category: writing

With Apologies to Emily Dickinson

My Snake

A headless fellow in the grass
Bleeding and lifeless lies,
I did not see him, till too late.
Mower blades met him first.

Grass is short now; he lies exposed,
His stripes truncate too soon;
Tip of the tail is severed, too.
He died this afternoon.

He liked the elm tree’s shade,
Protected from the sun
He made a nest at its roots,
Was sleeping there this morn.

Many days I’ve seen him slither
And pass before my feet.
I never meant him harm; when
I saw him, I’d retreat.

Several of these snakes I’ve had
Abiding in my yard,
Neither of us aggressive,
Yet both kept on our guard.

But never met one so close
By accident or purpose,
To touch him with my hand
Or with the blade’s sharp surface.

**

This is based on an incident from a couple of years ago. I started a poem about it then and forgot it until recently. I found the nearly finished poem earlier this week and brought it to its conclusion. I really didn’t run over the snake on purpose.

Submission Tracking

Every writer I know has her or his own method for tracking submissions, except for those who don’t. Since I’ve always admired Wallace Stevens as much for his actuarial skills as for his poetry, I’m one of those who does keep track. My check book is always balanced, too.

Many writers use spread sheets and I’ve heard tell of special software designed specifically for the task of submission tracking. I’ve invented my own method that integrates the creative writing half of my brain with the accounting half. So it’s a bit less accounting than the aforementioned methods, but also a bit more entertaining.

I color-code the file name of each piece of writing I have stored on my hard-drive according to it’s current status. Plain black means it needs more work before I send it out. Red means I feel the piece is ready to spread its wings and fly, but either I haven’t nudged it from the nest yet or else it’s come back home to live for a while after the moving out thing didn’t work so well. Blue is for work I’ve sent out but for which I haven’t yet heard anything. Green means a piece has been accepted.

I also keep a note on the bottom of each piece, informing me of where I’ve sent it and when, etc., information I duplicate in one large word document I have oh so creatively named “Submissions List.” The information in “Submissions List” is colored coded as well. Here black means rejection, red means waiting to hear, and green is accepted. Purple, a color I’ve used exactly once so far, means my piece was rejected but somehow the editor made me feel so good about it.

I have one paragraph for each submission. I always include what I sent, where I sent it and when, what they say their reporting time is, and how much they pay. When I hear back I add in the date I heard & what the status is. In addition I sometimes include insights into my mood at the time of submission and rejection. For some reason I’ve found no need for extra notes to myself upon acceptance. Not so with rejections.

I was scrolling back through the entire list earlier today and found some notes I’d forgotten about. I suppose they probably run the typical gamut for a writer’s reactions. Here are some samples:

I have plenty of “will assume it’s rejected if I haven’t heard by now.”

“11/20 sent poem to ‘Poetry of the Sacred’ contest. 02/01 – Didn’t win shit.”

“Rejected in the mailroom, judging by the speed.”

I have a few “rejected, though with a nice note.”

At one point in my list I have 15 rejections in a row with no comment, followed by a sixteenth with the word “sigh” at the end & a seventeenth with the words “boo hoo.”

“5/24 sent three poems to XX…All rejected 07/25/05. Without returning manuscripts, even though I sent adequate postage. So I had false hope when I realized the envelope contained only one page, thinking it was an acceptance. Blppppthhhh!”

“07/27… sent three poems to …XX via snail mail. … Rejected 02/21. They waited long enough that postage rates went up, so they had to add 2 cents to my SASE. Ha! My little unplanned raspberry back at them.”

“09/16… sent essay to XX via snail mail. …Returned 12/05 with illegible handwriting that I assume was a rejection since it included the first page (only?) of my manuscript and no contract. They used the rest of my postage to send me adverts for their mag. Instead of my manuscript.” (Extra note for other writers – I will identify this magazine. It was GreenPrints. Now you know, if you send them something, only include enough return postage for one page.)

11/16…sent essay to XX …  So now it’s double submitted, as I still haven’t heard from YY.  Whoa, I’m getting daring.  Rejected 01/05 with a very nice note saying she was making a point of sending me a personal note to say she found my piece exceptionally well done, but thematically it didn’t fit. I take what consolation I can get.”

“01/22… sent three poems to XX via snail mail…I will have a heart attack if they accept one of my poems. 02/09/06 – no need for the defibrillator.”

“02/06 sent four poems to XX, anthology of poems about motherhood. …made first cut!!! ‘Will likely hear from them again in the fall.’  09/15..Didn’t make final cut.  Too bad their book will be such poor quality.”

“07/11…sent story to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Mag. Pro market.  Snail mail. Rejected 01/16…but it was a “nice” rejection w/handwritten extra note.” (Note: I included the name of this mag as well because I’m still impressed that an editor at such a large publication would take the time to handwrite a nice little extra page.)

“07/25…entered piece in XX writing contest…11/01 Put a big L on my forehead.”

“04/09 sent poetry book manuscript to XX contest ..Because it was a more interesting way of disposing of $25 than flushing it down the toilet.”

**

Since I’m nothing but professional and courteous in my communication with editors, I find keeping this list on my computer is a good way to vent my feelings. Also, I like to remember whether a particular publication is a market I want to try again or not. Maybe my little system is submission and attitude tracking.

A Whole Lot of Writing Going on

Through my local public library, I logged into an Infotrac database – General OneFile – to do some research. I stopped before I started, stunned into a case of the vapors by a number I saw: 83,083,630.

“Currently searching General OneFile with 83,083,630 articles…”

83 million articles?! Let me add some more punctuation to illustrate my reaction. ?????!!!!!?????!!!!!

Who wrote all of that? Why should I add to it? Should I add to it? Is there too much written already? Maybe people should stop writing for a while. How can I make my writing noticed in a sea of 83 million+ articles? Do people feel overwhelmed with written word overload? Would more written words be nothing  but piling on? Is there anything left that hasn’t already been written? Will the questions generated by this number never end?  All of this went through my head in about 10 seconds and then started looping on replay over and over.

On the other hand, if I believe writing and reading are worthy pursuits, can there be too much of either? And, if 83,083,630 articles have already been published, doesn’t that mean there are plenty of markets publishing stuff?

83,083,630. I’m trying to decide if the number is discouraging or encouraging.

Computer retraining

As I mentioned in my previous post, of all of the deaths that have occurred recently, the death of my hard drive hit me the hardest. It was also the most unexpected. Talk about untimely. I only bought this laptop about seven months ago. Used though. But only slightly.

Thanks to my foresight in having married an alpha geek, I had a new (and more spacious) hard drive installed within days. But now I’m required to help my computer relearn the things it used to know. Kind of like recovering from a brain injury.

“This is a bookmark,” I tell it. “You use it to take me to a web page, so I don’t have to type in the URL every time.”

“This e-mail address I’m putting in your address book is one you used to know. It’s my best friend’s. You used it all the time; I can’t believe you forgot even her.”

“This program is called Microsoft Word. We’ll be doing a lot of therapy using Word. It’s what you need the most for my writing. Oh good, now that you’ve relearned that, I see you’re able to pull up the memory of my novel from the flash drive.”

A writer friend, upon hearing the news about my hard drive, said in an almost-stricken way “Please tell me you have your novel saved somewhere.” It’s nice when people understand.

Actually, I’d done an exemplary job of backing up my writing, so I lost almost nothing. Photos of my children, however…not as much. Bad mommy. Guilty mommy. I’m afraid some of the most important memories have been lost to permanent amnesia. I did have a lot of the pics saved, just not the same percentage I managed with my writing.

Then there were all of the cool quotations I had collected over the past few years. Ah well, time to get out of the old ruts and make some new ones anyway. And maybe time to develop better habits about backing up everything, not only my writing.

Elusive Finish Line

I’ve been working on the first draft of my first novel for a year and five months. For last five months I’ve claimed to be in the home stretch, a place that has proved to have great elasticity indeed. My finish line keeps moving.  I’ve added three chapters that somehow eluded my beginning outline, so how was I supposed to know I was going to have to write them? Then there’s the ever-present problem of finding time to do the writing. I considered telling my kids they couldn’t have birthdays this year because I had a book to finish, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Likewise I never quite get to the point of saying to my boss “Sorry, I’m on a roll with my writing. My paying job will have to wait.”

It’s getting embarrassing, as people ask me how the novel is going and I keep answering “Almost done with the first draft.”  I hope it doesn’t go on my tombstone: “She almost finished the first draft.” I started telling people I was writing a novel because I thought if others knew about my project, I’d have to finish it. It would help me to take myself seriously.

At first I spoke with enthusiasm, even when I encountered the skeptical look I knew meant everyone’s writing a novel. I spoke with confidence because I knew I’d be the person who actually finished the task. When queried, I’d report “Got the outline done.” Or “Wrote another chapter last week.” And it sounded even to me as if I were progressing toward something, even if I was getting there at a strolling pace. Now I’m starting to feel like Moses, with the promise of a new land shifting ever onward into the future and a whole nation asking “Are we there yet?” Or like a bad credit risk. I find myself tempted to avoid those acquaintances who are most likely to ask about the status of my novel because it feels too much like “Do you have that $20 you owe me yet?”

I know I’ve done this to myself.  It’s only because I set myself up for it that I have to feel so sheepish now when I answer. I suppose there’s only one solution, and that’s to finish the damn book. Which I guess means my plan is working.  I told everyone I was going to do it. Now I have to keep my word.

Book Thoughts: Payback by Margaret Atwood

I knew that, in addition to her mind-blowing fiction, Margaret Atwood also writes some pretty decent poetry.  And now I come across her non-fiction book, Payback (Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.)

The book is as thought-provoking as I assumed anything by Atwood would be. (Okay, that sounds a little too  much like “How much wood would a woodchuck…) The book has nothing to do with managing your finances and everything  to do with examining the meanings and origins of the concept of debt.  What do we owe each other and why do we think we owe it? 

Of particular interest to fiction writers will be chapter three: Debt as Plot, which made me think that there aren’t even four basic plots. Perhaps there’s only one, and it is debt. Who owes what to whom, how did they get into that debt and how are they going to get out of it? She begins the chapter by saying “Without memory there is no debt. Put another way: without story there is no debt.”

She goes on to examine the story of debt in various works of literature, her rather obvious starting point being Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Some whopper of a debt there. She also discusses A Christmas Carol, Vanity Fair and, a less obvious choice, Wuthering Heights. Think that last title is about romance and affairs of the heart? Well, Atwood would have us know that the heart keeps a balance sheet.  Then too, Heathcliff uses financial debt to control those around him. 

After reading Payback I find myself examining many of my assumptions about life and human relationships. I also find myself reading fiction with a new eye. Want to  unravel the plot? Follow the debt.

The Meaning of Life – Updated

Update:  Tracfone has responded to my e-mail, and I have to give them credit for quick answering. The issue, as they explain it, is two different double minutes plans, one for life and one for one year.  They believe I purchased the one year double minutes plan and I was sure I purchased double minutes for life (since I didn’t even know the other was an option.) Unfortunately I can’t find any documentation from when I bought it.  I’m pretty sure it was in an e-mail, which I lost a lot of upon switching computers. I do remember my husband and I both purchased double minutes at the same time and having much discussion beforehand about whether to spend the money, and clearly remember we believed we were purchasing double minutes for life.  It’s completely out of character for me to have spent so much money only for one year. I also remember my husband dropping his phone in a lake and then being informed his double minutes were only for the life of the original phone (my understanding) and not the life of him having *a* phone from them. Of course, me saying “I seem to remember…” is a far cry from having saved the receipt.  So if there’s a lesson in this, it’s the importance of saving receipts. 

Having looked at other cell phone plans, Tracfone is still the best option for me. I don’t use my phone that often.  I have it in case the school needs to reach me if one of my children is ill, or if my car breaks down.  Being able to purchase the minutes in advance and not worry about a monthly bill works for me.  I think I’ll pass on the double minutes card for now, though. Apparently, one of us – it could be either – has a history of doing that part wrong.

**

 

I discovered the meaning of life today.  It is one year.  Tracfone (you know, the cell phone company) explained it to me via e-mail.  When I bought double minutes for life, that was good for one year. If I want double minutes again this year I’m supposed to buy a second double minutes airtime card, for my second life presumedly. I don’t know if I’m required to create an avatar to use it.

I’m a bit stubborn about holding onto my first life, however, so I haven’t let the matter drop.  Here is the text of my response to their response:

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I thought that double minutes for life would mean the life of the phone, at least. If I had realized “life” was so fleeting, I would have adopted a Carpe Diem attitude and spent the money elsewhere. Please advise me where life is defined as one year in your fine print. 

I look forward to hearing back from you about a resolution of this issue within this lifetime.  In this case, lifetime means the next week.

Regards,

Harumph!

 

Sestina: Example and Form

It’s not about peanut butter, but here is an example of a sestina. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago:

Wasps In Fact

I know the facts of the story.
I was there as witness, of course
and more than that, one of the saved
during the slaying of the wasps.
My father played the hero role
armed with a spray can and ladder.

Not sturdy, it shook, the ladder
as he climbed to the top story.
I never questioned my dad’s role,
the labor of knocking off course
any homesteading plans of wasps,
nor doubted if I would be saved.

The nest was enormous; he saved
it, carried it down the ladder,
proof that the multitudes of wasps
matched the large claims of his story.
The stings he received in the course
of battle also served this role.

He insisted they played no role
in making him sick, the stings, saved
that blame for the flu cutting course
through the city. That the ladder
needed fixing fit the story
well, too, but not illness from wasps.

Now it falls to me, fighting wasps.
My children have filled my old role.
I saw right through my dad’s story
long ago. The spin he used saved
his ego I thought. The ladder
held steady later on, of course.

Raising children has been a course
in hindsight relating to wasps
and the sturdiness of ladders.
Less a character trait than role
requirement, dad’s bravado saved
us from fear; that’s now my story.

Over the course of time, the role
of wasps did not change; also saved:
the ladder’s part in the story. 

***

I’ve seen variations on the form, but they all involved using 39 lines and repeating the same six end words. I took my guidance from The Book of Forms by Lewis Turco. 

You can read more about the sestina here:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5792