Posts in "Musings" Category — Page 2

There were a lot of really rotten, awful things that happened in 2016. I won’t dwell on them here, because I think we all know a lot of them and have been dealing with them for quite a while now. But 2016 wasn’t a complete stinkfest. In my attempt to cast things in a more positive light in the new year, I’m listing, in no particular order, some pretty awesome stuff that happened to me or just in general out there in the world over the past year. What are yours?

Jennifer Egan blurbed Bystanders. Jennifer Egan’s been my hero since I read Look at Me, and it’s only gotten more obsessive since then. So to get her stamp of approval on my new collection of stories was truly the best literary thing that’s ever happened to me. This also happened in January, which meant that the year was doomed to go down from there…but hey, start high!

And speaking of…Bystanders arrived into the world. Happy birthday, you crazy little book. (Buy it here! Or if you already have it, please consider giving it a quick, honest review!)

The book did pretty well. It got some lovely reviews, I did some lovely readings, people said they liked it. Grateful to everyone who was a part of that journey.

Stranger Things. Seriously, have you seen it yet? It was the best television that happened to me in 2016. Spooky stuff, 70s/80s throwback, a kick-ass complex female hero, and all in an easy-to-binge miniseries package. Can’t wait for more.

One of my very best friends moved back to D.C. from Florida. And now we work together! In an increasingly scary world, it’s nice to be surrounded by folks you love. And be able to have movie nights together.

I paid off my student loans.

I bought my very first new car. (She’s so cute, isn’t she?)

I saw Bryan Adams in concert. Teenage dream realized, people. He’s just lucky I didn’t bring my crinkled Teen Beat poster for him to sign.

My husband won a bunch of awards. His first novel On the Road with Del and Louise won the Agatha Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Macavity and the Anthony awards. The anthology he edited, Murder Under the Oaks, was an Anthony Award winner.

All of the photos from my son’s bowling birthday party are blurry. Which means those crazy kids were having too much fun to ever stop moving.

What is it about Fall for the Book that makes me sad every single year? I’ve been asking myself this question all week.

I love this literary festival, held every year on George Mason University’s campus. I “grew up with it” in some ways, having attended it since my very first year in the MFA program there. I’ve seen and met amazing writers each year and had great experiences presenting at it myself.

But every year I get this hollowness in my chest. Every year I get the Fall for the Book blues, and when it hits, it hits big.

It hit last week, after I presented on a publishing panel for Santa Fe Writers Project. The panel itself went well. We had a small audience, which was probably in part due to timing and bad weather, but they were engaged and interested. We even sold a few books.

But later that night, I started to get the sadness. Those feelings of inadequacy, of hopelessness.

Maybe it’s tied to the fact that I “grew up with it,” that the nostalgia of the festival brings out some deep-seated anxieties or at least highlights them in a different way. When I was first attending FFTB, I was an unpublished writer desperately wanting to be a published writer. I listened to accomplished authors with their amazing books and felt like I would never get there. I remember attending a panel of Mason MFA alumni and thinking, ‘Wow, they went through this same program and now they have books and a career. Will this ever happen to me?” It was panic-attack-inducing at the same time that it was inspiring.

It got worse after I graduated from the program and started to see my own classmates and writer friends get published. I’d attend their Fall for the Book events and though I was ecstatic to see them succeed and be awesome, that same inadequacy for myself started creeping in. Will I ever get there?

And then I started publishing things, but never in The New Yorker. And then my first book came out, but it was “just with a small press.” And then I won an award, but it wasn’t a Pushcart. And it goes on. Will I ever get There?

What I’ve come to realize—even though I have to continue to tell myself this over and over and over again—is that the truth is, there is no “There” to get to. Each new level of success we reach or accomplishment we earn opens a whole other world of challenges to conquer, a whole other set of demons and confusions and expectations to navigate. And you can drive yourself crazy battling them.

I think it’s a universal feeling to always feel that wherever you are is not good enough. Especially for writers, perspectives, goals, and aspirations shift as we move forward. I think about myself twelve years ago, and how I would’ve gladly stuck my tongue out and gotten it run over by a tractor trailer to have a book published. I think about Merritt Tierce’s recent piece in Marie Claire about book sales and not being able to live off her writing. She’s been scorned by some people, but I have to say I kind of get it. The higher you get on the publishing ladder, the farther it feels you can fall. The inadequacy feels even more looming—”Well, surely, if I was able to do this, it can’t really mean all that much.”

I’m not trying to get all woe-is-me on you. I feel very fortunate that I’m able to continue writing and have success doing so. I’m grateful to all the wonderful writers and editors that I’ve met and built friendships with who keep me going every day. I’m proud of all the hard work that both my husband and I put in to our writing and editing, and totally fine with the sacrifices we make to continue doing this insanity.

But despite all that, my own worst inner critic never goes away. And sometimes I think it’s important to acknowledge that beast. To yank it out and stare at it and say, “Ok, fine. I get you. I’m not perfect and sometimes I feel sucky.” And then put it away, and crank up your computer and get back to work.

After the panel last week I had a young woman come up to talk to me. She was excited. She said she’d never heard of flash fiction until that night, and she’d been writing all these one or two page stories and not having a clue what to do with them. She thanked me for mentioning it and we talked for a bit about all the amazing journals out there that want those very stories.

And you know what? That was enough. That was worth it. That is why I keep doing what I do, year after year, even when the demons get me down.

I’ve been bummed out this week after hearing about the massive plagiarism accusations against B. Mitchell Cator, including several pieces from SmokeLong Quarterly that were apparently lifted and published in a book under different titles. For now, Cator has been largely silent, except for a few emails he’s sent to some of the writers and journals that he stole from. We have not heard from him at SmokeLong.

This makes me angry, and it also makes me sad. Angry because many of the writers I know are struggling to find time to write and publish in between other jobs and family obligations, and hardly getting paid anything for their work. Angry because flash fiction, especially, is a form that is brilliant, but largely misunderstood—each time I do any sort of presentation on the form, inevitably someone in the audience will say it’s the first time they’ve even heard of it—and plagiarizing these stories for profit seems like an even bigger ‘FU’ to me for some reason. Now, I say ‘for profit,’ perfectly understanding that chances are Cator’s self-published book on Amazon wasn’t selling like hotcakes before the news broke anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if his total royalties were less in dollars than the fingers I have on my hands. But even if he made 5 cents on the book…WRONG. But it’s also sad to me that he felt the need to put this much effort into plucking stories, paragraphs, sentences from other people and collaging it together to call it his own. I’ve seen many comments along the lines of: It probably would have been easier to just write his own book. But he didn’t. Why? Can we find some sympathy in this situation?

I’ve heard from lots of writers and editors, and we’re all sort of reeling in puzzlement. What makes someone do something like this? How could he think he could get away with it? And the thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that this issue is much more widespread than we think. Perhaps not to the systematic, serial level that Cator conducted, but smaller violations. Stories previously published elsewhere, contract violations, lines and phrases lifted, even unintentionally, from other places. The online journal writing world, the flash fiction writing world, is a small one, and one that I feel is bound together in some ways by trust, collaboration, and support. Many journals, operating with small volunteer staffs and little to no budget, don’t have the time to extensively scour the Internet to verify stories accepted are the works of the author and don’t appear anywhere else. Editors are overworked, under-thanked, and usually juggling a million other things, and they trust that writers are going by the honor code. It’s not an excuse, but it is often the reality. Clearly that can easily be taken advantage of.

At SmokeLong, we’ve been discussing this issue and trying to decide what actions to take. I believe in the next few months we will be changing our editorial process slightly to give room to vet stories accepted and ensure as much as possible that we are publishing the highest quality and original works by writers. To my knowledge, we have never discovered plagiarism in any of our published stories, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen or hasn’t.

It’s been a sad week for writers, but also a good wake-up call for us as well. Here’s hoping it will make us better, more original, and more vigilant with our words.

For whatever reason, I’ve been feeling a little blue this week about writing and whatnot. Which is odd, since it’s the week that my book is officially released out into the wild. But, I suppose, wherever you are in your writing career, there are always new challenges, doubts, and worries, and you never know when they’re going to sneak up on you.

Which is why I was so pleased to see Michael Czyzniejewski ‘s write-up of “The Monitor,” one of the stories in Bystanders, on his awesome Story366 blog this morning. In case you’ve missed it so far, Mike is writing about a different short story every day for the whole year. Ambitious! Awesome! Check it out.

His review of “The Monitor” is great, and much appreciated. But more than that, it got me thinking about the way that writing friendships work, and the way that encounters and generosity and a little bit of luck open up opportunities and connections and friendships.

Way back when in grad school, I would read Mid-American Review. Mike was the fiction editor then, and a damn fine one with a stellar reputation. The publication was on my bucket list. I sent him anything I vaguely thought might be worthy, and got a lot of rejections back. Some with handwritten notes, others not, but trust me, I remember those little scribbles. They were a sign of an actual person behind this mysterious process.

When I finally got a story accepted by him, it was like I’d made it. I remember dragging my coworker to the bar in the middle of the afternoon for a sneaky celebratory drink.

Later, that story was included in my first collection. Later, I met Mike in person at AWP. I became the editor of SmokeLong Quarterly, and actually got to publish some of his stories. Then he read for us at an off-site event in D.C. (The picture with this post is us, circa 2010! Look how happy we look!) We chatted occasionally on social media.

A few years ago, Mike interviewed one of our authors for the quarterly issue, and the interview was so great that I jokingly told him he should just be our interview person. Not only did he say yes, but so did his amazingpants wife Karen Craigo. And so goes the weird, crazy, wonderful, sometimes frustrating but always interesting circle of writing life: the faceless editor I used to spam with my work in grad school now works with me on a publication.

This is not a particularly unusual or special story. I’m sure most every writer has a similar experience to share, probably dozens of them. But I needed to reflect on it this week in particular, when it seems like the writing world is too big. That there are too many of us trying to do the same thing, that it’s hard to write and even harder to get that writing in other people’s hands.

All of that is true, but it’s precisely those reasons why its worth it as well. Yep, there’s a lot of us. But that’s all the more to “get” what we’re trying to do and sympathize. It’s all the more to meet and learn from and have beers with. It’s all the more who spend what little free time they have to write a review or send you a quick note or slog through submission queues to publish your work and give you a voice.

So thank you, Mike and all of my other writing pals out there–too many, thankfully for me, to name–for your friendship and for all the opportunities you’ve provided to me throughout the years. And thank you for being amazing writers and editors and support groups. I feel quite lucky to have you all and to be able to call you friends.

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And speaking of awesome writing people, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to Chris Irvin, Paul Tremblay, and Erin Fitzgerald for making our panel at the Newburyport Literary Festival this past weekend look good. We chatted about violence in literature (and the occasional movie), and I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed Paul’s reading later that afternoon–which was given to a SRO crowd. If you haven’t checked out A Head Full of Ghosts yet, you need to. Just don’t read it late at night.

I’ve always used one word to describe the winter season: Ugh. I’d much rather be hot than cold. I cannot stand being cold; it makes me miserable and unproductive. I can handle the first part of winter because of all the holiday festivities, but once New Years Day comes and goes, it’s pretty much bleakness through to mid-April for me.

However, the past few years I’ve tried (note: tried) to have a better attitude about the whole thing. If only because there’s no real way to avoid it, save moving south somewhere. And with a better attitude comes a new way of looking at our coldest season. There’s something kind of nice about that first snow day, that equalizing feeling that comes with everything shutting down for the day, of everyone taking a break, slowing down. There’s something nice about warm sweaters and blankets, a cozy fire crackling. Hot chocolate.

So with that spirit, I offer up a few things that have gotten me a little more pleasantly through what is still my least favorite part of the year:

1. A good coat. Never underestimate the power of a good down coat. What used to be me freezing on the train platform in what I thought was a good warm coat is now me laughing at the old self as I wrap myself in puffy feathers, warm gloves and a scarf. It makes the walk a little more bearable. (A little more.)
2. Grapefruit. It is best in the winter, and it is a delightful treat. It’s also the kind of fruit that you eat ceremonially. It takes some time. It takes a special spoon. It takes some digging and some work to get it out. And it’s delicious with a sprinkle of sugar on top.
3. A SAD light. It’s so terrible to arrive at work in the dark and leave work in the dark. I purchased one of those seasonal affective disorder lights a few years ago and it’s made all the difference for me. I use it for 30 minutes a day and I don’t burst into tears quite as often for no real reason.
4. New Years cards. We haven’t sent Christmas cards in a while, but I always feel guilty about it. I like writing notes to folks, but I just don’t have the time in the mad rush before the holidays. So I’ve thought about doing New Years cards in January, once everything has calmed down and it’s too damn cold to go out anywhere anyway. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try!
5. Orion. No doubt about it, the winter sky at night is the best sky. The first glimpse of our sky hunter grounds me, and on a clear night in the winter you can see so much beauty. It’s worth bundling up and heading down to a dark spot for.
6. Cashmere. It’s soft, unlike scratchy wool. It’s light, unlike heavy wool. It’s warm, really warm, unlike all the rest of the sweaters in my closet. It’s expensive, sure, but it’s SO WORTH IT.
7. Key lime pie. I have a fantasy of taking a tropical vacation during the winter. Of escaping to Key West for a week at the end of January or in the middle of the worst month of all (February, in case you were wondering) and sitting on the beach eating key lime pie and flipping a big middle finger to the arctic winds and polar vortexes. It hasn’t happened yet, but a girl can dream, right?

I’m already in hives thinking about all the nasty posts and comments I’ll inadvertently see in the months to come as we kick into full-out gear with the U.S. presidential election. I’m not averse to disagreeing, but I don’t feel like much of the conversation I’ve seen and heard gets anywhere near a conversation. It usually ends up more in name calling and shut-downs. Ugh.

My Facebook life during election season is usually to swear to myself that I won’t post anything political at all, then get really angry at some point and break that vow, then worry incessantly that I’m pissing off people I otherwise like, then feel better when people agree with me, then see a post or comment by someone else on some other friend’s post that I really itch to comment on and disagree but don’t because I don’t want to start anything nasty, then swear not to put myself through that again by posting anything political. (REPEAT).

I recently came across this document by Patty Maher that she wrote for her family and friends as guidelines and reminders for posting political stuff on Facebook. I thought she had some good points in here, so I asked her if I could share it here. Happily, she agreed.

How to Survive Facebook during the Presidential Election Season—with All Your Loved Ones in Tow

Debates have their place in society. Our daily Facebook feed is not one of them. If we are forced to defend our point of view every single day between now and the 2016 election, we will grow weary—or worse. We may end up in outright fights.

Although some people seem to see Facebook posts as invitations to debate, I encourage a different point of view. I think of Facebook posts like yard signs. If your neighbor posted a yard sign in support of a candidate or issue you disliked, you probably wouldn’t go knock on her door to insist she defend herself. You probably wouldn’t interrupt her dinner to insist that she listen to your 7-point solution to her errored thinking. You might post a sign in your own yard supporting an opponent of her favorite candidate. You might even make your sign a bigger and better one! Awesome for you. That’s the American way. Live and let live.

Until now, there have been only a few options for politically thoughtful persons on Facebook.

• Keep it inside. Don’t EVER post about who you support or what you believe in. Instead, take photos of your dinner. If possible, find a nice filter to make the colors pop. Talk about eating it. It’s not controversial. Or post pictures of cats and babies instead.
• Post about your love for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump and keep an eye on your friend count. You’re taking the chance of being unfriended in this political climate but, oh well. You just gotta do what you gotta do.
• Only post about issues that are super important to you. And be ready for the people who hate your opinion on these issues to swoop in like vultures and pick apart your thoughts and feelings.
• Whatever! Post whatever you want whenever you want and comment wherever you want whenever you want and become hated by at least 45 percent of the people with whom you had previously been “friends.”

It doesn’t have to be this way!

In celebration of National Conflict Resolution Day recently, I developed some guidelines to get us through the next presidential election with all of our limbs and loved ones intact.

The Live-And-Let-Live Approach to Facebook Political Discourse:

Step 1: Register to Vote. I’ve been amazed to find that some of the most opinionated people don’t vote. If you’re going to make political suggestions, criticisms and proclamations, don’t be lazy about voting.

Step 2: Post about issues and candidates you support. Don’t make negative posts about the candidates and issues you don’t support unless they are truly funny and warm spirited. Would Jesus or Ghandi chuckle, too? Then you’re probably ok.

Step 3: If you disagree, let it roll. This is the most important step. When your uncle or your kid’s daycare provider expresses a view that you are 100-percent opposed to, remember, “It’s ok to disagree.” You can still care about a person and completely disagree with his or her political views. Let it roll through your newsfeed and don’t engage. If you must express a counterpoint view, make a post in your own newsfeed instead of commenting on the post you find offensive. Do you really want to philosophically browbeat all of your friends and family members? Nah. You’re an American. You can handle this.

Step 4: Ask political evangelists if you can agree to disagree. When people insist on trying to sway me over to their point of view via comments on my political post, I now make a comment such as this: “Frank, it’s clear that you and I have opposing viewpoints, and it’s not because either one of us is uneducated about this subject. Can we just agree to disagree? I don’t want to discuss this with you anymore.”

Step 5: Pull the shade. If you have asked for the debate to end and someone continues to try to change your opinion by expressing lengthy comments on your post, consider pulling the shade on them. First, let the person know. Respond to their comment with a comment such as this, “Frank, I’m sorry you’re not able to stop arguing about this issue despite my request that the debate end. I encourage you to continue to express your own political views by making posts that support your candidate and point of view. However, as a way of pulling the shade on your debate, I am changing our Facebook relationship status from “friend” to “acquaintance.” This way you will no longer see the posts you find so disturbing. My privacy settings allow friends but not acquaintances, to see my posts. You can still send private messages if you want to get in touch with me regarding community events. I wish you all the best with your political work and I hope to see you at the next neighborhood potluck.” Once a reasonable amount of time has passed (if the person is online, half an hour should do it) reassign the friend status. If your Facebook privacy settings indicate that only friends but not acquaintances can see your posts, your former “friend” and new “acquaintance” will no longer see the post over which he felt so inclined to wage debate.

6. If you exercise the option to “pull the shade,” I recommend you follow up with a short, considerate snail-mail greeting.This should not be a letter explaining yourself. No need for that, and it will only make matters worse. What this situation calls for is just a little something to let the person know you still care about them—despite the political differences. This month a holiday card would be perfect. Go with whatever’s seasonably appropriate.

Good luck! Keep free expression and kindness alive. It’s possible to have an opinion without feeling the need to clobber others with it. I think it’s important to share your opinions if they are important to you—whether they are about pandas or pies or politics. If moderate-minded people don’t feel safe to share, the bullies will dominate Facebook. Don’t let them.

Patty Maher is an old-school journalist who bemoans the loss of paper newspapers. Most recently she was a k-12 education reporter for the Ann Arbor News. She also has covered police, city hall and local government beats for Gannet Newspapers. Today she writes occasional columns and essays, mostly for her own sanity (or to school haters about social media communication). She lives in Ypsilanti, Mi, with her boyfriend and often contemplates getting a Roomba and some pets to feature on a You Tube channel. 

Yesterday my son Dashiell was playing with his Matchbox cars quietly on the floor while I watched the news. He held up two cars and said, “Momma, guess what this car just said to the police car?”

“What?”

“He called him ‘stupid.'” He said, very solemnly, then shook his head slowly. “That’s not nice.”

“That’s not nice,” I agreed. “No one should call someone else stupid.”

It then, of course, became a game, with him holding up another car every few seconds and asking me the same question. “Stupid,” the other car always called the police car. Eventually, the “bad” cars weren’t allowed to play anymore and had to go to “jail” or back in their cases until they could behave better.

An innocent game. Yet that morning I’d been watching the dash cam video that had been released of Sandra Bland’s arrest. The video that showed her giving, at best, a mild attitude (but really, in my mind, just questioning the police officer’s requests and orders). She didn’t call him “stupid,” but she didn’t agree with him. She questioned his authority. She was told she was being “bad” and ended up in jail–and later, ended up dead.

My son’s innocent little game suddenly took on these dark tones. Now, granted, it’s good, I suppose, that he’s learning that he shouldn’t call other kids names, that people need to be nice to each other. But the fact that he was using a police car in this game made me pause–are we all taught that disrespecting police officers (or authority in general) is bad, is cause for some very severe punishment? And then I saw this article by Tiffanie Drayton discussing this very thing–that you shouldn’t have to be “respectful” in order for police officers to do their job and be professional. Drayton writes, “Others, however, are rushing to the defense of police, saying that Bland should have simply followed the trooper’s orders and not given him ‘an attitude.’ This kind of justification all but directly says that police brutality is a matter of unruly, indecent people getting their just deserts.”

Our culture is one that celebrates shows like Cops, which glorifies the police taking down criminals, with the message that these folks are “stupid,” or “lazy” or “losers.” It sends the message that officers are just making sure no one gets out of line–and if you do, if you even dare to question whether or not you have the right to keep smoking in your own car, you can be yanked away to jail.

I know that law enforcement has a tough job. I can’t even begin to imagine the things they have to deal with every day, the decisions they have to make in seconds that could mean life or death, the heartache and sadness and bleakness they deal with as part of a regular morning. I recognize they have to be on guard all the time and project their confidence and authority in order to stay safe. But it’s a scary world where these decisions are deemed unquestionable, where authority and law enforcement goes above and outside of the law. Yes, we should respect police officers. But respect goes two ways.

In my three-year-old’s world, the police are allowed to send people to jail for name-calling. But should the rest of the world really be allowed to function on a three-year-old’s emotional capacity and logic? Because, honestly, sometimes police officers ARE stupid (and, other times, even worse)–and we should be allowed to say so.