Announcing a winner

Like most of the rest of the world (at least the ones who still have electricity) I have been following the Olympics.  It has been brutal to watch the few judging glitches: Japan regaining a few points in gymnastics and bumping the Ukraine down a notch, or the Greek racisim disqualification bumping people up ("I got this Bronze thanks to someone else's racism.") or this newest badminton fiasco.

Having just awarded a Fellowship (results posted here), I can tell you - judging feels like the heaviest weight. Not just the back-and-forth gut-aching feeling of watching the USA gymnasts celebrate unexpected gold on split screen with the Russians and their unexpected loss. But also the knowledge that hundreds of armchair critics are narrowing their eyes, wondering why this one, not that one. Prizes do matter. They give you energy, they tie you to history. They are the world's approval of your somehow otherwise ridiculous decision to devote yourself to something that will never earn you a zillion dollars...

Michael Cunningham (a mentor and ex-writing teacher of mine) summed it up beautifully in his New Yorker piece recently (there's a Part 2) -- he was on the Pulitzer committee and even there, the choices were nearly impossible. Everyone has talent. Everyone has at least one spot where you want to tell them "oh, couldn't you have just gotten this one thing a little better?" But it is your job to make that choose and so you so. In the end of it all, you feel like they are all your children - you are so proud of them all, despite their flaws. It's strange how connected you become.

Here is why we at Pen Parentis strictly adhere to blind judging--I can't imagine if we, like those judges, knew where the entries were from and what the life story of the athlete/writer was as we tried to value their work.

Really, isn't a few sentences by a formerly illiterate 40 yr old as much of an accomplishment as twenty lovely pages by a trust fund kid who just finished an all-expesnses paid ride to Harvard?

When you judge quality, you aren't judging the process.

Maybe we should. Maybe there should be medals for "achievement" in sports - and in writing.

But actually, no. Everyone has a struggle. Even that trust-fund kid has to get his head around reality and put words on a page. Discipline is universal. Those kids at the Olympics all had to work to get on that team. And so it is with us. If our story is waiting in the slush pile of some editor's desk, we are already in the running. We have already jumped the first hurdle - now we are in the race.

Keep running, folks. Just keep running.



Wanted to add - Books Ahoy! was a grand success thanks to you people. I want to warmly thank our authors who all read beautifully, Bluestockings Books, FaceArt by Melissa, Church Street School for Music and Art, our fantastic volunteer staff including the lovely Arlaina Tibensky and Kaitlin Sancoucie, and I'd especially like to thank The Lilac for hosting. We had 176 people attend the event. That's just...olympic.  Thanks to all who came. Photos here: www.facebook.com/penparentis.

Writing Groups

SO, writing groups. What are they and how can you get one?

Writing groups are a little like a workshop without a teacher. Of course, the easiest way to get feedback on your work is to sign up for a writing workshop (or if you are just starting a career, a writing class.) Thing is, workshops cost money. Always. And parents don't always have an extra $300-$1000 lying around. 

Sorry, just made myself choke on my coffee. the things I would do with an extra grand...

Anyway, writing groups. These groups of 3-8 writers make a professional commitment to meet on a regular basis and to read and critique each other’s work. Some groups are small enough that everyone gets read every single week. Most take turns—some allow one writer to have a whole book critiqued, some have a maximum number of pages. Many writing groups are online - you submit and crit via Yahoo groups or some other private message board option. Even Facebook Groups can be set up to accommodate, especially if people use Google Docs to share MS pages. 

Regardless of the format: if it is a well-run group, there will be guidelines, the people will be vetted in some way, and the critiques will be presented in some kind of orderly manner. My group is in-person, meets every other week (because we all have jobs and/or families) and all of us are published and or award-winning writers. You are never “too good” for a writing group – though you may want to leave after a while once you internalize the representative critiques. 

Or once you have a professional editor who is waiting for your pages.

Writing groups give you a connection to your readers, so chose wisely: if you write romance novels don’t join a writing group of men writing historical nonfiction. You want a supportive group that “gets” what you write. That is hungry for it. You also want the other writers to be well-read in your field, and hopefully, at least one of them will have actual editing experience and be able to catch the grammatical and spelling errors which spellcheck has missed. The critiques of your peers will definitely improve your writing, but what’s possibly even more important to parents – the deadline for needing to submit something to the group can keep you motivated when everyday life drains your very will to live. Wait, did I say that aloud? I meant, when everyday live makes it difficult to feel creative.

If you live outside of an urban setting or university town, it can be a little harder to find a group that will be suitable, but check industry publications for groups seeking new members. People do get publishing contracts and leave groups all the time—look for postings on bulletin boards, in church bulletins, anywhere. Make sure you interview the group first (and don’t be a pompous prick, no one likes a stuck-up writer) to ensure your personalities mesh.

If in-person critiquing isn’t possible given your situation, find an online group. There are many. These groups often form privately after attending a colony or conference together, or after graduate school. In general, going to a colony or taking a class, really any writing class will do, can give you the energy boost you need to get yourself back on the horse and in your creative space. A lot of time, all we need is a readership and the ideas flow like magic.

Mental Space for Rent

Ever since you first picked up Dorothy Parker or Jack Kerouac and fell in love with the writer’s life, you’ve had an image in your head of what it means to be “a writer.” Probably that image includes some vice (sex, alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, luxury yachts) that you deserve because of all the time you spend writing. Because almost without fail, the image that comes to mind when you think “writer” is someone all alone in a room somewhere. A quiet room. With only writerly stuff in it and a means of composition. Books. A nostalgic typewriter. Possibly a window, but if so, a window that opens onto a peaceful scene.

When was the last time a parent was alone in any room devoid of kid detritus?

You do not think of a writer as a person who has to make non-peanut snacks for fifteen kids and then a doctor’s appointment which will entail at least one shot before sitting down with her manuscript. You don’t think of a National Book Award winner setting an alarm to ensure he/she picks up Coraline or Jeremy from soccer camp no later than 3:25pm. Definitely not the image that comes to mind. But that’s what we do. Every damn day.

How the hell do we accomplish this?

Let’s just say there’s often a hero spouse in the picture. Let’s say someone is willing for YOUR career to do all that daily stuff, at least on occasion so a few sentences can be strung together and called a paragraph. Let’s say that’s true for about 40% of parent authors. (could be more/less depending on divorces, remarriages, business trips, and spousal reluctance) … it could also be a mom or paid nanny/sitter/day care that takes over the parenting for a while—

There is still the issue of mental space.

After all, writing a cohesive short story (not to mention a whole novel!) requires a certain amount of focus, wouldn’t you say? Focus that is not razor sharp when Coraline and Jeremy are fighting with the caregiver in the next room over whose turn it actually is to choose the TV show. Focus that can be ripped from you even with a stray thought; oh crap, tomorrow is Coraline’s share day at school and I promised to ask Joe to loan out his old fireman’s helmet and I totally forgot. Focus that is utterly destroyed when your cellphone buzzes and the caller ID says “Jeremy’s School.”

“We’re so sorry,” says an administrator when you pick up. “Jeremy threw up in the lunchroom today. He seems fine now, but our policy is to have the parents keep him home for 24 hours after an incident like this.”  Say goodbye to the next 24 hours, since your spouse has already told you she’s got a meeting at ten tomorrow with the CEO of her firm.

So that’s our lives. We know it. Why am I bothering to blog about it?

Because there are plenty of writers who have managed to put out amazing novels despite having kids at home. People who nonetheless pick up their kids from soccer and who sit with them when they have fevers.  People like Jennifer Egan, who, oh I dunno, wrote novels that were good enough to win Pulitzer Prizes.

When she wrote A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan was helping to put food on the table and pay for soccer classes for two boys. That prize came to her because the quality of her work was fantastic—not the other way around. We often laud writers’ work after they win prizes: but every last one of them was not a Pulitzer Prize winning author before they won that prize. (members of Pen Parentis can log onto the website and hear a podcast of her discussing the book BEFORE she won the prize... it's astonishing.)

It is vital to remember that the prize-winning authors that we so admire had to carve out time to slave over their writing, same as you. 

In the next blog, I’ll talk about some specific ways that published novelists who are also parents have carved out enough mental space to get some real writing done.