Inspiring article - read it and WRITE.

Had to share this inspiring article by Shawn Vestal, sent over by our newest advisory board member, NYC-based literary agent Renee Zuckerbrot.  Shawn's debut collection, Godforsaken Idaho, was published earlier this month--check out his wonderful essay on The Quivering Pen (link below).

Did this ever happen to you? I will admit, I was frantic about my writing while I was pregnant the first time - thought for sure that I had to make it all happen in those speedy nine months.

Follow this link for some wonderful inspiration: "My First Publication as a Father" by Shawn Vestal.

And write something wonderful today - even if it's only a paragraph. Make something happen.

How to balance a creative career and an active family life

I was asked to guest-blog on Kidville's blog on the topic of balancing a creative career and parenting responsibilites, and I share with you the post. One day, perhaps we will also be fancy here with images and so forth. But for now: stay creative. Balance your life. Please comment on their blog in response to the tips - let them know this is a topic of interest in the virtual world!

And - we at Pen Parentis extend heartfelt strength to the families suffering in Boston. As New Yorkers with offices a block from Ground Zero, we get it. Gather strength from your loved ones, and remember that writing can also be therapeutic.

Crossword Poetry - guest blog by Brooklyn poet, Peter Valentine

Not every writer who is a Pen Parentis Author has four novels and an NEA grant. A lot of us are writers with day-jobs to support a family, who simply can't live without our creative outlet. Here's a guest-blog from a terrific poet, Peter Valentine, whose daily crossword-poetry is a wonderful example of threading a hobby into your creative writing - to ensure that you keep at it! He writes in the six hours that his children are in school, and here he describes his process for us, in hopes of inspiring others to discover their own forms. It's important to stay in the game, no matter your tools. 

Peter lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. Visit his website here.

Take it away, Peter!

-----

About 11 years ago B.C. (before children) I was sitting in my apartment, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette over the crossword. I had just gotten up, so it was probably 10:30am.

 

On this particular morning rather than speeding through the answers, I was staring at the words and letting my eyes play over them. Soon I found myself putting lines together -- first in my head, then on paper.

 

My first crossword poem consisted of two distinct parts – each created from the words in the clues and answers respectively. Later I evolved the form to 3 parts: across, down, and answers. For the title, words are drawn from any part of the puzzle.

 

The rules: 

1. Words in any section may be repeated

2. Punctuation may be altered in any way

3. No word may be used in a part of the poem that is not found in the corresponding part of the puzzle (if there is no “the” in the across clues, then “the” cannot be in the “across” part of the poem)

 

I wrote these poem daily for three years until I became a father. After three kids, I stopped reading the paper entirely.

 

Now, six years have passed and things have gotten easier. Today, with the kids in school six hours a day, I have been able to pick up the project again.  And it continues to be an extremely fun and satisfying occupation. Each day I look at a fresh batch of words from a different crossword puzzle constructor and never know where it’s going to take me. I’ve also added a new element – images. My wife, who is involved in social media (check out her blog here), urged me to include images -- a must if you want your stuff to get passed around the Internet. My initial snooty thought was that images diminish the words. Now I love them. It’s fun to see what pictures come up when you google things like, “soldier shakes hands with squirrel.”

 

Also, social media was not around six years ago, and I’m finding that there is nothing more motivating than the “like.”

 

It’s amazing how much has changed in only six years – both in the world-wide world and in me. Many of my older poems leaned on absurdist humor and at times cynical invective. Today, I can barely take cynicism. I still love funny, but I also feel more compelled and less embarrassed to write about real feelings and real things – surely the influence of kids. So while I may not get to sleep until 10:30am anymore, I may be a better writer.

Dystopian Future of Publishing

I'm reeling.

I was at a cell phone service store today, chatting with the staff while waiting to deal with a billing question and my guy noticed my email address. "Are you a writer? Carlos is a writer," says my guy, "Well, not exactly a writer. A publisher."

"Carlos" (name changed, obviously) is a heavyset, laughing, youthful man in his late twenties, with short dreds and really nice shoes. "Yeah. I don't write a word. I make books. I'm not exactly a publisher, though," says he. "More of a market research guru."

Intrigued, I asked for more details.

"Well, I have an Amazon imprint, you know? for eBooks. And I take a look at what's hot - like what's being Googled a lot, what books people are searching for, you know?--and then I think of a title and a pen name and get some cover art, come up with a table of contents, do some graphic design and then I get my writers to do a 'report' for me. Each report is a chapter of the book."

I am now trembling and appalled (and despite myself, really impressed at the nerve and cleverness of this scheme). "Do you pay the writers?"

"Sure," he says, "I pay them $50 or $60 for a ten thousand word report. Then I throw it all together with good graphic design and put it out on Amazon as an ebook. They sell like crazy; no work for me."

"Sleep money," says my guy.

"Yup," Carlos proudly nods. "Sleep money. I just started, and it's going great. The guy who told me about this? He makes 60K per month."

Let me repeat that last bit. The guy makes sixty thousand dollars per MONTH. I hope you weren't trying to eat while you read that. I nearly choked.

On the good side, this can only be done in non-fiction, where people search by keyword and where people don't really care who wrote the book, just that it's by "an expert."

In fiction, we are still...so far...safe.  So get back to writing your novel, people. Or, hey - pool together with your writing group to each write a short story on a very popular, contemporary topic - self publish the collection, and promote it on Twitter using the popular hashtag. It might not be a bad way to fund the annual party!

--

There is still time to submit to the $1000 Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents. All writers at any level with a child under ten are eligible. Follow this link for guidelines.  Deadline April 17, 2013.

What AWP taught me

This is going to be an unusually personal post - I went to AWP (the massive, twelve-thousand writers in a single event space dance-with-your-editor party that the Association of Writers and Writing Professionals puts on annually in various cities). First let me say that it was....amazing.  There were thirty panels for every time slot - each one hour and fifteen minutes long. There were six official time slots in a conference day, for three days. Do the math. You could spend a whole session just debating what panel to attend--!  Simultaneously, there was a two-floor book fair at which indie presses and literary magazines, MFA programs and writing retreats all had their tables. Down there, you were likely to run into people who did readings with you, who attended your grad school, or who had been standing in line for the bathroom with you for fifteen minutes the day before. In other words, those two floors were all about socializing and making connections. As if that's not enough, there were evening receptions (up to ten on-site per night) plus a score of offsite readings and social hours, dance parties and dinners.  It was...amazing.

So let me get personal. I am, first and foremost a mom. A writer. I just spent two whole minutes deleting one and replacing it with the other. I honestly don't know which I am first. If the kids need me, I'm definitely a mom first. But if they are at school, there's not a chance in hell I will choose voluntarily to create a felt-board so they can learn their spelling words if I'm in the middle of a writing session. So what comes first? Whatever needs me most, I guess. And yes, there's guilt in that.  But that's not what this blog post is about.

I also balance running Pen Parentis with the writing and the momming. And at AWP I realized that a lot of the time, I place the Directing higher on the scale than either of those things because it feels like a job. It can get tedious. It can be frustrating in an administrative "we just ran out of ink in our printer and need to put up flyers for tomorrow's event" sort of way. And it gives us the kind of pride that only a job can give you: a sort of legitimacy in the universe.

And what's hideous is that it means that even I, who run this organization, tend to subconsciously negate parenting and writing as legitimate. And I'm crushed about that, because it's preposterous.

If you could have seen the work that was being done at the conference to learn and innovate, to get inspiration for the next page, the next sentence - the people sitting on each other's feet (quite literally) to be able to fit into a very-full panel discussion on Traditional & Nontraditional Structures in the Novel, or Surviving and Thriving without an MFA or Borrowing from Literature to Create for the Screen...you too would have said, these people are not being self-indugent (a criticism I often hear about writing as a profession--yeah, it irks me too). I doubt any gastroentereologists at conferences at the Hynes Convention Center would stand through a whole session with one elbow in someone else's face and another on the water cooler, just to see a panel speak about a new surgery technique. Maybe they do, I've never been to a medical conference. But I have seen the suits that doctors wear to their conferences, and that sort of high-end costume doesn't encourage crowding.

But not even every large-scale literary event is this exciting. The difference between this conference and the BEA (Book Expo America that happens in June in NYC annually, and is the publishing industry conference) - is where the passion lies. At BEA, it is passion for the book: as a product, as a collaboration of author, agent, editor, publisher and distributor, and as a valuable, thrilling piece of art (or at the very least a valuable, thrilling commodity that sells like hotcakes). There are a lot more suits and a lot fewer panels, and nearly all those panels feature powerpoint. At AWP, the conference celebrates WRITING. The creation. The editing. The decision to sell or sell out or change or not. The teaching of writing. The collection of writing into anthologies. The transformations of writing both style and content. The impetus to write and the things that block it or fund it. This conference is all about the craft.

What did I learn? I learned that I actually wear three hats; which isn't all that surprising, given that my nickname in grad school was "Chapeau"... Here are my three hats: when I'm a parent, I feel guilty I'm not writing, but also I feel like I'm doing the exact correct thing by giving my all to my kids. When I'm a writer, I feel guilty I'm not doing more for my kids, though I feel personally most fulfilled. (I was surprised to discover that when I accomplish something great in writing it gives me a huge amount of personal, if fleeting, pleasure and makes me feel like yes, I've made the right choices.) And when I'm the executive director, all the doubts and fears and guilt fall away, to be replaced by hope and encouragement and I find myself acting like that tree in The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. You know the one? "And the tree was happy..." When wearing the hat of founding director, I will scrape bottom to ensure that every writer/parent who is pushing to keep a writer hat on -- even part-time -- while wearing their parenting hat the rest of the time, gets rewarded and encouraged. You guys -- and you know who you were -- who attended that conference bringing along your kids? You were my heroes. I could see the suffering you felt as others looked askance "really? you couldn't get a sitter?" -- and wanted to shout on your behalf: it's frickin' impossible to get a sitter for four days!! And then I want to give a public shout-out to the many, many writers who are devoted to their craft, are working full time day-jobs and/or just don't have the funds to go anywhere for four days with or without their kids. They deserve celebration as well.

(as a side note, our Writing Fellowship for New Parents was created specifically so that you people whose only impediment to attending conferences or residencies like AWP is a financial one could finally do so. It's open for application until April 17--do spread the word, please.)

I kept thinking, between panels and meetups and waiting in coffee lines, that there were 12,000 "literary"-genre writers that attended this event, but that meant that there were probably a million writers who were actually WRITING while the rest of us were taking in panels, not to mention the writers in other genres who have other conferences to inspire them! That's a pretty miraculous and astonishing number of people who are faithful to the word as an art form, and I hope that all you guys, the guys who stayed home as well as those who made it out to AWP, I hope that you all find inspiration in the livetweet feeds, that blog posts, and all the Facebook posts and articles that resulted from this massive conference. Also I hope that you all keep writing and fighting the good fight. Give your all; change hats as often as you possibly can. Hats are awesome.

I'll likely write some specific things that I picked up at AWP on my next post. I attended a huge number of panels, and why not spread the wisdom? We can all be better at what we do - but for now, what's important is to remember to also enjoy it. A bestselling author on a panel about getting your book into the world says that she still to this day has to remind herself every day that it is amazing that we are able to do what we do - the work is hard, but oh, is it ever rewarding.

Free money costs time

It's grant season!

The NEA's amazing fiction grant is available every other year - and this is the year for fiction (next year is poetry, etc.) -- hard to keep track of because the grant is actually a 2014 grant but the application is due by February 28th, 2013. And if you think you're going to just whip it out, given it's only a one-page document, then you obviously haven't ever filled out an official government form... This thing makes a 1040 look EZ.

Kid you not.

You'll be writing bibliographies, copying and pasting files into PDF format, renaming the files with code names...it's enough to give any artist hives.

Perhaps they think they will save money by the sheer numbers of authors who give up.

But seriously people - I heard a spectacular presentation at AWP in Chicago about this, and you should apply. It's true that if you don't get the grant, you have lost a whole day of writing time. But it's something that you really CAN accomplish on a day like President's Day, when the kids are around and you get six or seven minutes with the computer every half an hour or so. This isn't brainy work, people. This is crossing T's and dotting i's. Make that day a productive day!!

it's a shockingly simple application. 25 pages of your best prose. A one-page bibliography proving eligibility (FYI: a hint, they don't want ALL your pubs, they want the minimum that makes you eligible. If you wrote seventy five books in the last ten years, yeah, JCO we know you did, still all they want is one bibliography. No judges see the eligibility page, just a bunch of government office people who throw out applications that don't follow the rules. they don't screen - they pre-screen.)

There aren't any letters of recommendation. There's no artist statement. Nada. Just a bunch of irritating formatting guidelines.

That's it.

So go get an NEA grant already.

Back to Birgitte - second post from South America

Guest blogger, Birgitte Rasine checks in with manuscript and toddler from her writing travels in the wilds of South America...

A Clash of Two Worlds

The tropics.  Hot hot sun, exotic fruits, amazing local food, plenty of wildlife and songbirds, a hammock swinging in the breeze, cool drink in your hand… what more could a writer want for inspiration?

As I quickly found out, that depends on what you’re working on at the moment—and whether you’ve got a toddler in tow.  After Christmas, we drove down to “Los Llanos,” the tropical grassland plains of Colombia, to spend 10 days at a small fishing lodge secluded near the banks of the ancient Manacacías river (for reference, the Manacacías joins the Meta which then flows into the legendary Orinoco in Venezuela).  Normally, a trip like that would be a dream for a writer looking for a faraway place to get away from the emails, the cell phones, the constant interruptions and stresses of the modern world.

But when you bring your two-year-old, a paradise quickly transforms into an obstacle course of potential hazards, and your writing time drains down into maybe an hour or two a day.  Malaria-bearing mosquitoes, uncertain water sources, weird and unfamiliar food, parasites lurking in every crevice and pool of standing water, rivers full of electric eels, anacondas, water cockroaches, crocodiles and all kinds of other eminently friendly and compassionate creatures.  Then there’s the ever-present potential for running into paramilitary or guerrilla forces, although fortunately these days that potential runs very low in this area.

Sure enough, the first day my little girl got sick—we didn’t know if it was the water from the swimming pool, the oatmeal that sat in the heat a little too long, or some unseen insect that had bitten her… but instead of succumbing to the strong temptation of panicking (we were hours away from a decent hospital), I spent the day watching over her and administering lemon and garlic water, a mixture that works wonders on E.coli and all kinds of parasites and stomach bugs.  I myself had suffered from a rather aggressive E.coli infection shortly after our return from the island of Providencia, and the lemon/garlic cured me in 3 days.*

Thankfully, the next morning my baby was fine, jumped in the boat with us, and spent the day fishing the wild ancient rivers of the Colombian plains.  Remember that piranha I was after?  I’m proud to say that I was the first to catch a fish on this trip, and it was indeed a piranha—although not the giant black one, it was a gorgeous red-bellied piranha.  We let it go: it’s illegal to kill piranhas here.  They’re incredible river janitors.

And my writing?  On this trip I brought my psychological thriller with me, the one that takes place in the Parisian métro.   Yes, I know: Parisian metro vs Colombian tropical flood plain.  The most unlikely bedfellows.  Normally, I have no problem plunging into the world I’m writing about regardless of where I am physically.  But this time, I found it very difficult.  I tried writing in bed, in the hammock, by the pool, but found myself wandering off, gazing at the trees, the birds, the river… I even considered staying at the lodge by myself while my husband and the rest of the family spent the day fishing, but I just couldn’t do it.  After all, who travels thousands of miles to this remote place and give up even one day on the river? 

So I resigned myself to editing in the early dawn or in the evenings after dinner, which worked fabulously well.  I was able to edit the majority of the work I had written to date, most of it tucked away in my mosquito net, away from would-be biters and stingers and other annoyances of the minuscule kind.  And because there was literally nothing to see (light pollution is minimal here), I could edit in peace knowing I wasn’t missing anything.

Besides, I told myself, I can write when I get back to Bogotá… and California.  There was simply too much to see—and see we did (I’ll write about that in my next post).  The Llanos have a way about them… the plain enters the very marrow of your soul, and won’t let go long after you’ve gone.

Birgitte Rasine

Author

http://birgitte.lucita.net

www.facebook.com/birgitterasine

https://twitter.com/birgitte_rasine

p.s. Medical disclaimer and a note about that lemon/garlic mixture: it is a known fact that citrus has extraordinary cleansing properties.  After all, they make detergent out of it don’t they?  It turns out that if you blend lemon, orange and grapefruit, pulp, rind and all (no seeds), with a bit of raw or powdered garlic, and drink it ideally with food, anything sitting in your gut that shouldn’t be there (as in, E.coli, parasites, worms, whatever) runs for the proverbial hills. 

It’s natural, won’t kill your flora, and you can get it practically anywhere.  And yes, if you can’t stand the bitter taste, you can add honey or sugar.  But as with any health-related suggestions, please talk to your doctor before using this mixture to cure specific ailments or conditions.  I know it works for me and my family, but if you’re allergic to citrus or garlic it’s obviously not a good idea.