Don't ask, don't get

By Joan

When I first wake, I slap on my glasses, pick up my phone from my nightstand and scroll through emails. I’ve got my eye open for agent emails from still-outstanding manuscripts – even though everyone knows emails are for rejection and phone calls are for offers of representation. Like many writers, I’m on mailing lists for publishing industry newsletters and literary magazines' calls for submissions and contests, such as Publisher’s Weekly, Writers’ Digest, The Bookseller (in case one day I want a London publishing job!), Ploughshares, Glimmer Train and Granta.

If I’m in recluse writer mode, I often delete these – write first, read about writing later! But Wednesday morning I was scrolling through my email and noticed a Ploughshares email which read:

Ploughshares Lit Mag (@pshares) mentioned you on Twitter!

I opened it up to see that Ploughshares had published my essay online in their Writing Lessons feature. I scrambled out of bed and went to tell my husband. Before I had a sip of coffee, I read and reread my essay, paced and jumped and screamed. Before re-Tweeting and Facebooking it (are these verbs yet?), I wisely waited for caffeine.

At our last retreat, Pamela and I made a pact to submit something every month of 2014--to a contest or literary journal or writing program, and when our current manuscripts are ready, to literary agents. We both started early by submitting in December. Pamela was rewarded right away with a lovely essay she wrote about her Mom, published in the New York Times Magazine. 

Writing a novel is a long process with few rewards along the way. This week Susan shared some tips on setting writing goals. She wrote: “Not only does submitting your work keep you focused, it keeps you writing.”

So far in January, I’ve submitted a novel excerpt and the first two pages of my WIP for an online agent workshop. In February, I will submit a short story to another literary magazine and will likely apply for one or two summer workshops, as well as enter some contests in the spring. By year end, I hope to be submitting my new manuscript. Getting rewarded right away was definitely motivation to continue. Don’t ask don’t get, or in this case, don’t submit, don’t publish.

I’ll leave you with an inspiring clip posted on The Australian Writers' Centre's Writing Bar blog from Neil Gaiman, a true advocate for aspiring writers. 

In the clip he says:

“If you’re only going to write when you’re inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you will never be a novelist.”

And:

“... as quickly as you can, start telling the stories that only you can tell — because there will always be better writers than you, there will always be smarter writers than you … but you are the only you.” 

Who Do You Think You Are?

By Susan

There was a time when I spent too much brainpower deciding what kind of writer I was going to be. I felt an intense pull to name myself, to define what it was that I was doing with the words, to call myself something. If I couldn't name it, then was it real? Or was I just a scribbler, a pretender, a hack?

I came up with several options: Southern Literary Fiction Writer, Women's Writer, Kentucky Author, or simply Novelist. I practiced using each of those phrases in various forms. When it came time to send query letters to living and breathing agents, I was thrown once again. Who was I? And why would that agent want to represent me, an unknown amateur who couldn't even decide what to call myself, or my work?

The problem with any of these titles is that they limit my work-- the same way an implement used to prop someone up can in fact stunt their growth. Can a Novelist, for example, write poetry and non-fiction? Can a Kentucky Writer spin a tale about Africa? Is calling yourself Literary pretentious and off-putting? If you are a Women's Writer, does that devalue your work somehow, or keep men from reading it?

It all makes me wonder how much control we actually have over how we are perceived. I like to think that writing quality work is the best path to literary acceptance, yet I am not naive enough to believe that labels and stereotypes mean nothing. Instead of labeling myself, I've realized that by simply calling myself a Writer I've opened up doors that I'd previously closed without even meaning to do so. No labels anymore--just the words. I've had poetry place in a contest, I'm contemplating a narrative non-fiction proposal, and I'm stretching beyond my southern roots to write stories that are compelling to me--not just stories set in the South.

This blog, of course, is called What Women Write for a reason--even though we are all vastly different, we strongly identify with our roles as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, and we are all writers. We are proud of who we are, and are proud of our words. In great part this blog was created to encourage other women who navigate this same culture--both with and without the labels.

So who are you, dear reader? Are you a writer, too? Or have you limited yourself by genre, gender, and guise? Because we control our image, to a great degree--not all of it, but quite a bit. Step outside of the labels you've scripted for yourself and see what kind of writer you can be.

You might surprise yourself.

The Long and Short of It

By Susan

My first draft of my first novel was over 100,000 words. For whatever compelling reason, I couldn’t stop writing it. I added subplots and additional characters and points of view. I added description and three full generations of multiple families. It was sweeping, spanning over sixty years. It was broad, but not necessarily deep. I added everything I could possibly think to include. If I was going to write a novel, I surmised, I should put everything I’ve ever known into it.

That sweeping novice attempt garnered me an agent, but no book deal. Six months of revisions, followed by a quick testing-of-the-waters submission (that we just as quickly pulled after five rejections and five amazingly similar snippets of feedback) led to my decision to embark on a complete rewrite of the story. A rewrite, I am proud to say, that I finished this week. The current product? One story-line, one time period, one generation. 88,000 succinct words.

I taught myself to reign in my storytelling. The original draft wasn’t really one book, it was a minimum of three competing and overlapping stories, all crammed into 100,000 words. This closer-to-final product became a journey of learning to write more while writing less.

I’m calling it writing short. By writing short, I’ve stretched new muscles. Over the course of this novel rewrite, I’ve also written quite a bit of poetry, a children’s story, and a myth. In my practice, I learned to tighten sentences and to pack as much punch into a scene, character, or description as possible. Writing short also means writing deeper. With fewer characters, I learned to focus and to develop the ones I was left with. The end product? It’s a much better book and, as a student of my own process, I’ve become a better writer.

I think some of my friends may have thought I was crazy for embarking on a full rewrite. Taking 100,000 words and slashing it to less than 30,000 and rebuilding it in four months' time was a daunting process. Yet I’ve learned that more isn’t necessarily better. I learned that finding the poetry inside prose is a delight. More than anything, I’ve loved learning a better way to tell a story.

Calling Me Home: Susan

Click for details

For more than a year, we have been awaiting a special day that is almost here: the publication of Julie Kibler’s first novel, Calling Me Home, available for pre-order now and in bookstores February 12. If you are in DFW, please join us that evening for Julie's book launch and signing at 7:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, The Parks Mall, Arlington. Click here for more information and to RSVP (which is helpful to Julie and the store in planning for the event, but not required).

Calling Me Home is our group's first published novel, and it marks a major milestone for both Julie and the blog itself. We started this blog more than four years ago as an outlet for some of our thoughts on writing, but also as a platform to help introduce us to you, our readers, as writers looking forward to publication. That time is beginning. In celebration, each of us is sharing our thoughts on home, how it calls us, and what it means to every "me" in our group. We hope you enjoy these posts, and we hope to see some of you February 12!

By Susan

I’ll admit it: I’ve struggled with writing this post. Home is a loaded word to me: a mix of my childhood and the childhoods of my own daughters, of my past and my present colliding in a place we call the same thing, two places that are the same yet are vastly different: Home.

I’ve made no secret that I am a Kentucky girl and proud of it, even though I haven’t lived there in thirteen years and left my hometown—my real home—twenty-four years ago.

I grew up in a town with a population not much more than my Texas daughter’s high school. I knew every bump of every sidewalk in that town. I knew the shortcut to Laura Gay’s house and the open field behind Stacy’s place, where we’d play kick the can with boys until called in for dinner. There was a freedom that came with home in those years.

In the spring and summers of my childhood, I slept with my windows open to the cool night air. I stoked fireplaces with wood in winters, and felt the crisp crackle of autumn every October. I walked to school with my sisters, rode my bike everywhere else, went to church three times a week, and lived within blocks of my cousins and both sets of grandparents. Home isn’t just another place to me, of course. It’s another time. Yet by the time I was a teenager, home was no longer freedom; freedom was somewhere else. I left in 1989 and never lived there again. 

We live in Texas now, and have for eleven years. I married a California boy, and my daughters know of no other home except for the house where we currently live. Their story of home will be built around the hot white light of Texas drought, our suburban cul-de-sac in the middle of the Metroplex filled with children their own ages, and our travels to far-flung locales for vacations, including the annual road trip to Kentucky to stay a summer month with my old friends and extended family who never left. And so while a part of my heart will always be in the rolling hills of the Bluegrass state, my home is also here: the dry flat expanse of Texas, where my daughters are growing up faster than I could have ever imagined, making their memories of home as they go.

My Kentucky home, in my mind, will always be magical in so many ways—not perfect, mind you, but full of love. And isn’t that what home really means? Home truly is where your heart is.

When Julie started writing Calling Me Home her story immediately tugged at my heart. How could it not? I know the road that Isabelle and Dorrie follow from Texas to Kentucky. I understand the racist undertones from this part of the country and can easily imagine what Northern Kentucky would have been like in the 1930s. At the same time, I know women like Dorrie—tough and independent Texans who don't want to feel forced to rely on anyone. Julie, who was born in Kentucky, knows this road as well, and it's beautifully evident in this novel.  Through her drafts and revisions of Calling Me Home, we talked more and more along the way about Kentucky memories and our present lives in Texas. One sign of a good writer is taking the seemingly ordinary journey and making it extraordinary. Julie does this with Calling Me Home.

And so if home truly is where the heart is, Julie's heart is this novel. And I can't wait to see others read and enjoy this book, this book of my friend's heart. 

Setting Free the Teenage Manuscript

By Susan       

My daughter, the morning of her 13th birthday

A few months ago my older daughter turned thirteen. “Turning” is the perfect word for her transformation from child to young lady. She seemed to spin and twirl into another creature, one suddenly several inches taller than I with Rapunzel-like blond hair who sings the Les Miserables soundtrack without ceasing, in near-perfect high soprano. She is my baby, my first born, a girl who is now nothing like what I could have ever envisioned because she is so much more than I could have ever foreseen.

I’d been married for four years when she was born, yet who could have prepared me? How could we have known? There is no knowing the love you will have for your child, this part of you who is nothing like you, who is full of self and will and startling intellect. I could not comprehend the love my mother had for me until I held my own daughter to my breast. I didn’t understand the heartbreak I caused my parents as a teenager until I see my own daughter sprouting wings before I am ready for her to fly.

I have a manuscript that is much like my daughter, in so many ways. She’s been with me for a long time, starting as a seed of an idea in 2006 who sat dormant for years, until I allowed her the soil and sunlight she needed to thrive around 2009.  In late 2011, I sent her out into the world so she could find and retrieve the agent of our dreams. She did not disappoint me. Yet now—after a tumultuous year of edits, she is turning, too, just the way my daughter spun into a room when she became a teenager. And like my daughter, I only love her more for the transformation. 

My three-generational saga has become the song of 1950—as I’ve cut two thirds of the story completely out. (Maybe, just maybe, I can write about those characters later. But for now, my 1950 crew had too much to say by themselves.) My 1950 gang never ceases to startle me with their will and collective intellect. I thought I knew them before, yet now, they are becoming so much more. I wonder if other writers love their characters the way I love mine, dreaming of them, protecting them, and then setting them free. 

Much like my daughter, my manuscript is about to sprout wings and fly away from me. Not today, but soon. And part of me is torn. I've even called myself stuck for the past week--unable to move forward in allowing her to be what she is becoming. Is she good enough? Can I finish her properly? And even worse, am I a good enough writer to do this story justice? The 1950 draft will be completed in a matter of weeks, and then, after a few rounds of clean up, it will be time for submission. From there? She will either sell, or she won’t—that’s not in my control. The only thing I control are the words I put to the page. My only hope is that, just like a mother, I’ve been able to properly parent this story out the door. And just like my daughter, perhaps one day I’ll be able to look on proudly as this manuscript becomes a book, and maneuvers herself through the world without me. 

Just like parenting, it’s a risk. You do your best. You show up every day. Writing is a priority, a joy, a pain, and a beautiful journey, isn’t it? And then we set the words free, for others to enjoy them too. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Writing Goals

 By Susan

For years, I hid my fiction: password protected documents still litter my files—their passwords long forgotten—yet I can’t bear the idea of hitting delete. I’d scribble poetry on paper, then would toss it away, embarrassed at my own audacity. I’d write a short story about love, or about loss, or about longing, and would embarrass myself at my own transparency. I hid my work.

Over the past few years, I’ve become less—well, less weird about my words. I’ve read aloud in critique groups. I’ve applied to and attended workshops, calling myself a writer without shame. And we’ve been blogging here now for almost four years! As the old Virginia Slims ad used to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby."

This year, I’m even up for sharing my writing goals with you, my writing friends. Instead of the end goals (completion of the novel, publication, poetry and essays) this list is about how I plan to get there. 

This year, it’s all about the journey.

1.     Write with a heart full of gratitude. This is by far the number one goal this year. I am incredibly thankful for the gift and desire to write. Thankful for the time and space to write. Thankful, overall, for the joy it brings me, and hopefully, brings to others. I need to remind myself to be thankful, even when things don't go the way I want.

I hiked to this spot to write and think
 in Tennessee this October.

2.     Write without complaint. Okay, sometimes it’s difficult, this getting-words-on-paper-thing. As Zadie Smith says about the life of a writer, ”Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” My goal this year is to minimize the grumblings, frustrations, and fears that come with my chosen vocation.

3.     Read more, read better. Short stories, poetry, fiction, biography. This year, I want to read writers I’ve never heard of, and read writers who intimidate me, like Tolstoy or David Foster Wallace. This year, I’m going to read the best works I can find.

4.     Support bookstores, libraries, and charities. For Christmas this year, I ordered book gifts from Powell's in Portland, Joseph Beth in Lexington, and Malaprops in Asheville. My daughters and I frequent our library. My charity of choice is the International Book Project, and I raised the funds for the delivery of enough books to stock two libraries in Ghana, West Africa this year. I support what I love. I encourage you to, as well.

5.     Remember to move. I find my words and my heart when I exercise and spend time outdoors. I plan to continue twice weekly yoga, hike whenever/wherever I can, and to continue running the bleachers at my local high school. Scenes fix themselves, characters find their voices, and plots make sense when I move (Not always, but it sure doesn't hurt!) Sometimes it’s hard to remember that, when pounding the keyboard seems like the logical answer. It’s not, always. Sometimes you’ve just got to move.

Beach Retreat: Cannon Beach, Oregon

6.     Surround myself with writing friends, but remember to write alone. I love having and supporting friends who write. Sharing ideas, plots, retreats, business talk, and coffee breaks are all part of the writing life, and it helps keep me sane, knowing I am not alone. But I’ve got to remember that books don’t write themselves. Protecting writing time, editing hours, and solitude is a big priority for me this year.

7.     Never apologize for retreating. In 2012, I took advantage of workshops, retreats, friends’ offers of beach houses, the holy solitude of a silent monastery, and a mountain retreat to find my words. It felt a little decadent, in a way. But my writing became stronger, my voices clearer, and my heart fuller from taking advantages of solitude.

Sunset at The Abbey of Gethsemani

8.     Remember that I am a student. There is no one way to write a story. There is no right way or wrong way—there is just the story. Just make sure to write it and remind myself to always learn from my own mistakes.

9.     Be kinder to myself, and to others. Back in October, while on a five-day retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, this struck me almost as an epiphany. I’d spent a full day in solitude, attempting to “fix” my new draft, as though somehow the abbey itself would function as a magic wand. Then I beat myself up heartily for failing to “fix” it. The idea of forgiving myself for my many writing failures is a tough one, somehow. But I am working on it. A huge part of 2013 will be choosing love and kindness over fear and self-loathing. Admitting that out loud is a good start.

10. Reach. By this I only mean that I promise to try. Apply. Enter. Submit. Push fear aside and continue to put myself out there. In 2012 I vowed to take my writing seriously. For 2013, I’m ready to share it. 

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

By Susan

         This December started off in typical Texas fashion: 85 degrees and bright blue skies.

         I have to admit, I resent warm Christmas weather. My childhood Christmases in Kentucky were cold and icy winter-wonderlands spent at my grandparents' log home, Fort Henry, perched on a mountainside above a lake, just on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest. We’d chop a twenty-foot pine ourselves and drag it into the house, tying it up to the walls to keep it steady. We’d often have snow; we’d always see (rein)deer. Every year my grandfather would jokingly threaten, in front of a roaring fire, that he was boarding up the chimney this year to keep “Santy” from bringing us gifts.

My cousins Morgan and Evan with one of our famous trees tied to my grandfather's El Camino.
(I know, it's almost too good to be true.)

         And so to me, something about this time of year inherently means dashing through the snow, not big Texas heat. The hot blue expanse of Texas skies never really meshed with my idea of Christmas. I miss the mountains. I miss seeing my breath. And yet I’ve lived here for over ten years. Every other year, I’ve taken my brood to Kentucky, where we’ve experienced what I've called "authentic" yuletide seasons. The log home was sold years ago, when the maintenance and remoteness of the house became too much for my grandparents to manage; yet we always had big Christmases full of lots of noise and egg nog and family cheer.

         This year I’ve had a hard time getting in the mood. We’ll be at my in-law’s house here in Texas for the week of the holiday, so I excused myself from decorating my own home. That’s right: no tree. Not one single spray-painted pinecone or sequined stocking. Not even one glittered Santa or gaudy brass candlestick shaped like Rudolph.

         Sunday night, a cold front blew through. Twenty-eight degree mornings. Frost on cars and winter coats with mittens. We even had a light dusting of snow. My younger daughter and I built roaring fires in the fireplace each night this week, and I started to get in the spirit of things. Then I realized I wasn’t really grumpy about the weather, or about Texas, after all.

         This is my first Christmas without my grandmother, who died October first. She was my last grandparent. She was the one who loved those twenty-foot Christmas trees and that log house in the woods. Part of my bah-humbug attitude, that I was blaming on Texas, really was about the passing of time.

Susan at Fort Henry, Christmas Eve, 1975

         I’d never have those Christmases again. My children know different traditions (one, if I am not careful, could be of their mother not decorating for Christmas). And although I am blessed to have healthy parents this Christmas, and I know that my daughters and extended family are healthy as well, somehow I know that without my grandmother, Christmas will never be the same.

         And so I pulled myself together. It was simple, really. I didn’t have to go all out. Stockings on the mantel, a little greenery on the open staircase. Some background Christmas music, and The Night Before Christmas propped open, ready to be recited, just the way my grandmother used to read it to my sisters and cousins and me, and later, to our children. I found a few special ornaments that once hung on one of those giant Christmas trees at Fort Henry and put them out where I could see them, even if I didn’t put up a tree of my own. Not yet, at least.

A Fort Henry tree, with my grandmother sitting in front.

         This morning, the weather in Texas is mild again. Not warm, mind you, just pleasant. And I remind myself that the season really isn’t about the weather, or about the big family celebration at the cabin in the woods. It’s about celebrating a season of kindness and giving and religious celebration.

         I’m going into the New Year with lots of hope. I’m also ending this year with plenty to be thankful for. And so I’ll forgive Texas weather for being what it is, and I’ll embrace my daughters instead. I’ll even forgive time for marching on—thankful that I’m left with such wonderful memories, even though I can’t have the Christmases of my past ever again. God-willing I’ll have plenty of great new Christmas memories before me, even if we are wearing T-shirts and shorts on Christmas Day.      

      And even if I don't get a twenty-foot tree.

Call Me Ishmael

By Susan _____-_________-___________.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Writers choose their names all the time. From the Bronte sisters writing as men to Stephen King wondering if his work could find an audience without the “King” behind it, writers, for centuries, have struggled with their identity on book covers.

Yet for me, the question of a name goes back way before I decided to send my words out into the world and call myself a writer.  Let me explain.

I married young—at 23—and I liked my maiden name: Susan Park Ishmael. I like my masculine middle name: Park. It was the side of my family descended from Daniel Boone’s brother, Edward, who’d been killed in an ambush by the Cherokees. The Park side of me felt solid and strong. Dropping the middle name for matrimony felt like leaving a part of my heritage behind.

Then there was the matter of Ishmael. I loved the both Biblical and Melvillean aspects of the name, though few pronounced it exactly the way my family did. (We say Ish-mul, not Ish-male, or Ish-may-ell.) When I married a second generation Greek-American boy named Poulos, I was torn. What’s in a name? I asked.  

Yet I didn’t change my name after I married. I’ve used Susan Poulos (or Susan Ishmael-Poulos) professionally for the past seventeen years of my marriage, but deep down (and on paper) I am still Susan Park Ishmael.

Now comes the part where choosing my name for a submission becomes a bigger question. Am I Susan Ishmael? Susan Poulos?  Or some mix of the two?  Should I use Park for some measure of good luck? I studied book cases … do I want to (hypothetically) fall next to Kazuo Ishiguro, Jodi Picoult or James Patterson?

Decisions, decision!

Here are some authors who wrote under different names:

Pseudonym                Author’s Real Name

Ayn Rand                  Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

Currer Bell                 Charlotte Bronte

Elis Bell                      Emily Bronte

George Orwell            Eric Arthur Blair

George Elliot              Mary Ann Evans

Isak Dinesen              Karen Blixen

Lemony Snicket         Daniel Handler

Mark Twain               Samuel Longhorne Clemens

Pablo Neruda             Ricardo Eliecer Naftali Reyes Basoalto

Richard Bachman       Stephen King

Sapphire                     Ramona Lofton

JD Robb                     Nora Roberts

I never wished for a name like Smith or Johnson. I like the unique fact that I am the only Susan Ishmael-Poulos out there. But when it comes to book covers, what really is in a name?