What Do You Do While You Wait?

One of my novel manuscripts has received 79 agent and/or publisher rejections. I should change that to read 6 agent and/or publisher rejections and 73 ignores.

The ignores are the most difficult. I’d rather have a firm “no” than nothing at all. I lovingly send something off with high expectations, then I never hear back. Did they ever receive the package or email, I wonder? The actual rejections have arrived either via email, a form letter, or a self-addressed stamped postcard that I paid for.

While my shorter pieces have been published, there’s been no action on this particular manuscript. I think it’s a good story.  My readers think it is a good story.  But the publishing industry is not in a gambling mood; they want a sure thing.  If it was chick lit or young adult fiction or anything with vampires some agents say it might have a better chance. But here’s the thing, I can’t and don’t write in those genres. I've tried, but I have no passion for that. 

I’ve almost come to enjoy these rejections and ignores, these little efforts to force me into doing better or different work, because when you win there’s no incentive for improvement.  When you receive a rejection, or even an ignore, at least there is a reason to go back and look at your pieces over and over again and make them better.  I decided to engage the services of a professional editor to review this one manuscript.  I know I will learn something from her, even if it means re-writing this novel for the upteenth time.

So what to do while I wait for those acceptances, those affirmations for my life as a writer?  I keep doing it.  Every day. Writing is a solitary activity.  I am usually alone when writing, as are most writers.  I sometimes sit all day and write. I will miss meals and work in my slouchy clothes all day if given the chance, because story material appears every day.  Just this morning I read about an 11-foot alligator caught by wildlife officials walking down the street in Greenville, Mississippi.  That was after the wedding in the convenience store between the Cheez Whiz and the toothpaste. And then there was the grandmother in Florida who tried to sell her infant grandchild. What motivates people to do what they do is the basis of fiction.  What are those internal or external conflicts that we all bump up against? Was the alligator hungry? Was the grandmother? What about the couple who married in that store? Did their eyes meet, did the ringing of the cash register sound like rolling thunder in their hearts? Did they honeymoon at Talladega?

Writers are compelled to write. I carry these stories forward to see what they want to express to the world. There are myriads of opportunities in Memphis to pursue this avenue of artistic expression, especially in the inner city, and especially with our young people. They all have stories to tell.

Writers have an artistic gift, and we need to cast it out into the universe, not keep it to ourselves.  There’s a young man in the Beltline neighborhood that enjoys writing so much that he wrote a play and his mentor helped him enter it in a local contest. He didn’t win.  But he’s still writing. He wants to be a better writer.

If you enjoy writing and want to carry your story forward, helping young people like the young man in the Beltline neighborhood, consider facilitating a writing group for WriteMemphis, a literacy program I started because I wanted to do more than hold my gift tightly to myself. I am compelled to share this gift with the world, and I hope you are as well.  Visit the website at http://www.writememphis.org, and we’ll put you to work while you wait.  

Unknowing Agents of Inspiration

Susan Cushman's post,  Getting Saved, Sex and Writing over at A Good Blog is Hard to Find, inspired me this morning. Susan writes of a teacher who put masking tape over her mouth to stop her from talking. Her words sparked memories of my own childhood. I am an extreme introvert, although not shy. My elementary school was Walthall School in Hattiesburg, MS. When I asked a question or made a statement as a child it was usually a well-thought out sentence so as not to embarrass myself. In 4th grade I have this vivid memory of having not heard the page number leaning over to ask a classmate what page we should be reading. When I leaned back into my own desk, here comes the teacher stomping towards me, yelling at me. I am terrified. She grabs my little desk with her big hands and shoves it back against the wall.  The impact jolts my tiny 9-year old body so much I can still feel my skin shudder.

I don’t think I uttered another word until I graduated. There have been other agents of energy (this is being kind) who tried to stop me from writing and talking in addition to that fourth grade teacher. In ninth grade, we had an assignment in English Class to write a persuasive letter to someone. I have no memory of whom I wrote my letter to or what I was trying to persuade them to do, but I have a strong memory of what my teacher said about my letter as she read it to the entire class. Shame invaded my life and still lives rent-free in my brain.

Growing up in the south, we have certain words that are part of our language, our vernacular. We use these words in our homes, in our businesses and in personal conversations.  I won’t bore you with the specifics, but I had used several of these words in my assigned letter. The teacher read my letter and snickers echoed off the walls as my classmates listened. She waved the letter in the air and shouted that one does not use such language. I was humiliated. I did not write another thing until I graduated. Except in my personal journals that I kept since elementary school.

As a young bride living in New Jersey in the early 70s I got a part-time job as a typist at a company called Myron Sugarman International.  They manufactured gaming machines for casinos.  I typed letters from the Dictaphone. The men who dictated those letters were all fast talkers. Too fast for me. Well, that was New Jersey, and those accents, you can imagine, were strange for a young girl from Mississippi. I tried to slow down the machine so I could understand what the men said, and I strained to listen. I did my best. The words I couldn’t understand I just made something up that fit what I discerned the letter was about.  Every letter came back with red marks. I tried to explain that I could not understand their accents. They laughed. They did not have an accent – it was me! People in the office asked me questions just to hear me talk.  I was so embarrassed I shut up and quit the job.

But I continued writing in my journals. I made up characters, settings, descriptions. Years later, in a fit of anger, my now ex-husband threw all my journals, around 30 or them, in the Ross Barnett Reservoir. I guess he thought I was writing about him. All those stories now sleep with the fishes.

Writing was mandatory in college classes of course, so I tip-toed around those words that one does not use and was awarded some scholarship dollars to Millsaps College in Jackson, MS based on my writing. I was finally set free.

Now I come to today, and I am like an addict who goes on a binge, wakes up 5 hours later and wonders where the time went. The newspaper is still in the yard, the dust has gathered on the coffee table, phone calls go unanswered, and my FaceBook status is non-existent.  That is how it is when I am writing. Time stands still.

My husband Robert comes home and knows I am writing and leaves me alone. He encourages me. He understands.

Who were/are, in spite of themselves, your unknowing agents of energy and inspiration to keep writing?

Poise and Personality?

I've been reading Gail Bruce's book Literacies, Lies & Silences: Girls Writing Lives in the Classroom, about her being a participating observer in her work of writing with adolescent girls. In her lengthy introduction she takes the time necessary to explore the history of why a shift occurs in the lives of most girls as they move from childhood to adolescence. A shift from being the 'subject' to becoming the 'object'. I find this fascinating on so many levels. More about this later.

On a recent flight I am sitting in an aisle seat on that beloved exit row next to an attractive young woman with long billowing black hair, dangly earrings, silver sandals, and those trendy "skinny jeans". I admire anyone who can wear those things with class - of course they show off one's body, however much or little of it there is. Here I am, a healthy middle-aged female, taking up much of that little airplane seat. And there she is, like a limber grasshopper, taking up about half her seat, legs folded up and she is writing thank you notes, one after the other. She is in the center seat. A mildly obese man occupies the window seat. He sleeps. I continue reading my book.

Miss skinny jeans reaches under the seat in front, stashes the stack of thank you cards, and retrieves a folder. I cannot help but notice there is a golden mark of some sort on the cover as she flips it open. She pulls out a stack of papers. On the letterhead I read, Mrs. America: We are Family. I slyly eavesdrop for a while as she ponders each question and fills in the answer. Then I have to ask: "Are you a contestant?"

She turns, flips her beautiful hair, and answers, "Yes. I am the state pageant winner and I will compete in the pageant in Tucson in a few weeks." Her earrings shimmy as she flashes perfect white teeth. Congratulations, I say, you have a good chance. She thanks me, with demure humility, then tells me she is writing notes to her sponsors and continues talking about all the opportunities the pageant has afforded her. She is a wonderful cheerleader and has what they look for in those pageants, plenty of poise and personality. And her hips are no wider than her head.

I think how synchronistic it is that she is seated next to me as I continue to read Bruce's book, and I have to compare and contrast Bruce's findings against the world of beauty pageants. My mind began to wander to Bruce's stories in her book, and how the world of adolescent girls is so fragile. And to the media, which is another fantasy world.

My intention here is not to bash pageants or the media, as pageants are useful to those who enter them and to those whose business it is to promote them and those are arguments I will not pursue. My intention is to explore the complex dynamics in the lives of young girls and not the world of poise and personality. However, contrasting this is attractive to me.

I once worked with a young woman who put herself through college and graduate school on scholarships from such pageants. She lauded them and encouraged younger women to make use of the opportunity. But I think everyone will admit that pageants are not for everyone. Some women have the qualifications for them and some don't. Most of us are called to different lives and to pursue different opportunities.

Which brings me back to Bruce's book, and her experiences of writing with girls, and her descriptions of the period in girls' lives when they begin to get 'lost'. Most of the girls in my creative writing classes seem to feel as if they dwell in an alternate universe, yet they yearn to feel normal whatever that may be. I remember the time in my own life when I felt 'lost' - when I watched the Miss America pageant on TV and heard over and over that this was the dream of every little girl, to hear Bert Parks sing There She Is. Every little girl's dream. I believed that. But it was never my dream. So how odd was I, I wondered then. What are the various fantasy worlds of adolescent girls, and how do these fit in with their reality? How do you think the world of pageants affects little girls?

I watch the Facebook posts of some of the girls in my writing classes and am embarrassed at their language, their abbreviated words, and realize it is an entirely new language. But at least they are writing! Even if some of those posts are full of misspelled words and anger. Mostly directed at their parents.