While I prefer to write fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy, I do write other genres. This includes personal essays. I took a little break from writing personal essays over the summer, mostly because writing them can be emotionally draining.
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Is poetry as we know it dead? Goldsmith speculates the “meme machine” has taken over.
This week, The New Yorker book blog published a post by Kenneth Goldsmith about the proliferation of rather un-poetic “poetry” spreading across the internet. He writes:
[T]he Canadian media scholar Darren Wershler…has been making some unexpected connections between meme culture and contemporary poetry. “These artifacts,” Wershler claims, “aren’t conceived of as poems; they aren’t produced by people who identify as poets; they circulate promiscuously, sometimes under anonymous conditions; and they aren’t encountered by interpretive communities that identify them as literary.”
…It’s not uncommon to see blogs that recount someone’s every sneeze since 2007, or of a man who shoots exactly one second of video every day and strings the clips together in time-lapsed mashups. Continue reading
The Rejection Letter that’s Good for You
Yesterday, I got a rejection letter.
Yes, it happens a lot.
I’ve argued in the past that rejection letters are good for you, and I’ve gotten better at taking them in stride, but this one went even further. Its timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
You see, last night was my monthly writers’ workshop. All morning, I’d been trying to decide on a piece to bring and share. When that rejection letter appeared in my inbox around noon, I decided it was a sign.
No, not that kind of sign.
Not just a sign, but a Sign — “This is the piece you should bring to your writers’ workshop tonight.”
So, I did.
And it was magical.
Our group was smaller than usual, consisting of just three of us (usually, we’re four or five). But the two other ladies present gave me so much insight about what worked in my story and what did not, feedback that I might have been less open to, had I not just received the rejection letter. I spent a good chunk of this morning working on revisions, and plan to wrap them up tomorrow in between baking my challah and roasting my chicken.
I’m still hoping that the next time I hear from an editor, they send an acceptance letter. (To say that I pray for acceptance letters is no exaggeration.) But this experience is definitely going to help me embrace the next rejection letter.
Because another will surely come.
“You knew you wanted to do it, but you’d never had the courage…:” Writing in the second person
For some people, it’s bungee-jumping. For others, it’s swimming with dolphins, getting a tattoo, or eating fugu.
What am I talking about?
The thing you’ve always wanted to do, but were too chicken to try.
For me, it’s writing in the second person. When it’s done well, it’s so, so compelling. The reader is naturally drawn into the narrative, as they are a part of it. But when it’s bad, it’s like a poor imitation of a Choose Your Own Adventure book (I loved them as a kid, by the way). I remember reading a book that teaches writing which suggested that only the most gifted of writers should attempt writing in the second person.
Over the last few months, the second person narrative has appeared on my radar quite a bit. And for the first time, it’s in non-fiction.
I’m a huge fan of Erika Dreifus’s blogs, and that led me to some of her other writing. Among her corpus of work are several interlocked true short stories about her (yikes!) mugging in Central Park.
(You can read them, too:
- Part 1: http://carte-blanche.org/articles/sunday-in-the-city/
- Part 2: http://brevitymag.com/issues/march-2013/before-sunrise/
- Part 3: http://contrarymagazine.com/2013/at-the-station-house/)
What really interested me about the stories was Dreifus’s handling of her misadventure. While the events actually happened to her, she writes them as if they happened to the reader. Whether this was intentional or serendipitous, she discovered a way of writing about a traumatic event that happened to her with greater objectivity.
My new POV
A couple months back, I wrote a very self-revelatory story. It was the kind of thing that is so embarrassing to myself that I can’t be at all objective about it. When I wrote piece, I thought it was completely unpublishable, but shared it at my writing group nonetheless.
Surprise! Several members of the group had a very strong reaction to it, not because it was exceptionally well-written (it wasn’t), but because they felt the feelings I portrayed were very universal. So, they encouraged me to revise it.
Struggling to handle material that was a little too close for comfort, I tried Dreifus’s technique and rewrote my story entirely in the second person. I’d describe it as highly therapeutic. I was able to laugh at my foibles and not take the behavior that elicited my negative response so personally. I have no idea if the story will ever make it to publication. But the process definitely gave me a new perspective on my behavior.
The process also gave me a bit more confidence in writing the second-person. Now, I’m looking for the right opportunity to use it again.
Have you read notable works in the second person? Have you ever tried to write in the second person? Share your experiences as a reader or a writer below.
Posted by whom? Writing under a pseudonym
Guess who?
I know it’s no longer news, but a couple months back, the author of a well-reviewed book was unmasked as J. K. Rowling, the bestselling author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling was delighted with the experience. When critics praised her outing as Robert Galbraith, she knew the compliments were genuine, that her novel really deserved them all. She wasn’t just riding on the waves created by her earlier fame.
The article about Rowling’s literary adventure stuck out for me, because at the time her identity was revealed, I had recently published for the first time under a pseudonym. I chose to do so for different reasons than Ms. Rowling: I needed to protect the identity not of myself, but of various people within my community who were part of a real-life cautionary tale.
My turn
Unlike Rowling, when my short story came out, I had very mixed feelings. On one hand, I felt that I had done a service, telling an untold story and drawing attention to an under-reported phenomenon. I hope that readers learned something from reading the story, perhaps something that will help them make different, better choices than those made by myself and several members of my community.
On the other hand, I felt it was one of my best pieces of writing ever, and no more than five people will ever know that I wrote it.
I’m writing something again that will — if accepted — be published under a pseudonym. Again, I want to champion a cause without causing embarrassment to others, and without infringing on their privacy. But it will come again at the cost of my ego.
Have any of you writers out there had the experience of publishing under a pseudonym? How would you describe the experience? Please share in the comments below.
The Post in Which I Confess Again My Love of Sharpies & Probably Ruffle Some Feathers
Today is Hoshana Rabba, the last day of Sukkot, the Jewish Festival of Booths. In keeping with the more lenient final days of the holiday, my family has been trekking all over Southern California on outings. Today, I’m cooking, so between the challah baking and the vegetable roasting, I’d like to share a few thoughts with my readers.
A Writer’s Quandry
The Avila Adobe, the oldest building at the Pueblo.
Yesterday, we visited El Pueblo de los Angeles, the original non-Indian settlement here in L.A. Last year, the Pueblo welcomed a new addition to its site on Olvera Street — an interpretive center for the América Tropical mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros that appears near the roof of what’s known as “the Italian Building.”
When the mural was unveiled in 1932, it immediately fell victim to controversy because of its anti-imperialist sensibilities. The most “offensive” images on the right half of the mural were quite literally whitewashed not long after it’s first exhibition, with the remainder of the mural being painted over four years later.
I was aghast as I listened to and read the details of the story. A white socialite pushed to remove an artist’s genuine expression of the Latino experience because it offended her political and social sensibilities.
Now, here’s the seemingly ironic part of the situation. I have a web page devoted to a “kosher reading list” and elsewhere have confessed to censoring my kids’ reading materials. My husband and I have effectively banned TV, Disney movies & Romeo and Juliet from our home because we don’t like their effects on children (see my comment in this link to the excellent post by Pop Chassid).
Yes, I am a self-described censor. Continue reading
Rebecca Klempner 