Mary Karr @ the Art Institute of Chicago

Mary Karr will be reading at the Art Institute of Chicago next Tuesday, April 5. Attending readings is, I should say, definitely a part of the literary life I thoroughly enjoy so I'm looking forward to going - it's always exciting to see an author live whose writing I admire. I regularly use excerpts from The Liars' Club in my memoir classes, and I was blown away by her most recent memoir Lit. I'm still blown away because I can't quite figure out her take on converting to Catholicism and spirituality - further reasons why I'm looking forward to seeing her in the flesh.

Michael Steinberg on Re-Imagining or: Why I Would Like a Book about Baseball

My Advanced Memoir Workshop students and I were fortunate enough to host Michael Steinberg, founding editor of the esteemed nonfiction journal Fourth Genre, and author, most recently, of Still Pitching, for an author Q&A this month.

In preparation for our session, we read Still Pitching, which, on the face of it, is a book about growing up in 1950s New York wanting to be a baseball player. It astounded me how very much I enjoyed Still Pitching, even though, having grown up in Germany, I have little appreciation for the game except for the fun I had playing softball with my American cousins. Steinberg clearly is a great storyteller because those passages where I was totally in the head of his adolescent narrator, experiencing what he was experiencing, swept me along, and the fact that I might be witnessing a baseball match mattered very little.

The level of detail Steinberg musters to create those scenes of his adolescence are stunning, and one of my students asked him how he managed to write at that level of detail after so many years. His answer was illuminating: “You don’t worry about the details when you write,” he said, “you worry about the feeling. I might not remember all the particulars of a scene but I do remember what it felt like. So I wrote myself into that feeling. I re-imagined what it felt like, what situation I had been in, what it had been like to be that kid. The details followed once I was in that place.”

This also explained to me, ultimately, why I liked this book so much: Because it is about universal feelings – of wanting to belong, and of being humiliated – feelings that we all know, no matter what the context. And it is with those universal feelings that the reader will connect. If well done, the subject matter becomes almost immaterial because we recognize ourselves.

What Memoir and Thriller Have in Common

I love the Wall Street Journal’s weekend column Word Craft in which prominent writers share their insights. This weekend’s resonated with me because thriller author Frederick Forsyth talked about research. He titled it "How to Keep a Thriller Real." Now why would a thriller author’s insights matter to a memoirist? Well, I could retitle this: "How to Ensure that a Memoir is Real."

The goal of fiction is to make the story seem real and possible. For that a novelist needs to research so that, for instance, s/he knows what life on a fishing trawler in the North Sea might be like. Therefore, someone like Forsyth goes and chats up Scottish fishing skippers. As a memoirist, you might be writing about life as a fishing skipper because it’s your life, so you know it. Or you’re writing about your grandfather’s life as a skipper in which case you’re basing it on what he told you. Why research? Because you still need to get your facts right. In the age of the Internet, when everybody can research just about anything, you better have checked up on everything anybody else can find, or you will lose credibility as a writer. And that is especially deadly for a memoir writer.

Facts are facts, and if you get those wrong, you’re cooked. So, if you can, visit that fishing trawler’s harbor and soak in the scene, check which way it really faces, and where the wind usually blows from. It will help you write any scene taking place in that harbor. Or walk the streets of your childhood to see which way you need to turn to get from the church to the school. If you can’t travel there, check old maps. Be sure to use the street names as they were in the time you are writing about because they can change. If you can travel, take as many pictures as possible.

If you’re writing your grandfather’s story, it still behooves you to talk to other skippers to get their impressions, and to verify your source’s reliability. It’s also a great way to get, as Forsyth tells us, anecdotes that will enliven your story.

A whole lot of research might end up being only one sentence in your manuscript but you will rest easier if you know you got it right. And readers who know what you’re talking about will delight in your ability to capture their life as well.

Acceptances Never Arrive in an SASE

Today I found three envelopes addressed to me in my own handwriting in my mailbox. I immediately know what those are: rejection notices from literary journals. Because if a journal wants your work, an editor will send you an e-mail, or will call, or both. He or she won't use the self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) you enclosed with your submission. Of course there are way more journals now that accept work electronically, and therefore also send their rejections electronically.

Incidentally, one such e-mail popped up in the lower righthand corner of my screen while I was typing this blog entry. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the subject line “Re: Your submission….,” and felt a flicker of hope. With an e-mail, you actually have to read the body of the message to see whether it’s an acceptance or a rejection. Of course it was a rejection but hope and possibility lived just a little longer, and their demise was a little less tangible in cyberspace than it is in the form of a SASE. Those SASEs often lie about unopened in my pile of mail until I have the heart to log the rejection in my submissions spreadsheet.

Being a Literary Citizen

I loved Cathy Day's idea of being a literary citizen, published on The Bird Sisters. I especially liked it because it's in checklist format, and I love checklists. A few things I know I don't do enough of are writing to authors whose work I like, and posting book reviews on amazon, even though I know from several author friends that those reviews on amazon make a difference. And I haven't been writing book reviews, for which this blog is an obvious vehicle. So these steps to literary citizenship are going to be added to my writerly resolutions for the year.

Do You Need Structure to Begin? - Danielle Ofri Answers

I'm sharing another clip from the Q&A session my Advanced Memoir Workshop students and I had with Danielle Ofri back in January. Here she talks about whether or not you need an outline or structure to begin a book.

Story Week at Columbia College Chicago (March 13-18)

To all my readers in Chicago: Check out the schedule for Story Week at Columbia College Chicago - Festival of Writers. It's free, open to the public, and a nice opportunity to see/hear such literary luminaries as Audrey Niffenegger and Jennifer Egan. They're also offering some interesting panels on publishing and the writing process.

The Journey to Publishing

Listen in – the journey to publishing can take many roads: This recording captures an interesting discussion about the publishing experience that I was part of at an author’s roundtable last week during the Literary Festival at Kaplan University.

Participants:

George Snyder, PQ Trumps IQ (PQ=Perception Quality)

Lisa Sims, Stretching a Dollar To Save and Make Thousands: An Entrepreneur’s Guide

Dawn Maslar, From Heartbreak to Heart's Desire: Developing a Healthy GPS (Guy Picking System)

Moderator: Ellen Scalese, Director, Faculty Development, Center for Teaching and Learning, Kaplan University

I was invited to discuss having my essay “A Room of His Own” published in the anthology Cup of Comfort for Couples, and in this recording I share how I had the same piece published twice because of what readers saw in it. George Snyder talks about publishing in Kindle; Lisa shares how she self-published and then e-published, and Dawn discusses her journey from self-publishing to traditional publishing.

Check it out – the world of publishing is certainly evolving!