Road Trip Report 1: St. Louis - Oklahoma

Some impressions from the Big American Road Trip with my family, driving from Chicago to explore the Southwest this summer.

City Museum St. Louis - the name does it a disservice. This is by far the coolest children's museum ever. Someone with a love for quirky junk turned an old shoelace factory into a giant wonderland. I mean who thinks of putting a ferris wheel on a roof? We made for that first, despite the fact that it was 100 degrees outside. Luckily, there was still a breeze up there and a fountain to cool off in. Inside, you can crawl through tunnels laid in ceramic mosaic, swoosh down a few stories on super slides, swing from ropes, ride a toy train, etc., etc. Our kids didn't want to leave.

In Bartlesville, Oklahoma, we visited a good friend and got to check out the only highrise Frank Lloyd Wright actually built: the Price Tower, 19 stories high, completed in 1956, recently renovated. It now houses an arts center, an inn and a bar. I found it a rather odd, angular apparition in the midst of an Oklahoma prairie town more renown for being the old headquarters of the Phillips Petroleum Company.

Speaking of oil, Woolaroc, not far from Bartlesville, is one of those out-of-the-way sites that turn out to be gems. Created by Frank Phillips, founder of the Phillips Petroleum Company, it's a stunning wildlife preserve and also one of those museums that has an appealing dustiness to it. By which I mean it is truly a museum showing off a collection of Native American artifacts, showcasing early pioneer and cattle ranch life, as well as explaining the beginnings of the oil industry in Oklahoma. From an animated display I finally understood how those "horsehead pumps" actually suck up oil from below the bedrock. I liked that they are self-sufficent, powered by the gas that naturally comes up with the oil.

I've already written about our visit to the Oklahoma City Memorial but I focused on the museum, and I do find the outside memorial equally impressive. As I've said before, I've visited many memorials for horrible atrocities, and I am always amazed that anyone could conceive of a site that could actually do some justice to the gravity of the tragedy. The chairs at the Oklahoma City Memorial, especially the smaller ones to commemorate the 19 children who were killed, does just that. What could be more appropriate to symbolize a lost life than an empty chair?

Blog Mash Up: Memoir Videos

Telling a little personal story in video - check out this turning memoir into video post by Marion Roach Smith.

I must say I've become addicted to Marla Miller's quick query critiques of queries written for memoirs - perhaps because I know I have to write my own query pretty soon! It fascinates me how these critiques of query letters really end up being critiques of the books themselves.

My friend Sandra Beasley's memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl came out last week - check out the fun trailer. Makes you think how you'd shoot your own...

MFA Q&A: Interacting in a Low-Residency Program

Further in my MFA Mondays series on the benefits and practicalities of getting an MFA in Creative Writing, today’s installment covers the practicalities of my low residency MFA program.

Q (Alison): I know you attended the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte.  Were you part of the low-residency program?  How did that work in terms of interacting with your instructors and your peers? How have you stayed in touch with your fellow students after the program?  Do you have online critique groups or in-person get-togethers?

A: Yes, I was part of the low-residency program. Aside from the one-week residencies in Charlotte, communication with instructors and the students in any given semester’s workshop happened via email. I feel that the MFA in Creative Writing is probably one of the programs that lends itself best to being taught online. After all, you’re writing, and you give feedback in writing. Even if you receive a harsh critique, it is easier to digest, I found, when you receive it in writing, rather than face-to-face in a group setting. You can step away from it, come back, read it again when you can stomach it. You can go back to it many years later. Of course we also had in-person workshops during the residencies and those were intense but I also never had a negative experience.

During the program we students also had a forum on zoetrope, to which every student got invited. A fellow grad also runs an office on zoetrope focused on publishing and many of us alumni still congregate there. We also keep in touch via an alumni group on Facebook that’s quite active. Another benefit of the Queens MFA program is the alumni conferences that happen every 1.5 to 2 years. I’ve been able to attend two and each time it was a wonderfully inspiring experience, not only in connecting with old friends and making new friends but also in being able to workshop with editors and agents in the publishing world.

In addition to all of that, I regularly see fellow alumni at conferences like AWP or NonfictioNow, and I am part of a loosely-knit critique group that exchanges manuscripts on an almost monthly basis.

All of this is to say that the aspect of becoming part of a community of equally dedicated writers has been a tremendous benefit of getting my MFA at Queens.

Oklahoma City Memorial: Every Item Had a Story

We visited the Memorial of the Oklahoma City bombing on Thursday, and it saddens me how oddly fitting that visit now is given Friday’s rather similar tragedy in Norway.

Visits to memorials are always sobering but for some reason I find the collection of objects left by the dead especially heart wrenching. This has been true for me at any visit to a concentration camp memorial, and again in Oklahoma City the cases of keys, glasses, shoes, briefcases, day planners etc. had me swallowing tears.

The exhibit reconstructs the timeline of events by taking the visitor through the innocent morning of April 19, 1995 at 9:01 a.m., to hearing a recording of a meeting in the Murrah Federal Building which captured ordinary proceedings until you hear the explosion at 9:02, to the destruction and mass chaos afterwards, to the tragedy of having to find survivors, to the investigation that eventually convicted the perpetrators. I was touched to find that one of the many investigators had eloquently expressed the tragedy of the items left behind:

“We set up containers for money. We set up containers for documents. We set up containers for personal belongings. As we were sifting through, we might find a coffee cup. We might find a purse or a briefcase. We might find a Social Security card. Each time you’d pick up a personal item of some type, you’d catch yourself wondering, ‘Who did this belong to?’ or ‘Gee, I hope that person made it.’ You’d pick up a personal belonging, and it’d have on it ‘love’ from some relative, and it kind of kept you thinking. Every piece had a story.”

Trooper Fred Horn, bomb technician

Guest Blog by Nancy Julien Kopp: The Benefits of an Online Writing Group

Welcome to one of my writer and blogger friends, Nancy Julien Kopp. Thank you, Nancy, for sharing your take on participating in an online writing group:

Annette asked the right person to write about the plus side of an online writing group. I credit my group, Writers and Critters, for making me a better and a published writer.

With more than a dozen years in two separate groups, I’ve reaped numerous benefits:

1. An online group is easy to attend. I can participate pre-dawn in my jammies or on sleepless nights. I never need to leave my home or deal with bad weather.
2. Critical feedback is sometimes easier to give in writing than face-to-face. I may not always like what is said, but I take the attitude that the negative critiques help me grow as a writer. I have often found that it’s easier to give this type of critique when not facing the writer in person. Conversely, since I know my group compliments only when it’s deserved, I know it’s not an ‘attagirl’ comment meant to stroke my ego when I receive positive feedback.
3. Perceptions of my work are more global. Different perceptions come from the many members who critique my work and who live in different parts of the world. They may see my words in a completely different light than I do. They help me clarify places that might be a bit hazy to readers.
4. I learn from being able to read other critiques. I try to read a large number of the critiques on other submissions, and then put my observations to use in my own writing and critiquing. It is as beneficial as taking a writing class.
5. There is more time and space to share marketing tips, writing exercises and grammar guides. We share all of these as well as personal experiences with queries, editors and agents. Marketing tips save time for each writer. In face-to-face groups, there may not be time for exchanging all these resources. Plus we can file resources online.
6. An online group can be larger than an in-person one. Members in a group of 20-30, like mine, develop close ties over the years. I have stronger friendships in this type of group than in others I’ve joined. Not only does the daily interaction in an online group allow friendships to become strong but I also receive more feedback that I probably would in a smaller in-person group.
7. Inspiration to write comes partly from the submission requirement. Writers and Critters asks for two submissions per month (and four critiques). Reading what others have written is also an incentive to put bottom on chair and fingers on keyboard to write something new.

Join an online critique group with an open mind and participate regularly. No matter what kind of group you choose, you get out of it what you put into it.

My Essay "Waiting in the Dark" is in Prime Number Magazine

I'm happy to announce an essay of mine is now published in Prime Number Magazine. It's a piece I wrote several years ago so I am glad to finally see it in print. Let me know what you think!

MFA Q&A: Is Pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing Right for You?

Thanks to my blogging friend Alison Law, I'll be running a little Q&A series on the benefits and practicalities of getting an MFA in Creative Writing. So Mondays will be MFA Mondays here for a few weeks. Questions are by Alison, answers are by me, based on my experience of obtaining an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. Later installments will also include perspectives from fellow alumni and graduates of other MFA programs. My first installment covers the prerequisites of an MFA.

Q (Alison): Is [an MFA] the right pursuit for people who aspire to write books?

A (Annette): Not necessarily. The vast majority of people who publish books probably do not have an MFA. During the program, you do need to complete a “thesis,” namely a book-length manuscript, so in that sense it definitely pushes you towards writing a longer work. When I started my MFA program, I couldn’t even conceive of writing more than 10 pages!

Q: Teach writing at the college level?

A: Depends on what kind of writing. For teaching creative writing, an MFA is almost always required. Some programs even want a PdD. But many successful writers have been hired to teach college solely because of the success of their books. For teaching college composition, many colleges, even junior colleges, require an M.A. in English, and consider an MFA insufficient. For example, the City Colleges of Chicago initially wouldn't hire me to teach English composition because in their eyes an MFA is not enough; I had to get my old degree from the University of Munich reevaluated and thankfully I had enough credits for it to qualify as an MA in English. Another junior college hired me to teach English comp with the MFA, no problem, so did Kaplan University where I still teach.

Q: Want to be more marketable in their current freelance writing careers?

A: I doubt it. In freelance writing, publications (clips) count more than anything else.

Q: Beyond strong writing skills, what characteristics will make students successful in an MFA program? Is anyone a bad candidate for the MFA?

A: If you don’t know what a deadline is, you’re a bad candidate for an MFA program. Being in an MFA program means working in a community of writers, which means you give and you take. I was lucky in that all of the students in my workshop groups were conscientious, but some of my friends ended up in groups with space cadets and it was terrible for everyone.

Q: How did you decide what to submit as your 10 or 25-page writing submission? Did you have the beginnings of a memoir all ready to go? 

A: No, I didn’t have a memoir ready to go, if you mean a book length manuscript. But I did have an essay published by then, which I submitted. I also submitted a short memoir that had won a prize so I knew it was good.

Guest Blog by Joyce Finn: How to Keep an Online Writing Group Thriving

A travel writing class I took online many years ago became the turning point in my life as writer. Not only did I receive the best writing advice ever, but I met Joyce Finn. She invited me to join an online writing group she was a member of and thereby opened up the world of the writing community to me.

When that group faltered, we set out to create our own. It was clear from the very beginning that Joyce was the ideal moderator. She has amazing empathy, energy and yet a firm hand and a clear idea of what she wants. Seven years later that group, Writers and Critters, is still thriving, and even though I had to leave it when I pursued my MFA (too many commitments!), I still consider myself a member-at-large. I asked Joyce to share her insights on how to keep an online writers group thriving. Here’s her guest post (Thank you, Joyce!):

When I started the online writer-critique group, Writers and Critters, I had firm ideas about what I wanted and expected from an Internet group. I wanted an international community for women writers with enough structure and staying power to last. I knew it wasn't enough to assemble compatible writers and expect it to prosper. I had seen too many others fail from lack of focus, ill will, or loose organization. Here’s how Writers and Critters avoided those pitfalls:

Don’t accept just anyone. Acceptance to Writers and Critters is by application. Like many other moderators, I ask potential members for a writing sample to determine whether a writer is willing to share her work with strangers and to broadly ascertain her writing level.

Have a diverse and robust membership. Members range from poets to novelists and everything in between. We even had, a few years back, an obituary writer. At any given time, membership bounces between 20 and 30 members. As part of the membership selection process, my job, as moderator, is to keep in mind the different forms and genres within the group. An overabundance of any one genre can throw the group dynamic off balance.

Have rules for participation. Our basic rules stress constructive, not useless "attagirl" critiques. We require two submissions and four critiques per month. Participation is tallied on a spreadsheet. Results are posted mid-month and at the end of the month, both to motivate--it's a record of what members have achieved--and to prompt anyone who may be struggling.

Offer group activities that foster participation. We offer a weekly free-write exercise as well as other writing prompts and challenges, and a weekly market listing. I encourage members to consider overseas possibilities and will often include applicable publications relevant to members' work. The listings are a good nudge to stop tinkering with a piece and flinging it out to fend for itself.

Consider meeting in person. In 2008, we were featured in Poets & Writers Magazine when we took our group from cyberspace to a face-to-face conference. Since then we've had three more conferences with a fourth planned for October 2011. Sessions are geared specifically to member needs. Annette has often been a guest speaker.

The success of Writers and Critters is evident in the many books, magazines, and anthologies on my shelves that contain work by members. In the past five years, there have been three nominations for the Pushcart Prize and one for the Agatha Award.

Although we write from all corners of the world--Shanghai and Australia to the Netherlands and Norway--bonds have been forged and writing honed. My own success as a writer is certainly attributable to the help I've received by the women in Writers and Critters. With a firm structure, our group has become more than I hoped for all those years ago. Annette will tell you, when a group rocks, it rocks! 

Submissions: A Word on Writing Contests

My take on writing contests was first published in Tiny Lights, but it's been a while so I'm offering this update. A few years ago, at one of my MFA residencies, a panel of three literary magazine editors (from Tin House, Ploughshares, and The Gettysburg Review), unanimously advised: "Enter only free contests, never pay anyone to read your work."    

I wouldn't go to that extreme, but my own rules for entering writing contests are:

1. Enter only contests that have been around for a while and offer some prestige
2. Give preference to contests that award 2nd and 3rd prizes and honorable mentions, not just one prize;
3. Get something out of the entry fee, namely at least a copy of the journal with the winning entries in it, or a critique of your entry.

I think there's merit in entering contests, having a deadline is one, the off chance of getting that recognition is another, but I do think one has to be cautious. Poets & Writers has good standards for listing contests, one being that they never list contests with less than a $1000 prize.

Your chance of winning a contest is much slimmer than your chance of getting a piece accepted if you spent the contest money on postage and submitted the same story to several different literary magazines. That's my new rationale anyway. Simultaneous submissions are standard procedure, all you have to do is keep good record of your subs and if your piece does get accepted somewhere, immediately notify the other publications.


What's your take on writing contests? Any missives you want to add?

Reading: Lingering in Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge

I love it when a book becomes a place, becomes an alternate reality I can dwell in. That’s what happened as I was reading Terry Tempest Williams’ now classic memoir Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place. I picked it up in a friend’s guest room last November and read the first few chapters during my visit. They stayed with me. Maybe because my friend’s house in Iowa City was blissfully serene and thus a refuge in itself from my otherwise hectic family life, but also because Refuge is very much about place, namely Great Salt Lake and the desert of western Utah.

It took me a while to buy the book for myself and then I kept reading it, on and off. Sometimes all the descriptions of birds were a little too much for my taste but nevertheless I was drawn in by the author’s obvious reverence for these animals. It’s a testament to Williams’ skill as a writer that I stuck with the birds even though I am reportedly not an animal lover. Now I have to wonder about myself because this is the second animal-focused book I’m recommending after My Family and Other Animals.

Refuge is also very much a book about a family, and to a smaller degree an exploration of Mormon culture and history, which is seen mainly as a source of strength that sustains the mother but less so the daughter. Observing the birds brought Williams’ greater solace as she watched her mother slowly die from breast cancer.

What struck me, over time, was the book’s immediacy. I asked myself how Williams achieved that until I realized that she hardly ever offers any transitions. Transitions are explanations of where we are and why we are there. Williams never leads the reader anywhere. Instead, she starts wherever she is: “The Refuge is subdued, unusually quiet” begins the chapter titled “White Pelicans.” Sometimes being plopped here and there and having to find my bearings bothered me but it also mimics life, doesn’t it? And it mimics the flight of birds – they know the grand picture from above but they don’t really know what’s on the ground until they dare to land.

The book is elaborate and unique in its organization: Chapters are named for birds, and as time markers we are offered the lake level, as Great Salt Lake is going through a flooding period during the early 1980s, the time Williams is capturing. It begins with:

BURROWING OWLS
      lake level: 4202.70'

More than once I leafed through the book, again trying to get my bearings, looking for a time marker I could understand: a date. But ultimately we cannot measure nature and life, no matter how hard we try, and I think Williams was trying to show that.

Just as the communities around the lake fought to contain it with all kinds of schemes, from building a new damn to flooding the desert west of the lake, Williams’ family fought to keep the mother alive with all kinds of treatments, while the birds from Williams’ beloved Bird Sanctuary simply up and left as their habitat drowned. And sure enough, as the lake receded, the birds returned.

Practice Makes Perfect

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

This quote came through on the Happiness Project's daily email today and it reminded me, once again, why, if you want to be a writer, you need to write every day. If not every day, then almost every day. Because that's what writers do. Not only do they write but they write all the time, and if you write all the time, guess what, you do get better at it. This, of course, applies to all human endeavors.

So that's the little insight I'm sharing for today because I am otherwise writing, namely working on tweaking those first few chapters of my memoir manuscript.

Writing Exercise: Color List – Blue

Red, white and  ____. You guessed it: In honor of Independence Day, the color of this month’s color list is blue. For the uninitiated, the idea here is to come up with ways to capture shades of blue without saying blue because one of the challenges in writing effective descriptions is getting the color just right. Each month on this blog we work on one color, so far we’ve done green and pink. So help me here to come up with nouns and adjectives that bring blue to mind. Here’s my initial list, please contribute:

aquamarine

blueberry

cobalt

cornflower

denim

ink

navy

peacock

periwinkle

sapphire

skyblue

teal

turquoise

Hemingway on Writing

Today is the 50^th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s death, and an article by Jeffrey Meyers in the Wall Street Journal on Hemingway’s literary achievement reminded me of that. He died, sadly by his own hand, on July 2, 1961.

I thought it would be a fitting tribute to share one of Hemingway’s insights into writing that really made a difference to me. For all the tumult in his personal life, he was an amazingly disciplined writer, and I think much can be learned from his approach to writing. One was his famous goal of achieving and logging a certain word count every day that he was working on a project. (This was before you just had to click “Word Count” in your word processing program!) His steadfastness in his writing probably accounts for his steady output, or as Jeffrey Meyers puts it, he “wrote at least one great work in every decade of his career.”

But what really made a difference to me in my own approach to writing is this insight he shares in his memoir of his years in Paris, A Moveable Feast:

“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

My standard approach, before I read this, was to write until I was exhausted, until I had said everything I wanted to say, until a certain chapter or point was completed. But during my first writer’s residence at the VCCA, I tried Hemingway’s approach and found it worked much better, especially when you’re working, like I was then, on the first draft of a book length manuscript: Stop when you still have something to say so that the next day you know exactly where to begin.