AWP Tips

From the scarily freqently perfectly timed mind of Roxane Gay:

Some Dos and Don’ts:

Do drink a lot of water. Go offsite to buy bottled water because the convention center and hotel will charge exorbitant prices.

Don’t thrust your unsolicited manuscript into an editor’s hands. It will be awkward for both of you.

Do visit the host city for at least an hour or two. There is life beyond the convention center.

Don’t try to attend everything. It’s not possible. Instead, pick a few panels and offsite readings to attend and leave the rest to possibility.

Do acquire a good tote, and on Saturday evening, ship home all the books and magazines you buy.

Don’t pretend to have read someone’s book if you haven’t. Don’t be sycophantic or use flattery as social currency. You can and should engage writers in normal conversation. Writers are people, too.

Do have fun and do not take the conference too seriously. Do carve out quality time with your friends when you can—a quiet hour for coffee or a meal far from the hubbub of the conference.

The only part of this I won't be taking to heart is the shipping part of it, because we will have a trunk. Great American road trip, here we come!

If you're going to be there, I hope to see you! This is my very first writing conference, and any other tips (or drinks and moments of commiseration once we're emotionally flattened) are more than welcome.

The Loyalty of Water: Alphabet Fridge Magnets

Editor’s note: Kristina was one of the first people I asked to join this project (full disclosure: we were college roommates), and I was thrilled when she said yes, mostly because I know just how busy full time work can be. She’s also got a toddler. I wasn’t expecting anything of great length, but as anyone familiar with her writing knows, short forms have never held her back. I wasn’t expecting what I did get, however, which was a very excited text suggesting that we curate her Facebook posts. I was in love with the idea immediately.

As you’ll get to see, Kristina makes the most of tiny spaces and snippets of time. Everything you read below was a status update, no editorial privilege exercised beyond curating the collection. It was a pleasure to work with her to create this snippet of 21^st century writing in a time of motherhood.

Alphabet fridge magnets make me feel very much a mom. 8/26/13

In my last decade I learned to love ideas -- the complex, subversive, utopian kinds. Thus far, the present decade invites me to ground those ideals in the love of people -- the real and particular kinds. May my heart accept this invitation without restraint. 10/17/13

how can such a tiny, bright, funny, charming, loving, gorgeous creature instigate such a tremendous amount of exhaustion for her progenitors? 11/9/13

I was asked to write a personal mission statement: "I act now--no matter what--to cultivate a safe, inspiring, and happy world." What do you think? 11/21/13

Someone has learned to say "I love you." Heart melt. 12/4/13

Click to read more ...

Our Man In America

These two collections over at mental floss made my morning.

Japanese sources on the US:

Non-smokers are more important than smokers in the US. Smokers capture the concept that they are not able to control themselves, and are the owners of weak character.

And Russian sources on the US:

However, it would be wrong to believe that the Americans with their smiles only create the illusion of well-being and that their smiles are stretched with false joy. This is not so. Americans: they are a nation that truly feels happy. These people get used to smiling from the cradle onwards, so they do not pretend to be cheerful. The desire for a successful happy life is inculcated from childhood.

Loyalty: Gloria Steinem

There are few things I pull out more often lately than this quote, both for myself and my peers. I don't know that I would have found it had I not been unemployed in May, when this story ran in New York Magazine, since no one in the event lineup is anyone I tend to follow (excepting, of course, Amy Poehler). But I'm glad I did, and entirely for the Gloria Steinem quote in the final paragraph:

“In my generation, it was difficult to know that you could take control of your own life,” she said. “You thought your husband and children were supposed to dictate your life. Now I see young women who feel they have to be a total success by 30, which is very different. And both things are equally wrong.”

She wasn't talking about writing, at least not exactly. But she was talking about writing, and about how a particular subset of women in my generation--well educated, high-achieving, either middle class now or from that sphere in childhood, and tending towards social justice, or at least socially postive, professions--tends to think about ambition. I personally find it simultaneously an excellent reality check and effective motivator.

The Loyalty of Water: Living with the Scratches

Guest post by Allison Landa 

First off, thanks to Emily for inviting me to be part of this experiment. And it is an experiment, isn’t it? Everything is. The only time an experiment is no longer an experiment is when it’s dead, when it’s still and quiet and can finally, ultimately, be judged.

And speaking of judging, let’s look at the Mary Oliver quote from which this experiment takes its name: creative work requires a loyalty as complete as the loyalty of water to the force of gravity. I don’t have that loyalty. My loyalty is to other things: lying on the couch, for one. Buttered popcorn, for another. The Food Network, and I can go on and on – but these are easy loyalties, cheap and simply won.

The loyalty of which Oliver speaks is different. It is, I suspect, a matter of the creative process as willing entrapment. There are layers of entrapment: one must be committed to the project, the process and the present. Sometimes the layers feel like a favorite flannel shirt, slightly worn, completely comfortable. Other times they are that sweater you mistakenly wore on what turned out to be a ninety-degree day, defeating in their heavy insistence.

And what of my own loyalty to the process? It’s a fickle one to be sure. I write in spurts, without any sort of rhyme or reason or schedule. I write when I feel like it and occasionally when I don’t, but it’s typically at my whim, not because I have a cast-iron will. Sometimes it all feels great. Sometimes it feels like a burr in my ass, a prickly one.

It would be far too easy to say I happily choose to embrace it all. It would also be a bunch of crap. Of course challenge is harder to embrace than peaceful progress. Challenge is a bitch to wrap your arms around. It’s spiky, wriggly. But you hug it nonetheless, and you live with the scratches.

Allison Landa is a Berkeley, CA-based writer who earned her MFA in creative writing at St. Mary’s College of California. She has held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Playa Summer Lake and The Julia and David White Artists’ Colony. Her memoir BEARDED LADY is represented by Naomi Davis at Inklings Literary Agency, and an early excerpt was featured in Salon. Stalk her at www.allisonlanda.com.