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Rules:
The Daily Prompt:
Begin with the prompt line: “I wanna know…”
Rules:
“Until I cleaned it up, I couldn’t tell what it was.”
May is Short Story Month, so this might skew toward the fiction writers among us, but the piece doesn’t have to be prose. Build something around this piece of dialogue. Use it any way you want, just include it somewhere.
Tell us a story.
One of my worst nightmares as a Creative Writing teacher, is the student who comes into class with a hardbound book, and exclaims, “Mr. Margolin! Mr. Margolin! MR. MARGOLIN! I GOT PUBLISHED!!!!!!”. I typically try really hard to not be mean, and to champion the fact that they wrote a poem, but it’s incredibly difficult in the end, when I look into their glowing eyes, and ask the questions: “Oh, you got a poem…published? Um… how much did that cost you?”. Immediately, I can see their defenses draw up, and their eyes get a nice mix of anger and mist. The conversation then goes like this:
Student: “But I got published. I submitted my poem to this company/contest and they wrote me back and told me that I was accepted and that all I needed to do was send them a check for $49.99 and they would put my poem in a hardbound book and that I could pay an additional $29.99 for every other copy for my family and my mom and dad and grandma are all really excited that I bought them all a copy for Christmas and I got published!” This is typically followed by some jumping, or arm waving, or some hefty exclamations of greatness.
Me: Sitting down on a desk in my room. “I’m really proud of you for writing a poem. It’s good that you enjoy doing that. I’ve got to be honest with you though, you didn’t actually win anything. You’re in that book because you paid for it – just like everyone else who is in that book. I’m really sorry you had to spend so much money. It’s cool that you’re in a book though. I mean, you’ll have that forever now.”
Student: This is wear the anger turns to tears. “But, but, but… I … they… it’s…it’s… I got published. They wrote me the letter and everything. I’ve got it in this book. I… I don’t… ” and then they storm out of my room before I get a chance to say anything else.
Yes, it’s true that some journals charge for submissions to their poetry contests. It’s also true that no journal worth their literary integrity would charge for submissions to their poetry contests. Small press journals do not have a ton of money. Some are better off than others, and can award a monetary prize for publishing your pieces. Most publications can afford to give you a couple of copies, or a pat on the back, or a subscription. Paying them simply means that you are funding their publication, or that you are paying to have your piece published – especially in the case of the “hardbound scam” that has been going on for decades.
If you truly want to submit your pieces for publication, take a look at Writers Market, or Poets and Writers, or Writers’ Digest, and start to send pieces to reputable places.
Look, I will always be proud of the student who simply writes a poem; I just don’t want that student to believe that they are a published author because they put a check in the mail. If it was really that easy, the world would be filled with a lot more poetry.
Rules:
The Daily Prompt:
“The Sound of Silence”
Get your writing materials ready. Set a timer for 5 minutes.Turn off the music, television, dishwasher, washing machine, or anything else that may be generating artificial noise. Either find a room to yourself or ask anyone in the room to be completely silent. Begin your timer and, for the next five minutes, record, note, list, describe, and/or explain everything you hear.
We’re starting a new daily posting to go along with our Question of the Day. This one is The Daily Prompt. We know that the majority of our readers are writers, or at least dabble in the craft on occasion. We would love to see what you can do with the prompt each day.
Rules:
The Daily Prompt:
Start your piece with the line, “It took 7 hours, 48 minutes, and 16 seconds to…”
Don’t worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
ELMORE LEONARD
#amwriting #writing #writetip— Jon Winokur (@AdviceToWriters) May 6, 2013
We all have a “Watcher,” a little being that sits on our shoulder, like a conscience, that reminds us of how terrible we are as writers, or artists, or as whatever we’re deciding to be that day. It’s inevitable that at several points in our lives, we will be over-taken by the words of our watcher, put down our tool of choice, and walk away with the feeling of utter frustration and pain. We are, after all, our own worst enemies, and the watcher is our own creation. In my Creative Writing class, I have my students draw a picture of their watcher, and explain its origin. It’s always interesting to see how many students draw their mother, or father, or a former teacher. I always wonder if it’s more than one of those people pushed them to work harder, and not simply that they were their toughest critic for the sake of being a critic.
In Gail Godwin’s essay, “The Watcher at the Gates,” she tells us that we must “outsmart, pacify, or coexist with your Watcher.” She gives us tools to work with when our watcher wants us to be constant pencil sharpeners, or dictionary lookers, or coffee drinkers. Setting timers when we write. Writing until the teapot sounds. For me, I write like to write where I know I’m being watched: my classroom while students are working (as I’m doing now), in a crowded mall where I feel uncomfortable, on a park bench in downtown Portland, or on a very specific tree at Cannon Beach. I guess in a way, I like my watcher to feel like it is being watched as well. It’s harder to doubt oneself, when the watcher feel uncomfortable.
It is not easy to avoid self-doubt. It’s the one thing that holds the majority of us back. I’m no stranger to the watcher. I finished a novel more than five years ago, only to be told that I needed to revise it one more time before the publishing company would take another look at it. I was upset, and frustrated, and chose the road most taken – which was to unfortunately shelve the book, and not do what I needed to do in order to possibly call myself a published novelist. I was scared of something, and frankly, it was the fear that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. When I wrote the original draft, I wasn’t thinking about how anyone else would feel. I was just writing. It came out naturally, and easily, and a lot faster than I had ever imagined. But when I was told that someone else had issues with certain parts, it hurt me, and I didn’t take it as constructive criticism, but rather just criticism. I should have said “thank you,” hung up the phone, and completed the re-writes over the next few weeks. Instead, it sat until this last summer when I finally decided I would finish it up. Now, I’m sitting on it again, waiting to submit it, all because of the mystery watcher that questions if it’s really all that good.
As Elmore Leonard points out, we cannot “worry about what [our] mother[s] think of [our] language.” If we do, then we are bound to fail. Art is not about what other people think – at least not in the early stages. Creation is our job. Once we are finished with a product, and that product hits the world of public opinion, it is everyone’s to judge, but as long as we are satisfied, then it should never matter.
Before you start reading this, let’s get one thing perfectly straight, this post is not just about the students in your class, or the kids who say they don’t like reading; this post is very much for the teachers who stand in the front of the class, attempting to hide their sweat, and the fact that they are on the exact same page as their students – that they have never read the book that they are in the middle of teaching. It’s way more normal than people might think. Frankly, the first time teachers hand out an assignment, it’s not unusual for them to have never gone through that assignment, and be absolutely clueless as to how it’s supposed to go. Unless they were assigned certain texts in high school – and let’s face it, most teachers, myself included didn’t read everything they were assigned – they’ve never even considered opening the book that they’ve already placed on their classroom desks.
Last week, one of my students returned from a two weeks pre-arranged vacation. He was aware that we would be smack dab in the middle of reading Catcher in the Rye, and had been given all of the assignments ahead of time, as well as a reminder that the assignments, and the actual text of the book could be found on my classroom website. When he showed up in my classroom to ask what he had missed, it was more than obvious that he hadn’t followed through with any of the work we’d spoken about before his foray into the sun. We were just about to start chapter 20, and his response to me was, “Well, I read through the Sparks Notes last night, so I know everything that’s happened in the book.” Yikes. It took me a moment to figure out if he was serious. I mean, Sparks Notes were the hidden way to catch up when I was in high school, and not something that you openly bragged about having read. I told him that while I was glad he had a brief overview of the text, he had missed out on a book that might have taught him a little bit about his life. I mean, come on, even Holden Caulfield got A’s in English.
I did a lot of thinking about what my student had said, and it brought me back to my first couple years as a teacher, where, much like I mentioned earlier, I had not read all of the books that I was going to teach. I remember scrambling for “themes” and “meanings” and “symbols” and any possible “teachable moments” in the text just before the morning bell. That’s why, while I was not happy about what the student had done, I had to laugh it off. Frankly, the kids only mistake was telling me about his venture through the yellow and black.
There are some really good aspects to reading guides like Spark Notes, and sometimes it’s just the push we need to actually figure out what we are supposed to be gathering from certain texts.
For an example of what I’m talking about, RapGenius.com, has published a guide for The Great Gatsby. The movie is coming out this week, and a lot of American Literature classes are scrambling through it because teachers know that their students will soon be forking over their money to watch Leo DeCaprio portray the famed liar. It’s not the easiest book to understand, and it takes some time to truly grasp the depth of all the symbolism. This is a fantastic guide, and honestly, I’ll probably use a good deal of it when I teach this book next year. I’ve read Gatsby several times, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t use a refresher course.
Sometimes it’s not just the students who feel like the dumb ones in the class, and it’s okay to admit that, as a teacher, you don’t know everything.
We’ve been at this whole website thing for a little over a week now, and we’ve amassed over 500 followers. That’s incredible. This little thing that started as a classroom project, has turned into three old college friends who have finally decided that they were ready to give their all to this mess called writing. We want to inspire people to write, to read, to think, and to talk to each other about what they are writing, reading, and thinking. But, how the hell do we do that?
We think our posts have been pretty good, and it seems like enough of you have found something to enjoy on the site so far, but we’re still trying to find our groove, and figure out the exact direction of The Poetry Question.
We truly need your help with today’s question:
What the hell do we do here? What would you like to see on this site?
@poetryquestion : At weddings and funerals, it’s usually poems that are quoted. Not prose.
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) May 4, 2013
I sure as hell hope that no one reads an essay at my wedding or funeral. In fact, if you’re even thinking about reading an essay when I die, or get married (assuming they are not taking place on the same day, because if they are, I hope someone writes a book about me), please don’t come. Actually, please stop being my friend. You are not welcome in my circle anymore.
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, and countless other best-sellers, said it quite well in her response to me this morning: “At weddings and funerals, it’s usually poems that are quoted. Not prose.” Whether or not it’s a joyous or solemn occasion, no one wants to listen to anyone drag on about another person’s life. I attended a funeral last year, and there were seven essays read about the deceased. This person was a wonderful person, and I considered her a dear friend, but I don’t remember one damn word that was read in any of the essays. What I do remember is the poem about her hair. I remember that being the only grouping of words that made me weep.
If at Dylan Thomas’ father’s funeral, he had read, “If there’s one thing I could have wished for my father, it’s that he would have not have gone gently toward that good night, but rather raged – quite fervently – against the dying of the blah blah blah,” there isn’t one person who would have thought to instill his words into the common English lexicon. Instead, he writes:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(If you want to hear Dylan Thomas read his poem himself, click HERE)
The ability to capture such honest emotion so perfectly, in a mere set of cadenced words, is the reason why Thomas’ piece has been recited over and over again for the last near century.
While it may be difficult to capture a person’s life in a few short stanzas, I promise, those words will live on long after the Eleonor Rigby’s of the world have cleaned up the church.
This recent post by NPR got me thinking…
Why don’t I write more Haiku? There is no acceptable answer to this question.
Join me, writers, and stretch 17 syllables worth of muscle on this thread. Gimme your best haiku, or, failing that, three lines that sound good together.
