The next three weeks I will be in So. Korea, visiting my son's family: Greg, Jinny, and my grandson, Noah. But before I go:
Here's another prompt for you writers ready to write but stuck, or you writers writing but ready for some fun, or just you writers:
#4 - Write two pages about a physical characteristic you are proud to have inherited and passed on. (Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir)
Here's my effort (NOW WRITE AND POST YOUR OWN):
My father left me his flat, hairless chest, his big bum, and his balding crown. Which of these I am most proud of I can’t say, but I have passed them all on to my son, Greg, and, in truth, I am proud of that: Whereas all three have made me self-conscious, they have made him humble.
I became conscious of my lack of bosom in junior high school, as I saw buds beginning to bulge on my girlfriends. By the time we showered en masse after high school gym class, I was painfully aware of the fulsome, pendulous, and swinging breasts all around. They filled my peripheral vision as I hunched my shoulders, bending inward like a closing book to hide my blank pages.
My mother came to my rescue with a bra – not the training bra I had been eyeing at Kress, but a full-sized monstrous thing, padded with foam so firm that when I put it on I suddenly had the Wasatch Mountains on my chest. This gargantuan thing I wore through high school and college, attracting admiring and slavering gazes from the boys, and no small amazement from the men I slept with when, on the first encounter, they reached to grasp these cups of flesh and embraced instead a springy, lumpy, or hardened ball of foam, depending on the age of the bra or, worse, nothing but a wrinkled raspberry nipple on a plate.
My bum was equally problematic, hanging on behind me like two koala babies riding in a back pouch. Pants that fit my bum cheeks were long in the leg and wide at the waist. Mother to the rescue again girdled me in a tube of elastic so tight I developed diverticulitis and weave lines on my abdomen that remained in my flesh like birth marks. “Good for having babies,” she soothed, but since she never really explained the process of birth, I thought I was pregnant in the bum.
These sartorial disabilities I discarded (along with makeup, high heels, tight clothes, and styled hair) when the women’s movement freed me from artificial beauty, and I proudly wore my chest and cheeks as outward signs of inner beauty. When I began to jog, I reduced my posterior gallon jugs to half-gallons, and winced for those unlucky women trying to run with twin sacks of flour flapping on their chests.
The balding I don’t care to discuss except to say that I certainly understand those pitiful men who so lovingly take the few strands of hair left and pull them across the entire pate, as though these strings will cover up for the viewing public the shiny pink globe beneath. We do what we can.
My son has been a great teacher to me. He happily exposes his hairless chest as though he is the lucky man unburdened with all that sweaty hair. He elegantly wears his pants as though pleased with the extra room in the legs which the bum-fitting slacks bequeath him. And when we talk on Skype, he bends his head right in front of the computer webcam; so there I am in Salt Lake City, looking at his balding circle in Korea. He laughs and says “Look what you gave me, Mom. More to appreciate every day!”
That’s what he has taught me: appreciation. “It is as it is,” he says. And to that I might add, “It isn’t as it isn’t.” And for that, we should be grateful.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Prompt: Get Me Out of Here!
In Abigail Thomas's perfect potpurri of a book for writers -Thinking About Memoir she lists about 150 + prompts to prompt you to write promptly - every day. Here's one to try. And my effoirt - just a ten-minute freewrite. Go! And post it if you are willing.
#128 Write two pages starting with "Get me out of here!"
Effort by Katharine English.
Get me out of here! Everywhere – demands! At every turn – a favor asked. All my creditors come forward demanding payment, favors, help. Help!
You have no idea how burdensome my life is. An example – Anthony called four times yesterday, each time pleading: “Can you look at this latest letter I’ve written to the D.A.?” “Will you proof my resume?” “I know you’re not practicing anymore, but I have a legal question about foreclosure…” Of course, I say yes. He’s my brother.
Lucy wants a letter of recommend to Goddard College’s MFA program. She lacks self-esteem, wants to know if I think she’ll be admitted. Of course she will, I say. Will I write this, and say that, and render my opinion of her poetry? Of course I say I will. She’s my sister.
Harry wants to have breakfast. He won’t talk about anything personal, he never does. But I will chat and cheer him. We will laugh. I will examine his fifteenth-year coin and praise his sobriety. Of course we will. He’s my brother.
Sandy wants to chat, unable once again to decide “Should I live in Hawaii where I’m so healthy? Should I live in Mt. Vernon next to the twenty-two grandchildren?” “Sereta,” I say, “Your family runs you ragged and your lungs close down. Hello?” Still, I spend an hour on the phone. Of course I do. She’s my sister.
They are just my siblings. There are my friends, my writing group, my husband and my step-daughter. Give me time, give me feedback, give me breakfast, give me tuition. Of course I say yes, yes, yes, yes.
My office chides, “Clean me.” The school calls, “Can you sub?” My doctor asks, “Are you coming?” I do, I go, I am.
In Sunday School I learned and (does this surprise anyone?) still can sing a child’s song:
Give said the little stream
Give, oh give, Give, oh give
Give said the little stream
As it hurried down the hill
I'm small I know but wherever I go
The grass grows greener still
Give said the little rain
Give, oh give,Give, oh give
Give said the little rain
As it fell upon the flowers
I'll raise their weary heads again
As it fell upon the flowers
If I turned off the phone and closed my computer, if I put away my calendar, if I said no and no and no, what would I do? I would drive to the Bear Lake cabin and sit on the porch, my legs on the rail, watching the sun rise like a red scarf over the lake in the eastern sky before me, watching the light and shadows play like children on those same hills in the evening. I would read books and magazines, and cook spinach lasagna and eat too much fruit, and write in my journal, and dust, and polish, and tidy my drawers, and alphabetize my spices, and arrange my closet by colors and soon, maybe even very soon, I would stand on the porch and yell into the silent air.
“Get me out of here.”
Of course…I’m me.
#128 Write two pages starting with "Get me out of here!"
Effort by Katharine English.
Get me out of here! Everywhere – demands! At every turn – a favor asked. All my creditors come forward demanding payment, favors, help. Help!
You have no idea how burdensome my life is. An example – Anthony called four times yesterday, each time pleading: “Can you look at this latest letter I’ve written to the D.A.?” “Will you proof my resume?” “I know you’re not practicing anymore, but I have a legal question about foreclosure…” Of course, I say yes. He’s my brother.
Lucy wants a letter of recommend to Goddard College’s MFA program. She lacks self-esteem, wants to know if I think she’ll be admitted. Of course she will, I say. Will I write this, and say that, and render my opinion of her poetry? Of course I say I will. She’s my sister.
Harry wants to have breakfast. He won’t talk about anything personal, he never does. But I will chat and cheer him. We will laugh. I will examine his fifteenth-year coin and praise his sobriety. Of course we will. He’s my brother.
Sandy wants to chat, unable once again to decide “Should I live in Hawaii where I’m so healthy? Should I live in Mt. Vernon next to the twenty-two grandchildren?” “Sereta,” I say, “Your family runs you ragged and your lungs close down. Hello?” Still, I spend an hour on the phone. Of course I do. She’s my sister.
They are just my siblings. There are my friends, my writing group, my husband and my step-daughter. Give me time, give me feedback, give me breakfast, give me tuition. Of course I say yes, yes, yes, yes.
My office chides, “Clean me.” The school calls, “Can you sub?” My doctor asks, “Are you coming?” I do, I go, I am.
In Sunday School I learned and (does this surprise anyone?) still can sing a child’s song:
Give said the little stream
Give, oh give, Give, oh give
Give said the little stream
As it hurried down the hill
I'm small I know but wherever I go
The grass grows greener still
Give said the little rain
Give, oh give,Give, oh give
Give said the little rain
As it fell upon the flowers
I'll raise their weary heads again
As it fell upon the flowers
If I turned off the phone and closed my computer, if I put away my calendar, if I said no and no and no, what would I do? I would drive to the Bear Lake cabin and sit on the porch, my legs on the rail, watching the sun rise like a red scarf over the lake in the eastern sky before me, watching the light and shadows play like children on those same hills in the evening. I would read books and magazines, and cook spinach lasagna and eat too much fruit, and write in my journal, and dust, and polish, and tidy my drawers, and alphabetize my spices, and arrange my closet by colors and soon, maybe even very soon, I would stand on the porch and yell into the silent air.
“Get me out of here.”
Of course…I’m me.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The San Francisco conference (very advanced! pefect for all of us ready or almost-ready to think about publishing) was wonderful - every day filled with optional workshops, lectures, seminars. I learned so much about the publishing business - enough to give pause to the most ambitious writer!
Process: First there is the writer - YOU; Then, if you so choose, the "book doctor" (free-lance editors) helps you get you book into shape for pitching to agents (they charge from $60-$125 hour!)
Then there are the agents to whom you "pitch" your book in various required ways (query letter or book proposal, face-to-face in "speed-dating, as at SFO), etc...
Then, IF an agent decides to represent a writer s/he is the one who tries to sell the idea of the book (and the book) to an editor.
Then, IF the editor likes the book s/he tries to sell it to the publisher. Once the book is purchased it takes about 18-24 months to get it to market.
And THEN? Distribution and promotion. 90% of the time it's the author's job to sell it! This means an author should try to have (and "pitch") a "platform" (some agnets and editors want this in the "pitch": a blog, a website, an e-mail list, an "in" to interviews and book reviews, an audience in mind, contacts, etc.
The whole process seems both exciting and daunting!
At the SFO "speed-dating agents" (three minutes each with however many editors you can get to - I stood in line and made it to three in the alloted hour; most writers made it to four), two agents ask me to send them a book proposal and/or sample chapters (somehting which happens at these conferences, but the agent/agency may still not like the book and may turn the writer down, which happens much of the time).
At the "Ask A Pro" (at which nine writers sat at a table with Editors and had 5 minutes each to talk to an Editor, and then got up and stood in line for another table) one editor asked me to send her the whole manuscript without an agent first. So I count the conference a success on any level.
Still, I am having second thoughts - I am not sure the book is in the shape it should be in before I send it anywhere, and I'm not sure I have the time to finish it up to my satisfaction before I go to Korea for three weeks Mar. 3. I am in the process now of thinking and editing and deciding what to do. I don't want to miss these opportunities, but I don't want to blow them either. My advice:
My advice: Memoirists, poetry, and fiction: Have your book done, complete, ready to send before you meet with agents/editors. Nonfiction: Have several chapters completed to attach to book proposals.
Agency websites I found particularly helpful: Larsen-Pomada Agency; Katharine Sands Agency; Ted Weinstein Agency; Nathan Bransford Agency - lots of info about pitching, query letters, book proposals, etc.
querytracker.com is where I am researching agents and keeping track of queries - good site!
Books by Micahel Larsen and Katharine Sands.
Self-publishing: I also learned about, and am highly attracted to, self-publishing on the web. (This would be a start for you, too!) This process is no longer the old "vanity press" method of paying someone to publsih your work with limited distribution. Some authors publish and print a run and then help to sell their own in-hand books. Others "print-on-demand." so that the book is printed when it is sold. The author controls everything! Agents and publishers scour these book sites and when a book has sold 500 or more they might decide to convert these books to publishing house books for wider distribution - an excellent way for a first time author to start. Reputable places work with authors to self-publish - Amazon, for example, sells 25% of the books sold in this country, and have a highly respected self-publishing arm. And iiuniverse, among others.
For $10 + I purchased my domain url - katharineenglish.com (you should go to GoDaddy.com and purchase your own name so no one else gets it), and I am going to learn how to set up a website for my writing.
Hope this information is useful to some of you...
Process: First there is the writer - YOU; Then, if you so choose, the "book doctor" (free-lance editors) helps you get you book into shape for pitching to agents (they charge from $60-$125 hour!)
Then there are the agents to whom you "pitch" your book in various required ways (query letter or book proposal, face-to-face in "speed-dating, as at SFO), etc...
Then, IF an agent decides to represent a writer s/he is the one who tries to sell the idea of the book (and the book) to an editor.
Then, IF the editor likes the book s/he tries to sell it to the publisher. Once the book is purchased it takes about 18-24 months to get it to market.
And THEN? Distribution and promotion. 90% of the time it's the author's job to sell it! This means an author should try to have (and "pitch") a "platform" (some agnets and editors want this in the "pitch": a blog, a website, an e-mail list, an "in" to interviews and book reviews, an audience in mind, contacts, etc.
The whole process seems both exciting and daunting!
At the SFO "speed-dating agents" (three minutes each with however many editors you can get to - I stood in line and made it to three in the alloted hour; most writers made it to four), two agents ask me to send them a book proposal and/or sample chapters (somehting which happens at these conferences, but the agent/agency may still not like the book and may turn the writer down, which happens much of the time).
At the "Ask A Pro" (at which nine writers sat at a table with Editors and had 5 minutes each to talk to an Editor, and then got up and stood in line for another table) one editor asked me to send her the whole manuscript without an agent first. So I count the conference a success on any level.
Still, I am having second thoughts - I am not sure the book is in the shape it should be in before I send it anywhere, and I'm not sure I have the time to finish it up to my satisfaction before I go to Korea for three weeks Mar. 3. I am in the process now of thinking and editing and deciding what to do. I don't want to miss these opportunities, but I don't want to blow them either. My advice:
My advice: Memoirists, poetry, and fiction: Have your book done, complete, ready to send before you meet with agents/editors. Nonfiction: Have several chapters completed to attach to book proposals.
Agency websites I found particularly helpful: Larsen-Pomada Agency; Katharine Sands Agency; Ted Weinstein Agency; Nathan Bransford Agency - lots of info about pitching, query letters, book proposals, etc.
querytracker.com is where I am researching agents and keeping track of queries - good site!
Books by Micahel Larsen and Katharine Sands.
Self-publishing: I also learned about, and am highly attracted to, self-publishing on the web. (This would be a start for you, too!) This process is no longer the old "vanity press" method of paying someone to publsih your work with limited distribution. Some authors publish and print a run and then help to sell their own in-hand books. Others "print-on-demand." so that the book is printed when it is sold. The author controls everything! Agents and publishers scour these book sites and when a book has sold 500 or more they might decide to convert these books to publishing house books for wider distribution - an excellent way for a first time author to start. Reputable places work with authors to self-publish - Amazon, for example, sells 25% of the books sold in this country, and have a highly respected self-publishing arm. And iiuniverse, among others.
For $10 + I purchased my domain url - katharineenglish.com (you should go to GoDaddy.com and purchase your own name so no one else gets it), and I am going to learn how to set up a website for my writing.
Hope this information is useful to some of you...
Climbing the Vine to Getting Published
February 20, 2009
Nearly nine months since I posted. And why? Because after graduation I gave up the writing I went to graduate school to learn to do! My "completed" manuscript - Salvation - A Judge's Memoir of a Mormon Childhood - sat unopened in my studio, while I substitute taught any subject I was called for, cooked pedestrian meals, traveled toour little cabin at Bear lake, read literature and trash, and basically let the spiders nest and the dust motes float in my studio.
Courage returned! And I have just returned from the 2009 San Francisco Writers Conference, which was chock full of informative, companionable attendees, and gracious agents and editors.
Have you dreams of publishing your book? Fiction, nonfiction, memoir, short stories, essays, poems? Take a breath, gird the old loins, and set your sights on that great beanstalk to the stars - the Publishing Vine. Of course, there are climbers who skip a branch and leap up; there are writers who catapult or reach up on stilts; but most writers climb up hand over hand, foot over foot, eyeing the route, testing the weight, gripping the branch for its strength.
I will post what I learned in "More About..."
Nearly nine months since I posted. And why? Because after graduation I gave up the writing I went to graduate school to learn to do! My "completed" manuscript - Salvation - A Judge's Memoir of a Mormon Childhood - sat unopened in my studio, while I substitute taught any subject I was called for, cooked pedestrian meals, traveled toour little cabin at Bear lake, read literature and trash, and basically let the spiders nest and the dust motes float in my studio.
Courage returned! And I have just returned from the 2009 San Francisco Writers Conference, which was chock full of informative, companionable attendees, and gracious agents and editors.
Have you dreams of publishing your book? Fiction, nonfiction, memoir, short stories, essays, poems? Take a breath, gird the old loins, and set your sights on that great beanstalk to the stars - the Publishing Vine. Of course, there are climbers who skip a branch and leap up; there are writers who catapult or reach up on stilts; but most writers climb up hand over hand, foot over foot, eyeing the route, testing the weight, gripping the branch for its strength.
I will post what I learned in "More About..."
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