July 19, 2010
Writing Avec Baby
How does anyone get anything done when they have children? While preparing to join the not-very-elite club of people who have reproduced, I was told repeatedly that my standards would have to slide. If those people were referring to housework, then they were certainly right, and I’ve got to say that I wasn’t sure that my standards could go much lower than they already were.
They have.
But strangely, I seem to have found more time to write since having a baby. Maybe if I stopped writing, I would be able to clean the toilet more often.
Nah.
Now, I’m hardly working on my novel-in-a-drawer, or even writing anything as impressive as essays or short stories. I’ve defaulted to poems, my first language apparently, though my sights were set not too long ago on more sustained forms. Sustained time is not something I can find. But snippets of time, yes.
I’ve always noticed that parents become more efficient people, can switch on and off, back and forth between this task and that. I’ve been switching the magic on quickly, in the middle of the night perhaps, to just get it out as fast as I can in case the girl wakes up and rips the keys off my keyboard.
Which is all fine and good and after a year or so of this, I have a whole lot of poems.
First drafts of poems.
Hammering stuff out is one thing, but I haven’t figured out yet how to switch on the frame of mind needed to revise. I don’t know the last time I’ve actually used my printer. I think it must have been before she was born.
But who needs paper anyway anymore, right? If I never finish another book, I’ll save some trees. Or, rather, the sapling needed for the print run a poetry book gets.
Never mind. I forgot that by the time I finish my next book, paper books won’t exist any more. Right?
Tree pulped to print my last book.
June 28, 2010
Teaching the Trade
This past week I took a fairly enjoyable class in “Instructional Methods” along with 19 other instructors, mostly from Red River College. We spent most of the week listening to each other teach. We were a class of guinea pigs, testing out our colleagues’ lessons. I now know only a very little bit about the following: filling a syringe, setting up a surveying instrument, wiring household receptacles (also known as plugs), how digital clocks work, the best way to sharpen a knife, and how to micropipette test samples into those little test tubes in a rack like on CSI.
Now, for some reason, I’ve had trouble getting students interested in poetry in the past. It was the first thing I tried to teach when I was hired, and I made a lot of mistakes in my approach. So I tried a new concise and snazzy poetry lesson on the guinea pigs last week–people with, ostensibly, less interest in poetry than even my Cre-Comm students–with much success. I had mechanics and electricians writing poems within 15 minutes–and it wasn’t even for marks. Someone even brought in a new poem the next day, unbidden, and read it at the end of his electrical lesson.
The other thing I tried out was a proofreading lesson, which, well, was not quite as exciting and for which I still got a lot of glazed faced (still needs work, I guess, but I don’t want to give up on trying to teach a little proofreading).
I hope to learn more about the ever exciting field of teaching creative writing at the inaugural conference of the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs association, in Calgary and Banff this coming Thanksgiving weekend.
June 15, 2010
Listen to yourself talk
Audio content at Aqua Books you should check out.
This page has several Red River creative writing connections–recordings of readings by last year’s first-year students in Sally Ito’s class, by the students from last year’s writing retreat, and even one by me back in December.
May 31, 2010
May Day is Over
May Day is over — does that mean I have to blog in prose again?
I did great at the beginning of the month, by the second week I just couldn’t write on the weekends, and any day post-Victoria Day was hit or miss. Today I posted my last, “Petering out.”. While you’re there, read some of the other poems posted by the May Day poetry folks.
May 2, 2010
May Day Poems
For the month of May I’ll be blogging poetically at Ariel Gordon’s sixth annual May Day Project blog. It’s a challenge to write and post a new poem every day. They may only be first drafts, but it’s a fantastic motivation to write. I’ll be trying not to cheat with old drafts from the electronic drawer.
April 28, 2010
Aqua Books Emerging Writer-in-Residence
Graduating Students of the Awesome Writer Variety! You should apply for this if you haven’t already been snapped up in gainful employment for the summer:
Call: Aqua Books Emerging Writer-in-Residence
Aqua Books’ successful Writer-in-Residence program has included such local luminaries as writer/thespian Carolyn Gray, film writer Kier-La Janisse, and, most recently, graphic novelist David Robertson.
This spring and summer, Aqua will have its first-ever Storyteller-in-Residence (Rebecca Hiebert) in May and a Songwriter-in-Residence (Greg “Milka” Crowe) from June to August.
In July, we’ll yet again feature an Aqua Books Emerging Writer-in-Residence. (Poet Marika Prokosh was our inaugural Emerging WiR.)
The Emerging Writer-in-Residence will occupy one of Aqua’s Writer’s Studios, located on the second floor of Aqua’s bookstore/bistro at 274 Garry Street for the month of July, rent-free.
The Emerging Writer-in-Residence will also be the featured reader for the July edition of Aqua’s Soapbox Open Mic Reading Series.
Aqua Books would like to invite Winnipeg writers of every genre to apply to the Emerging Writer-in-Residence program.
No previous publishing experience is necessary, but applications should include a five-page sample of your work in addition to a resume and cover letter.
The application deadline for this opportunity is June 15, 2010.
For more information, please contact Aqua Books owner Kelly Hughes at 943-7555 or kelly@aquabooks.ca.
April 8, 2010
Why you should learn to spell
After circling umpteen incorrectly swapped instances of “your” and “you’re” in my first-year students’ screenplays recently, I engaged in water-cooler ranting with other instructors about spelling. Now, creative writing may not be the class where spelling counts the most, but don’t think that I don’t notice. Oh, I notice. As the the students in my second-year class now know from this morning, I am intimately familiar with the difference between an en-dash and an em-dash, and will fistfight typesetters on it if necessary. So yes, I notice when you don’t know the difference between a possessive and a plural, or “complement” and “compliment.”
Creative writing students sometimes come in with the attitude that, you know, it’s creative, so why does it have to be correct? Bad spelling tells me that you don’t care about your writing, that you aren’t serious about it, and that you probably don’t read very much, because the best way to spell well is to read lots. And if you don’t read much, how good will your writing be? Bad spelling crushes confidence: any confidence your reader may have had in you is gone.
I spent a while in the publishing trenches, reading the slushpile and writing the rejection letters. Manuscript readers get paid nothing or next to it, and have a gigantic pile of work in front of them, and it’s a thankless job. So, a spelling mistake in your cover letter? REJECT…. without even turning to your manuscript.
March 24, 2010
Alive and Writing Workshop
Students! If anyone is thinking about becoming a Manitoba Writers Guild member anyway–and I highly recommend it–here’s your chance to get a great workshop with the esteemed Catherine Hunter into the bargain:
Alive & Writing:
Lecture by Catherine Hunter
+ workshop for university & college students
Saturday, April 10, 2010
218-100 Arthur Street (Burns Family Classroom)
11 am – noon (open to public by donation):
Writer Catherine Hunter presents “Alive and Writing,” a lecture on sensory
awareness
Noon – 3 is for university and college students only:
- Networking lunch to learn more about the writing life & the Manitoba Writers’ Guild
- Writing workshop with Catherine Hunter: “Imagery and Voice”
$30 registration fee includes the workshop, lunch and a one-year student
membership to the Manitoba Writers’ Guild!
To register, email info@mbwriter.mb.ca or call 944-8013
March 18, 2010
The Power of Deadlines
The prize for procrastination in this world would, I know, be hotly contested. I think I’d have a shot at one of the runner-up spots, at least, though some students would likely give me a run for my money.
There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned deadline to end procrastination. I remember many the English lit research paper composed–research and notes already finished, but absolutely nothing written–starting at 9 pm the night before the due date. I had a tradition of writing it all night, handing it in in the morning, and then going to see a matinee instead of succumbing to sleep.
This may be one of the reasons I quit grad school. (On the other hand, I had a professor back then who claimed he wrote every conference paper on the plane on the way to the conference. The guy was a world-famous expert type.)
But what happens when there is no deadline? You have to make them, silly: sign up for writing courses, join a group, book a reading, anything that will force you to finish a certain something by a certain date, however small that something is. This was the primary reason I took creative writing classes in school: to give me a reason to get off my ass and write something.
I was set thinking about the power of deadlines following my students’ IPP (Independent Professional Project) Presentations last week. It’s a heck of a deadline–an entire course, with a final presentation attended by at least 150 people, rests on what you produce. I was keenly impressed (Can you be “keenly” impressed? Now you can!) by what most students were able to accomplish in one short year, while taking a full course load.
Okay, so some of the students who were writing novels or novellas didn’t exactly “finish” them. But unless you are a miracle worker, just lucky, or Joyce Carol Oates, actually writing a novel from nothing to publishable in one year, while going to school full time, is highly unlikely, deadline or no deadline. I applaud them anyway–while there is something to be said for hammering out a draft as fast as possible to get it out of the way, there is perhaps more to be said for being happy with what you are writing.
On a related note, I was alerted on Facebook this morning to the existence of Freedom, freeware that prevents you from going online for a period of time you specify. Okay, you can restart your computer if you really want to circumvent it. But I’m game to try it, since, as we all know, the internet is probably the greatest procrastination tool known to humankind.
Which reminds me, I have a class to prepare for.
March 9, 2010
Six-Word Stories
Last term’s creative writing instructor, Sally Ito, put me on to this one. Want your short story to appear via iPhone Application? And by “short” I mean real short.
Narrative magazine has a call for submissions for six-word stories.
Six words. That tell a story.
I’d say a complete arc with a beginning, middle, and end in six words might be asking for a bit much, but Margaret Atwood manages to do it in this example:
Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
Here’s another famous one quoted on the submission page:
For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn. —Ernest Hemingway
You may be neither Hemingway nor Atwood, but you can submit up to five stories. There is a submission fee, however, of $15, which makes it more like a contest. Worth it to have your kernel of story appear on iPhones everywhere? You decide.
