A bunch of updates
There’s this thing I’m really excited about, so I guess I’ll start there. It’s my writing life. Early last fall I felt extremely down about myself as a writer. I felt silenced, talentless, worthless, rejected. But I decided to take one last stab at this writing thing and signed up for a manuscript workshop with Kathleen Ossip at 92nd St. Y. A year and a dozen Zoom courses later and I have forthcoming: my first published story, my first published personal essay, and my second chapbook. Plus a handful of new poems. Plus, two courses I’m teaching myself.
It’s rare that I give myself credit, that I stop to enjoy successes, that I rate successes at all. I went to the White House for winning a nationwide Scholastic scholarship my senior year of high school (if I tell you which First Lady I met, I will be dating myself. Hint: blond and scorned), and I remember telling my mother that it couldn’t be much of a scholarship if I won it, plus I wasn’t super impressed with the other winners so it must all be really dumb. You won’t be surprised that, 5 years later, having stopped myself up in a million ways and not writing or submitting to awards at all, I really loathed myself.
But here I am: happy with what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. Lots of projects in the pipeline, for myself and for others. None of them particularly ‘fancy’, let alone well-paying, but I’m doing it. I’m active, and I feel seen.
The difference, I think, has been in daily not-quitting, and in speaking up, building community, meeting people, sharing my work—and in the time of Covid, that difference really boils down to the internet. I’m still very shy on social media, but it’s getting better. If I carefully curate who I interact with, you all online can be a great bunch.
I think part of the change is due to getting older, too. I had a milestone birthday last fall, and that among other things impressed upon me very clearly that time is limited (obviously). It’s really true, what they say about giving fewer fucks. Except I’d put it this way: I give more fucks, about fewer things. I have many many fucks to give about family and friends, my (mental/physical/spiritual) health, and my writing. Very few about status, appearance, feeding my fears, listening to my self-loathing.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do for actual money, though (any money I’m making at the literary writing thing is just enough for a little ego boost). I’m working part-time as an editor in educational publishing, and I like it pretty well, and I’m good at it—but frankly it doesn’t pay what it would need to for me to do it full time.
So I guess that means I’m putting this out into the (internet) universe: I am actively and eagerly open to well-paying, stable remote (possibly part time or contract) work that uses and grows my writing, editing, and/or pedagogical skills. Content writing? Technical writing? Instructional design? More/different editing work than I’ve been doing lately? I’m not sure, but I believe I will find it.
I guess in the absence of anything but self-satisfaction to talk about, I will give you guys some links to what I’ve been up to recently:
Classes
I’ll be teaching 2 classes come September.
1. Demystifying Poetry begins on Saturday, September 4th. It’s a live (synchronous) Zoom course through San Diego Writers, Ink and is super affordable as these things go. I hope that if you know anyone who is an interested neophyte to poetry, you will let them know about this course. I’m a kind, welcoming, & passionate teacher of poetry and I cannot wait to get started.
2. Speaking of welcoming, the other course I’m teaching is also meant for people who are new or just returning to writing. Why do I Write? will help you re/build a writing process and ethos while exploring multiple genres and growing your confidence.
Publications
I’ve got a bunch of news since last time I checked in!
1. A new chapbook, Root, is forthcoming from Milk and Cake Press, a lovely nonprofit press that also publishes friends and rising stars Joan Kwon Glass and Angelique Zobitz. Root is about the beautiful and terrible porousness of pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy, and I can’t wait to share it with the world in August 2022.
2. My first story is going to be published in the horror anthology Humans are the Problem: A Monster’s Anthology. The featured authors (Gabino Iglesias, Gemma Files, and etc. and etc.) are a dream. This story, “The Sound”, is about grief and climate change (and a monster). It’s the very first story I ever actually finished, and I have to say it took fewer submissions to get a first story published than it did to get my first poem published years ago. A sign? I hope so, because I have big plans with fiction (to keep writing it lol).
3. I was commissioned to write a personal essay about Everglades National Park, & it will appear in the second Campfire Stories anthology, which celebrates our national park system. The first volume sold over 25,000 copies & was sold in national park stores (as well as REI, L.L. Bean, and Anthropologie) so this would be, by far, my most…commercial work. What I ended up writing was a fairly dark piece about climate change and environmental destruction, and if it’s not a fit for this celebratory anthology I know it will find a home somewhere. Because it’s some of my best work.
4. My poem “Song” was a finalist in the River Heron Review poetry prize, & was published a few weeks ago. Judge Shankar Narayan said in his citation that “the poem’s aching urgency is compelling from start to finish.”
5. Several other poems have come out this year, too:
“Uterus as baby as breathing as wellfield as contraction” at Cold Mountain Review, featuring a recording of me reading it!
“Florida High School State Championships, Class 3A, 1994” in Rogue Agent.
“Jacaranda” and “I learn about you on the prairie” in Flyway
Final Note: I have a new intention to post here once per month with news and thoughts, in preparation for starting a newsletter soon! So…there you go, internet universe. Hold me to it.