Category: general

Literary Criticism

I was thinking a couple of days ago about my various experiences of writing, and my mind uncorked a long-buried memory from the back of my mind. I may not have all the details straight, but this is the gist of it:

I was in school (not sure what grade), and my class was given a homework assignment (or maybe extra credit)–to write a play about Paul Revere’s ride at the Battle of Lexington and Concord. This particular class was where I had fallen in love with history to the same degree that I was in love with writing, and now I had a chance to combine the two! I couldn’t pass this opportunity up.

I remember coming to the assignment with the utmost seriousness. I wanted it to be as accurate and honest as I could make it from the version of the story presented to me in my class history book–I populated the play with farmers, churchmen, soldiers, and Quakers. I had Paul Revere complaining to his horse about the weather and about being tired and about how he hoped he didn’t get saddle sore. I went all out.

So the due date came, and I turned in my play. I seem to remember only one other girl did a play as well. My teacher decided to have the class read both the plays and hold a vote for who the class thought had the best one. So she called on people to read mine aloud first, then the other girl’s.

The other girl had not taken the pains to be historically correct. The characters were all named after her friends in the class. The narrative didn’t have much to do with the American Revolution at all.

But the girl was popular. And she had name-checked most of the other people in the class. I had a sinking feeling as I heard the class talking among themselves how much they liked hers more then mine. I just sat in my desk and started at the floor. The teacher had us vote with a show of hands. I held up my hand for mine and didn’t even look up to see if anyone else did. The silly play won.

I was left with this takeaway: my play had lost because I was the one who wrote it.

Silly, yes. Naive, a bit. But anyone who has spent time in writing spaces has seen this happen before, even among grownups. Literary merit doesn’t always bring success to the creator.

However.

My mistake was to turn this incident into a flat statement about my abilities: That my work could never be “good enough” because I would never be “good enough” because I was too smart, too show-offish, too unattractive, too too too–whatever.

My work is as good as it needs to be. And the more I work, the better it will get with practice. And the more persistent I am, the more opportunity I can create for myself and my work. That’s the bottom line.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is the law. Plain and simple.

I am an absolutist on the First Amendment. An American has the right to say, print, write, sculpt, compose, or create any kind of speech, and the Congress cannot make such expressions illegal. No matter what that American says or does. Americans have the right to freedom of speech.

What Americans do not have a right to is a platform, an audience, a market, attention, renumeration, or approval by society. No one should be required to view your art, read your book, or listen to a performance of your music. Americans have the freedom to choose what speech they will or will not consume. That’s why televisions come with an off button. That’s why books can be returned for their purchase price. That’s why people wear noise-cancelling earphones.

Somewhere in the discussion of free speech, the metric for speech being free is no longer that I have a right to say whatever I want, but that others have to be required to approve of what I want to say and support it with their words, their vote, and their tax dollars or my right to free speech is being repressed.

No. The First Amendment makes no such promises. People can and will hate you for your speech. People can and will be made uncomfortable by speech they don’t like. People can and will make you pay consequences for words they find offensive or beyond the pale.

That’s how a free society works. That’s how adults interact with each other. Demanding favorable attention for your free speech antics stops being cute around five years of age. Learn better. Be better. Do better.

Dogmud Tavern

My husband and I were trying to figure out where to eat lunch today, and I was checking out Google to see if I could find somewhere that looked good that we maybe hadn’t been to. I found Dogmud Tavern–we had passed by it several times in driving in that area, so I scrolled down to the menu, and the name of one of the dishes caught my eye:

Sandwiches: Werewolf’s Bait.

Wait. . . WHAT?

Then I saw another sandwich: Rebeus Hagrid. Then this: Werechicken Pizza

Then the desserts: The Shredder–a TURTLE brownie.

I started reading the entree names to Bob. We had found, in little ol’ Ridgeland, MS, a restaurant where the dishes seemed to be inspired by literary fantasy worlds every nerd in the world knows. We HAD to visit if just to satisfy our curiosity.

So we drove over. We walked in the door and were greeted by a young lady into a reasonable facsimile of a medieval mead hall. Banners from various fandoms–Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, anime and manga–hung from the ceiling. The bar sported a giant skeleton pouring drinks above it. Display cases with Star Wars, Harry Potter, and other big LEGO builds stood along the walls.

I turned and looked at my husband; he was grinning, just looking around and taking it all in. I said, “I think we’ve just found our happy place.”

Seeing the actual menu was a revelation. There was a page of brunch items labeled “Second Breakfast”. A page of twenty different booze shots–which one you received was, of course, determined by a roll of a d20 dice, if that’s how you roll.

I asked the waitress, “Is this a chain restaurant?”

She smiled. “No, we’re local. We celebrated our fourth year in April.”

The food was delicious, but the feeling of community was even better. The whole time we were there, I felt the same sense of being seen and understood as I did when watching the movie “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, where all the characters turned out to be heroes of 19th century British literature. A literary fantasy restaurant? In Mississippi? That shouldn’t be possible.

Yet there she stands.

Highs and Lows

Let’s talk about the low point first.

I suspected as much, but I got the official notification on who won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, and it wasn’t me. Which was a bummer. It’s one thing to not win an award because you wouldn’t dream something like that anyway. But to be nominated unexpectedly and then not win feels a little different.

But no matter. I called out the winner on Facebook and congratulated him and encouraged everyone to buy his book. It costs nothing to be gracious even when disappointed.

But one high–the nationwide Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair was in Los Angeles, California this past week, and Hurricane Baby: Stories was there! My publisher, Madville Publishing, had a booth there and they took my book with them! I saw a photo of it because my MFA program was also there, and they hunted Madville up and posted my book on their Facebook page. So nice to see my book in such an exotic locale.

And another high point–this Friday, I went to my hometown high school where I graduated from in 1988 and spoke to the junior and senior classes about having a vision for their life, and setting goals, and executing plans to achieve those goals. I was told before the event that this was a pretty unmotivated bunch of students.

But I didn’t approach them that way. I told them I was just like them back ages ago when I’d been a high school senior, but that I had a vision of what I wanted my life to look like and I worked until I achieved it. It seemed to perk them up somewhat. They asked me to read some of the book, and when someone asked where they could find it, I handed out my bookmarks and told them how to order. I hope I inspired someone at least a little bit.

So what’s ahead? I plan to start working back on Looking for Home on April 1–hopefully my beta readers’ feedback will come in and I can start incorporating what they have to say. And Friday I am conducting a breakout session at the Southern Literary Festival in Blue Mountain, Mississippi at Blue Mountain Christian University. I’m going to talk about how I constructed the stories in Hurricane Baby by a pattern, then I’m going to give them a silly writing prompt I hope they can have fun with.

Happy reading and writing this week!

Happy Surprise

We get together and exchange gifts with my husband’s mother, his sister, her husband, and their sons every Christmas Day. This year I was opening a small present from my sister-in-law’s family and saw that it looked like a Christmas ornament, a porcelain star. I pulled it out of the package and turned it over.

This was the inscription:

“The year I was published. Julie Whitehead 2024.”

I was so stunned. I never knew there was even such a thing in the world as a personalized commemorative ornament like that. I went and gave my sister-in-law a hug and told her I loved it.

And they are not bookish people. But they understood what Hurricane Baby meant to me and that was enough. (Picture above courtesy of Bob Whitehead.)

After the Debut

Hurricane Baby: Stories has been out for about two months now. So I thought I’d post a few things I’ve noticed going on in my head and my life since the debut, actually after I signed the deal in the first place.

A book deal will not fix you.

If you are looking for something to ease the doubt about your abilities, fill the God-shaped hole in your soul, or validate that you have a role to play in God’s plan for the universe, a book deal is not that thing.

Signing a book contract does feel really good for a while. But it will not quiet the voices in your head that say you’re a poser, a dilettante, a pretender. Someone you know will get a better deal. You may not be able to dive into another work right away. Someone you know will sell more than you do. And all of those things will combine to make you feel like an imposter again and you won’t understand why that is.

If selling the book to a publisher is hard, selling a book to the reading public is way harder.

You can schedule a signing, and it seems like everyone you know will message you telling why they can’t make it. The books may not arrive in time. You may not get invited to all the cool kids’ books conferences, and if you do, you may sell one book at that event. You may go weeks with no sales. And all the grinding, strategizing, networking, and peppy social media posts you do may do nothing to move the needle on sales at all. Selling books is hard, and no one told us or trained us in doing any of it.

Releasing your work out in the world is terrifying.

A few weeks after I got the news about selling the book, I was seized by terror. Surely something bad was about to happen to take the joy this achievement brought into my life. The first time I read aloud from the book at a conference, my voice shook so bad I didn’t know if I could finish.

When I found out it was open for pre-orders. I was giddy for two weeks, then realized–people I know are going to read this book. People I don’t know will read it. What if I get a bad review? What if someone comes up to me someday and says how much they hated it?

Don’t let your mind think about all that. It doesn’t take you anywhere nice.

And remember, other people will not care as much as you do. Surround yourself with writing friends who get it, but large swaths of people you know and consider friends will not remember to pre-order your book, or call you on release day, or leave a review on Amazon. All those people who have been living rent-free in your head all this time that you were going to prove something to? Pfft. They don’t care.

And that’s all right.

Why?

Because to me, letting people inside my head and my heart is a payoff in a league all its own. Watching someone I don’t know come up to me asking that I sign their book, where maybe they read an article or just heard the book mentioned in passing or picked it up because it had a cool cover, is a thrill right up there with the feeling I had when I held each of my daughters when they were first born. I made this. I did it. No other feeling quite like it.

Lull

So now I am already looking ahead to see where I can schedule events in the new year. I have one library event scheduled in early January and applications in to be in several large book events (HOMEGROWN, the Oxford Conference for the Book, and the Southern Literary Festival).

Other places I’ll be contacting are libraries in my county, some civics groups, and possibly some business groups. I’m trying to think outside the box a bit. The only thing that makes me hesitate in contacting these groups is that I don’t know if there will be an expectation for me to bring books to sell. I’ve avoided that because I do not have the requisite tax paperwork filled out to be able to do that. But I won’t know unless I ask! So we will see how that works out.

Otherwise, the writing is going really well. I am maybe 40-50 pages away from finishing this draft of Looking For Home, then I’ll work through another draft after the new year. I’m trying to decide when to let readers see it. I am thinking that since I already know some areas where I’m going add more material, I need to wait until I finish them. That’s probably what I’m going to do.

I was asked in a podcast the other day (here) how being a debut author felt right now. I said that it was like my regular life, but shinier. There’s a deep satisfaction in having set my mind to do this and then doing it, against all odds, in my circumstances as an older author selling a collection of stories (usually a hard sell in the book world), as an author no one had ever heard of. But I did it by the grace of God. And that’s something special.

Work-In-Progress

So I’ve had a break from everything this week. It was odd to realize that the book’s only been available for a month. Now it’s time to continue shifting to the future with my work.

I’ think I’ve only missed one day of writing this week, and I believe I’ve added a thousand words to the document. I finally found the right voice for the female main character, and I can see the shift in the work. The words are coming a lot easier now as I type. I hope to finish off another section in the next few days, then start the next scene I want to work on.

Yesterday I did something risky and read the first novella again just to see how it held up. I think it does. I already know where I want to fill out some areas, and I’m sure once I read the whole work together when I finish the second novella, I’ll find even more work to do and revise and add. But I feel a lot more confident approaching it now, more like I felt when I first started working on it

My next book tour stop is in Natchez for the Mississippi Librarians Association on October 10. There will be books for sale at that event so that should be a good opportunity to move some product. Hurricane Baby seems to be moving at a steady pace, selling some every week it’s been out. That’s all I can ask for.

So I suppose that’s all the updates I have today. Happy reading to everyone!

TWO DAYS!!

Hurricane Baby: Stories releases into the reading public two days from now. It seems so bizarre that right on this date a year ago, I just gave up on the book emotionally. I had two more publishers I was considering sending it to once their reading periods opened up, and then I was going to sit back until the rest of the rejections rolled in. And I was going to never create writing for publishing again. I would stick to my job at the press I worked for and just file thar dream of publishing a book in a drawer in my mind and lock it shut. Delete all my writing of my computer files, the whole works. But I was going to wait until I got my 71st rejection to do that. Giving it time for the process to wind down.

Then three weeks after thinking all of that over, Madville Publishers offered me a publishing contract–and now here we are.

I’m going to take the opportunity to thank some people for their help in making this come true:

Lori, the first person I showed any of it to, who saw the story’s promise before I even did

Chris, one of my editors who suggested that they could be more to the story than I had

Karen, Mary Jane, Jesse, and Candy, the first people who read the whole book after I finished it.

Beth and John, who swapped manuscripts with me.

Billy Watkins for giving me his agent’s email address

Jim Dickerson, who asked, “Do you have any more stories like this?”

Dawn Buck and the whole crew at New Stage Theatre who gave me a chance to see the work in action as a play in 2010

Kendall Dunkelberg, for founding the MFA program at Mississippi University for Women

Mary Miller’s fiction workshop, who were the first ones to see it the first story another ten years later and gave great feedback on it.

Rob, Renee, Shannon, Debbie, Keslsey–all who read the first version of the short-story collection and gave great honest feedback throughout this entire process

Cheryl and Laurie, who I met and jelled with at A Smokelong Summer 2022 workshop and who so graciously accepted my offered exchange of manuscripts for critiquing purposes

Christopher, for giving me the scholarship to attend a Smokelong Summer.

Steve, for reading that first book contract and giving me advice on the finer points.

Lauren, for opening so many doors for me to get the word out about my work

Katie, for giving me space in her magazine to tell the faith story behind the whole endeavor

Kim, my publisher who has answered all my pesky questions often sent to her late at night.

Mike, for recommending to Kim for it to be published

Courtney-Ann, who got me on the radar for TV coverage.

Tracy for taking my book for review,

RJ Lee who did such a wonderful first review

May, Ellen Ann, CT, Steve, for their blurbs on the cover

Jacqui for a stunning cover

John and the crew at Lemuria bookstore, Murph at the Author Shoppe, and Carolyn at Book Mart for taking a chance on stocking the book

Mic, who answered my panicked Facebook message two days ago on how to get my unboxing video back after I deleted it, and who solved the problem.

Rebecca, for taking me sight unseen into her live radio show to talk about the book on the exact day nineteen years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall

Jim at the Louisiana Book festival and Ellen at the Mississippi Book Festival for honoring me with a space as a panelist

CT for a possible future event

Robert Kneuhle in arranging stops on a book tour for our Madville Trio throughout Mississippi.

And Bob who hears me prattle on about book stuff and loves me enough to listen.