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Mississippi Book Festival
I went to one of the most uplifting events I know of in Mississippi–the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson, Mississippi–this weekend. Mississippi has produced a lot of writers over the years, and we’ve devised a way to bring them all back in the heat of August to do panels, talks, and book signings at our state’s New Capitol building for a day dedicated to the written word.
This year was the ninth year of the festival–it was held virtually during the height of the pandemic and last year was the first year they had it in person, with over 7,000 people attending Festival events. We haven’t heard yet what this weekend’s attendance was, but every panel I have heard anyone mention has been packed full of people.
I went this year in my capacity as an employee of the University Press of Mississippi and still saw a lot of people: Lauren Rhoades, who will publish her memoir Split the Baby in 2025; CT Salazar, who has won numerous Mississippi awards for his poetry; Ellen Ann Fentress, who released her memoir The Steps We Take, with us this month; Exodus Brownlow, my MFA mate who has a fiction chapbook and an essay collection out this year; and many other of our authors and many of my friends from around the book world.
An event like this gives me something to shoot for. A new resolve to be In the Room Where It Happens. I have new hope for my books and that one day I can be a panelist and talk to people of home, my place, where I grew up, about my work in a culture–small that it is–that loves stories and words. Just you wait. . .
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Break
I took a break from writing because I had outpatient surgery and didn’t want to write doped up. I’m going to start back on Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi tomorrow and have several goals for August:
–to complete chapter two
–to send out more query packages
–and to keep reading over and refining the chapters I’ve gotI keep on writing in the dark–I feel like I am going to write a book-length newspaper article. But I know it needs to be more than that. It needs to be a story–something to capture people’s hearts instead of just their minds. I feel like I can do this while keeping my head down and just plowing through, one short assignment at a time.
I am trying to push my own boundaries as a writer and get into people’s heads with the story itself, not with my fancy writing. I don’t think my nonfiction voice is fancy. I still have a very ‘just-the-facts-ma’am” voice. I need to push to come across as knowledgeable because I am. I need to push to create scenes as well as facts. Hopefully this book can teach me how to do that.
Onward!
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Much Encouragement in Writing
I got a lovely note from a contest the other day about Hurricane Baby:
Dear Julie Whitehead,
Thank you for submitting your manuscript to fiction,OSU’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize. We were gratified by the number and quality of submissions, all of which were read anonymously and with care, and hope you will be glad to hear that although your collection was not ultimately selected as the winning entry, it was among a group of distinguished semifinalists for the prize. We want to acknowledge the time and effort you put into your work and wish you great luck with it elsewhere. You are of course welcome to try us again in 2024.
OSU being The Ohio State University Press.
So that was wonderfully encouraging.
I finished my light rewrite of Hurricane Baby and have it almost ready to send to the newest batch of reading periods and contests that open up in August and September. I’m going to read it through and make sure it’s what I want to send out, then send it first to the guy that asked me directly to resubmit Hurricane Baby to his press. I hope that bodes well. It’s a nice outlet and I certainly hope his words might be a harbinger of success for it there.
Keep going. Persist. Don’t give up. Those are my watchwords for August 2023.
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Writing Retreat
Last weekend I went to a writing retreat sponsored by Mississippi Christian Living, a magazine I used to write for way back in the 2000s. It was a lot of fun!
I got to meet Susan Cushman, an author whose career I’ve been keeping up with for a long time–she was the keynote speaker. She published a book with University Press of MS about writing, which I have read, and I won one of her books today as a door prize so that was fun.
During lunch I had some time to talk to her and we turned out to know a lot of the same people, of course. We talked about what we were each working on and that was fun to hear about.
I got to talk to another one of the authors as well just as we were leaving but not for as long as Susan.
We did writing exercises, and some people were not really serious about writing. They wanted to talk about writing, but when it came time to write, they didn’t do it. Weird.
I’ve noticed there are a lot of people like this–they love to read, they love to talk about books, but then they start talking about how they would like to write a book and ask another writer for tips and pointers. Sometimes they even go to college and study creative writing and even get an MFA. But they just like to talk about their plans to write and what keeps them from writing–kids, a job, grandkids, other hobbies, husbands, etc.
I spent six of the most miserable years of my life working a job I hated and not writing after I finished grad school the first time. I didn’t want that to happen again this time. I have worked hard to integrate writing into my life again and even at the bleakest points, kept writing. Blogging was a big part of that. But working to focus, sit down, and write the thing is the best decision a writer can make. Success breeds success. And as Neil Gamian says, finished projects turn into published projects.
So to all those out there who keep talking about writing but don’t do it, i leave you with Toni Cade Bambara’s observation that writing is going to cost you something–that anything worth doing is going to have a cost. And there’s the advice from Gabino Iglesias: “Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.”
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DONE!
I. FINISHED. THE. PROPOSAL.
I am so excited! I finished my proposal for Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi last week in time for my mentor, Ellen Ann, to look at it and pronounce it good. I worked so hard to finish the last sample chapter. I need to get to work on the second chapter because some of the agents I want to send to require X number of first pages or chapters. So that will be tomorrow night’s writing sprint.
I sent it and a query letter to two agents this past Friday–I want to sell it on proposal so I am not investing my whole life into it only for no one to pick it up. So that is the plan right now.
I also plan to finish my light rewrite of Hurricane Baby this month as well. I know one big change I’m going to make to one of the upcoming stories in the list–I need to lose a scene that was in the original document but sadly has to go in this iteration from Tommy Hebert’s storyline. I hate it but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.
I feel so accomplished just making the major attempts I am making. Doing things I’ve never done before. Keeping on pushing myself to grow and learn and practice. We will see what happens!
Keep writing. Keep going. Keep dreaming. Keep on keeping on. You can do it!
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Revamp
So I have started in earnest on the quick Hurricane Baby rewrite for July. I am working with the last reading Cheryl gave it and finding new ways to ratchet up the tension throughout. I am on story number 12 so far, and finally ran into one of them I’m not sure I can improve on. But I’m going to keep thinking on it to make sure. I am using Cheryl’s notes to work through problem passages that she pointed out that need either rewriting or cutting.
The story I just went through was a good example of what I am doing. In the last rewrite, I realized that each individual story had three impactful scenes in it, a rising tension one, a big climax, and a third scene leading into the next story in that arc. I just went through the story where Cindi leaves Tommy and realized the third scene was really flat. It didn’t have any stakes for Cindi and Tommy; it was just a memory of Cindi’s. So I made the scene have some more meat to it and added to the stakes of the fight between Cindi and Tommy over his drinking.
Another particular one that Cheryl had commented on was a story told from Rosie’s point of view, and Cheryl felt like it was Wendy’s story to tell. It had been originally in Wendy’s POV, but I wanted it to be in Rosie’s so she could have her say about the events in the book as well. But I hadn’t told a story about her in it. On this rewrite, I made the story about their relationship as sisters. I made it have stakes between them instead of just Rosie finding out about Wendy’s relationship with Judd. Hopefully that gives the story more depth and meaning and makes a better case for Rosie as the narrator.
I’m doing that with every story, checking that the number of scenes is right, that the stakes are high, and that each story is told from the right character’s POV. So we will see how it turns out.
Wish me well–I will need to be sending it back out soon after July to the new places I found to submit to. Here’s to second chances.
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Encouragement
I received two very encouraging emails this week about Hurricane Baby–one was from a contest I had entered that directly invited me to revise and resubmit, telling when the new contest deadline was and everything.
I was so shocked I wrote back to make sure I had read correctly.
He (the publisher) responded that that was exactly what he had meant.
So that got me thinking. Another press that I think a lot of had held a pop-up submission window for short-story collections that I had sent to last Thanksgiving and had ultimately been rejected by, but they had a specific short story contest coming up in September that they had not held last year. So I wrote that publisher and asked if I could revise and then resubmit to that contest. She replied that of course I could–people did it all the time.
So i am taking Cheryl’s comments from my last story swap and using them to revise and deepen the reader’s understanding of the characters and pick up on other notes she made about the stories, and I’m going to submit to the last few presses on my list and then to those two in particular. Hopefully we can see results.
I am also putting my other strategy in place of sending a few of the other individual stories to high-quality journals as they open submissions and see if I can place a few in some nice publications and get a little buzz going. So I spent yesterday doing that with the first story, Still Waters. We will see what happens.
Good writing vibes to all!
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Moving Right Along
I drafted a first chapter of Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi in my writing sprints this week, about 9,000 words. It needs maybe a few stats to fill it out, but I finally worked out the arrangement of the scenes and what order I wanted everything in. I had to figure out what I wanted to accomplish, which was introducing major characters and drawing parallels between us, then summing up what I wanted to do in the book. So I feel good about it.
Now I need another sample chapter and an introduction to my proposal. Then I’ll continue to draft more sections and see if I can get an agent on proposal only. I am selling it as true crime, so we will see how that stacks up with what agents are looking for.
My writing friend is really keeping me accountable. She reminds me it’s a writing day and that we start at 6:30 p.m. and write for an hour. Other times I remind her. But we check in at the beginning, then give a word count and what part of the story we wrote after we’re done. So it’s nice to know someone wants to hear about your writing when you finish.
Onward and upward!
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Progress!
So far I have typed 3000 words on my current work-in-progress. I’ve done the writing sprints with my MFA buddy Shannon and am making progress past my initial fear about taking such a project on. When I start I just think, “It’s only for an hour.” And I just write!
The more I write the more excited I get and the more daunting it gets, but I’m not letting myself think it’s a book; I’m treating each chapter like a newspaper article. That’s helping, too.
I can’t wait to get back to it Monday night!
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New Project!
Time to announce my new project for the year–Missing and Mentally Ill in Mississippi.
I plan to write about working for MCIR and covering mental health issues, specifically the disappearance of Travis Sean Hunt from Choctaw County, which is where I grew up as well. I hope to tell his story as well as mine about being mentally ill and how similar our conditions were and how there but for the grace of God, go I. I will be chronicling the writing of this story the same way I have been doing Hurricane Baby in hopes that it can encourage others who want to tell their own stories as well.
As for Hurricane Baby, here are the latest statistics:
Presses sent to –62
Rejections–37
Presses left to hear from–25
Presses left to send to–6
So I will let the process work its way through the rest of the list and just see what happens. But I am excited to work on this new one and stay busy creating my own future. If I have to put away Hurricane Baby, I suppose that’s just the way it is. But I am excited for this new venture and hope you all can be excited with me!
Onward!
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Julie Liddell Whitehead 