Tag: writing nonfiction

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!

Genius Move

Just got off Facebook with a solid plan to write this late summer and fall.

A writer buddy of mine and I were talking about writing, and I said I was going to start on my next short story collection in mid-August once my kid goes off to college and need something to distract me from the empty nest.

I remembered how a lot of people talked since the pandemic about doing writing “sprints” where you and others meet over Zoom and write for a while together then compare notes when you finish the sprints. So she and I agreed to start meeting on Facebook at 6:30 p.m. three times a week, and each write for an hour, then compare notes.

So I feel good about what I’m going to do. I’m going to only write an hour a day, three times a week, and write a very rough draft.

I’m now aware that I’ve got to give up the notion of I’m putting down something magical right as it flows from the pen. I need to just get the story out. I have a good outline, a throughline, and lots and lots of details to squeeze in. I’m looking forward to it. Really. 🙂

Accountability is really good for me. How do you feel about writing partners, workshop partners, accountability, and deadlnes?

And Now For Something Completely Different

I am just now hearing about the death last Thursday of one of America’s premier political satirists, Mark Russell, at the age of ninety.

My first thought was, “I thought he was already dead!”

But no. He actually lived to cover the 2016 presidential election, after which he retired. (Wouldn’t you? Satire cannot beat Donald Trump running for and winning the US Presidency.)

You may not remember him at all. He did a regular show on PBS, taking what had been a lounge act with musical political parodies of songs to the network after the fall of the Nixon administration in the 70s.

Since PBS was one of the three channels we could pick up regularly out in the country where I grew up, I watched a lot of him at night on the tiny black and white TV in my room. My parents believed that whatever appeared on PBS was educational and let me watch whatever I wanted to on PBS.

Now, fast forward to the start of my freelance career in 2000. I read a flyer online about an arts series at little ol’ Meridian Community College and there it was in black and white–Mark Russell was coming to do a show.

And I thought exactly the same thing I said above. “I thought he was dead already!”

So I asked one of my editors if I could do a story on him appearing and interview him. She said “Sure!” (Probably laughed like a hyena after she got off the phone. I was fangirling big-time.)

So I did have enough sense to call the people putting on the arts series and tell them I would like to speak with him for the story. So they said they would forward my request and number to his people.

His people called and set up the day he could talk.

A few days later, I pick up the phone after it rings. “Hi, Julie! It’s Mark Russell. Is this a good time to talk?” I heard.

Oh, yessir, it is!

We probably talked for twenty minutes, with him tossing off bon mots and me taking notes like aboslute mad. I was thinking, “I have ARRIVED! NOTHING in my professional career will top THIS MOMENT!”

And you know what, I wasn’t far wrong.

I still remember that kind man returning my overture and gifting me with grace when I was as green at this business as a Granny Smith apple.

But I learned dreams can come true. What dreams are you waiting for to come true?

Writing Is Hard

Not to sound all fuddy-duddy and get-off-my-lawn-ish, but I don’t think some people understand how hard writing is.

You have to do so many things well to write well.

You have to be able to research your topic. You have to know how to research your topic. You have to be committed to researching your topic, despite all the challenges that may be thrown at you. You can research by reading books, talking to people knowledgeable about the topic, doing internet searches, poring over primary sources and records. And each research method has its own skill set to master before it can be effective.

Gone are the days of the copy pencil and paper and two-finger typing on a manual typewriter. Soon the qwerty keyboard may be on its way out the door as well. Adapting to the speeded-up pace of publishing is a must. Adapting to technology is a must. Adapting to your physical environment is a must, whether you work in a dedicated space in your home, or a coffeeshop, or a busy office environment. Writing is a physical act, not for the fainthearted.

You have to be able to recall, synthesize, and highlight information that is important to the reader’s understanding. A plain recitation of the facts is NOT writing. Beguiling, seducing, and entertaining the reader is what writing is all about. Sometimes it feels like you have to trick your reader into understanding what you want to get across; other times you have to trick yourself into believing that anyone cares. The writer’s job is to make them care, even if they aren’t interested.

It’s lonely–writing as a group activity is almost never good writing. It’s isolating–often the writer needs time and space to just think about the work, rather than talking about it to someone or bombarding their consciousness with noise. It’s often excruciating–when the perfect word or turn of phrase is just out of reach of the writer’s mind. It’s alienating–the writer has to believe in themselves when others wonder when the writer is going to give up this obsession and get a job.

But if you show up and do the work, magic can happen. That’s the writer’s payoff–not money, not fame, not bestseller status. The magic of a craft practiced well is the best payoff there is.

To-Be-Read Pile

So I have a nice pile of books to be read stacked up for the new year. I plan to be a lot more intentional about reading now that I am a year-and-a-half out of graduate school. I was so TIRED of reading. But now I plan to really get back into it and see where I go. I am going to list my books out and log when I read them on here as they are completed. The list (so far) contains:

–Defining New Yorker Humor, University Press of Mississippi, 2000

–Positioning Pooh: Edward Bear After 100 Years, University Press of Mississippi, 2021

–Best American Essays 2021, Mariner Press, 2021

–Best American Essays 2020, Mariner Press, 2020

–Best American Short Stories 2019, Mariner Press, 2019

–Best American Short Stories 2018, Mariner Press, 2018

–Always Happy Hour, Liveright Publishing, 2017

–Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House and Beyond, University Press of Mississippi, 2019

–A Charlie Brown Religion: Exploring The Spiritual Life and Work of Charles Schulz, University Press of Mississippi, 2015

–A Year In Mississippi, University Press of Mississippi, 2017

–Born To Shine, Hachette Book Group, 2022

–What If? 2, Riverhead Books, 2022

–Little Pieces of Hope: Happy-Making Things in a Difficult World, Penguin Books, 2021

–The Potlikker Papers, Penguin, 2017

–American Housewife, Anchor Books, 2019

–Dispatches From The Golden Age, St Martin’s Press, 2022

–Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light, Anchor Books, 2021

There’s a list. There’s a plan. Off I go!

Facts About Planning to Write

I struggle with a particular problem whenever I start a new project–planning vs. writing.

Planning sounds good, right? We plan for trips, plan for our day, plan for retirement. Why is “planning to write” so deadly to some writers?

Because “planning” isn’t actually writing–and therein lies the rub.

I am by nature a planner. I planned out all the classes I would take for my MFA before I even embarked on the six years it took for me to finish my degree. I plan meals, workdays, life events. I don’t deal very much in serendipity–just seeing what happens when I don’t follow a plan.

But planning to write is not the same thing as actually writing. You can plan out what you want to write and how you’re going to write and when you are going to write, but when you’re done–what have you accomplished to the goal of writing your book (or article or term paper or life story)?

Nothing.

Whereas, if you just sit down with a blank page and start typing, that same amount of time planning could have been spent generating a page of prose (or poetry, whatever your flex is) however imperfect it might look to a trained eye.

That’s where I am right now with my nonfiction project. I have found myself reading the manuscript I already have and inserting scenes I PLAN to write to go in it. This tendency, along with my realization that I’m going to have to find a new entryway into my story since I won’t have the previous 200+ pages of exposition/description/action I now have in the work, I find myself nine days into October with nothing new actually written. And that’s not good.

How to get over it? For me, no other way works except jumping into the cold water of my manuscript and swimming for my life. If I just stick my toe in the manuscript, I will get scared and never get into it and make it all it can be.

So today I will write instead of plan. It’s the only way anything ever gets done. Write today.

Next Stage

So all of the writing contests that I’ve already entered closed on September 30. Some have already undertaken a review of my manuscript, some will probably start reviewing on Monday, and others may not get to it for a long time. So what am I going to do in the meantime?

I’ll get busy on something else.

Waiting around for publishers/agents to get back to you is rough. You check your email every day. several times a day, to see if you’ve heard from anyone. Or you check QueryTracker and Submittable multiple times a day. Or you resist the urge to write follow-up emails asking if they received the manuscript.

Keep resisting. No one wants to be pestered. What you need to do is keep writing. On something else.

This method works on several levels–1) You distract your mind from the constant drumbeat of “I haven’t heard anything yet; what is taking so long?” 2) You have a fresh store of enthusiasm for the new project that may have been simmering in your mind for a while now. 3) You actually accomplish something in the waiting period, besides driving yourself crazy over the finished project.

Am I done with Hurricane Baby? Maybe not. I have two people who agreed to read Hurricane Baby but said they couldn’t do it right then when I was looking for feedback for these contests. So one has gotten back in touch, and I sent the manuscript to him just for kicks. Another lady from my summer workshop had agreed to swap manuscripts with me but didn’t think she would have a complete draft until December. So I will get back in touch with her then and see if she is ready.

Why am I doing that? If Hurricane Baby isn’t picked up in its current form, having another batch of feedback by the first of next year will enable me to revise again to get ready to enter another string of contests that open in the first three months of the year. Remember: writing is a long game. Persistence pays off.

So I have started another project in the waiting. I will keep writing here weekly to discuss different craft ideas, to update you on Hurricane Baby’s progress, and maybe to discuss the new project. We will see. But I hope you hang around for more ideas, insights, and if-not-this-then-that about the writing life. Stay tuned.