Category: Writing

Aspirations 

~ plainswriter ~ Leave a comment

In second grade, a new kid named Ryan Meinert joined my class. He befriended me; I befriended him. So far all normal. I’m not sure how it started, from where the idea descended, but I began giving him a weekly handwritten newspaper: Nate’s News. 

I know I included jokes I gathered from other places. I’m confident I included some news stories; whether they were serious or not, I can’t say. Maybe I included baseball scores, football scores. Maybe I included other sections–I’m just not sure. And I only made one copy of each issue: the one I gave to him.

No copies of this august publication remain.

*

Summer of ’86 was hot and dry across Minnesota. There was lots of dust, and for much of the summer, my house didn’t yet have central AC. We utilized the “fan method” of cooling: put the fan in the window at night. We also had a ceiling fan in the living room, which helped move around the hot air.

Just as with Nate’s News, I’m not sure what prompted this, but I drew a one-panel comic strip. In it, a somewhat human-looking individual is sitting in a chair, the ceiling fan spinning overhead. The joke is the juxtaposition of the man saying, “Boy, is it hot!” with the switch marked “Hot/Cool” set to “Hot.” An attempt ironic humor.

I rode my bike downtown to the office of the local weekly newspaper and asked to speak with the editor. For whatever reason, perhaps because my mom worked as a receptionist there, he agreed to see me. Of course nearly thirty years later I remember none of the conversation I had with the editor, but I do know that I handed him the cartoon, and a week later, I had my first official publication.

*

Two years later, I was immersed in the world of reading comic strips and comic books as well as in making my own. My comic strip was Stupid Cowmix, and among my other creations was the comic book Molecule Man. I spent hours in my room first using my wooden ruler to draw panels and then filling them with text and pictures that I thought were funny, clever, and entertaining. My parents humored me.

But in that time from 6th grade through 8th grade when I was dedicated to the comic world, my drawing ability peaked, and the following year other interests grew and continued on through high school: basketball, music, role-playing games, and theater.

*

And what I realize looking back is that it wasn’t so much about the drawing. It was about story. About pacing and timing. About humor. About making something of my own. Taking ideas and materials and creating something that someone else could read and connect with.

Since my mid-twenties, I’ve dedicated my life to making things: poems, stories, essays, blog posts, literary journals. I can trace a line back through those earlier experiences, realizing that they were preparing me for what I love to do.

Even now, all of my efforts begin with a blank page.

[Note: see this prior post about how I came to write poetry again.]

On Rejection

~ plainswriter ~ 2 Comments

Two weeks ago in my prose Creative Writing class, we read and discussed Bret Lott’s essay, “A Home, a House: On Writing and Rejection,” from Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life. In the essay, Lott explores the relationship between the writing life and the publishing life, using the analogy of a lean-to in the woods for the writing space and a house built from rejections (and acceptances). He calculates, as of August 2004, that he has received 597 rejections (for stories and essay alone–not his books). This figure (understandably) startled my students.

As I visual aid, I brought my binder of rejections (those that I saved) beginning in 2003 and running through 2009, when I stopped saving them. The binder also contains my earliest acceptances, including my first post-MFA acceptance: a poem in The Chaffin Journal. I told my students how I had danced around my apartment, how Amy and I had celebrated by going out to eat at some fast-food place in Southeast Portland. Using the classroom projector, I displayed my Submittable account, showing them first the number of rejections, and then the acceptances. My disclosures added an up-close example of several of Lott’s points.

By my rough estimate, in 12 years I’ve sent out close to 500 submissions. As my website’s publications section attests, some fellow editors have decided to publish my poems, stories, essays, and reviews. I’m proud of each item on that list, not embarrassed by any of them, and I take great satisfaction in the places where some of these works were published.

Lott reminds writers that they “will be rejected,” and he suggests that writers need to view the submission element of writing as a “business transaction.” I understand both ends of the “business transaction” element of submissions: as a writer, and as an editor. Since I became editor of Windhover in 2012, my own comfort level with being rejected has increased. This isn’t to suggest that I enjoy rejection but only that I understand and “accept” the dynamics: I don’t take rejection personally. I reexamine the work (perhaps), and then send the piece (or pieces) out again.

In the closing section of the essay, Lott reminds writers that the real joy, the real delight is in the creation of (and reworking of) the pieces themselves. I agree. Probably because I hold on to that exhortation, I find that the submission process (the rejections, the acceptances, the unanswered submissions, the lost submissions) doesn’t wildly raise or drop my emotional barometer as it once used to. Perhaps as Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes in that famous passage, we might add that there is time for publication, a time for rejection.

On Early Mornings

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With the exception of my teenage years and early college years, I’ve always had a preference for the early morning hours. When I began running (again) when I was first married, my wife and I would get up early to run on treadmills at a fitness center, rather than brave the sub-zero Northwestern Minnesota temperatures. Now, sleeping until 6:30 is a luxury; sleeping until 7 is an un-achievable feat, even if I’ve had a late night. (Part of that inability results from two young children, both of whom are early risers themselves.)

Over the years I’ve used those early-hours to train for marathons, for 10ks, for 5ks; to work on graduate coursework; to read; to work on various writing projects and assignments. Whether inside or outside the house during those dawn and pre-dawn times, I’ve found them to be some of the most fulfilling and productive minutes of my days. And for me as an introvert, those times alone are crucial to my emotional well-being.

Over a month ago after I returned from an academic conference, I decided to write for a half hour before breakfast, before I did anything else. Just roll out of bed at 6, everyone else still asleep, and slip into the home office. In this time span, I’ve established a wonderful writing rhythm, those 30 minutes to myself and my words a jump start to my day, whatever responsibilities await.

My brain is so much sharper at this hour than if I tried to write once my children are both asleep (ideally before 8). At that hour, I have little mental focus, all of it used up during my job as a professor. I’ve tried to write during space from 8-9 p.m., but I’ve found that what I can accomplish in that time, I can accomplish in a half hour in the early morning.

I did take this morning off, it being Thanksgiving, but of the many things for which I am grateful (my family, my friends, my job, my church, my home, etc.) writing and reading are two of the most precious. To be able to communicate and to be able to understand the ideas and stories of others are gifts I do not take for granted. And having done the former (I trust), I will now spend part of this rainy afternoon doing the latter.