Found: Hope

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

Why I Love Losing Writing Contests

If you find yourself staring at the wall, reciting your query letter verbatim, wondering if you should change the structure of sentence 3, why not enter a query letter contest? I'm going to enter the Kidlit query contest over at literary agent Mary Kole's site.

How do you feel about writing contests? As the books-as-babies metaphor goes, entering writing contests is a bit like entering your kids in pageants, no? Then again, some of these contests are just plain fun. For instance, I'm writing a short story for the Genre Wars over at the Literary Lab, and--dork alert--I'm enjoying it.

Every year I say I'm going to try to win the Flannery O'Conner Short Fiction Award, and on the eve of the deadline, I find myself shivering on the floor, blowing my nose in the discarded pages of my short stories, wondering why I try--but every year I also do a ton of revising to get those stories in fighting shape. To me, contests are just motivation to do SOMETHING.

Here is what I have accomplished by losing several contests this year:

• I revised a pile of pages into a semi-finished novel that I later finished.
  
• I wrote Chapter 1 and a synopsis of a second novel.
• I wrote a short story from the point of view of a secondary character in my novel. In doing this I learned so much about him--why he wants to be a doctor, how he feels about his mother, that he learned to be compassionate when he was a scared little boy who had to be extraordinarily brave to save someone he loved.

There's more, but that's enough. The point is: I may have done these things anyway, but probably not. I didn't win a damn thing, but my contest-entering was not in vain.

Do you enter writing contests? Worth it, not worth it? What are the best writing contests? What makes a writing contest worth your effort?

From: "Becoming a Writer"

"[A] writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

"Becoming a Writer"
Junot Díaz

This Conventional World of Unhip Undergraduates*

I've read books about writing for as long as I can remember. The act of writing fascinates me. A lot of people, however, consider books about writing useless schlock.

Have you read the Alexander Chee article about learning to write with Annie Dillard?

It's beautifully written and boasts all sorts of valuable thoughts on ego and writing. One of the most memorable lines came not from Dillard or Chee, but from Chee's father:

"Whatever it is you want to do, find the person who does it best, and then see if they will teach you."

In the old days, they called this an apprenticeship. I'm a writing apprentice, willing to unquestioningly wax on and wax off for the right person. That's what I'm doing when I read Speak for the 50th time, when I read On Writing and Stein on Writing and A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, the blog that recently mentioned that Donald Maass's book The Career Novelist is available for free download. (go 'nap it!)

As far as I know, Laurie Halse Anderson (aka, the person who does it best) isn't accepting any mentees, but if her book-eating daughter tweets that she LOVES a certain writing essay, I'm going to read it with an open notebook and poised pen. Does that make me a neophyte? Do I care? In the new age of life coaches, blogs, and tweets, I'm still an old-school apprentice learning my craft.

*I searched high and low on the Interwebs to find a poem I love called "I the Graduate" by Ted Joans because I think it complements this post. It's not widely booknapped, so it's probably not well-known. That's a shame, 'cause it rules. Read the whole thing on the ultimate booknapping site. Here's a taste:

I graduated
From my mom's womb
From childhood and family
From neighbors
From villages/towns/and cities
From religions/creeds/nationalities
And stagnant allegiances
And fad conformity
I graduated
From it all

Do you read writers writing about writing? Why or why not? If you do, how 'bout some recommendations?

I ♥ Mondays. You should too.

Did you read that title? Do you think I'm being sarcastic? 'Cause I'm not.

Lots 'o people associate Monday with the end of fun, but me being sort of manic about getting things done, to me Mondays are weekly opportunities for renewal:

I start something new. I try again. No matter what happened last week, Monday signifies a time to get over it. Stop looking in the rear-view. Get this life train back on track.

I was gloomy and doomy last week. While buried in a weekend pity-gorge of hot wings and pizza, I did some hardcore self-analysis, and I spotted the the reason for my emo-ness. With a certain book as they say completed, I'm clearly suffering from PND--post-novel depression. My characters are still in a way they've never been since I met them. I keep picturing them together in a hospital waiting room, checking their watches, eating vending machine snacks. They're depressing me.

So today I write:

Dear Characters,

I have done all I can for you (for now). I can't wait with you anymore. It is Monday, and I've a new week, a new story--and fine, it's true--new characters to write. It's not you, it's me.

I wish you all the best. You truly deserve it. When you meet a nice editor who makes you feel even more complete than I ever could, I'd love to have dinner with the both of you.

I am a better person for having known you.

Love,

Marie

Bloggies, it is Monday. I dare you to start something exciting. Make your fresh start more real by telling me about it in the comments. What new adventure are you about to begin?

Apropos

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
at the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

James Wright

From: "Tickle Me Pink"

"Pray for the people inside your head,
for they won't be there when you're dead."

Tickle Me Pink
Johnny Flynn