Holly Walrath's Blog, page 34

NAPOWRIMO Day 3

For today's poem I'm playing around with index cards to create a shuffle poem. It may turn out to be a prose piece, I'm not sure yet. The prompt for this one was "The General Store".

NAPOWRIMO Day 2

Today my poem is based on a book of Japanese fairy tales I'm rereading. There's a very sad one about a man who falls in love with a turtle princess and when he leaves her to go see his family he finds that 300 years have passed. I wanted to reimagine the story so that he could live and die in peace. This stanza is a start. It's also heavily influenced by Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea". I may weave some found poetry from the texts into this one.

NAPOWRIMO Day 1

Today I wrote the start of a poem about Pluto. It's a found-text poem, where I mix facts about Pluto with the story of a woman in a complex relationship.

​Day one of #NaPoWriMo DONE

My New years writing resolutions

    As 2016 draws to a close, I think many in the writing community are thinking the same thing as me: good riddance.  It’s been a rough year among my writing friends, but there have also been triumphs. People I love were in turmoil, and others celebrated life-goals met. The bitter mingled with the sweet. Personal troubles were briefly outweighed by writing milestones. Even now, I’m clinging to the holidays like I haven’t in the past, letting myself enjoy them for the simple love of candy canes and sugar cookies. I feel a sense that things in 2017 may change, but I can’t tell where they are going. All I know is that I want so badly to recenter, refocus, recharge. As the New Year approaches, here are a few of the things I’m resolving to do with my writing. 
1. WRITE MORE      In 2016 I wrote over 120 poems and roughly twenty or so short stories. I have been told by fellow writers that this is a large output. Yet Some thing in me continues to insist it is not enough. Perhaps this is because these works were squeezed out in early mornings and late nights, rarely at my desk in the comfort and solitude of my home office. When I look back on this year’s writing accomplishments, they still feel metered, as if I’ve stolen them from the ether. The appropriate goal may instead be, “Revise more” or “Make more space to write”. At any rate, my hope is to approach writing with even more seriousness in the New Year.   2. Write for Myself More      It’s rare that I find myself writing to a trend, so this goal may be more about aligning my expectations. There are times when I find myself so drawn to conversations in the writing community that when I come back to the page I’m paralyzed – have I written a character appropriately? Is this story one that I should tell? Should I be this personal, this dark, this honest? There’s a difference between questioning a work after it’s done to make sure it’s done right, and quitting halfway because of fear. That’s when things freeze up. This year, I want to unthaw my imagination and try to focus on what I love in my own work, what excites me. There are very many times when I read work out in the world and wonder what the editor was thinking to publish it. However, I have to learn to turn this critic off in my own work.  3. Write To Challenge The World      Building on #2, I’d like to see the writing world challenged more. I’d love to see more new voices in SFF and realist fiction. I’d love to see the SFF and speculative community embrace new forms. In my own work, that means letting myself do strange things. Letting form reflect content. Letting my mind go crazy with ideas. ​ 4. Write with Friends & Community      Writing is hard. Friends make it better. In 2017 I want to foster better relationships and be more aware of toxicity in my community. I want to listen, not speak. I want to do what I can to help the writers around me. 
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What are your New Year’s writing resolutions?
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2016 Awards eligibility

This feels a bit strange, but since I do have works that are eligible I thought I would list them here for interested parties. 2016 was an exciting year for me, and I feel grateful to the editors who enjoyed my work enough to publish it. I'd love to read your work, so please link below if you have an eligibility post!

The following poems are Rhysling Awards Eligible:  "Powder Keg" (short poem) in Silver Blade, Issue #29, February 22, 2016"Revolution" (long poem) in Abyss & Apex, Issue #58 (2nd Quarter 2016)"Woven" (short poem) in Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry (May 2016)"Night Raven" (short poem) in Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry (June 2016)"For Lonnie" (long poem) in Liminality: A Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Issue#9 (Autumn 2016)"Cetecean Prosthesis" (short poem) in Star*Line, Issue #39.4 (Fall 2016)*"Hart Island" (short poem) in Eye to the Telescope, Issue#22 (October 2016)
​*Not available online - send me an email to receive a copy

​For my full publication history, click here. 

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My super-secret identity

Oh noes! The word is out and my super-secret-not-so-secret heroine self, HARLEY HARBINGER was interviewed at Luna Station Quarterly. Whatever shall I do now that the aliens can find me? But seriously, this was a blast to be involved with. Big thanks to Jody T. Morse for the feature. 

Read the interview here!

Collaborating with Eastext

​I'm very excited to share with you a new project I'm a part of in October, Eastext, a collaboration with artist Pablo Gimenez-Zapiola. 

I met Pablo when one of our Writespace volunteers shared his call for poets for an upcoming art project. I've always felt pulled toward ekphrastic work - that which responds or interprets artwork in some way. In fact, this is one of the more effective prompts I use in workshops and in my own writing experience. I love to visit museums and galleries and see what poetry comes from viewing artwork. Through Arts & Culture Texas and ARTHouston, I've even had the pleasure of writing about art. So Pablo's project seemed like a great fit. 

After our conversation it became clear to me that my involvement needed to be more than just ekphrasis. Pablo reached out to me with an idea - to use my current fascination with erasure poetry as a response to some of the news coming out of Houston's east end. In this way, the poetry I will be presenting is part of not just my own love of ekphrasis, but also a blending of worlds - my own with that of the artist's. For this, I am very grateful to be involved. I'm also thrilled to be reading alongside local poets Eloísa Pérez-Lozano (who I've had the pleasure of publishing in Writespace's In Medias Res anthology), John Pluecker, Vanessa Torres, and Gwendolyn Zepeda. 

I'll be reading my poetry October 13, 20, & 27, at 6:30pm. Event locations are to be found at the link below. 

For more information click here. 

Read the article in Arts&Culture Texas
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Upcoming Writespace Workshop

I'll be teaching a Writespace jumpstarter workshop on September 10th! Register here. This is a great workshop for new writers, or established writers looking for a little boost and new ideas!

Workshop Description: ​
Feeling stuck? Have you not written in a while? Does the work you have accomplished seem stagnant? Join your fellow writers in a friendly, open atmosphere in which creative freedom is celebrated. Using writing prompts, visual inspiration in the form of images and props, and fun freewriting exercises, we will unleash your creativity so that you can get back on track and feel inspired again. The exercises we will share are intended to help spark new ideas, but they are also adaptable to works-in-progress, so feel free to come without a particular project in mind or with a current project you’d like to be excited by again.
TIME: Saturday, September 10th, 2-4 p.m.  
PRICE:  Early-Bird Price Until Monday, September 5th: $15 Members, $25 Non-Members. After September 5th: $25 Members, $35 Non-Members – Become a member here.
LOCATION: Writespace - PLEASE NOTE:  There is also a Silver Street event at this time, so please allow extra time to find parking.  Please see the map at this link for alternative parking information, if needed.
LEVEL: All Levels
CAP: Limited to 15 Writers

Announcing The Weird Circular

Hello fellow writers of the weird! I have an announcement!
​​I've decided to start a newsletter for other writers of weird things! Starting October 1st 2016, I'll be sending out a monthly circular full of all kinds of things weird writers like, including but not limited to: Places to submit your bizarre-ass writings, delineated by paid/unpaid markets and with helpful tips for submitting, weird images and inspirations, outlandish writing-related news from the web, kooky prompts, revising tips, and updates from your host, moi.

Most of you know me, but if you don't, I write weird things. I'm interested in intersectional works and crossovers, so I'll cover speculative markets but also literary fiction and poetry too. I'm fascinated by weird images and news, so that might make it in the circular. Who knows, maybe I'll throw in one of my own poems too?

I know you can barely stand the anticipation, so scroll down to sign up! 

I always wanted a reason to use this gif...
​And oh yes, I promise not to give away your email or use it for strange things like self-flagellation. Come on, I'm weird, but I'm not that weird. You're agreeing to receive one email a month and that's it! No freebies! (Ha. It's totally free.) 
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Ten Ways I’m Learning to Write Better

​In the past year I’ve observed there are people who come to writing for life and people who come to writing for a moment in their lives. Neither are wrong but when the latter occurs I find myself unsettled. Is writing something that falls away after a period? Perhaps it’s the natural fear of any creator: Will my well dry up? Will I one day not love this anymore? How could they move on?
            Seemingly there’s an uncanny place as a writer where you start to realize you have to give yourself goals, deadlines, and edicts in order to keep going. For a while as a new writer you meander through stories, having stops and starts. You throw things out, only to retrieve them from the trash the next day. You get a few acceptances but then a wasteland of rejections and you get a bit disgruntled with the world. A friend decides writing isn’t the career they thought they wanted. Another celebrity publishes a bestselling novel, and you wonder whether you’ll ever make this writing thing work. This is the stage where some people move on. But for others, they learn to write better, to goal better, to plan better.
            When I get a bit baffled as to my next steps, I reexamine the following rules for my writing. This is a list I drew up when I started to realize I wanted to be a writer-for-life recruit. When one doesn’t help, I move on to the next one on the list. So what are your commandments?
​ 1. Write More

​“And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write – every day, no excuses. It’s so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they’d rather clean the toilet than do the writing.” --Octavia Butler

"​If you’re waiting for the perfect moment you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive." --Margaret Atwood

"​I want to write short stories even when I don’t like writing them. I don’t actually like writing. But I want (and wanted) to write short stories enough that it seemed worth doing despite how awful and difficult and uncomfortable it can be, figuring out how to make a short story work." --Kelly Link

I think this might be my favorite piece of writing advice. It applies to all avenues of writing. Revising a story that doesn’t work? Write more, don’t cut. Having a hard time thinking through an idea? Write an outline. Writer’s block? Do a free write. That word “free” seems essential to this rule. Writers develop all kinds of methods, from laying down on their couch with a kitty on their feet, to heading to the local coffee shop, to writing on bar napkins. Some writers daily. Some write months at a time. None of these matter. What matters is getting the words on paper. I know what you’re thinking. “But friend, I don’t have time to write more.” The honest truth is you probably do, you just aren’t allowing time in. Or, a concealed kernel of resistance is inside you. I’ve learned I will write if you give me a prompt. I’ve written in the bathroom, on buses, while driving, before bed. I have preferred places/times, but they change, and that’s okay. If you are currently reading this at 2 a.m. in order to avoid writing, please stop reading and go write. You can sleep when you’re dead.
​ 2. Read More

"For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading." --Eudora Welty

"​Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read." --Neil Gaiman

​I’m encouraged by the authors and stories I read. During my morning writing sessions I sit and read until an idea strikes me. My to-be-read pile is constantly threatening to bury me in my office. But it’s not just about reading and learning from the authors you love. It’s also about reading things you don’t like—because those teach you what not to do. Literary journals, poetry, YA, romance, magazines, newspapers, all of these are fodder for your brain. You don’t even have to read classics (although I say why not?). The beautiful thing about reading as a writer is that it counts towards writing time! That’s right, what you are doing in reading IS writing.  
​ 3. Edit More

"​I love that part; that’s the best part, revision. I do it even after the books are bound! Thinking about it before you write it is delicious. Writing it all out for the first time is painful because so much of the writing isn’t very good. I didn’t know in the beginning that I could go back and make it better; so I minded very much writing badly. But now I don’t mind at all because there’s that wonderful time in the future when I will make it better, when I can see better what I should have said and how to change it. I love that part!" --Tony Morrison

​There was a time not too long ago when I thought my writing didn’t need a lot of revision. So much of the revision techniques I was taught in school were entirely useless to me as a writer. And my processes varied too—I found I was hand-writing my poems to revise them versus scrolling and rereading stories to revise them. Lately I’ve changed my tune and have begun researching more involved methods of editing. While it may or may not have changed very much of my writing process, the act of looking at different ways writers revise in itself is useful. Isn’t it crazy how we pin down our minds into boxes? When you realize editing is writing too, it’s a whole new world. 
​ 4. Research More

"​I spend a lot of time planning. I’m quite a deliberate writer in that way. A lot of writers I know just work with kind of a blank canvas. They feel it out and improvise on it and then they look to see what kind of material they’ve got. I’ve never been able to do that. Even at the start of my career, when maybe I would have been a little more reckless. I’ve always needed to know quite a lot about the story before I start to write the actual prose." --Kazuo Ishiguro

"I also wrote about a hundred pages of the Olondrian sacred text, the Vallafarsi, before I started the novel — origin myths and so on. I made charts of Olondrian deities and a family tree showing generations of kings and queens. All of these reference materials became resources I could draw on while writing. I probably spent about six months doing this kind of world-building work before starting the book." --Sofia Samatar

​"I do a lot of research any time I write a book, and often the research takes me into difficult places." --Karen Joy Fowler

Wikipedia is my new best friend. Twitter is a resource made of real people. Books have things called facts in them. The writing world is justifiably concerned with authenticity right now. It’s very easy to go off track, forget to look up a nagging question in your story or novel, and end up offending an entire group of people. I’m learning research translates to details—sure, I may write about whales, but did you know they communicate as a group and hear individual voices? Your google search history should look like a crazy person lives in it. Because that’s the truth: telling other people about a thing you know nothing about is crazy. 

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5. Find Your Voice

"You do you." --Chuck Wendig

​"I suspect that for most writers, the first reader one tries to please is oneself. I think it’s inevitable that the ideal reader you have in mind is pretty much like yourself in terms of knowledge base, experiences, and so on." --Ken Liu

"When I first started to write people started telling me you have to choose, you have to do one thing or the other. Or this story has to be one thing or the other. I knew that no, in fact, I could do whatever I wanted. Maybe no one would buy it, there was always that possibility, but that didn't mean I couldn't do it." --Karen Joy Fowler

Not sure if I’ve figured this out yet. I think there’s a tendency to tell new writers they have to write one thing—poetry OR fiction, literary fiction OR genre, etc. In reality, there are no boundaries to your writing, just that it be yours, your voice, your story. And that doesn’t need to mean the old adage of “write what you know.” I often write stories that end up in-between, and I’m starting to realize that in itself is a voice. I think this applies to living as a writer, too. Sure, that friend of yours seems to be rolling in the acceptances and gee, did they really write that prize-winning story in an hour? That person is not you. You do you.
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6. Get Feedback

"A workshop is a way of renting an audience, and making sure you're communicating what you think you're communicating. It's so easy as a young writer to think you're been very clear when in fact you haven't." --Octavia Butler

"You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up." --Margaret Atwood

Feedback is essential for me as a writer. As I’m learning my voice, I’m discovering how what I hear on the page is not what others hear. My process involves making my husband read me a story so I hear it in his voice. Then I send it on to other writers and get their thoughts on it too. I’ve been lucky to find a group of writers who are working in the same vein as me who I can share work with, but I’m always looking for new partners. I get a strange joy out of reading other writers work-in-progress, especially when they revise it and it gets better. 

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7. Find a Community

"I don’t write on a daily basis. I don’t have enough stick-to-it-iveness. But I am often hanging out, on a daily basis, with people who manage to get a great deal of writing done day in and day out." --Kelly Link

I feel like the above quote from Kelly Link sums up the importance of having a writing group or community. Yes, you have access to critiques and readers, but more importantly you get to see what other writers do, how they work. Being around a diverse group of writers opens your eyes to how your way is not the only way. I’m learning community means different things to different writers. To me, it’s the rich literary atmosphere of Houston, Texas. To others, it’s the intersection of voices on Twitter. 
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8. Submit More

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story." --Ursula Leguin

So far this year I submitted 330 poems, short stories, and flashes to markets. I’m fine-tuning my submissions process to target places I love. I’m reading more journals so I know where to send work. My goal is to double that number next year. When I say publishing is a numbers game, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone, but to all you new writers out there: I’m 100% certain you’re not submitting enough. Submit more. Now. Go do it now. 
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9. Accept Failure

"The rejection letters I’ve collected over the years can probably make a book of their own. Learning to deal with rejection (and to know when to change course) is one of the hardest lessons about being a writer." --Ken Liu

​“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” --Stephen King

Wait, didn’t Ijust say submit more? That’s right friends, submitting is a double-edged sword that wants to poke out your innards and wear them as a hat. The saying “guts for garters” comes to mind, because the rejectomancy in submitting more often feels like literary journals merely exist for that purpose alone. Trust me, they don’t. That doesn’t make it any better though. You will obsess. You will get a rejection that stings on the story you thought was perfect for that venue. You will receive many “Maybe, but no” rejections and more “Thanks, no thanks” rejections. You’ll cling to each and every “In the future please send us more of your work,” and when a nice comment comes from an editor, however how small, you will tattoo it on your eyeballs for when you close your eyes to sleep at night. You will not, however, by God, give up. You will not stop writing. You will write more. You will edit more. You will email me when you are feeling like this writing thing is just you crying for attention and I will tell you to go write more, now. 
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10. Hold On To The Magic

“There’s no way of knowing in advance what will get into your work. One collects all the shiny objects that catch the fancy — a great array of them. Some of them you think are utterly useless. I have a large collection of curios of that kind, and every once in a while I need one of them. They’re in my head, but who knows where! It’s such a jumble in there. It’s hard to find anything.” --Margaret Atwood

"Some parts of [writing] really are so mysterious, like the forensics of how a story came to be. It’s just such a funny labor. I feel like I understand sentences sometimes in a way that’s more intuitive. I’m finicky about them." --Karen Russell

​I’ve saved the hardest for last. We need goals as writers, and deadlines, and all those strict rules, but we also need to love writing. I’m learning how to hold onto the magic. I’m building up a thick skin. I’m letting myself play around, try new genres, experiment with structure, read new authors, take risks. I will not self-reject myself. I’m cultivating joy. I’m poeming the mysterious. I’m putting things in words that don’t make sense, but that’s okay, they will. 
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