Rachel Lyon's Blog, page 7

Feature in Princeton Alumni Weekly

I woke up this morning to find that me and my book appear in a lovely little feature in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, or PAW. A few of my cohort acquaintances have been featured in PAW over the years, for instance my good friend the comedienne Nikki Muller, and the remarkable playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins. As a second-generation college graduate who had a difficult time in college, I feel a particular kind of emotion appearing alongside them in these pages.

What is such an emotion called? It's similar to how I felt sixteen years ago (!) when I was informed of my acceptance into that elite school in the first place. It's more complicated than gratification, prouder than humility, sadder somehow than pride. Perhaps there is a German word for it: the feeling of having been welcomed into a club where you never thought you'd be a member.

You can take a look at the short article here.

Breaking the Rules for Style

I'm currently reading the excellent novel Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee. It is an example—I think, of all the contemporary fiction I've read in recent memory, the only example—of omniscient narrative voice. Here's what I mean: 

"This is nice." Hansu's eyes searched the cluster of low waves in the middle of the sea and settled on the horizon. "It's not as beautiful as Jeju, but it has a similar feeling. You and I are from islands. One day, you'll understand that people from islands are different. We have more freedom."
    She liked his voice—it was a masculine, knowing voice with a trace of melancholy. 
    "You'll probably spend your entire life here." 
    "Yes," she said. "This is my home."
    "Home," he said thoughtfully. "My father was an orange farmer in Jeju. My father and I moved to Osaka when I was twelve; I don't think of Jeju as my home. My mother died when I was very young." He didn't tell her that she looked like someone on his mother's side of the family. It was the eyes and the open brow.

Switching perspectives in the close-third person—"She liked his voice" followed by "He didn't tell her…" a paragraph later—is generally thought of as a kind of crime in creative writing classes, and indeed many beginning students do it unwittingly. But Min Jin Lee does it so frequently—and deliberately, and gracefully—throughout this beautiful book that it becomes a kind of style.

Come to think of it, great style is often (always?) the result of the stylist's having broken some rule. A few random examples that come to mind: the playful grammatical rule-breaking of e. e. cummings, the dramatic rule-breaking of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. The gender rule-breaking of so many great musicians, from Bowie to Anohni, of Antony and the Johnsons, and beyond. The etiquette rule-breaking of comedians from Joan Rivers to Amy Schumer. The breaking of unspoken rules about race, and explicit rules about body type, by ballerina Misty Copeland. What great stylists all these artists are.

This week your prompt is to think about breaking the rules for the sake of style in whatever art form you practice. Whether you are working in conceptual art or simply the art of conversation, what rule or rules do you break? What rule or rules do you wish you could break? Why don't you go ahead and break them? That's not an invitation, necessarily. There might be very good reasons not to break it. Only you can know.

This post was originally published in my TinyLetter newsletter.

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p.s. A short, shameless plug: the countdown has begun! My novel SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BOY comes out in 8 weeks. It is currently available for preorder from Amazon, IndieBound, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers. As you may know, preorders are important for initial sales numbers, which can make or break the fate of a book in the marketplace. If you have not preordered my novel yet, please consider doing so. A thousand thanks, Rachel.

Accountability Institute, Season 3

A little over a year and a half ago, my friend Rachel and I did an interview together for Luna Luna about our partnership in accountability. Rachel lives in France; I live in New York. We are partners in accountability. We write emails back and forth between languages and time zones, to cheer each other on and hold ourselves accountable on our respective creative projects.

Read Rachel and my piece in Luna Luna here: http://www.lunalunamagazine.com/blog/...

It's amazing how effective it has been for me to have a partner in accountability, particularly one as inspiring as Rachel. Over the course of maybe 200 emails, from November 2015 to today, we have kept track of our goals and accomplishments, small ("I want to email this person I know," "I organized my files") and large ("I'm planning on traveling to a refugee camp for research," "I sold my first book!"); concrete ("I assembled all these pieces into one portfolio," "I got a rug for my writing room!") and abstract ("I want to get through this mucky feeling," "I want to purify my language"). We have read each other's lists and encouraged each other, even if all we have time to write is, "Awesome! Way to go!" I really believe it's due in part to our correspondence that I ever finished my first book.

Still there have been long lapses between letters. Months have gone by with no accountability emails at all. But then one or the other of us will feel the need to share what we are up to, and we will pick up the thread again, or start a new one. Today we find ourselves in the first few episodes of Accountability Institute, Season 3. I like thinking about our project as happening in seasons, like a television show. Our characters have developed. New narrative threads have unfolded.

The simple act of writing to a dear friend about what I want to do makes me feel as if I can do it, which means I am far likelier to. And yet sometimes I find it difficult to pick up that thread, or even to respond, although I want to. What is that about? Why would I avoid something that's so productive and enriching?

I guess it can be overwhelming to take stock of all the things I want to do. It can be embarrassing to realize that I've dropped the ball on this or that longterm goal. It can be frustrating to feel as if I haven't made any progress on something or other, frustrating to admit, "I'm stuck on this." 

There are ways of getting around those issues. I have to remind myself of them frequently. Here's what works for me: Separate tasks into bullet points. Keep each bullet short. Sort groups of bullets into three categories: Past (Accomplished), Present (Ongoing), and Future (To Do). Account for and celebrate even the tiniest victory. A project needn't be finished to be counted; it is enough to say, "I'm working on it." It's okay to keep a goal in Future (To Do) indefinitely.

This post is copied from my weekly Writing/Thinking Prompts newsletter. Subscribe at tinyletter.com/rachellyon.

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Last week in new words

It's such a delight to learn a new word. It's also so difficult to keep up with blog posts. After learning the wonderful word "brachiate" last week, I decided to start keeping a vocabulary list, as I used to do in high school. Here are the new words I encountered over the course of the past week, along with, in some cases, the contexts in which I encountered them:

acanthus |əˈkanTHəs| noun 1 a herbaceous plant or shrub with bold flower spikes and spiny decorative leaves, native to Mediterranean regions.acanthus 2 acanthus 2 [via Latin from Greek akanthos, from akantha ‘thorn,’ from akē ‘sharp point.’]

From Counterman, Paul Violi: “The lettuce splayed, if you will, / In a Beaux Arts derivative of classical acanthus”

brachiate verb |ˈbrākēˌāt, ˈbrak-| [ no obj. ] (of certain apes) move by using the arms to swing from branch to branch: the gibbons brachiate energetically across their enclosure.

fleuron |ˈfləränˈflo͝orän| noun a flower-shaped ornament, used especially on buildings, coins, books, and pastry. • a small pastry puff used for garnishing.

From Counterman, Paul Violi: “…form a medallion with a dab / Of mayonnaise as a fleuron.”

kenosis |kəˈnōsəs| noun (in Christian theology) the renunciation of the divine nature, at least in part, by Christ in the Incarnation. DERIVATIVES kenotic |-ˈnätik| adjective ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from Greek kenōsis ‘an emptying,’ from kenoun ‘to empty,’ from kenos ‘empty,’ with biblical allusion (Phil. 2:7) to Greek heauton ekenōse, literally ‘emptied himself.’

From a student: “My most important argument with myself is about self-sacrifice. How much self to let go of. The great religions call for some, idealize complete self-sacrifice here and there. Kenosis.”

pelisse |pəˈlēs| noun historical a woman's cloak with armholes or sleeves, reaching to the ankles. • a fur-lined cloak, especially as part of a hussar's uniform. ORIGIN early 18th cent.: from French, from medieval Latin pellicia (vestis)‘(garment) of fur,’ from pellis ‘skin.’

poltroon |pälˈtro͞on| noun archaic or literary an utter coward. from French poltron, from Italian poltrone, perhaps from poltro ‘sluggard.’

From Jane Eyre: “What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days!”

sitzfleisch |ˈsitsˌflīSH| noun informal, chiefly US a person's buttocks. • power to endure or to persevere in an activity; staying power.

solander |səˈlandər| (also solander box) noun a protective box made in the form of a book, for holding such items as botanical specimens, maps, and color plates. ORIGIN late 18th cent.: named after Daniel C. Solander (1736–82), Swedish botanist.

Baby's First Kirkus Review!

Check. It. Out!

"When an ambitious young photographer captures an unthinkable tragedy—and creates an accidental masterpiece in the process—she is forced to make a choice that will define her future.

"Thick with the atmospheric grime of early 1990s New York, Lyon's haunting debut hinges on a single instant: the moment when recent art school graduate Lu Rile, broke and ruthless, sets up her camera for a self-portrait—the 400th in her series—and captures, by chance, the image of a little boy falling from the sky. The boy is Max Schubert-Fine, the 9-year-old son of Lu's upstairs neighbors, and now he is dead, having slipped off the roof of their building, a crumbling Brooklyn warehouse not officially zoned for tenancy. The building's motley crew of residents—all artists; who else could live there?—come together in the aftermath of the tragedy, rallying around Max's beautiful mother, Kate, and offering Lu, until now a loner, something like community. In the weeks that follow, Kate and Lu form an intense and complicated friendship, united in loneliness, held together by a flicker of unspoken attraction. But Lu doesn't tell Kate about the photograph of her son falling, the photograph that could—that will—fundamentally change the course of Lu's career, offering her an escape from both poverty and obscurity, a name and a paycheck. (God knows Lu, whose father is ailing, needs the money.) From its first sentences, the novel is hurtling toward its inevitable and nauseating conclusion as Lu chooses between her friendship and her art, a choice that wasn't ever really a choice at all. More than a book about art, or morality, it is a book about time: Lyon captures the end of an era. Lu, after this, for better and worse, will never be the person she was before the photograph. And as the warehouses get developed and the rents rise, the city won't ever be the same, either.

"Fearless and sharp."

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rachel-lyon/self-portrait-with-boy

Ryan Sartor Interviewed Me, Briefly

Ryan Sartor, who runs the Difficult To Name reading series, asked me three short questions after I read with his series this past weekend. Read our brief interview about Joyce Carol Oates, Muriel Spark, and the beach: http://www.ryansartor.com/brief-inter...

I'm really proud of my newsletter, guys

I've been working really hard on my TinyLetter recently and it's been making me really happy. I have nearly 200 subscribers! Which doesn't actually sound like that much. But considering I don't really promote it or anything, I don't know. It feels good. Last week my grad school friend Ryan Teitman mentioned my TinyLetter in his own TinyLetter, and I got six new subscribers. Two of them were mutual friends/acquaintances of ours from Indiana University. It felt good to see some familiar names, and know that they're interested in what I've got to say. 

I feel like my TinyLetter is a good way for me to keep track of what I've been thinking about, and sort of turn my thoughts inside-out. It's also a good way to keep track of what I've been doing in my classes. Most weeks at least one or two people unsubscribe. But often I also get really good responses. Sometimes people write and say that a certain letter meant a lot to them, and it fills me with pleasure and conviction.

Check it out here: http://tinyletter.com/rachellyon

My Writing Space featured on the No Extra Words podcast

The lovely Kris Baker Dersch featured me on her podcast No Extra Words, talking about the space where I write. Listen to the episode here.

New Website for my Writing Group!

I'm on a roll with the Squarespace! Made a new website for my writing group. Check it out at www.allhappyfam.com. 

Interview in BKLYNER.com

A very lovely journalist from BKLYNER interviewed me about the reading series I host with Sarah Bridgins, and my process and thoughts about writing. Take a look.