Cathy Day's Blog, page 8

On Turning 45

Given that my grandparents lived into their 90′s, I’d say that my life is roughly half over. I don’t mean that in a negative way, just an honest one.

So, I’ve been thinking:

What did I do during the first half of my life?

educated myself
started a career
published two books
saw one of those books take on its own life
sat in the dark and watched other people watch my imagination come to life on a stage
got married to someone I want to be talking to when I’m 90+
taught 107 classes from 1991 to present
taking into account that some of those classes had 35 students and some had eight, I’m going to say that I’ve taught about 1750 students thus far in my life
at least six of those students have published books
changed jobs four times in an effort to have my career close to family
severely compromised my long-term earnings by doing so
found peace and contentment by doing so
got tenure, gave it up (in said effort to move closer to home), got it again
moved (interstate) seven times
witnessed the death of two of my grandparents
bought a house, sold it, bought another one
became the parent to two cats and a dog
decided, after much soul-searching, not to become a parent myself
spent a third of my 45 years with severe jaw, then back pain
came to terms with pain
came to terms with my bad breaks
thanked my lucky fucking stars for my good breaks
stopped smoking
figured out who I was
became exactly who I wanted to be
taught myself the tech skills necessary to take a thought in my head—like this thing that I’m writing and that you’re reading—to take things like this and share them easily, quickly, and widely

I’ve been thinking:

What do I want to do during the second half of my life?

stay married
stay put
write some more books
get an NEA grant
settle into my teaching career, finally
become a full professor
get my “school life” to a point where it’s not all-consuming so that I can enjoy a fuller life
this will be accomplished in my brain (internally) and in real life by making wise choices and seeking out available resources (externally)
become more financially secure so that I can feel less anxious all the time
travel to every continent
be a good aunt to my four nephews and two nieces
be a good caregiver to my parents as they get older
be a good caregiver to my husband as he gets older
be healthy and independent and cogent for as long as possible, and then, be someone who can accept being cared for
be interested in others and interesting to others for as long as possible
be happy most of the time
stop worrying about why some people don’t like me
do something, accomplish something before I die that will make a difference and create some sort of legacy (in lieu of having my own children)
let go of the grudges I held during the first half of my life
accept what’s going to happen to my body, my hair, my skin, my mind
accept that people I love are going to die
close the door on all my ghosts
open the door to everything that’s coming, because I know a lot is coming–both good and bad

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Teaching Tuesday: Learn their Names

The names of all my students this semester.

On the first day of any class I teach, I learn all their names.

First, I call roll. I request that they tell me:

what they prefer to be called
the name and location of their hometown

I learned a lot about the states of Alabama, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania this way, and now that I’m teaching back home again in Indiana, I’m familiar with most of the towns they name.

Every once in awhile, I’ll get a student from Peru, Indiana, my hometown. Last semester, I had a young woman from Peru who was the cousin of a boy I “went with” in the 8th grade (although I didn’t tell her that).

I try to have a brief conversation with each student about where they’re from, where it’s located, what it’s famous for. Something. Anything. I make a connection. This can take awhile.

Then I go down the roll sheet again and try to identify everyone—and remember their hometowns.

Then I put the roll sheet down and go around the room, point to each student, and try to recall their first name. I keep going until I get them all right.

I tell them this. “I might see you in an airport five years from now, and I’ll remember your face and where you sat in my class, but I will not remember your name. At the end of this semester, I do a brain dump.” But for now, I want to know who they are.

Then, and only then, we go over the syllabus, etc.

How many names are we talking about here? When I taught undergraduate general education classes, I often had 35 students per class. Now I teach mostly majors, and I tend to have 15 or 20 students per class, three classes per semester. So: at maximum, we’re talking 60 names. Usually less. This semester, it’s 40.

At The College of New Jersey, I once had a class with seven Matts. I kid you not.

I’ve noticed that many of my students seem startled that I’m making this effort to learn their names.  I’m not sure why this is.

I learn their names because I think it sets a good tone for the semester. I want them to know that I care about who they are as individuals. Sometimes students will work harder if they feel like you might be disappointed in them if they slack off. I want my class to be at the top of their priority list.

I do this because I think that students very quickly make up their minds about whether or not they like a class and their teacher. I know I did when I was in college, and this study bears that out. That first day, they’re taking stock of their semester, what’s on their plate, with whom they’re going to be dealing. I want my class to be their favorite, if at all possible–although if it’s not, that’s okay. (It’s taken me a long time to accept that, actually.)

I do this because being a good teacher isn’t just about your syllabus, how smart you are, how knowledgeable, how you’re perceived in your discipline. It’s about whether or not you have the ability to get through to people. Sometimes, I’m capable of  this. Not all the time (and I’d be happy to show you my evals, which are sometimes mixed), only sometimes.

I try for “most of the time.” And spending most of the first class learning all their names is a good start.

Teaching Tuesday: Mentor (and Be Mentored) Wisely

I take my job as a mentor pretty seriously. This blog–my whole social media presence, really–is an expression of my desire to mentor as many writers as possible.

Some of you are here because you’re writing students, and some of you are here as writing teachers.

These “Teaching Tuesdays” features are geared towards the writing teachers, although I’m sure the students will be interested, too.

Mentoring via New Media

I started a blog a few years ago called #amlinking. It’s for a class I occasionally teach on Linked Stories. I’m teaching it right now. The class and I will share our weekly discussions and activities with you. There are only 2 people following this blog at the moment. Please hit the “follow” button on that blog, and you won’t miss a thing.

I started a blog a few years ago called #amnoveling. It’s for a class I frequently teach on Novel Writing. I’m teaching it right now. The class and I will share our weekly discussions and activities with you. There are 75 people actively following the course right now. Feel free to join us by hitting the “follow” button on that blog, and you won’t miss a thing.

I started a blog in January 2013 called Literary Citizenship. It’s for a class I just started teaching on that subject. I’ll teach it again in Spring 2014. I haven’t quite figured out the best way to use that blog, but there are 101 people who will know when I do figure it out. Please hit the “follow” button on that blog if you want to be one of those people.

As you have no doubt gathered, I take on too much. My desire to be helpful–no, my enjoyment of being helpful–is both a blessing and a curse to me. But to be honest, it’s easier for me to have all these blogs and help you via new media than it would be to help you in person. My blogging doesn’t interfere with my fiction writing. No, blogging creates more time for me to write. These blogs are basically my teaching materials, lecture notes, long emails sent to friends and former students, and FB comments–all that writing made transparent to anyone. In fact, many of my blog posts start as writing intended for a different purpose.

Like today’s topic: Mentor Wisely

Michael Nye, managing editor of The Missouri Review, wrote this blog post, “On Finding a Writing Mentorship.”  I wrote a long comment in response, but I want to expand on my thoughts here–about being mentored, and mentoring itself.

Being Mentored

The topic isn’t talked about nearly enough. In undergraduate and graduate programs, young writers must be on the lookout for mentors and stay in touch with them. Cultivating mentors is a mostly unspoken process. I know I wasn’t very deliberate about it until mid-career, when I was long out of school.

I’ve had many mentors, but in the last few years, the most important has been Porter Shreve, and I met him by writing him a letter, thanking him for reviewing my book.

Me and Porter in 2005 at a talk sponsored by the Indiana Writers Center.

When I use words like “deliberate” and “cultivate,” please don’t get the idea that I’m recommending that you should be disingenuous in this process. Ultimately, mentoring happens naturally. You either get along with someone or you don’t. I wrote a lot of thank you letters when my first book was being published; Porter’s was the only one that turned into something else. We “clicked,” and finding a mentor isn’t that different from finding the right agent, the right spouse/partner. You have to “click” with someone.

It’s hard to find mentors when you’re out of school, even harder when you’re not employed by a university. That’s where conferences and colonies come in, I think, or local writing communities. Here’s a post I wrote about how to find writers to write Letters of Recommendation when you’re out of school, and so it touches on many of these issues.

In his post, Michael mentions a friend who felt that her mentor “cut her off.” That’s a very unfortunate thing. And it hurts, I know.

As someone who mentors many, many former students, I can only say that it’s really difficult to maintain that many relationships and find time to help them all. I’m mid-career and feel overwhelmed sometimes. At the end of one’s career, I’m sure you become much more choosy about in whom you invest your limited time and energy.

Let me say this, too: Hell hath no fury like a mentor scorned. No, that’s not quite right. If you scorn your mentor somehow, you will most likely get silence, not fury. I think there is a deep-seated need inside us all, a need to repudiate our parental figures. Consider what Ernest Hemingway did to his mentor, Sherwood Anderson. Or maybe it’s not even conscious scorn. Maybe we’re like teenagers who take our parents for granted until we’re old enough to appreciate what they’ve done for us. All I can say is that when someone who is further down the pike reaches out to help you, agrees to champion you in any way, honor that gesture. Be grateful.

But do not expect it to happen. Strive to be worthy of being mentored, but do not expect it.

Being a Mentor

I wish AWP would offer up some kind of statement about this topic, specifically “What are the long-term responsibilities associated with being a member of the faculty of an MFA program?”

I hear this gripe a lot:

I paid a lot of money/invested a lot of time in my graduate degree, and now I feel cut off and stranded professionally. So why did I do it?

The answer to this question is incredibly complicated, and I don’t even know if the problem can be or ever will be solved.

But a step in the right direction would be for the mentors themselves to mentor wisely.

Part of the problem, I think, is that creative writing programs nationwide are booming. We’re admitting more students than we can mentor one-on-one in the classic, “closed” system.

We can’t always provide the closed model. The classic model. The closed model isn’t even practicable.

Therefore, we need to teach students to think about mentoring less like the image on the left and more like the image on the right. We need to point them towards other resources. This blog was created in part because I knew it was needed.

Also: set limits. Create rules for yourself about how you will help. You can’t mentor everyone.

Remember: apprentice writers need feedback on their writing from their mentors, yes. This is what takes so much time, especially for prose writers. (I’m sorry, but it’s true.) But feedback is not the only thing your students need from you. They also need you to be a productive writer yourself. Remember that.

Until next Tuesday then, when I think I’m going to talk about something very simple: learning all their names. 

Teaching Tuesday: a new regular feature on The Big Thing

[This is a "Teaching Tuesday" post. Every Tuesday, I'll share something here about teaching: a link to one of my course blogs, a bit of advice, an exercise that works particularly well. This is also a cross post between "The Big Thing" and the "ABOUT" page of my novel-writing course blog, "#amnoveling."

About #amnoveling

Yes, I turned "novel" into both a GERUND (my husband says it's a participle, whatevs) and a HASHTAG. When I made up this word three years ago, I was trying to ride on the coattails of popular hashtags like #amwriting (I am writing) and #amreading (I am reading), but since then, I've decided that calling this class, this blog, this endeavor #amnoveling is important for two reasons.

The class I teach isn't on "the novel" (a static noun) so much as it's about the process, the activity of writing one (a VERB).
Most creative writing classes don't focus much on writing process, on motivation and performance. But I'm interested in using social media (this blog, the hashtag, a private Facebook group) so that my apprentice novelists can develop a regimen, share their progress, connect with others.

I'm supposed to be using Blackboard to teach this class, but I'm not. This means that people outside my classroom can read this blog. People like you.

Blackboard is a closed environment that allows students and faculty to communicate with each other and share information and documents. And Blackboard attempts to replicate (badly) lots of social media platforms and programs within its closed environment: blogs, messaging, email, wikis, etc. Compared to Facebook or Gmail or WordPress, the user interface on Blackboard is counter-intuitive and difficult to navigate. Not to mention ugly.

Also, the people in charge of Blackboard at my university took it offline during the week I'd set aside to develop and plan the course, so really, I had no choice anyway.

I feel your pain, Roxane.

So: this semester, I said, “Heck with it.” I’m using a combination of Google Docs and this WordPress blog in lieu of Blackboard. We’ll see how it goes.

One advantage for my students is that they’ll learn how to navigate real technological waters. Once they graduate from college, they’ll never see Blackboard again. But if they can walk into a job interview knowing how to use WordPress, Google Docs, etc., they’ll be a step ahead of the game. At least, that’s the way I see it.

One of the advantages for you (the person who is NOT in my class but is reading this) is that you can follow along, if you like. Take the same journey as my students. Each week, they will be posting a report about how things went the previous week, and we’d love to hear from you, too. Because writing a novel is HARD, and we all need all the help we can get.

If you want to follow along, here’s what you should commit yourself to do:

write at least 2,000 words a week, every week.
read the books we’re reading.
reverse storyboard a book of your choice
start a blog yourself and share your journey
find a beta group (IRL or online) who you can trade work with this term

It’s easy. Just go to my course blog, look in the top right corner, and subscribe! Create a column on Tweetdeck or Hootsuite for the hashtag #amnoveling.

But I should be clear about something.

I’m sometimes asked if I teach online classes, and the answer is no. This is not an online class.

Honestly, I can’t handle one more student, one more page. I’ve got all I can handle with three classes, 50 students, an MA thesis to direct, committees, etc. No, I’m not reading your work.

I’m just making what I’m doing in my classroom transparent, and if you have the discipline, you can “take” my class–to some extent.

This blog turns my class in the Robert Bell Building at Ball State into a kind of fish bowl. Me and the 15 enrolled students are the fish. You’re staring at us swimming in our bowl.

This is a fishbowl. Me and the students in the class are in the center. You’re listening in.

But please don’t bug me wanting to know exactly what I’m saying. distributing in my classroom. I’m not sharing my lecture notes. At least, not right now. I believe online learning is pretty wonderful, but these kids in my class are paying a lot of money for their degree. They are my priority. They get behind the pay wall.

All that said, I am interested in figuring out how to reach more people who want to study novel writing. Consider this blog my experiment toward that goal.

So: if you want to follow along with my class, just subscribe. There’s a little button up on the right. 

Academia & Websites: Let Me Show You the Problem

For writers in academia: do you feel like your “writer self” and your “teacher self” are two separate entities? The problem might be your websites.

A Meets B at Midwest Writers Workshop

Roxane Gay helps two writers get their websites up at the Midwest Writers Workshop.

A: I can’t tell you how many times a week I meet someone who says, “I wish someone would sit down with me and show me how to create a website or blog.”

B: And every day, I look at my students sitting in the classroom. I know they have the skills to help people.

How do you get A to meet B?

Intern Rebekah Hobbs works with Midwest Writers Workshop attendee Susan Holland.

So I applied for a grant to pay a bunch of students to come to a room.

Then I told a bunch of writers who wanted websites/blogs to come to that room, too.

Intern John Carter helps Tony Roberts.

Today they sat in this room for about five hours and the B’s helped the A’s, and the A’s taught the B’s a few things, too.

Actually, the B’s didn’t even know that what they did today was a marketable skill.

Also: standing in front of that room was Roxane Gay, who knows a thing or two about websites and blogs.

These pictures may not look like much, but a lot of learning happened today.

It’s pretty fun to watch people feel empowered about technology.

The Dirty Little Secrets of Internships

Dear Midwest Writers Interns,

This week,  your internship at the 40th annual Midwest Writers Workshop begins.

On Thursday, half of you will assist Roxane Gay in her “Building a Website/Blog” class, and the other half will assist Jane Friedman in her “Creating an ebook Class.”
On Friday and Saturday, six of you will staff a Social Media Lab where attendees can get hands-on help and advice, and five of you will work as assistants to the literary agents who will be hearing pitches.

I thought I’d give you a few words of advice about internships. Here’s why:

I’ve been on both sides of the experience. I’ve been the intern, the outsider trying to get inside, and I’ve been the employer, the insider trying to train someone coming in from the outside.
Over the years, I’ve listened to a lot of former students complain about bad internship experiences, and I think that half the time, the students’ gripes are probably valid and the other half, the students’ gripes are the product of unreasonable expectations.

Internships aren’t classrooms (although they’re supposed to be)

In this particular internship with you, I am a college professor (a teacher) who is also on the planning committee for the MWW (the employer, although it’s my grant that’s really paying you). I’m used to explaining things. But most of the time, internships aren’t coordinated by teachers. They’re coordinated by busy people who are under no real obligation to you. You can’t give them a bad eval or complain to their department chair. You are almost completely at the mercy of the internship coordinator, and your generation is not used to this scenario one bit.

Most of the time, the “intern coordinator” is someone relatively low on the totem pole who is told that they must train you in addition to a bunch of other responsibilities. Understand that fact, and you’ll be better off.

(Later in this post, I’ll talk about how this situation might be changing for the better.)

Even “failure” is a victory

I’ve had two internships in my life. I was an intern at Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine (I wrote a short story loosely based on my experience) and at a small-town newspaper. Neither of these experiences led to a job (although both offered me a position). What I learned was that my temperament wasn’t suited to writing for magazines or newspapers, because those jobs required me to be “on” and extraverted and forceful in a way that was really, really hard for me. Yes, I knew it was supposed to be hard, and so I soldiered on (with the help of a lot of cigarettes) because I’d spent years envisioning myself in one of these two careers. But finally, I was forced to admit that I just couldn’t do either of those jobs for the rest of my life.

I left each internship feeling depressed, like I’d failed, although in retrospect, I know that I saved myself a lot of time by figuring out these things early.

It’s not about you

The most important thing I can tell you about most internships is that (with exceptions, of course) no one really has time for you or whatever it is you think you need you need to derive from the experience. Does this indifference bother you? Too bad.

It’s scary isn’t it? Realizing how completely indifferent the world is to you. I remember this as being a pretty terrifying realization.

From an employer’s perspective, it’s almost always easier to do a job yourself than to explain to an intern how it should be done. The reason that most interns get stuck doing relatively meaningless duties is that these are the only tasks the intern coordinator can assign relatively quickly and with low stakes. Because what the coordinator really needs to do is give you something to do so they can get back to their job.

If you approached college from a position in which you were trying to “get your money’s worth” because you were the “consumer” and your professors were “working for you,” then you probably won’t respond well to most internship environments. Because you think the situation is all about you, and it isn’t even remotely about you.

You will make mistakes

When I worked at that small-town newspaper, the editor told me to do a story about a new shopping center in town (a Wal-mart and a bunch of smaller stores). I called all the little stores and asked how business was, typed up the story, and it ran. The next day, the publisher came into the office fit to be tied. Apparently, this story was supposed to have had a particular angle. The shopping center owners had promised those little stores that the complex would be anchored by a Walmart on one end and an Aldi on the other end; however, the Aldi had never come, and I should have asked questions to prompt the store owners to speak to that. But hey, I didn’t live in that town–I was a college student visiting for the summer–so I didn’t know that backstory, didn’t ask those questions, and the editor forgot to fill me in. He didn’t even THINK to fill me in.

It was a major screw up, but also sort of unavoidable. Things like this will happen.

My cousin Mark says ”A problem clearly stated is a problem half solved.” That’s a major freaking truth.

Be indispensable

If you want to get a good recommendation out of your internship, maybe even stay on in a paid position, you must learn how to be indispensable.

Do what they tell you to do, and do it right the first time. We had some difficulty early on in this internship when I was charged with the task of creating the copy for this webpage. I sent all eleven of you an email with directions which included a sample bio and a link to a similar webpage. Easy, right? No. I got eleven different kinds of bios. Some straightforward (what I was looking for), some more whimsical. Some people hyperlinked to their website. Some didn’t. Some people put their photos in the right folder, some didn’t. Some of you spelled things wrong. I spent many hours rewriting those bios. What upset me about this was that I sent you samples of what I needed, but I didn’t say “Do it like this,” because I didn’t realize I needed to say that. And honestly, I shouldn’t have needed to say, “Do it like this.”

Following directions is–seriously–half the battle in real life.

Be independent. A good intern is one who the employer rarely has to talk to but who still accomplishes a significant amount of work. Don’t wait for direction. See what needs to be done and do it. And when they give you something to do, ask a few good questions so that you won’t have to ask a bunch of followup questions.

Think like your boss. The best kind of assistant is the one who knows how their sponsor thinks and knows what they need before they need it. It takes time to get inside someone’s brain, but it can be done.

Seek out resources. Find out who does have time to talk to you and absorb everything they have to give you. If this person happens to be your supervisor, be grateful for this.

Write well. The first time. Every time.

I’ve met many students lately who have gotten internships as social media assistants–running a company’s blog or social media presence. If you get an internship like this and you cannot write clear, graceful prose, you will be sunk.

Here’s what needs to happen: your supervisor says, “We need a blog post about Topic A.” You write said post and give it to your supervisor. S/he reads it over and posts it. The end.

Here’s what you don’t want to happen: your supervisor says, “We need a blog post about Topic A.” You write said post and give it to your supervisor. S/he reads it over and spends a half hour or more that s/he doesn’t have editing the post and/or explaining to you how it needs to be done. You do it again. S/he reads it over and posts it. The end.

Every time the second scenario happens, your chances of staying on at this company diminish. Nobody needs more work to do. When you become more work for someone, they decide it’s easier to just do something themselves or to find someone else. End of story.

I say this to my students all the time, and I don’t think they believe me: You must disabuse yourself of the notion that it is anybody’s job to fix your shit for you. If anyone has consistently said to you, “Your writing doesn’t make sense,” or “You’re too wordy,” or “You have problems with grammar,” thank these people and learn how not to do these things anymore. Once you are out of school, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone with loads of time on their hands eager to edit your work for you. If, on the other hand, if you can become someone who can be depended on to write clearly and well, you will become indispensable.

Internships in the News

The subject of unpaid internships is very much in the news these days. Last month, a judge in New York ruled that interns on the film Black Swan should have been paid at least minimum wage.

These are the Department of Labor’s criteria for unpaid internships. Notice how much these criteria are intended to benefit you!

The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.
The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.
The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff.
The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern, and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.
The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.
The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

In an ideal world, employers who take on an unpaid intern should understand that they are taking on the task of teaching that intern. However, most of the advice I’ve given you assumes that employers are not abiding by these criteria, but they might, however, if a lot of class action lawsuits continue moving forward.

The dirty little secret about internships

Unpaid internships are a stepping stone to important careers.
Only some kinds of people can afford unpaid internships.
Hence, some careers might seem completely out of your reach.

Maybe you’re geographically and/or economically at a disadvantage, but in this case 1.) Midwest Writers Workshop brings New York to Muncie, and 2.) the Discovery Group gave me a grant so I can pay you.

I know you all work a job or two or three. You take care of your aging grandparents and great grandparents and kid sisters and brothers. You don’t know people in New York City who you can stay with while you do that big internship at Whatever House. You don’t have a trust fund or a safety net to live off of like some people do.

But I firmly believe that with the right attitude, skills, and resources, kids from Middle of Nowhere, Indiana can achieve whatever they desire. This week, you’re making an important step in that direction, and I can’t wait to get started.

Movie Marriage: Thoughts on my 4th Wedding Anniversary

I’ve had marriage on the brain for the last few months. Here’s why:

Today is my fourth wedding anniversary.
We’re getting some marriage counseling.
I’m writing a novel, which is about–among other things–why people get married.

I read an article recently which said Year Four is when the euphoric stage of “passionate love” fades and “mature love” begins. Yep, I believe it. I’ve never been so blissfully happy in my whole life as I was during our first year or two together, and right on schedule, our marriage has been tested recently.

Before I Got Married

It wasn’t that long ago that I was 37 and single, and all I could think about was love and marriage, chance and fate. Why had my life turned out the way it had? Was there anything I could do to change it, or did it need changing at all?

I challenged myself to find out these answers, and then I wrote a strange little book about it: Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love. It’s about the Colts 2006 Super Bowl season, and about my season of dating. Imagine a mashup of a smart rom-com and an inspirational sports movie. When Harry Met Sally meets Hoosiers.

Sports metaphors have always resonated very strongly for me, and there was one that I kept going back to again and again. Vince Lombardi said:

There are approximately 150 plays in a football game, and there are only three of four plays in any game which make the difference between winning and losing. No one know when the big play is coming up. Therefore, every player must go all out on every play.

I felt there was a lesson in that. Maybe I’d already met the “right” three or four people, but I’d let them  go because I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe, in order to change my life, I needed to stop acting like I had all the time in the world and start paying attention.

So: that’s what I did. I went all out on every play, every day for a year, and holy shit, it nearly drove me insane. Here, I wrote about for SI.com.

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset

This is the full story of how I met my husband.

We met the first time in 1990 and got along very well, but then we lost touch–as people did in the pre-email, pre-Facebook days. Flash forward 18 years. He heard me on the radio talking about Comeback Season and got in touch. I remembered him immediately, although I’m not going to say that I spent those years pining for him. But I did think of him as one of those important plays out of the 150.

The summer we started dating, the summer I was trying to decide if this man was the person I’d been waiting for, I happened to rent the Richard Linklater film Before Sunset.

Background: Jesse and Celine meet as twenty-somethings in Vienna in the first movie, Before Sunrise, and then nine years later they reunite as thirty-somethings in Paris in Before Sunset. They float down the Seine and reflect on the what-ifs. What if they’d exchanged phone numbers in 1994? What if? What if?

Celine says, “I guess when you’re young, you just believe there’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.”

LIKE MAYBE THREE OR FOUR?

They talk about the book that Jesse has just published about that night in Vienna, which is how they’ve reconnected: she read about him in a magazine.

: You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?

: Why?

: So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, “Where the fuck were you?”

: [laughing] No – you thought I’d be here today?

: I’m serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.

: Okay, that’s – I know that’s not true, but that’s sweet of you to say.

: I think it is true.

And so, reader, I married him. Four years ago today.

It wasn’t just because of the movie, but yeah, it had something to do with it. Yes. And I’ll be honest: I’m a fiction writer, and I cannot deny that one reason why I married my husband is because I knew it was a great story. It’s like the happy ending of rom-com/sports movie. It gives people hope; I know this because people who’ve read the book write and tell me so. Here’s one I got the other day, as a matter of fact, from a woman who is getting married soon:

I was very much inspired by your real-life story…it gave me hope for my future too. And I’m SO glad to see that you two are so happy together!

Before Midnight and Mature Love

A few weeks ago, I saw the third film in the Linklater trilogy, Before Midnight.

Jesse and Celine are finally “together,” but things aren’t blissful. In fact, the movie contains a wonderful, 30-minute knock-down-drag-out fight. I saw the movie with a bunch of friends my age, and we laughed ruefully throughout. What fascinated me about the movie was its realistic depiction of a mature relationship. How do people stay together over the long haul? I really want to know. And sentimental rom-coms aren’t going to give me the answer.

As I watched, I thought about the people (mostly married) who told me when I was going through my Comeback Season phase six years ago that I was just idealizing marriage, that marriage wouldn’t necessarily make me happy.

They were right. And they were wrong.

Take This Waltz and Happy Endings

There are two kinds of stories about love: the kind that ends with the big kiss/the declaration of love/the wedding, and the kind that begins there and moves into mature love.  Happily-ever-afters vs. reality-ever-afters, and as you know, mainstream America loves the comforting, sentimental nostalgia of the former, not the big bummer of the latter.

But here’s the thing: our lives contain both of these stories.

When I was living the experience that was Comeback Season, someone close to me said, “You have to find love at the end of the book or nobody will want to buy it.”

[Remember, I didn't meet my husband until after the book was published.]

I said, “But I didn’t meet anyone. No one special anyway.”

“Well, then just end the book at a moment when you are dating someone,” he said. “Give the reader some hope.”

This isn’t what I ended up doing, but the conversation did make me think a lot about where writers end “relationship stories” and why .

One of the best films I saw this year was Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz about a married woman (Michelle Williams) contemplating whether or not to have an affair. For most of the movie, I thought the dramatic question was “Which one of these two guys will she end up with: her husband or the neighbor?”[Spoiler alert!] Then she chooses the neighbor, and they embrace.

If the movie had ended there, it might have been your typical rom-com. But it doesn’t end there. It keeps going. You get a montage of Williams’s relationship with the neighbor, which moves from passionate to mature (slightly dull) love. I’m not sure how much time passes in this montage, but for fun, let’s say four years. Clearly, Williams isn’t sure if she made the right decision leaving her husband, and her former sister-in-law (Sarah Silverman) says, “Life has a gap in it. It just does. You don’t go crazy trying to fill it like some lunatic.”

Mind the Gap

Last week, I took my husband out for his birthday. We had a perfect day. And I said, “Can you believe that just one week ago, we were fighting so bad I thought we were going to have to get a divorce?” And he said, “I don’t even remember that.”

If you’d ended the movie of our marriage a week earlier, it would have been as depressing as the day the Colts released Peyton Manning, but a week later,  it was all Harry kissing Sally on New Year’s Eve/Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!/”You had me at hello.”

Being married isn’t one decision. Being married is deciding to stay married every single day. It’s hard. It’s boring. It’s not terribly cinematic.

A lot of people want to get married because they want to perform “Being Married” in front of other people–in real life and on Facebook.

I know you know what I’m talking about.

Maybe I’m guilty of this sometimes, too. I share our good moments, but not our bad. I don’t especially like admitting that my marriage isn’t perfect–there’s some shame involved in telling you that–but maybe if I tell you that I’m trying to mind the gap, it will help you mind it, too.

Maybe  the best way to give you hope–whether you’re married or not–is to tell you that my own love story has Happy Ending Days and Bummer Ending Days, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Research and Serendipity

Research isn’t something I do to flesh out my ideas. Research is how I get my ideas.

Writer Mario Vargas Llosa has said that he requires “the springboard of reality” to ignite his imagination, and I would say the same. Here’s a story about why I love doing research and why I write what I’ll call “nonfictional fiction.”

So, in March of 1902, my main character’s brother-in-law tried to divorce his wife. Theirs was a tawdry story, and it made all the papers for about two years.

Since the trial happened in Chicago, I wanted to see how the trial was covered there vs. how it was covered in the New York press. This involved going to the library here at Ball State and scrolling through the microfiche.

Bingo. I found what I was looking for. Drawings of the principal characters. Testimony read into evidence.

Now, I don’t know if my character actually went to this trial or not, but it’s certainly more dramatic if she was there. So I made it happen. Presto.

So, the other day, I was writing those scenes. Linda in Chicago at this divorce trial. March of 1902.

The Ladies’ Entrance to the Palmer House.

I decided to have her stay at the famed Palmer House. Why? Well, I stayed at the Palmer House for AWP 2012, and so this way, I can write off some of my expenses.

Also, it’s gorgeous.

While I was staying there, I grabbed a flyer about the history of the Palmer House and gleaned two great details:

The floor of the barber shop was tiled in silver dollars.
The owner was so sure that his hotel was “The World’s Only Fire-Proof Hotel,” he promised that if any of his guests were willing to pay to remodel and replace their room’s furnishings, they could set their hotel suite on fire and close the door. Potter Palmer vowed the fire wouldn’t spread, and he was willing to prove it. (His original hotel burned down 13 days after it opened in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and Palmer rebuilt his hotel out of iron and brick.)

When I saw those details, I knew my character’s rich, bad-boy husband wouldn’t be able to resist setting his hotel room on fire, and that he’d want to show her that floor tiled in silver dollars.

So, I knew from the Chicago Tribune coverage that the divorce proceedings ended suddenly in a mistrial. My character had a whole day before her, plus I needed to give her husband time to set their hotel room on fire. What would she do with the day?

The Art Institute of Chicago in 1892.

I decided to send her to a museum, the famed Art Institute of Chicago. Was it open in 1902? A quick Google search told me yes, it was.

Well, what would she have seen?

We all know from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that the museum is famed for its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, (like Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette”) but in 1902, they hadn’t acquired much of that yet. So I Googled:

what would have been on exhibit at the art institute of chicago in 1902?

And I found this: a list of all the exhibits for that year with links to the digitized exhibit catalogs.

Three cheers for archivists! Three cheers for the digital humanities!

Can I get an amen?

Randomly, I clicked on the name “Charles Walter Stetson,” then Googled his name, and discovered that Stetson was married to Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In fact, when she first published “The Yellow Wall-paper” in The New England Magazine in 1892, she was still Charlotte Perkins Stetson.

from The New England Magazine 11:5 (January 1892), 647-657.

I also discovered that Stetson painted a portrait of Gilman shortly after the birth of their daughter, a time when she was likely experiencing the post-partum depression that she chronicled so vividly in the story.

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“Evening. Mother + Child” by Charles Walter Stetson which portrays his wife Charlotte Perkins Stetson, later Gilman

So I came up with a plot device that would allow Linda to see this painting (although it actually wasn’t in the exhibit) and become intrigued enough to read her recently published book, The Yellow Wallpaper.

[image error]

Published in 1899. Note the art nouveau cover and that she’s still “Stetson,” not “Gilman.”

There’s a library in the Art Institute. Was this book there in 1902? I don’t know, but I’m hoping the reader will permit me a little creative license.

So I sat my character down in the Ryerson Reading Room and had her read “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and she has a kind of epiphany that day.

She’d been needing an epiphany for awhile. I just had no idea what might trigger it. No idea that a simple Google search would end up determining a major plot turn in my novel.

Then she returns to the Palmer House to discover that her husband has burned their suite.

Sometimes, I think young writers feel that “creativity” means “making up out of whole cloth,” but I’ve never felt that way.

Serendipity means a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise.” Specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. For me, serendipity is part of the euphoria I feel when I’m inside the creative process. I like it when my character’s “real” life (whether it’s my life or someone else’s) provides some plot points to shoot for.

But too much plotting can be…well, plodding. I find that when I’m writing and/or researching, I have to keep my plan, my goals rather loose to allow for serendipity, magic, and imagination.

I like following bread crumbs, like the trail I just described to you. It’s like playing detective.

That afternoon, I read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” not as myself but as my character. I found something out about her that I hadn’t known before. Or hadn’t been able to articulate before.

And who is to say that this wasn’t exactly the way that discovery was “supposed” to happen?

How I Quit Smoking on 6/23/06

On June 23, 2006, I sat on the deck behind my house in Pittsburgh, watching the sun set over the distant hills, and smoked my last cigarette.

I quit because a few months earlier, my doctor had said, “So you’re a smoker?”

“Yeah, just a half a pack a day,” I said, although the truth was I often smoked a pack a day.

“When did you start?” she asked with a frown.

“When I was eighteen.”

She looked up. “Well, you’re thirty-eight now, so you’ve been smoking for twenty years.”

Twenty years?

There was something about that number that undid me.

Twenty years!

That was over half the number of years I’d been alive. So I decided to quit, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty.

Bad Things That Happened

I had many, many emotional meltdowns.


I lost language for awhile. You know how older people will start a sentence and then stop and say, “Guess I’m having a senior moment”? Yeah, I had one of those every fifteen minutes, which is scary when you make your living as a writer and teacher. I can’t afford to lose words.


I gained 30 or 40 pounds, weight that aggravated my bad back and I’m just now shedding.


I also went through a period after I quit smoking and before I met my husband where I replaced smoking with drinking, and yeah, that wasn’t a solution.

This time period is fairly thoroughly chronicled in my second book, Comeback Season, so I’ll spare you all the gory details. If you want to “watch” me cry in my basement and double-fist Everlasting Gobstoppers, feel free to read the book.

How I Quit

Everyone smokes for a different reason. If any of this resonates with you, great.

The main thing: In order to quit smoking, I had to rethink my entire life and how I lived it, which was really, really hard, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I mean that. The hardest.

I read a book whose title I have forgotten, but the gist was that you can’t rely on nicotine replacement, because then you’re just replacing one addiction for another, getting hooked on gum or the patch. You aren’t solving the problem, which is–figuring out why you need cigarettes emotionally and psychologically. My friend, the poet Richard Robbins, once told me this: The physical need for nicotine leaves you after two or three weeks, and after that, it’s all a mind game.

Figure out why you need cigarettes emotionally 

Why did I need them?

Reason 1: Quitting smoking made me realize that I’m an introvert. For twenty years, I’d used cigarettes to help me “push through” the day. Say I’ve been teaching all day, and in the evening, there’s a visiting writer on campus who needs to be taken out to a big dinner with lots of people at the table trying to be clever, then a reading, then a big reception of more people trying to be clever. When I smoked, I could handle a day like that–as long as I smoked. But when I quit, I realized that I only have enough charge in my battery to get through one, maybe two big extroverted social interactions per day. After that, I’m done. I’ve got to go home and recharge. This isn’t always convenient, and sometimes (I think) people believe I’m being rude or standoffish. I was raised to be polite and accommodating, even if doing so is not in my best interests. In order to quit smoking, I had to stop worrying about what other people thought about me, stop wondering if I was doing what others expected. That was (and still is) really hard.

Reason 2: Quitting smoking made me realize my brain likes reward pellets. Cigarettes were my reward for…well, almost everything. Teaching a class. Finishing a story. Finishing a paragraph. Driving 500 miles. Driving to the grocery store. A friend of mine, a recovering alcoholic, told me once that what he missed about drinking was how he’d come home from work every night and have a little party with himself. When he quit drinking, he still needed the parties, so he’d smoke and eat instead. Then he quit smoking and just ate at them and gained a bunch of weight. So: no more parties with himself. He started running 10 miles after work instead. That phrase, “having a little party with myself,” resonated very strongly with me. It’s the need for those little parties that’s my problem, as well as how I celebrate.

Find other guilty pleasures

Gradually, I’ve changed what my reward pellets are, taking away cigarettes, then booze, then bowls of popcorn/crap food, and next I need to tackle Facebook/Twitter.

I’ve found other, less harmful guilty pleasures:

young adult novels, particularly romances
a visual novel/TV series, one episode right after the other, like candy.
smoothies
smelly candles
painting my nails
shopping at Goodwill
kissing my dog

Give yourself lots of coping mechanisms

My last piece of advice is this: when you first quit smoking, you have to give yourself as many “outs” as possible. White knuckling is stupid. When I really wanted a cigarette, I’d try to calm myself down with candy or regular gum, maybe some breathing, then maybe some tea or fruit juice. I’d call my mom or my Health Coach, or go for a walk, or pop in a movie and try to zone out. I stepped up my therapy appointments. I allowed myself–at most–one or two pieces of nicotine gum a day and didn’t buy more than one box. I had a long list of ways to “tackle” the craving, and if it truly wouldn’t dissipate, I’d take an Ativan. Please understand: I needed every one of those coping mechanisms. One less, and I probably would have fallen off the wagon.

Smoke-Free Campus

Last month, my employer, Ball State University, announced that, starting Aug. 1, it’s eliminating all designated smoking areas on campus. You can’t smoke anywhere but in your own vehicle with the windows rolled up. I’m amazed by this, and if I was still a smoker, I’d probably be freaking out right now.

But I’m not a smoker anymore. So I’m not.