Audrey Kalman's Blog, page 12

Reluctant bride of Twitter falls in love

I joined Twitter in June, 2009. Naturally, husband was the first person I followed.

“The Reluctant Bride” – Auguste Toulmouche [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

When I began blogging in 2011, I automatically tweeted my blog posts (thank you, WordPress) because that’s what authors do, the way girls used to get married whether or not they really understood why.

Between the time I joined and about a month ago, I visited Twitter only a handful of times. I never tweeted and I had about ten followers. Twitter overwhelmed me with its seeming chaos. #WhatIsaHashtagAnyway? Looking at random tweets made my head hurt. So much noise—how could I find anything relevant among the cacophony?

Then, this past March, I read a post by the ever-helpful Joel Friedlander called “A Google Toolbox for Authors,” which led me to (re)discover Twitter’s power.

Alert, alert

Regarding Google alerts, Friedlander said, “If you play around with this tool I guarantee you’ll find some neat and useful ways to use it.” I decided to experiment. I had already set up alerts for my name and book title. Now I created an alert for “literary fiction.” This turned out to be particularly helpful. In the years since publishing “Dance of Souls,” I have often felt that readers and writers of literary fiction must be lurking somewhere on the Web, but I never seemed to be able to find them.

Now Google began sending me six to ten links every day to new material about literary fiction. Some of the links were dubious, but many were interesting and relevant, for example:

“Women’s Fiction, Men’s Fiction, What Does it Mean?” (Huffington Post)
Cat Lumb’s genre experiment on Twitter
i09’s call for a new literary movement

At last, I had a way to discover things in a manageable, bite-sized way. Instead of a search yielding thousands of results, I had an e-mail with a few links I could quickly review, once a day.

Then came my next brainstorm. What if I were to share the items I found most interesting with my Twitter followers? And what if I were to start following, on Twitter, some of the organizations that are creating these interesting items? Suddenly, I had a path through the chaos, a method to curate, and a reason to pass on information.

Tweet, tweet

I tweeted. I followed. Twitter suggested more people for me to follow based on the people I had just followed. Sometimes the people I was following tweeted interesting things, which I retweeted. Suddenly, I began receiving several notifications a day in my in-box informing me that “So-and-so is now following you on Twitter!”

I have nearly reached the milestone of 100 followers. I realize this is quite underwhelming, but to someone who, mere months ago, avoided Twitter because it gave her a headache, this seems like an accomplishment. In fact, I’ve grown to enjoy the process so much that I’ve now had to do what so many other authors have advised: dedicate a particular time of day to social media, lest it swallow up all the time I could otherwise have used for writing and editing. (J.D. Moyer has some reflections on this.) Evening works well for me because by then my brain is too addled to focus on long prose anyway. Reading articles and tweeting is about what I can handle.

Brick by brick

By Titus Tscharntke [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

So, I’m actually building my “author platform.” It will be a long haul to get from where I am now to where I need to be to successfully market my writing. But now that I’ve started, it seems a less daunting task. Best of all, I’m no longer anxious about Twitter. I’m excited to “meet” new authors and potential readers. Besides, I’d better have multiple social media platforms, because Facebook is getting more challenging every day.

What’s your relationship with Twitter? A virgin? Just-married? Divorced? Longtime partner? Do you use Twitter to discover new authors and books or to share ones you’ve discovered? I’d love to hear! Respond below or send a Tweet to @audreykalman!

Spacetime, Buddhism, and my mother

Lately, I’ve been missing my mom, who died in 2007.

If you ask most people what they miss about their moms, they might say “feeling close to her” or “her cooking” or “the way she braided my hair.” Well, my mother and I were never close in a typical mother/daughter way. She was not a great cook and I don’t think she ever braided anyone’s hair.

I miss my mother the physicist.

My mother’s patent

Only recently have I come to understand that my mother’s path and mine may not have been so different after all, that physics wrestles with the same questions as art and philosophy. Who are we? Why are we here? Are we alone? What is the nature of reality? What does it all mean? What exists beyond that which we can observe?

During my young adulthood, I thought art was the only approach to answering such questions. Draw about them. Paint about them. Write about them.

My youthful hubris put blinders on me. So I never got a chance to discuss with my mother how she chose to deal with these questions. By the time it occurred to me to wonder what she thought of string theory, multiple universes, and the controversies in physics, it was too late to ask her.

Reading Max Tegmark’s book, “Our Mathematical Universe,” gave me a glimpse into some of what must have drawn my mother to her chosen field. As I struggled through the book’s more mind-bending concepts, I wished I could pick up the phone and chat with her about it.

I find myself a little jealous of my mother’s former students at Simon’s Rock College, who probably did get to discuss some of these ideas—or their predecessors—with her during her long tenure as a professor of math and physics. Although I attended the college myself, I was much too busy being a callow college student and indulging my love of literature to take my mother’s physics class. Now I regret that decision, though I’m not sure my taking the class would have been a particularly pleasant experience for either of us at the time.

My mother the Buddhist?

Another topic I wish I could discuss now with my mother is religion. She was quite a-religious, even a-spiritual, and I spent a good bit of my adolescence working in opposition to her views. I realize with the benefit of hindsight that we may not have been as far apart as I thought on this topic either. Perhaps, given time, she may have come to appreciate and even embrace a spiritual practice like Buddhism—as long as it didn’t involve any dogmatism.

My mother may never have braided my hair, but she bequeathed to me a legacy of questions that have consumed me and fueled the passions I’ve pursued for most of my life. While I don’t believe that she waits for me in any conventional heaven, I feel privileged to take up a conversation with her through my own thinking and writing about things that obviously mattered to us both.

Thanks to Kay Huber for her recent post that inspired my thoughts on this. 

What conversations do you carry on with people who are no longer with us?

 

Uh oh, I’m working on a new novel

I have been happily crafting short stories for the last couple of years, in between finishing my last novel and weighing publishing options. Some stories have even been published. This has been immensely satisfying, especially in contrast with writing long-form fiction. It’s like the difference between adopting a dog and raising a child, where the dog is the short story and the child is the novel. The rewards of a dog may be less emotionally satisfying, but the time-to-payoff is much shorter.

So imagine my surprise when my latest puppy (story) stopped wagging its tail and pressing its wet nose into my hand, stood up on two legs, and announced in an all-too-human voice: “I may be your next novel.”

Right now, this new man-dog is neither man nor beast. It’s a collection of characters, ideas, and themes I want to explore. Making all this coalesce into a coherent narrative is a messy process, the contemplation of which makes my stomach roil.

Most surprising of all has been the subject. I don’t like to talk in detail about works in progress, but to give you a hint, I’ll remind you that I admire the fiction of writers like Margaret Atwood and Kevin Brockmeier. This new work involves a world other than our own, which means I must spend more time than usual creating the milieu in which my characters will live, a world full of unfamiliar ideas, apparatuses, machinery, and attitudes. I must imagine all of them—and how they fit together, why they are there, and what they mean to my characters. One of my critique group partners, YA fantasy author Wendy Walter, says world-building is her favorite part of the writing process. For me, definitely not. But I love a good challenge.

Maybe you’ve heard writers talking about their fiction taking on a life of its own. I don’t know yet exactly how far this new endeavor will take me, but I’m excited to go along for the ride. Stay tuned.

Have you ever been hijacked by an idea?

Word up*

WARNING: This post contains intellectually provocative ideas, graphic descriptions of the power of words, and potentially repulsive ideas. (And swear words and suggestive sexual content in some of the videos!)

Jenny Jarvie’s recent article for The New Republic discusses the increasing prevalence of the “trigger warning.” As my tongue-in-cheek rendition above indicates, a trigger warning is an up-front disclaimer about stories that some readers may find upsetting or even traumatic. (I first heard about the article in an On the Media interview with the author.)

The initial impulse seems innocuous enough. For those who have suffered traumatic events—rape or sexual abuse, for example—reading a story about those subjects could trigger anxiety or trauma. A sympathetic writer might naturally want to protect such readers.

But what about the trigger warning Jarvie references in her article—requested by students to be placed on class content at the University of California, Santa Barbara?

Another problem is that one person’s innocuous event is another’s trauma-inducing trigger. I understand this from personal experience. For about a year after my mother died, I couldn’t bear to read anything about mothers and daughters. References to Mother’s Day put me over the edge. Should stories about mothers come with trigger warnings?

Banned

Another manifestation of the impulse to protect the vulnerable from powerful words is Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign. Here’s one of the videos from the campaign.

I won’t go into details here; you can read Kara Baskin’s excellent commentary in the Boston Globe or Margaret Talbot’s thoughts in the New Yorker for some perspective. I particularly like Baskin’s observation that “Someday, we should be able to say, ‘You think I’m bossy? So what!’”

Sticks and stones

Both of these initiatives acknowledge the tremendous power of words. And this sometimes puts us—as citizens, speakers, and writers—in a tough spot. We want words to have power. We want them to evoke strong emotions in our listeners or readers. But if our words shock or distress to the point where people can no longer hear what we’re saying, have we been effective? Should we censor ourselves? Or should someone tell us to be quiet?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me,” goes the nursery rhyme. As anyone who has ever been called a name can tell you, that’s not strictly true. Words can cause a world of psychic hurt. Words can put people in boxes, denigrate them, incite them, and cause them to act in ways they might not otherwise act.

Here’s an example of some of the responses to the “Ban Bossy” campaign:

Words as weaponry

However, we do a great disservice to ourselves—and to rational discourse—if we confuse tools with weaponry. Words are tools, to be used in the service of communication. When children on the playground or leaders in positions of power turn words into weapons, we shouldn’t ban the words but should shine a light on the hurtful (or illegal, or morally reprehensible) behavior. We shouldn’t “ban bossy” to protect girls or even because the term has become a shorthand for a complicated mess of psychosocial and gender issues. Ironically, I could support Sandberg’s campaign only if she doesn’t really mean it—that is, if she doesn’t really intend to ban the word but is using a provocative alliterative phrase purely to get people talking about an important issue.

Normally, I’m a person of nuance. I like shades of gray; I don’t buy into “slippery slope” arguments because I believe we ought to be able to distinguish among those shades of gray. But regarding trigger warnings, I must confess to having fairly strong feelings about anything that even vaguely resembles censorship. We don’t live in a utopia. The world is full of pain, hatred, and hurt. Banning words and images that describe these things—even for the noble cause of protecting the vulnerable—is a slippery slope I’m not prepared to start sliding down.

Even more importantly, I believe that both trigger warnings and sensitivity about unpleasant words focus the conversation in the wrong place. Yes, we need to raise awareness about things like persistent gender inequities and the horrors of trauma and abuse. But rather than arguing over the words we use or slapping warning labels on everything we write or say, we should work toward making sure individuals who have been hurt or traumatized get the help they need to bolster their resiliency and take life’s normal harshness in stride. Going one step further, we should work toward a world where the hurt and trauma don’t occur in the first place.

What do you think? Have you ever censored yourself so your words wouldn’t traumatize a reader? Have you ever been triggered by something you read? Do you think you should have been warned? Do you support the idea of banning words to help change social norms?

*If you’re old enough, you may get the reference in the title to Cameo’s 1986 hit song. I’m not sure it relates to the topic but it’s a fun ’80s R&B/funk tune that should help lighten your mood.

Three beauties and a redefinition

Thanks to August McLaughlin for hosting her Third Annual “Beauty of a Woman” Blogfest, which prompted this post. Visit her blog starting February 27 to read all the entries.

The Beauty of the Known

It has always seemed to me that people I care about are more attractive to me than strangers.

Looking for confirmation of this, I found a couple of interesting videos. One was titled “How to Make People Think You’re More Attractive Than You Really Are.” Leaving aside the issue of how one assesses one’s own looks, I was interested to find that instead of talking about plastic surgery or makeup, it recommends such things as standing up straight, making eye contact, and smiling.

It seems that the idea of a known person appearing more attractive applies even to oneself, as the video below shows. Four ordinary women received professional makeovers and posed for modeling shoots. You may be surprised to learn that they preferred their pre-makeover selves, replete with curves, freckles, and less-than-perfect hair. One reason? They didn’t recognize their made-over selves.

The Beauty of Surrender

My non-writing work as a birth doula affords me the great privilege of being with women at their most vulnerable: when they are giving birth. Very little about how women look when they give birth matches our cultural norms of beauty. While a few women (usually those who opt for pain medication) may be able to carry on with the application of lipstick and maintenance of their coiffure, for the vast majority of women, the process of giving birth is one of complete surrender.

Birth is an utterly physical act that, paradoxically, causes women to become completely unaware of their physical selves. My doula partner jokes that women “lose one item of clothing for every centimeter of dilation” until, by the time they give birth, they are usually completely naked.

I find this surrender and vulnerability unspeakably beautiful. Unless you are a mystic or a religious devotee, it’s the closest you can get, while alive, to the divine. And it has nothing to do with flat bellies, perfect cheekbones, or lush tresses. You can see some photos here of women giving birth (G-rated), courtesy of Babble.com.

Image credit: pedrovieira68 / 123RF Stock Photo

The Beauty of Being

Sometimes, when I finish yoga class and lie like a corpse on my mat, I’m able to completely lose awareness of my body. I literally cannot feel where I leave off and the floor begins. I see colors behind my eyelids but they are not my colors; some larger Eye sees them. I hear the sounds of the room, but I am not hearing them; some larger Ear hears them. I live for these moments, because in them I no longer feel separate. I feel part of something larger, something far more significant than the particularities of my physical body and even of my mind.

This is true beauty: a connection to the universe that transcends the physical, emotional, and intellectual limitations of humanity.

P.S. Redefining Beauty

I added this section because I recently read a wonderful blog post by my good friend Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez. In it, she talks about a new short film, “Selfie,” in which teenage girls—through a guided process of taking and displaying selfies—come to see new possibilities for how to define beauty. You can watch the 3-minute version below.

Leaping Liebsters

In my last blog post, I mentioned my nomination for the Liebster “Award.”

There are several Liebster images out there. I liked this one… understated.

In fact, this is not an award but a chain letter. You might wonder why someone as skeptical as I would fall for such a thing. Fear not: I go in with eyes open. I understand the honor is not bestowed by some Editorial Board in the Sky but by a fellow blogger who stumbled on my blog and liked it.

In that stumbling spirit, I accept and pass along the Liebster Award.

One of the Liebster rules (see below) requires nominating other bloggers for the award (does the chain-letter nature of this start to become clear?). I took this opportunity to expand my blog-reading horizons—something WordPress makes quite painless—though I stuck to blogs about reading and writing.

As they say in the world of Netflix, Amazon, and Goodreads, “If you enjoy Writing of Many Kinds, you may also enjoy…”

So, let’s leap in.

Each nominee must link back the person who nominated them.

Thank you to A Journal of Impossible Things, written by a fellow Sixfolder.

Answer the ten questions given to you by the nominator.

1) How lit [sic] the fire for your writing? When did your passion for the written word start?

Reading sparked my passion for writing. I can’t remember learning to read; it happened early. Apparently I was disappointed to find that I would be learning to read in kindergarten, since I already knew how. As a kid, I read everything I could get my hands on, visiting my town’s tiny public library at least weekly. I remember writing a story in second grade about a rainstorm. Soon thereafter, I was writing “novels” imitating the books I read—and learning about character, plot, and structure in the process. Why? I wanted to be able to create the luxurious sense of escape that reading provided for me.

2) Do you listen to music when you write? If you do, do you play a playlist or just one song on repeat?

Oddly, I rarely listen to music. When I do, it’s mostly to drown out distractions (TV in the other room, kids making noise). I find instrumental or classical music helpful in those situations. Music with lyrics distracts me.

3) What’s your favorite place in the world? That magical place that you always feel at home in and dream about when you haven’t visited in years?

Winter morning in my back yard (well, technically the neighbor’s yard).

I’m a “home is wherever I am right now” kind of person. I live in Northern California now and love it here. I loved rural New York when I was growing up there. I loved Boston when I lived there, and even Syracuse when I was there for grad school. I loved visiting Greece, France, and Italy; I loved hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

4) If you could only watch 5 movies for the rest of your life, what movies would they be? Care, not favorites. What movies do you think you could watch forever?

Only five for the rest of my life? Oh, come on. And watch forever? I mean, life is great and all, but I wouldn’t want it to be eternal. And I wouldn’t want to watch Dustin Hoffman or Jack Nicholson or John Travolta or Leonardo DiCaprio or Guy Pearce forever either. That said, I’ll play along:

The Graduate
The Shining
Pulp Fiction
Inception
Memento

5) Name a moment in your life that was out of a Hollywood movie. Action moment, romantic.

Deciding to get married after spending only three days with my husband-to-be. We’ve been married for almost 23 years.

6) What was the last dream you remember?

Trekking up a mountain carrying a trumpet for my son and being attacked by sand flies.

7) What fictional character would you like to pick the brain of, if you could meet them?

Milo, from The Phantom Tollbooth.

8) What book are you most looking forward to reading in the next year?

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, by George Saunders.

9) What’s something you really love doing and occasionally think you could have made it a living but realized if you did, you’d hate it forever?

Being a concert pianist.

10. What animal would you love to keep as a pet, no matter if it’s extinct or not really a pet type of creature?

A cougar (also known as a puma).

By Ltshears – Trisha M Shears (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Nominate 10 other bloggers for this award who have FEWER than 200 followers. Here are EIGHT. So sue me.

Literate Lives
Twenty Six
MaxEverhart
Susi Lovell
Ed Desautels’ Maximum Fiction ~ Writing up the Multiverse
Michael J. McDonagh
Eight Ladies Writing
Sandra Chmara Editing & Writing

Create TEN questions for your nominees to answer.My lucky nominees only have to answer five! Add that to the list of charges against me…

What’s your favorite time of day?
What’s your biggest fear?
What gives you the greatest joy?
Do you read paper books, e-books, or a combination?
What do you like about blogging?

Rules for honorees

It’s nice to get recognized, but when the recognition come with a list of rules, the honor may feel more like a burden. Although this is like a chain letter, my nominees won’t contract a horrid disease or be attacked by the big Liebster in the sky if they don’t participate. Should they choose to do so, here are the rules (edited by me for grammar).

1. Each Nominees must link back to the person who nominated them.

2. Answer the 10 ten questions which are given to you by the nominator.

3. Nominate 10 ten other bloggers for this award who have less fewer than 200 followers.

4. Create 10 ten questions for your nominees to answer.

5. Let the nominees know that they have been nominated by going to their blogs and notifying them.

Happy blog exploring…

In case you missed it

My flash fiction piece, “Now You Are a Public Nuisance” appeared in Every Day Fiction and is getting lots of positive feedback.

Next Up

My next blog post will also be off the strict literary path as I’ll be participating in August McLaughlin’s wonderful Beauty of a Woman Blogfest III at the end of the month.

Watch it and weep

Do you wear a watch?

I do. Not a fancy one, and not a digital one. Just a good old-fashioned Ecclessi analog watch my husband gave me quite a few years ago for my birthday. (Come to think of it, the first gift he ever gave me was a watch. Hmmm… can we read something into that?)

Tikker: The Happiness Watch. Huh?

Recently I heard about a new kind of watch. Not just any watch. This is “Tikker – The wrist watch that counts down your life!” (also tag-lined as “The Happiness Watch.”)

I was fascinated, intrigued, repulsed, and, of course, gripped by existential dread.

Why would anyone want to wear a reminder of their mortality on their wrist?

After I got over my initial shock, it turned out I could think of quite a number of reasons, many of which were enumerated on the Kickstarter page for Tikker. Apparently, many people are intrigued by the concept, as the project was funded with more than three times the amount requested.

On the face of it, nothing would seem more antithetical to the idea of living in the moment than being able to glance at your watch and see an estimated number of years, days, hours, and minutes until your death. But, perhaps counterintuitively, reminding us our time here is finite is the watch’s way of goading us into making the most of every moment.

In-the-moment logo by Radicalcourse [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Of course, as practitioners of mindfulness know, there’s a difference between making the most of every moment and being aware of every moment. The first aims to do something with the moments; the latter aims simply to bring attention to the present moment. Perhaps for me, a watch that simply reads “NOW” would make more sense.

Around the same time I heard about Tikker, I listened to a podcast of Radiolab’s show Apocalyptical – Live from the Paramount in Seattle featuring a segment about The Endgame Project. The project involves two actors with decades of experience between them who mount a production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. The intriguing part is that both actors have Parkinson’s disease and must struggle simply to rehearse.

Samuel Beckett. (Roger Pic [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

You can’t get much more dreadfully existential than Beckett, and the project’s site features a quote from Beckett that I’ve been mulling recently: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” It seems to resonate with me particularly because of some challenges I have been going through that defy easy solutions and pat answers.

Both of these ideas—the countdown watch and the idea that life goes on whether you feel up to the task of living it or not—illustrate the fact that our lives as humans are both painfully exquisite and exquisitely painful. The adjective slashers among you may be readying your red pens over those two word pairings. But they resonate.

Would you ever wear a Tikker? Do you go on, even when you can’t? As for me, my analog watch tells me it’s time for a mid-morning snack. There’s nothing like a rumbling stomach to bring you out of the ether and into the present moment.

Some happy stuff

And now for something more upbeat. A Journal of Impossible Things nominated this blog for a Liebster award. In my surlier days, I would have groused about the artifice of bouncing around the blogosphere handing out kudos. But, by participating in these kinds of activities over the last couple of years, I’ve been turned on to some fascinating people I would otherwise never have found. This will be my opportunity to give back to the blogging community. You’ll have to wait a few weeks, though, since the dictates of the Liebster require some work. Stay tuned!

2013: A year of selfieshness

My kind of selfie

In November, the Oxford English Dictionary named selfie its Word of the Year for 2013.

While trying to forget the word’s ickiness (it brings to mind the worst self references—self help, self esteem, self important—along with horrible diminutives like nightie and girlie), I began thinking about what might constitute the writerly equivalent of “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically… with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”

There’s the obvious, of course, which you might call the “lunchie.” The lunchie is a picture of a drink or a plate of food usually accompanied by a description of the environment and circumstances surrounding its consumption: “Yummy pancakes my honey made this morning” or “At Bar X with my buds.” (Now there’s even an anti-posting-pictures-of-your-food Facebook page.)

Another word-ly equivalent of selfies are blogs consisting mostly of discussion of the blogger’s daily struggles and exploits: keeping the weight off, getting to the gym, navigating relationships, or battling illness/addiction.

I’m not denigrating self improvement (here we go again with the self) or the horrific toll exacted by illness and addiction. If sharing helps ease the burden, by all means, share.

I, however, instead of blogging about such things, keep a handwritten journal that lives on my bedside table. On Christmas Day, 2013, it celebrated its 39th birthday (yes, I began keeping it when I was negative ten).

The title page of the very first volume of my journal. Happy Birthday!

Fiction fodder

Why would I write in a little notebook nobody will ever see, at least not until I’m dead?

Because I’m old-fashioned. (Yes, maybe I’m a tad older than 29). But I absolutely cannot imagine sharing what I write in my journal, in its raw form, with anyone—let alone with everyone who has an Internet connection.

The most recent volume of my journal. (You didn’t think I’d let you look inside, did you?)

I keep a journal for some of the same reasons confessional bloggers keep a blog. It’s cathartic. I often write my way through life’s challenges. Sometimes I rant and rave. I’ve been known to stab the pages or have my handwriting deteriorate to the point that even I can’t decipher it.

Mostly I reflect on my emotional state, my relationships with the people I care about, and, of course, my ever-present existential dread. Sometimes I use longer entries to work my way through a particular problem. For a number of years, I documented my dreams, which was fun for a while, until it got tiring.

Rather than share these writings uncensored, I use them as raw material for my fiction. Anyone who knows me well can discern elements of my life in my work. Some things that happen to my characters have happened to me, but they don’t show up in the ways a casual reader might imagine. They’re twisted, shifted, and put in the service of the story. You won’t see an uncurated version of me out in public. I like my privacy.

Hands off my selfie

Privacy, too, was much in the news in 2014. With the lid blown off the NSA’s activities, we’ve been forced to contemplate what it means to keep something private. Just because millions of people choose to expose themselves online through social media sites doesn’t give the government—or anyone else, for that matter—the right to listen in to conversations we expect to be just between us and the person on the other end of the line (can you even say “line” any more when referring to a phone call?).

And the privacy/keeping-us-safe balance? Call me old-fashioned and a liberal, but I’d like to see it tipped in favor of privacy.

Where do you come down on public vs. private, journaling vs. blogging? Do you take selfies? Do you keep a journal, maybe one of those with a lock and a teeny-tiny key?

Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2014—and just the degree of privacy you desire.

All folded up

The results of the Sixfold writer-judged contest came in a few weeks ago. My name was not among the winners. In fact, I had to jump to page two and scroll down to find my story, solidly in the middle of the pack.

How I felt–kind of–after getting the results of the Sixfold contest. (Folded & Hung Store, public domain image; Photo credit: Wikipedia.)

I’ve received hundreds of rejections over my writing career, so I’m used to the slight sting that accompanies each. But I wondered what the winning stories have that mine doesn’t. I concluded it’s more about what they don’t have.

The winning stories—and many of the ones that topped mine on the list—are good, solid short fiction. They spark enough interest to carry the reader through ten or fifteen pages. They have sympathetic characters and economical language that advances plot.

What they don’t have, for the most part, is language that takes your breath away. They don’t make me uncomfortable or stick with me long after I’ve read them. They don’t make me say, “Wow, I wish I had written that.” (The exceptions, for me, were Chris Belden’s third-place winner, “The Woodpecker Problem,” and

I’m not claiming my writing is so masterful it does all those things. But my submission aimed outside the box, to use business-speak. I played with form and went for a style that was more magical realism than realism.

Maybe the story really is a bomb.

Or maybe I just chose the wrong audience.

I read previous winning stories from Sixfold, so I had some idea of what rose to the top in the past. The problem is that there’s no way to know the predilections of the current readers generally, or, more particularly, the few who read your story each round.

It turns out writers are not as homogeneous a bunch as you might think. I can only guess that the six who initially read my story—and didn’t rank it highly enough to promote it to the next round—were not after unconventional form or a piece that asks a lot of the reader.

Still, I’m planning a revision to take into account some of the comments I got. And I plan to enter Sixfold again. But, just to be safe, I’ll enter something a bit more… conventional.

Because Sixfold contest entries are available only to other entrants, I’m unable to provide a public link to my story. But I’m happy to give special access to anyone who’d like to read it (pre-editing). Just join my e-mail list and check “Stories submitted to Sixfold” in your preferences and I’ll send you a link.

Related articles

Some other bloggers’ thoughts about Sixfold.

SixFold Writing Experience, part one (sypherhawq.wordpress.com)
Sixfold–Thoughts and reflections sypherhawq.wordpress.com)
Above the Sixfold (michaelmartineck.blogspot.com)

I’d love to hear from other writers who entered… or who may plan to.

Midwifing stories

mid·wife – verb (used with object)

3. to assist in the birth of (a baby).

4. to produce or aid in producing (something new)

I’ve gotten some nice compliments over the last year for my fiction editing. People seem to appreciate thoughtful, constructive feedback that respects the essence of their voice and their message. And I’ve discovered that I really enjoy the process of helping people discover what they’re trying to say and finding the most effective way to say it.

It occurred to me that there’s connection between my work as an editor and my work as a doula. A good editor, like a good doula, does not have her own agenda. It’s all about the client: the laboring mother or the laboring writer. Birthing stories takes less physical effort than birthing a baby, but in both cases the vision should belong to the writer or the mother, not the person supporting the process.

English: Title page to Christopher Smart’s magazine, The Midwife. (Public Domain – Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A doula, unlike a midwife, does not perform clinical tasks—she doesn’t check heart rates or have ultimate responsibility for the health of mom and baby. That’s up to the midwife or doctor. Here’s where the analogy breaks down a bit. An editor does have “clinical” responsibilities, if you think of coherence, grammatical fidelity, and sensible structure as vital health measures of a story.

If you had told me twenty years ago that I’d be in a helping profession, one that involves working intensely and intimately with people, I’d have thought you were crazy. I never thought of myself as a “people person.” But now I see the continuity between my lifelong love of editing and my work as a doula. They’re both about supporting, filling in, helping to shape, and, ultimately, about deriving satisfaction from the satisfaction of others.

Fault Zone: Shift is coming

As I write this, the great folks at Sand Hill Review Press are in the final stages of getting the fourth Fault Zone anthology out the door. I was its midwife—um, editor. My amazing assistant editor, Dorcas Cheng-Tozun and I shepherded this collection of stories, poems, and essays into being. We can’t wait to see it in its final form. Stay tuned for release and purchase details!

Schematic diagram of geological fault with thrown blocks. (Public Domain – Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What about you? Have you found connections between your work as a writer or editor and other parts of your life? Or experienced a seismic shift lately? Do tell.