Jen Knox's Blog, page 18

On Being Alone: A Meditation

A short practice to provide a new way of looking at loneliness and what it means to be alone.

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Photo by Anja Bauermann

On a Small Press Book Getting a Second Life

It is rare that a small press book gets a second life. Actually, it’s rare that any book gets a second life.

I am overjoyed to announce that The Glass City, a collection of climate fiction that won the Press Americana Prize for Prose in 2017, was re-released by Press Americana (Hollywood Books International) with a new cover and a new foreword.

Before I discuss what it was like to go back and revise published work, I am including the new cover below and an extract from the foreword that the brilliant and acclaimed poet, Sheila Black, wrote.

The original 2017 cover depicts the Toledo, Ohio landscape. Toledo is also known as “The Glass City,” which is examined in the namesake story. This is the revised cover. Buy it here *ALL 2023 ROYALTIES go to ONE TREE PLANTED.

From Sheila Black:

We are on the cusp of something unimaginable. That is how wrapping our mind around the planet in global warming time often feels. Which is why, as Amitav Ghosh has famously noted, given the urgency of the crisis, it is astonishing how little of it has thus far entered our fictional worlds. In his work The Great Derangement, Ghosh reflects on why this is so. He argues that part of the problem is that the catastrophic and unpredictable nature of climate change seems to make a mockery of the kinds of structured plots and epiphanies and character arcs that serious fiction depends on. He explains that “in the era of global warming, nothing is really far away; there is no place where the orderly expectations of bourgeois life hold unchallenged sway. It is as though our earth had become a literary critic and were laughing at Flaubert, Chatterjee, and their like, mocking their mockery of the ‘prodigious happenings’ that occur so often in romances and epic poems...these are not ordinary times: the events that mark them are not easily accommodated in the deliberately prosaic world of serious prose fiction.”

Yet Ghosh also argues – for me, very movingly – that neither is science fiction nor magical realism entirely equipped to prepare or console or teach us how to live through this complicated time. He states, “But there is another reason why, from the writer’s point of view, it would serve no purpose to approach them in that way: because to treat them as magical or surreal would be to rob them of precisely the quality that makes them so urgently compelling – which is that they are actually happening on this earth, at this time.”

As I read Jen Knox’s stories in The Glass City, this phrase from Ghosh keeps knocking around my head: “actually happening on this earth, at this time.” The reason I keep repeating it under my breath is that Jen Knox has somehow managed to combine the serious attention to the real, the deep facticity of great prose fiction as we have known it, with precisely the science fiction or magical elements that our time – this remarkable and terrifying age of miracles – seems to demand.

…

Put simply, reading The Glass City allows me to grasp with a more whole self what I see unfolding with my own eyes. For example, here where I write this in San Antonio, we are experiencing a heatwave, with seventeen days over 100 degrees in the last month, the hottest June ever on record. When I go into my garden, only the sunflowers are hanging on without water; each day another plant shrivels up and just gives over. Yet the stories in this book are not about despair, they are about the moments, like feeling the water in the hose in my yard go from bathtub hot to cool again as it trickles over my hands. One of the stories is about the sisters who trust the knowledge, and the muscle memory they carry in their hands and fingertips:

“They folded dough and eyed wax paper lined with their homemade truffles, prepared to instruction. They baked cookies and scones, mixed batters, and blasted French pop music as customers, one by one, began to line up in anticipation. The smells of fresh breads and sweet creams, of chocolate eclairs and almond macarons, enveloped the sisters.”

There is not a story in this book that does not evoke its particular landscape with thrilling immediacy and intensity, so we understand a little more what it is to be here, to see and listen and feel what is “actually happening on this earth, at this time.”

Sheila Black is the author of All the Sleep in the World and Iron, Ardent

Thanks to Sheila. Also, as a writer distanced from my own work, I wanted to discuss questions I myself have about the text. Because I wrote this book as a different person.

The pre-2017 me wanted to better understand my own reaction to the implications of climate change through the lens of fantastical fiction.

While it was a delicious challenge to revise the book years after it was released, our perilous situation on this planet has become less like fiction and more like reportage. Meanwhile, the planet is resilient. As are humans—when we have to be. We can come up with solutions and will, no doubt.

Right?

If you are a writer and can rummage up old work, truly old work that a former version of yourself completed, you’ll see that in some sense we are more often than not mystically clear about the general direction things are headed. I returned to this work with a scalpel and a few sets of generous eyes who found the human error in the last edition. (It’s always there if we look hard enough.) But I also returned to it wondering how much of the magical elements might’ve been seeking a solution.

Perhaps climate change, or global weirding, is a larger call, more filled with magic and power than we can realize. Perhaps it’s a call that beckons us in a stern but loving voice that if we don’t move forward on our own, we’ll be pushed.

Back to my regular rantings next week. I’m writing something about quantifying and the unquantifiable and death.

In the meantime, check out the book. It’s very different than my lit-witch novel, WAU. Still magical and still odd, it is a collection of questions I had years ago. And while this former me was an entirely different writer, her questions remain.

In community,

Heartfelt gratitude.

Do great artists really steal?

Ten years ago, almost to the day, I was featured in a blog called Great Writers Steal, which was a brilliant site that dissected some aspects of craft from a short story I wrote about a dog. I was especially honored. Mostly because I liked the way the site toyed with the concept and used it as a front for truly great critique and reviewing.

But I have to admit . . .

I think a lot of people oversimplify the idea behind Picasso’s attributed quote (Good artists copy, great artists steal). To say there are no original ideas is a common stance. And if you wanted to take that stance, I’m sure you could find evidence.

There are plenty of writing tropes to back up such a claim. Formulas and models speak to the value of recycled ideas. They evoke emotional responses again and again, predictably. Love stories, mysteries, poetry, and literary fiction alike have tells and techniques one can study or imitate. Common themes and analogies come up ad nauseam before being considered cliche.

In this sense, formulaic work is a lot like advertising. It’s about bringing a few existing concepts and images together in a slightly new way to evoke an emotional reaction that gets people’s attention. It takes a bit of creative theft, I suppose, and a knack for rearranging ideas.

But at a certain point, to combine ideas just to sell a thing begins to feel cheap. “Stolen” art or borrowed personas help an artist create a brand or product with a short shelf life.

Combining existing ideas, much like an algorithm, rarely leads to what endures, which is one way to define “great art,” and it’s the way I’m going to define it here. In fact, it’s the way I define art in general. Everything else is just a bit of success (capitalist success, that is).

True creative prowess takes something different and less derivative. But even great artists steal a little bit, right?

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To me, the great stuff begins with appreciation. Influence is an undeniable factor as an artist is developing her voice. But the difference in intention and formulation is the difference between something easy and shallow (that, say, AI could create) and something with a ring of originality. Something with legs.

We exist individually for a reason, to contribute unique ideas. And this kind of creativity takes time, deliberation, and, undeniably, a lot of work and . . . more time.

There is another adage that says no one can see the world through your eyes. Or no one can tell a story the way you can.

It’s easier to copy or ask an algorithm. It’s faster, too. More efficient. But it’s also more forgettable and more of the same, more inclined to blur and fade from the mind of those exposed to derivative creative works.

Replicating others can offer a decent training system for new writers and artists, and it can be done with purpose, especially if one is kind enough to pay homage to those they “steal” from. This makes for appreciation, rather than a simple grab. Appreciation is the catalyst from which we can find our unique voices.

What’s the point of an often-long, arduous journey, rather than just a quick grab? What’s the point of sacrificing a sure thing for a more enduring work?

I suppose it’s down to the person. But, to me, exploring the world authentically and creatively offers us purpose and offers our audiences something new. Something authentic. And that, my friends, just might lead to GREAT ART.

The kind of art that jostles a person from the norm and offers them a new way to see.

xo

PS - This is my goal anyway. I’d love to hear your thoughts. While I admit that my own writing life has been a bit of a slog, I wouldn’t trade any small part of it (especially the slow, painstaking parts) for the world. The process of personal discovery contains more than I can express. I guess that’s what I’m getting at here.

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From Worry to Love - Day 3

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this. —Henry David Thoreau

Meditation 3 of 3

Total Time: 9 minutes

Grab a paper and pen

Photo by Javardh

Today, we'll seal our practice wi…

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From Worry to Love - Day 2

This is the second of three sessions about reframing worry.

“Love is the mirror of divine beauty.” Rumi

Photo by Katie Rainbow 🏳️‍🌈

Meditation 2 of 3

Total Time: 9 minutes

In the first session, we looked at a worst-case scenario. Today, I’d like you to develop an appreciation for what you have right now. At this moment. Because anxiety is based on a predi…

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From Worry to Love - Day 1

I thought I’d share my other course on Insight Timer.

In the first session, we examine ways to reframe worry or overwhelm with a meditation to look at a worst-case scenario. What you’ll need? 10 minutes and a little silence.

What does it take to appreciate what you have right now? Worry or anxiety is based on a prediction, and predictions are never entire…

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Coming soon . . .

Listen on your commute or while you clean the house! This story is set in Toledo, Ohio, a city known as the “glass city” due to the Libbey Glass factory, which has been headquartered there since 1818. A few of my ancestors worked for this company, but none of that has anything to do with this fantastical story.

Originally published in Sequestrum. “The Glass City” is the namesake story in my forthcoming climate fiction collection, soon to be (re)released by Press Americana/Hollywood Books International.

I’ll post more about this soon.

Photo by redcharlie

On celebration

I have never been good at celebrating accomplishments. Usually, when things go well, I feel a quick rush of joy and then simply move on.

Not long ago, I was thinking about how much I had to celebrate, but instead of enjoying the feeling, I immediately busied myself with the next project. I don’t think this is uncommon. People, writers I happen to know especially, do not stop to celebrate their successes. And all too often, we don’t celebrate others.

With this in mind, I recently asked my students to reflect on a leader they admire. I told them it could be a parent, a teacher, a business or community leader—any person the respective student knew.

They wrote without hesitation and shared stories in class.

Assignment Part 1: Write two paragraphs about someone you know who inspires you and demonstrates personal leadership skills you admire.

When I told them there was a part two to the assignment, they got ready to write again. But when I told them what I wanted them to do next, they looked around at each other and smiled nervously. There was the collective sense of being on a roller coaster, about to tip over the apex and feel the rush of gravity.

Assignment Part 2: Text, email or call that person. Let them know that they’ve positively influenced your life and that you appreciate them. Do not ask them for anything. Just say thank you.

I’ve given this assignment before in different contexts. Sometimes I tell emerging writers to share appreciation with authors. But this is somewhat self-serving if the author is trying to network. Also, sometimes people do this just to endear themselves (Samuel Johnson: “He who praises everybody praises nobody”). But what about the people who have already given or inspired, from whom you have nothing to gain … who you merely appreciate?

For the first time, I had the thought that maybe I should do what I expected of them. I emailed a mentor from my young adulthood and thanked her for being a light in my life when I was an emotionally and mentally fragile mess. My stomach dropped as I hit send on the email, and I was confused by my own nervous energy. Not much makes me nervous anymore, but sending that email made me feel oddly vulnerable.

Those who positively influence us (especially without reciprocation) are human too. We need to celebrate them. And celebrate ourselves and our own efforts, for that matter. My email was answered promptly with appreciation and a note of surprise. And I realize that any time a student emails me out of the blue with a thank-you message, I feel the same. It’s not the norm.

So if you’re here reading this, thank you for your time and attention. Your presence. Secondly, why not do this yourself?

Even if it is the norm for you to show appreciation, is there someone underappreciated in your life? Someone who could use a little acknowledgment?

It’s remarkable to me how much more inclined I am to celebrate my own wins when I can celebrate others.

Heartfelt gratitude for your support.

What’s coming? I have another short podcast series coming up for subscribers and quite a lot of BIG writing news. In the meantime, celebrate, friends! Yourselves and others.

xo

On death

I catch myself paying closer attention to the cadence of my breath when I see a tombstone.

As a kid, riding in the back of my parents’ Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais, we were always on the lookout. Mom would say, “Hold your breath!” whenever we approached a cemetery. My sister and I would suck in oxygen and expand our cheeks.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

While I don’t remember discussing the reason, I knew we didn’t want ghosts and spirits to recruit us. So I made a game of eluding death by holding my breath for longer increments each time we drove along the cemetery that extended a few blocks on Olentangy River Road. It was a route we traversed often.

After a while, I became boastful about how long I could remain inert. Playing dead to fool the dead, I could suck in oxygen at the traffic light, when the cemetery was barely in sight, and hold my breath comfortably as I squinted to read the names on the stones, wondering at the life stories. I’d hold it beyond the cemetery until my body faltered. Just when we were in the clear, I’d find myself gasping after the inevitable release.

For a long time, I imagined gasping would be how I’d take my last breath.

Now in my mid-forties, I appreciate the wisdom and philosophical framing that arrives with middle age. I wouldn’t go back in time for anything, but I can’t say aging is without its perils. I wonder currently, for instance, if the cartilage in my right knee is atrophying or if this twinge is just overuse. It’s hard to tell. Small parts and processes of my body are beginning to weaken. There are more foods I cannot tolerate. I appreciate a good nap.

I wonder about the number of years I have left and the quality of those years, but not in a depressing manner. I’m not taking anything for granted.

I have to admit that on my birthday I succumbed to the urge to enter basic lifestyle information into a death calculator online. It told me I had about ninety full years to live. This means I am about halfway through, assuming I’m incredibly lucky. This death calculator is likely just a way of collecting marketing information, but even if it happens to be accurate, this is the sort of data the mind can’t quite digest. It feels abstract, albeit less so than it did in my twenties.  

In my thirties, I published a lot of short fiction staring a protagonist named Rattle. He was a seeker, internally tortured, and he seemed to have a proclivity for mocking death. I named him after reading about the death rattle, which refers to a sound the body emits when a dying person’s fluids build up in the throat and upper chest. But Rattle also had a certain innocence, a wonder.

I do not have children, but friends who do tell me that the sound of a rattle is transfixing. It evokes a sense of curiosity as babies puzzle about where the scattered sound came from. They investigate the object and begin to explore its shape. When a rattle comes from inside, perhaps we find ourselves just as transfixed. Just as curious and in awe.

“Lift your feet so they don’t get wet,” Mom would say if we drove on a bridge over a large body of water. I am pretty sure she made this one up. My sister and I would lift our feet and legs, finding an isometric hold, but we weren’t convinced. If we forgot, we’d laugh it off.

We never forgot to hold our breath.

I still remember the day we drove past a graveyard, and I chose to breathe. I did so defiantly, mocking the spirits. Take that, death, I thought, as my sister looked on in horror, her cheeks expanded and eyes wide. I tried to smile confidently, but I had immediate reservations about what I’d done.

I took conscious inhalations, feeling everything—the temperature, length, expansion in my body—and, for the first time I can remember, felt total appreciation for every single breath. This appreciation wanes and swells to this day, and the older I get, the more I feel it.   

After all, the ephemeral is what makes everything worthwhile.

Prompt: Death is one of the most compelling topics in literature, so I invite you to write a piece about death. A character, a process… an end.

4 of 4: The Alchemy of Creative Living

Week 4: Your unique creative voice

Time: 10 minutes

Hey, get that notebook again!

Dear friends,

I am heading back from a trip to Alberta, where I met a good friend and so many kind people in Calgary. It was lovely to meet these Canadian Rocky Mountains. What a creative and soulful boost for my birthday.

But if you’re like me, you’ll need a little fortitude as we approach the fall months and commitments swell.

This week’s installment is like an SOS for creative stuckness. A reminder that you have a creative why even if it’s not clearly defined in your mind, even if the how is inaccessible.

I hope you enjoyed this series!

If you’re a paid subscriber, you should be able to download and replay them as needed. Let me know how these meditations and short exercises worked for you.